[HN Gopher] In 2019 40% of San Francisco traffic fatalities are ...
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In 2019 40% of San Francisco traffic fatalities are from left turns
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 160 points
Date : 2021-12-06 19:00 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.saferleftturns.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.saferleftturns.org)
| dorianmariefr wrote:
| Maybe making the streets narrower would help
| mig39 wrote:
| This is a solved problem. Roundabouts.
|
| Even when accidents happen in Roundabouts, they're generally not
| "T-bones" or hitting vehicles at 90o or head-on. They're more
| glancing-typing collisions.
|
| Much safer.
| StillBored wrote:
| And Michigan lefts.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_left
| mig39 wrote:
| Very cool! Almost like a mini clover-leaf?
| mazugrin2 wrote:
| Roundabouts are great for roads between towns and cities and
| other population centers. But urban streets where lots of
| people are walking should be designed for pedestrians first,
| not cars. Roundabouts are actually quite complicated for
| pedestrians to traverse safely.
| higgins wrote:
| Not everyone is an ambiturner
| csours wrote:
| Watching dashcam footage I started saying "Left Turns Are Always
| A Mistake". If a left turn is possible in a dashcam video, it
| almost always the source of the incident.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/SMIDSY
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Does anybody know why bike paths are always on the left of the
| street? Looks to me that most problems come from that.
| black_13 wrote:
| In Austin and DFW motorists on a cell phone will kill you if you
| are on a bike and the worst is Plano and the worst for that is at
| 5pm. They are one their cell phones. I stopped riding in that
| area and in Austin i confined myself to trails.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It is hard for me to take percent statistics like this seriously.
|
| How does the overall fatality rate compare to other cities? What
| are the total death counts?
|
| Where would we rather have 40% of the pedestrian fatalities
| occur?
| worker767424 wrote:
| I wonder how many accidents and fatalities are due to poor
| layouts (that are hard to fix), inadequate signage, and unique
| designs that are "safer," but add enough mental overhead that
| you're paying more attention to where you should be so you're not
| in a bus-only lane rather than looking out for pedestrians.
| Driving in SF can be complicated when you're not familiar with
| the streets. Intersections feel like multiple clever solutions
| stacked together.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The closest calls I've ever had with pedestrians were on left
| turns. IMO the problem with modern cars is the airbags in the
| A-pillar. The pillars have gotten so wide that you have to
| consciously bob your head around back and forth (like a fighter
| pilot, of course...) to look around both sides of it. Otherwise
| people can easily vanish into that blind spot. I think a lot of
| people just forget that there's a big blind spot there because
| they're used to just looking on either side and inferring what's
| not visible -- which is usually fine with something as big as a
| car. But on a left turn, a pedestrian walking the same direction
| you are driving can be completely hidden as you turn because
| their motion will be synchronized with the blind spot.
| matsemann wrote:
| Sounds to me like cars shouldn't be allowed to drive where
| pedestrians travel, if they can't really avoid driving people
| over.
|
| Edit: This Tom Scott video shows how a cyclist can be perfectly
| occluded by the A-pillar while both are moving
| https://youtu.be/SYeeTvitvFU?t=55
| ars wrote:
| It's hard enough being a pedestrian, let's not make it harder
| by limiting where people are allowed to cross (only
| intersections with dedicated left turn signals).
|
| If you meant limit the cars, obviously that'll never happen,
| so I assumed the more realistic interpretation.
| matsemann wrote:
| I meant limit cars, yes. Not that I think it will happen in
| the US very soon, it's designed around them.
|
| As a European, the concept of jaywalking is so bizarre.
| Cities are for people, not cars. You can ban people from
| highways, but shouldn't ban them from walking in their own
| neighborhood.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Cars don't drive themselves, they are driven by people.
| The same people who are also pedestrians at times. The
| solution is not to try and ban cars, any more than it
| makes sense to ban pedestrians. The solution is to design
| the roads for multiple modes of transportation so
| everyone can get where they need to go.
| matsemann wrote:
| And well designed cities don't need much car usage. Thus
| my point about removing them. Not really just banning
| them, but making them obsolete by having better options.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| There's much more to most countries than just cities, and
| completely changing traffic rules entirely when going
| into car-hostile territory will continue to cause
| suburbia and CBD's to exit city cores.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Every time I get into a discussion like this, I feel like
| I meet a bunch of people who have only ever lived in very
| dense urban environments. Even in medium cities (using
| Portland, Oregon as a convenient example), cars make
| sense. The density just isn't there to support
| eliminating cars except for a few blocks in the densest
| area of downtown.
| giantg2 wrote:
| And I wonder how deliveries (especially furniture),
| emergency vehicles, and people with disabilities are
| impacted.
| matsemann wrote:
| I grew up in a city of 2500 people, with vast distances.
| Of course people used cars for much, and no public
| transport. But the city centre was designed such that you
| parked your care one place, and then walked between all
| the stores. No having to drive through a big parking lot
| and crossing a street to get to the next store. I lived
| about 2km away from school, and biked, skied or walked
| every day, since it was designed a path for that. That
| path/road was completely separated from any roads cars
| would travel. So very safe. No one I know of got driven
| by cars to school.
|
| Ironically, those making it unsafe for kids to walk to
| school, are parents driving their kids being short on
| time.
|
| Point being, I have not only ever lived in dense urban
| environments. Secondly, that even those non-dense are
| perfectly viable to make safe for humans, and use less
| cars.
| megablast wrote:
| People are addicted to cars and will never consider using
| anything else if you let them. In Australia this is true
| also. I have never owned a car here, lived in 4 different
| cities. Never needed a car. But most others think they
| need to.
| ChefboyOG wrote:
| I think this highlights the best path forward. Large-but-
| not-Manhattan cities should eliminate cars in the densest
| areas of their downtown, where it makes sense. Jersey
| City did this in their downtown area, and it seems to be
| going well.
|
| As people who want to live without cars move to the
| downtown zone, the area adapts to meet their needs (in
| terms of the types of stores etc). If the policy proves
| popular, the city has the option of spreading the "car-
| less" zone as the dense urban core grows. Similar to
| suburban sprawl, but inverted, I suppose.
| holoduke wrote:
| The US need to look at German or Dutch traffic
| regulations and road constructions. Optimized in an
| almost perfect form for both motorised vehicles and
| pedestrians. But I guess that's never gonna happen
| giantg2 wrote:
| Or we could actually test people. The drivers test is a
| joke here. Most "accidents" are really the result of
| someone making a bad choice - to look at their phone, to
| exceed safe speeds, to run a red light (impatience is
| probably the biggest in my opinion), etc.
| matsemann wrote:
| Where I live, getting a driver's license takes a long
| time, money and involves lots of training. Still have
| many problems. Maybe the average driver is a bit better
| here, but what's needed is a systematic change. Can't
| rely on people behaving better, they never will. Design
| stuff better instead.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Systemic change could be good, but depends what it
| actually is.
|
| The original suggestion was complete segregation of
| pedestrians and cars, which isn't completely feasible
| (only in relatively small areas and with exceptions).
| itronitron wrote:
| Same here, most recent close call was about a month ago despite
| being fully aware of the blind spot but not expecting someone
| to be crossing on a 'don't walk' signal.
|
| 'A Fighter Pilot's Guide to Surviving on the Roads' has some
| very good information on this.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17900759
| theluketaylor wrote:
| Modern A-pillar thickness has become a real problem. My biggest
| fear when driving my modern cars is losing track of a
| pedestrian, especially in the A-pillar. It's likely time for
| legislation on the field of view offered by modern A-pillars as
| many of the thickest pillars are to use lower grade steel to
| save costs while still meeting rollover and crush requirements.
| More expensive high strength steel and more compact airbags can
| bring A-pillar widths back into safer territory. I'm a lot less
| safe driving my vintage car around, but there isn't any chance
| I'll miss a pedestrian since the greenhouse is so great.
|
| Ottawa, Ontario just published a guide to building protected
| intersections:
| https://documents.ottawa.ca/sites/documents/files/protectedi...
|
| A lot of these changes are not particularly expensive and can
| have a huge impact on safety by limiting how much time a
| pedestrian is vulnerable and forcing cars to fully turn so
| pedestrians are in direct vision rather than peripheral.
|
| For higher speed intersections we should be using a lot more
| roundabouts and things like diverging diamond to eliminate
| conflict between different travel modes and keep traffic
| flowing in a single direction.
| mdasen wrote:
| I think one of the big things hidden in here is that auto
| makers are allowed to and incentivized to optimize for the
| safety of the passengers inside the vehicle and not
| pedestrians outside the vehicle.
|
| Modern cars have a huge lack of visibility. They've removed a
| lot of the glass so that they can get sturdier frames.
| However, that makes it harder for them to see pedestrians.
|
| I'd also note it makes it harder for cars behind to see the
| context of the road as well. I love being behind an old car.
| I can see straight through its rear window and out the front
| and see what is going on. I can anticipate stuff that I
| wouldn't be able to anticipate if I'm behind a newer vehicle
| where I can't see through the vehicle.
|
| I'd also note that the increasing size of vehicles is
| presenting a multi-faceted problem. 1) Higher hoods mean
| impacting pedestrians higher up putting the force into their
| internal organs and heads. 2) Higher hoods mean that your
| body will be pushed to the ground where the car can run over
| you and cause head injuries rather than being hit in the
| knees and flung onto the hood of the car where you are less
| likely to have as severe injuries. 3) Taller vehicles mean
| that drivers can't see what is going on as much. A 5'3"
| (average woman) pedestrian can be hidden behind a 6' vehicle
| while their head would bob above a 4'6" vehicle. A cyclist
| may be riding at 5'5", but they'll be completely obscured
| behind a 6' vehicle. If you're trying to make a left turn,
| oncoming traffic may be obscuring pedestrians and cyclists
| today in a way that it didn't in years past.
|
| I definitely get worrying about losing a pedestrian in an
| A-pillar. I find that cars are also often losing pedestrians
| behind other vehicles - vehicles that are tall enough to
| obscure pedestrians.
|
| We've allowed and encouraged auto makers to optimize for
| passenger safety. That's meant that they've removed the great
| greenhouse that provided good visibility and replaced it with
| more structure and airbags.
| Glawen wrote:
| Definitely not in Europe, EuroNCAP added a pedestrian test
| a few years ago, and the test forced automakers to change
| their design for pedestrians in mind.
| https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/the-ratings-
| expla...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >We've allowed and encouraged auto makers to optimize for
| passenger safety.
|
| Well we've outlawed all the other options and they're not
| gonna just pack it in and go out of business so what else
| would they do?
|
| The automakers are in this[1] situation.
|
| [1] https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/billingsga
| zette...
|
| They'd be happy to build 75mpg tin cans for the consenting
| adults who want them but the amount of hand wringing that
| would cause (were it even legal in any practical sense)
| would start a fire. I'm already imagining the Frontline
| intro now "Mrs Soandso's son was driving one of these when
| he rear ended a semi trailer..."
| worker767424 wrote:
| For me, it's actually the rear view mirror. I can miss a car at
| a 4 way stop because of it.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| For sure, I've had a few cars like that. Sometimes I could
| make it better by pushing the mirror up to the limit of
| travel (while it can still be aimed to see the road behind
| you). That puts it pretty close to the roof on some cars,
| reducing the impact of the blind spot. But it's not always
| doable on every model of car.
| kirse wrote:
| In the motorcycling world oncoming left vehicles are basically
| the "Jesus take the wheel" scenario.
|
| Go left to avoid them and you're potentially in oncoming
| traffic, go right and you're trying to negotiate a developing
| mess with a driver who realizes they've made a mistake, or
| lastly attempt to brake and you might dump the bike or end up
| underneath a vehicle.
|
| A couple things I do when coming to intersections is almost
| always cover the brake, flash hi-beams if I think someone is
| about to take an aggressive jump, or sometimes point an index
| finger at the oncoming driver to catch their attention. You'd
| be surprised how many people subconsciously register that
| they're being pointed at and it gets them to consciously snap
| into focus.
|
| Somewhat related ->
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| Interesting. On my bicycle I sometimes point to where a car
| should stop when I have priority on a roundabout and am about
| to exit crossing over where they would enter. Seems to work.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > In the motorcycling world oncoming left vehicles are
| basically the "Jesus take the wheel" scenario.
|
| Years ago I nearly creamed a motorcycle after looking pretty
| much directly at him. The angles we were converging at meant
| that he basically disappeared into the background because
| there was no relative motion. Probably scared the crap out of
| him, and it certainly scared the crap out of me.
|
| That was when I started moving my head back and forth coming
| up to an intersection where I'm going to turn, because it
| introduces enough of a perspective change to make a moving
| motorcycle stick out. It's exactly the situation described in
| the fighter pilot article. The human brain is amazingly good
| at stitching together what appears to be a complete scene
| while actually losing pretty sizable chunks of it all the
| time.
|
| The other times I have close calls were 100% coincident with
| having a full car of passengers. I think we only have a
| certain amount of bandwidth, and taking up a bunch of it with
| noise reduces what's left to devote to vision. I also turn
| down the radio when I'm coming up to an unfamiliar area, or a
| situation that is obviously going to be complex to navigate.
| foepys wrote:
| There is also a phenomenon where drivers (car and truck)
| just forget about motorcycles coming their way. They see
| it, they register it's there but then just... forget about
| it.
|
| Imagine a car wants to turn and waits and a line of cars
| pass with a motorcycle at the end, then it's extremely
| dangerous for the motorcyclist. Because our brains
| interpret dangers relative to us, it sometimes just filters
| out the not-so-dangerous things. The motorcycle is
| relatively harmless to a car or truck thus drivers
| sometimes filter it out as if it doesn't exist.
|
| What happens then is the car driver just waits for the cars
| to pass and then begins to turn while the motorcycle is
| still coming up, often resulting in a crash.
|
| There is an easy fix, though: just say "motorcycle" out
| loud when this situation occures. It's really as easy as
| that.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> The angles we were converging at meant that he basically
| disappeared into the background because there was no
| relative motion._
|
| This effect is demonstrated in this video about a
| particularly dangerous crossing in the UK:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYeeTvitvFU
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Yikes, just 15 seconds into the video, a car absolutely
| blows through the stop sign.
| necovek wrote:
| One of the things I noticed is that as "smaller" participants
| in traffic get faster, it gets exponentially harder to account
| for them. Eg. runners are harder to see because you need to be
| watching a much wider angle that is more likely to be obscured
| by something or other. Bicycles even more so.
|
| If you are not starting from a stop, my solution to avoid any
| close calls has always been to hover my foot over the brake on
| top of making my turns as perpendicular as possible (there are
| other reasons to do that too: I see cars tilt into the oncoming
| traffic lane, which slows oncoming traffic down and delays
| their left turn, making for fewer cars passing at that traffic
| light and increasing congestion). If there's any potential a
| pedestrian (think a small child or a short person) is obscured
| by any other object (a car, a street corner...), slow down even
| further even if you've got right of way.
| bartread wrote:
| > IMO the problem with modern cars is the airbags in the
| A-pillar. The pillars have gotten so wide that you have to
| consciously bob your head around back and forth (like a fighter
| pilot, of course...) to look around both sides of it.
|
| Exactly this problem caused me to nearly kill someone the other
| night as I turned right around a roundabout (I live in the UK:
| we drive on the left, driver is on the right of the car).
| Nearly nailed a guy crossing the road as I came off it because
| he was hidden by the A-pillar. Fortunately my girlfriend, in
| the passenger seat, spotted him and yelled, otherwise he'd have
| been toast.
|
| The car has collision avoidance functionality but it didn't
| spot the guy either. So, yeah, airbags or not, I am not a fan
| of thick, heavy A-pillars, and especially because you can't
| rely on the car's "smarts" to bail you out if you do fail to
| spot something that's obscured by them.
| ozgune wrote:
| I've been driving in the US for 16 years. The "left turn on
| green" is still the most non-intuitive part about driving here.
|
| As a driver, when you have a green light, you need to pay
| attention to giving priority to incoming traffic and
| pedestrians crossing the street, while also maintaining your
| calm with cars lining up behind you. It's way more intuitive
| that when you have a green, you can go.
| worker767424 wrote:
| Adding a blinking yellow left arrow could help.
| Skunkleton wrote:
| "blinking yellow left arrow" is the same thing as not
| having a protected turn at all.
| worker767424 wrote:
| But it cues your brain that it might not be safe to turn
| left.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Not quite. Yellow blinking left arrows are always for a
| protected left turn lane. So when blinking, it does
| become more like an unprotected 'turn left on green' type
| of light, but you don't have the straight-through traffic
| coming up behind you, since you're on a dedicated turn
| lane. And the yellow flashing arrow is usually timed so
| that it happens at the safest time to make an unprotected
| left.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not always. There are mixed lanes that also have arrow
| lights from the turns.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That's fair. Not anywhere in my state. But road design
| isn't 100% consistent across the US.
| bagacrap wrote:
| this is a change that's already rolling out nation-wide
| itronitron wrote:
| In a few US cities they have what is called a 'lag left'
| where the left turn lane gets a green left arrow for several
| seconds after the straight lanes turn red. This has the
| benefit of having left turns occur when pedestrians should
| not be crossing the side street at the cost of some
| spectacular head on collisions when drivers run the red
| light.
| kube-system wrote:
| There are some intersections like this in my city, but I've
| seen some drivers blow straight through the red light in
| the straight lanes because, presumably, they are barely
| paying attention but see a green light in their peripheral.
| usefulcat wrote:
| I have seen that quite often (green arrow after red for
| straight lanes) and had assumed that was pretty common, but
| I don't really know for sure.
|
| Regarding collisions due to people running red lights: at
| least when waiting to turn left chances are very good that
| you will see the oncoming vehicle since you're already
| pointed towards them.
|
| That seems much better than being first in line at an
| intersection when the light turns green; in that case
| anyone running the light may well be coming from the side.
| I lived in Dallas for a few years and after a few near
| misses I learned to always look before proceeding after the
| light turns green.
| seoulmetro wrote:
| You can fail a driving test in Australia if you don't
| look whilst being first at the lights on a green light
| cycle.
|
| Of course most drivers might do this for a week after
| getting their license then ignore it. Like a lot of good
| rules.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| NYC and a few pedestrian heavy areas have actually started
| doing the reverse; delayed lefts.
|
| The idea is that pedestrians, cars, etc. get a headstart so
| that by the time the left is legal, any people or vehicles
| crossing will squarely be in the middle instead of to the
| side where they could be blocked by a pillar.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Arizona is like that.
| wccrawford wrote:
| Stop lights will never be smart enough to tell you when you
| can "just go" until they're good enough to drive the cars for
| you, and then that choice will be taken from you anyhow.
|
| Drivers _must always_ pay attention to what 's going on
| around them. Trying to simplify their decisions will just end
| up with more people getting hurt as drivers claim they had
| the right because the light said so.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Here's a link to some traffic light systems that you can
| trust most of the time. But nothing is perfect, so you're
| still required to pay attention yourself too, of course.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbVWXzL4-4
| abfan1127 wrote:
| simplifying decisions can also lead to extremely
| inefficient traffic patterns.
| interstice wrote:
| Other countries have a green arrow and here we also have a
| system where the green arrow goes blank when pedestrians
| are allowed to cross aka 'give way'.
|
| Not that it stops pedestrians crossing whenever they like
| or people running reds, but it does take some of the stress
| out of driving.
| stevbov wrote:
| This is for California, not sure about other states:
|
| Note that whether you have a solid green or a green arrow
| matters. A solid green means you can turn left, but you might
| have cross traffic. A green arrow means you're protected and
| as long as other people are obeying traffic signals, you
| shouldn't run into other people.
|
| Lots of drivers don't understand this.
|
| Lots of drivers also don't understand a red right arrow (as
| opposed to a red solid circle) means you cannot turn right on
| red. Most "no right on red" intersections have both the arrow
| and a sign (and many drivers ignore both).
| [deleted]
| Arrath wrote:
| I've always thought the differences between the solid light
| and arrow was too minor for the average driver. I mean,
| look at the skills of the average driver.
|
| In Washington state unprotected lefts weren't legal
| maneuvers for quite a while. They were introduced gradually
| starting at intersections where it would be a traffic
| benefit, for signaling the state adopted a blinking yellow
| arrow that then goes solid to signify the 'almost over'
| meaning of a typical yellow light.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| One thing common in Texas is red light + green arrow to
| indicate a protected left/right turn. I suspect it's a
| lot easier to parse quickly for most people than green
| circle vs green arrow.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Is it? I see people sitting stopped at green arrows all
| the time because the red stop light takes priority in
| their mind. Presenting clearly contradictory signals at
| the same time can't be the best option.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| This varies somewhat based on locality. In Oregon, for
| example, there is no special significance to a red right
| turn arrow. If a right turn on red is not permitted, there
| will be a sign.
| creato wrote:
| > Lots of drivers don't understand this.
|
| Not sure I believe this. Obviously it's a fuzzy statement
| but I don't think I've ever once in my life seen someone
| blatantly ignore oncoming traffic due to having an
| unprotected left signal.
| echelon wrote:
| > Note that whether you have a solid green or a green arrow
| matters. A solid green means you can turn left, but you
| might have cross traffic. A green arrow means you're
| protected and as long as other people are obeying traffic
| signals, you shouldn't run into other people.
|
| This is the same in the southeast, and I assume the rest of
| the US.
|
| Recently "flashing yellow" [1,2,3] has been introduced to
| mean left turns must yield to right of way traffic. These
| are gradually replacing solid green signals.
|
| [1] https://www.txdot.gov/driver/signs-and-
| signals/flashing-yell...
|
| [2] https://durhamnc.gov/1140/Flashing-Left-Turn-Arrow-
| Informati...
|
| [3] https://www.penndot.gov/TravelInPA/TrafficSignalsManage
| ment/... (PDF)
| GatorD42 wrote:
| This is confusing, generally a blinking yellow when going
| straight means slow down but you have right of way. A
| blinking left yellow would be different from a normal
| blinking yellow.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Yeah, it should probably be a blinking red arrow in order
| to be consistent. I'm sure some committee decided that
| wasn't different enough from normal red arrow
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I agree. Left turns on green are an invention that works
| great in rural American small towns where traffic volume is
| low. Most of the places I've lived transition to protected
| signals as the density of the area goes up, but sometimes it
| can take years for the funds to be allocated, and in that
| time it can become a pretty confusing intersection. In a
| proper city I think they make no sense at all.
| lmilcin wrote:
| > I think a lot of people just forget that there's a big blind
| spot (...)
|
| Honestly, I think most people just don't care.
|
| If they cared but forgotten they would be doing some other
| obvious things like slowing down when they drive close to
| parked cars or setting their mirrors to cover around the car as
| well as possible.
|
| But that is not what I observe. I see almost all drivers to
| drive fast inches from parked cars and I can see the driver's
| face in their side mirror when in car behind them -- clear
| indication that they have side mirrors set to the road behind
| the car rather than cover huge blind spot on the side of the
| car.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| > side mirrors set to the road behind the car rather than
| cover huge blind spot on the side of the car
|
| I don't know about you, but I have my side mirrors set so I
| see the side of my car at the inner edge, which is vital when
| parking, and the shape and geometry of the mirror dictates
| the FOV I get from it.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Unfortunately, this is wrong (objectively, not
| subjectively).
|
| Even more unfortunately this is how everybody is taught to
| drive. I don't know how the exam looks in Czech Republic
| but here in Poland there is a lot of backing and the
| driving teachers set mirrors this way to make it easier for
| learners to pass the exam.
|
| Side mirrors are designed to fill the blind spot on the
| side of your car. If you see the side of your car your side
| mirror mostly sees the same thing that your rear view
| mirror. You don't need three mirrors to show you what's
| behind your car.
|
| The correct way to set the side mirror is to imagine the
| cone of the rear view mirror and the cone of your
| peripheral vision and point your side mirror directly
| between those cones.
|
| I set my side mirrors so that they point outwards a tiny
| bit but if I move my head to the side I can see the side of
| my car.
|
| In my car this is enough to close my blind spot but still
| enough to observe the side of my car while parking.
|
| I almost always park with my back first because I don't
| have stereoscopic vision and it is easier for me to judge
| distances when parking with back of my car first. And I
| don't have any problem -- I just move my head to the left
| or to the right as needed. When you park you can move your
| car as slow as you need and stop if you need more time.
|
| But when you drive at highway speeds you may not have that
| much time and this is when you need to be able to observe
| around your car in a split second without moving your head.
|
| I noticed when I almost smashed into a car in my blindspot.
| I started reading and I found that I have been using
| mirrors the wrong way entire time. Here, I found an example
| link for you. https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments
| /lskpl/lpt_how_...
|
| I can tell you it takes a little bit of effort to adjust to
| new mirror position. You can get used to moving your head
| during parking (looks silly but you can park just fine).
|
| But you will thank me the first time you merge, especially
| at an angle and see how easy it is since you are seeing
| _EVERYTHING_ with your mirrors and your peripheral vision,
| without needing to move your head.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I don't get why North Americans have people crossing at the
| same time as cars are turning.
|
| In the UK almost all junctions have either people crossing, or
| cars turning, but not both at the same time.
|
| Seems a super obvious idea when you write it out.
| kleiba wrote:
| And make car drivers wait for precious seconds?? Heresy!
| tgb wrote:
| It substantially increases pedestrian wait times though. In a
| grid city if I'm headed north east, I opportunistically take
| north or east, whichever is available. So I have no wait time
| at all for most of my journey, until the part when I have to
| go only north (say). A grid makes this the typical situation
| and placing a wait at every light makes the journey very
| tedious. It also slows down cars, of course. I'm sure this is
| the main reason it's not done - whether it's worth the risk,
| I'm not sure.
| namdnay wrote:
| I guess it's more efficient, because at a four-way
| intersection in the north-american system there are always
| pedestrians and cars crossing. Whereas in the standard
| european system, either cars going left are stopped in a
| dedicated lane, or pedestrians are waiting for the cars that
| are going left to finish.
|
| obviously that efficiency comes at the cost of a higher
| mortality :(
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I would have thought the UK way was more efficient because
| you can cross diagonally? In the US system you have to wait
| for two sets of lights to cross diagonally.
| olyjohn wrote:
| We do have this. We have this all over the country! But
| either nobody knows about it, or they ignore it.
|
| When the "WALK" sign turns to a flashing "DONT WALK" (or
| their equivalent symbols) pedestrians are not supposed to
| enter the intersection.
|
| Pedestrians already in the intersection can safely complete
| their crossing, but if you're on the sidewalk, you aren't
| supposed to step into the crosswalk.
|
| It's basically the yellow light for pedestrians.
|
| This is 100% completely ignored everywhere that I have been.
| Especially in big cities.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Hmmm but I thought a car is usually allowed to cross the
| pedestrian crossing, especially if turning right, even when
| the pedestrians are on WALK?
| vinay427 wrote:
| > In the UK almost all junctions have either people crossing,
| or cars turning, but not both at the same time.
|
| This sounds super strange from a continental European
| standard as well. Do you mean that cars and pedestrians are
| never crossing these intersections at the same time?
|
| In any case, the UK also has at least a few cities where
| pedestrians often have no dedicated signal and are (in these
| junctions) left to fend for themselves while crossing due to
| the lack of signals and lack of priority. I don't understand
| that situation at all.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Do you mean that cars and pedestrians are never crossing
| these intersections at the same time?
|
| Well yeah... because that'd be dangerous if they went at
| the same time wouldn't it?
| bo1024 wrote:
| Yes -- as a runner it is extremely common for me to be hidden
| by the A pillar and almost run over. These are extremely clear-
| cut situations, e.g. someone rolls up to a stop sign as I'm
| entering an intersection.
|
| When the car doesn't come to a complete stop, it's easy for a
| moving pedestrian to stay in the blind spot as both objects
| move. I watch the whole time and never see their face.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I think the "problem" is your running. I'm an ex-runner, ex-
| skateboarder (knees gave up) and my close calls were always
| when moving at high speed.
|
| Drivers are expecting we'll be a dawdling pedestrian moving
| at 2-3 MPH, when in fact we could easily be doing 10MPH or
| faster.
|
| We have street-grade LIDAR everywhere these days (at least in
| SF). I don't understand why they can't make "smart
| intersections" that flash drivers a warning when pedestrians
| are predicted to be crossing.
| rodgerd wrote:
| You have a higher opinion of people than I do. I've had
| someone threaten to kill me because he was trying to barge
| through a zebra crossing while I was on it, and he felt the
| need to get out of his car and have a go in person because
| I was, you know, blocking his car.
|
| People know. They don't care. They'd rather kill someone
| than slow down.
| notacoward wrote:
| It's not uncommon for drivers to get a big shot of
| adrenaline after a near miss, and turn that into anger
| instead of reflecting on their own actions. Sad
| commentary on human nature, I guess.
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm not sure that comment really addresses the high speed
| crosswalk entry concerns. Sure there are some people out
| there who behave like your story, but not that many (and
| should be addressed by losing their license). Even with
| the right of way, it's in a pedestrian's best interest to
| slowly enter the crosswalk and check to make sure the
| vehicles are yielding. Some states make it illegal to run
| into traffic or cross while distracted (phone use).
|
| So yes, people driving should be going slow enough to
| avoid someone running into traffic. But then the runner
| should also slow to safely evaluate and cross.
| notacoward wrote:
| This is why I practically never run within ten feet of a
| car's front at intersections. If they've stopped, made eye
| contact, and nodded or waved me on, then _maybe_. At least
| once a week, I encounter a driver who almost certainly would
| have hit me if I hadn 't followed this rule.
|
| One counter-intuitive result is that I cross more often
| against the "walk" light than with it. If I have the walk
| light, it usually means the cars next to me also have a green
| light (which is kind of insane really). Some of them will be
| turning, and they're _far_ more likely to do so without
| looking than someone turning at a red. The A-pillar
| visibility issue also affects them more. It 's generally
| safer to wait for a red light and look for a suitable gap in
| the cross traffic (plus right turners).
|
| Also, a pox on anybody who tucks a crosswalk fifteen to
| twenty feet down the smaller street. Yes, it's further out of
| traffic, but it's also further out of where any driver might
| be looking. I will _always_ stay in a direct line (and pay
| close attention to traffic) rather than take the extra steps
| to destroy my own safety.
| megablast wrote:
| The best trick is to avoid running anywhere near cars at
| all. Find a nice track. Of course, don't drive there, cycle
| there or use a scooter. What's the point if you are making
| the world unsafe for others.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Generally better on the joints to avoid asphalt and
| concrete anyways.
| notacoward wrote:
| > Find a nice track.
|
| Get used to the idea that not everyone lives in the same
| circumstances as you. The closest tracks to me are at
| schools, 1-2km away, and reserved for use by the students
| during prime outdoor-activity hours. That's probably
| better than for a lot of people, and even then it's
| nowhere near an equivalent option.
|
| Oh yeah, also we have real winters here. Streets are
| plowed. Tracks aren't.
|
| > cycle there
|
| Hardly better. Car/bike interactions are no picnic
| either, and I'm also tired of cyclists thinking they're
| better than pedestrians somehow. It's just not so. In
| this case I suspect they're even worse for safety, adding
| yet another mismatched speed and cutting into everyone's
| margin of error by a greater amount. I don't see anything
| good or honorable about discouraging people from a
| healthy activity - running on streets and/or sidewalks -
| that _can_ be done safely if one takes appropriate care.
| wonnage wrote:
| This was one of the worst adjustments for me coming from an old
| car. I think driver testing should be updated to account for it
| - looking around the pillar should be as mandatory as the
| shoulder blind spot check when changing lanes/turning.
| aresant wrote:
| Why don't we have an X prize for incremental self driving around
| collision mitigation & safety?
|
| So much interesting research on the advent of "Automatic Braking
| Systems" and its introduction ->
|
| - eg in China researchers demonstrate the potential of saving
| thousands of lives per annum - "fatalities could be reduced by
| 13.2%, and injuries could be reduced by 9.1%." (1)
|
| - and when using data from insurance claims - ". . front-facing
| automatic emergency braking systems can cut the frequency of
| bodily injury liability claims by nearly 25%. A similar study by
| the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) involving
| police-reported crashes -- typically the most severe type of
| collision -- found front automatic emergency braking reduced
| "front-to-rear" crashes by 50%. Often referred to as rear-ending
| another vehicle, these crashes can be deadly, particularly when
| the car responsible for the collision is moving at high speed. "
| (2)
|
| - Or when outfitting large tractor trailers with the tech -
| "Equipping large trucks with forward collision warning and
| automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems could eliminate more
| than 2 out of 5 crashes in which a large truck rear-ends another
| vehicle, a new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway
| Safety suggests." (3)
|
| I recognize that we'll see "trickle down" safety improvements
| from the self driving groups, but how do we just ensure every
| 2025 model or what have you has some basic automatic braking
| system in place that includes pedestrian recognition?
|
| (1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7037779/
|
| (2) https://www.jdpower.com/automotive-news/report-automatic-
| eme...
|
| (3) https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/study-shows-front-crash-
| pre...
| stefan_ wrote:
| Oh that would be an easy prize to win: limit the car speed at
| the speed limit. There you go, lots of lethality and stupidity
| outright removed. Electric kick scooters can do it, I'm sure we
| can manage that for cars.
| dheera wrote:
| Or you know, don't have left turns and pedestrian crossings at
| the same time. A simple software fix of the traffic light
| pattern would eliminate almost all of these fatalities.
|
| Sequence should be
|
| - Pedestrians in all directions including diagonal
|
| - Traffic in horizontal direction, no pedestrians
|
| - Traffic in vertical direction, no pedestrians
|
| Repeat
| martinald wrote:
| Agreed, being from the UK this confuses the hell out of me
| that left turns are allowed while pedestrian crossing is
| green in the US. It's clearly not green if cars can also
| travel!
| jeffbee wrote:
| You just doubled the expected wait time for pedestrians at
| every crossing.
| dheera wrote:
| OK then
|
| - Pedestrians in all directions including diagonal
|
| - Traffic in horizontal direction, no pedestrians
|
| - Pedestrians in all directions including diagonal
|
| - Traffic in vertical direction, no pedestrians
| hedora wrote:
| The current status quo in south bay is at least 4 states
| per light cycle:
|
| Horizontal straight (vertical pedestrians
|
| Horizontal left turns (no pedestrians)
|
| Vertical straight (horizontal pedestrians)
|
| Vertical left turns (no pedestrians)
|
| So the proposal increases the time a given pedestrian can
| use the intersection from 25% of the time to 33%.
|
| Many simple south bay intersections have 6 states, and I've
| seen one where they've added a 7th state to the cycle so
| the bike lanes can go straight while cars have a red right
| turn arrow.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The south bay is a car-choked hellscape that should in no
| way be used as a baseline or reference for pedestrian
| design.
| mhb wrote:
| _how do we just ensure every 2025 model or what have you has
| some basic automatic braking system in place that includes
| pedestrian recognition_
|
| The step preceding that would be to determine whether this is
| the most effective way to spend resources for the expected
| benefit. The marginal car buyer who will have to wait in order
| to buy one of these more expensive cars might have been able to
| upgrade sooner if this safety equipment hadn't been _ensured_.
| digianarchist wrote:
| Brit living in Canada. I hate left turns in North America. Often
| you can't clearly see oncoming traffic, pedestrians have right of
| way which can leave you unable to complete a manuever and a lot
| of judgment is put on drivers to turn at the correct time.
|
| There's a technical solution to this problem. Dedicated left turn
| lights which appear to run in some places only during peak hours.
| phkahler wrote:
| I've thought a bit about roads and it seems to me that having
| 2-way streets is a poor choice at the highest level. When you're
| driving north, the LAST direction you'd want to go is south. Yet
| the closest thing to you at all times is the southbound lanes. To
| go west - which you want to do more than go south - you have to
| cross those lanes. As soon as you decide to make all the roads
| one-way, a whole set of other issues come up, but having to stop
| and wait for half of your turns goes away.
|
| The EPA drive cycle for city driving has an average speed of
| ~20mph and that turns out to be close to what I experience even
| when posted speed limits are 45mph. Traffic lights are a plague,
| and IMHO traffic circles are not much better. All I can say with
| certainty is that it's complicated.
| frankus wrote:
| The tradeoff with that is that you end up with more than one
| lane per direction, which works fine with signalized
| intersections, but is unsafe at non-signal-controlled
| crosswalks.
|
| Without a traffic light, a car in one lane will stop for a
| someone waiting to cross, and a driver in the other lane (or
| who pulls around to pass the first car) might not realize that
| there is a reason for the car stopping, and hit the person
| crossing as they enter the other lane.
| trgn wrote:
| Tragic to read. The biggest thing imho is that drivers are making
| left-turns at speed. They should come to a full stop. Drivers are
| extremely extremely inconsiderate and selfish. When turning left,
| drivers are generally looking into the opposite lane where the
| cars are coming, looking for that gap, and then _gun_ it, so they
| can make the turn. Scanning for that gap in traffic is the only
| thing they care about, iso of _also_ looking for pedestrians or
| cyclists at the actual street they're turning into.
| williw wrote:
| It doesn't say if it includes left turns from one way street to a
| one way street on red light. Which is legal in California.
| unstatusthequo wrote:
| What is also dangerous are pedestrians who see a car turning or
| proceeding, look right at the car/driver, and _then_ walk into
| the crosswalk, assuming car will slam breaks on. Or the
| pedestrian can't be bothered to look up from their smartphone or
| stop their podcast to hear what's going on around them.
|
| Pedestrians have some responsibility to co-exist as well.
| pmulard wrote:
| I'm honestly surprised there aren't more traffic fatalities in
| San Francisco, especially with how many pedestrians, ride sharing
| drivers, and narrow streets there are.
|
| Coming from the mid-west, there are status quo norms (laws?) that
| baffle me:
|
| - Cars can park all down the street, even right up on the
| crosswalks at either end. It is incredibly hard to see people
| trying to use the cross walks, when they are behind the cars.
| Cars parking that close is illegal in many streets where I'm
| from.
|
| - The amount of cross walks in the middle of high traffic streets
| (not intersections) that rely solely on visibility between the
| driver and pedestrian. Again, these streets are usually lined
| with cars on either side, so it's even harder to see. They could
| use the electronic, push button signs that light up and beep when
| a pedestrian wants to cross; which to be fair I've seen around,
| but not nearly as many as there should be.
|
| I understand the city isn't going to reduce street parking, but
| at least implement better communication between drivers and
| pedestrians. The light up cross walks are a good start.
| worker767424 wrote:
| > It is incredibly hard to see people trying to use the cross
| walks
|
| This is only an issue for right turns (on two-way streets,
| anyway). Recently, walk signs have started illuminating a few
| seconds before the green light, and I assume it's for more
| pedestrian visibility. I wouldn't be surprised if the most
| dangerous thing in this scenario is a right on red while
| jaywalking. The driver knows they have a red, they look left
| for oncoming traffic, but not right for jaywalking pedestrians.
| estebank wrote:
| > Cars parking that close is illegal in many streets where I'm
| from.
|
| That's called daylighting and SFMTA knows it exists. That they
| aren't using it everywhere is baffling[1].
|
| > I understand the city isn't going to reduce street parking
|
| It should, but given how much push back there is for every
| change to cities that make them better _cities_ (increased
| density, prioritizing local movement of people by improving
| things for transit, cyclists and pedestrians, implementing
| safer streets) I 'm not holding my breath.
|
| [1]: https://www.sfmta.com/blog/daylighting-makes-san-
| francisco-c...
| jalino23 wrote:
| I've been driving for five years now and left turn still stresses
| me out in downtown LA
| [deleted]
| yongjik wrote:
| Recently visited LA with wife, not the first time, but I had to
| joke, "This is a city where the weak can't drive - only the
| strong-willed will survive and make it to their destination!"
|
| FWIW I did make it to the hotel, though emotionally scarred.
| bombela wrote:
| To test your strength, try Paris, France. Especially around
| the massive roundabouts without lane markings and
| intermingled with various extra red lights.
|
| When you have graduated from this. You can afford a detour to
| Milan, Italy. Over there, traffic signals are superseeded by
| your skills at honking.
|
| I was told driving in India is many time worse!
| yongjik wrote:
| Haha, I grew up in Seoul so I'm no stranger to traffic
| hell. (Though I also heard that India is at another level.)
|
| At least, in Seoul, I could avoid driving 99% of time.
| Harder to do it as tourist in LA ...
| adam wrote:
| Also relevant: replacing 4-way's with roundabouts in Carmel, IN:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/20/climate/roundabouts-clima...
| timidiceball wrote:
| Have you seen roundabouts of this scale in person? They aren't
| meant for people to be around at all
| martinald wrote:
| Hahaha. Are you joking? It's somewhat rare in Europe _not_ to
| have a roundabout like this. They are clearly way better for
| pedestrians. You only have to cross half the road before you
| get to a safer place.
|
| Compare this intersection which seems to have been somewhat
| recently upgraded:
|
| From https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9679819,-86.1403832,3a,7
| 5y,2...
|
| To
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9679454,-86.1403837,3a,75y,2.
| ..
|
| Notice that there is also now a bend in the road so a car
| physically has to slow down to navigate it, unlike miles of
| straight traffic light intersections.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I'm a huge roundabout advocate but the user you replied to
| is correct. Despite the Carmel roundabout looking safer,
| when you're there, you don't feel like pedestrians are
| considered. I've driven through them.
|
| Smaller roundabouts in narrower streets feel safer for
| pedestrians even if the islands are smaller. It's really
| the street size that is doing the work and the smaller
| roundabout works in conjunction with the street size to
| make cars behave more like they're in a turn and not a road
| with curves in it.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'm not sold, yet, on roundabouts improving safety over four-
| way stops. Pedestrians at regular intersections are pretty easy
| to spot. But when you come up to a typical roundabout, the road
| is twisting a little, you're looking to see what traffic is
| approaching the roundabout, and the crosswalk is usually right
| in the area where the road is twisting to line up for
| roundabout entry.
|
| I don't know that I have any suggestion, though, to make it
| better other than try to keep pedestrians far enough from the
| roundabout that drivers can easily focus on them and not be
| distracted by more moving parts.
|
| The argument that you are only crossing half the road at a time
| is fairly compelling, though. I guess there's a trade-off
| there.
| estebank wrote:
| Roundabouts where pedestrian traffic is expected should have
| the zebra crossing set back some meters before the actual
| roundabout, which makes the pedestrians move perpendicularly
| to traffic in _all_ cases, where their visibility is higher.
|
| https://www.craftontull.com/insights/insight_posts/view/63/p.
| ..
| michael1999 wrote:
| The big win as a pedestrian is you only have one direction to
| worry about at a time..
| watwut wrote:
| Roundabout have pedestrian crossing at the entrance - before
| you meet cars. Plus, they naturally force you to slow anyway.
| aeternum wrote:
| I cross one frequently and it's still pretty dangerous
| because cars rarely signal roundabout exit. As a pedestrian
| it's hard to predict if a car will exit, and drivers are
| also often distracted at that moment / looking down at gps
| (did I take the right/wrong exit)?
| filereaper wrote:
| To any Product Manager or developer working on Android Auto,
| CarPlay or Waze.
|
| Please add a "Avoid left turns, unless they're protected" option!
|
| It'll save lives and reduce overall stress for drivers!
| tomohawk wrote:
| New Jersey has eliminated most left turns, especially on major
| roads.
|
| What happens when you add NJ and SF together? More flight to
| other states?
| caminante wrote:
| HN headline is misleading.
|
| Actual claim on site:
|
| _> 40% of SF traffic fatalities in 2019 involved drivers making
| left turns who didn't see the person in the crosswalk until it
| was too late._
| gostsamo wrote:
| HN has headline length limit.
| caminante wrote:
| Not the issue.
|
| OP made subtle re-phrasing tweaks that weren't forced by
| length limits and changed the meaning.
| nradov wrote:
| I suspect thicker A pillars are also part of the problem. The A
| pillars have gotten a lot thicker in recent model years. That
| improves passive crash safety by making the car body stronger
| and allows for more airbags. But it also reduces visibility
| when turning. Sometimes drivers literally can't see pedestrians
| without moving their heads to the side.
| silon42 wrote:
| This is a big problem for cyclists and especially e-scooters
| because they can match speeds much closer to a car
| approaching the intersection whilst remaining hidden behind
| the A-pillar.
| hpkuarg wrote:
| Definitely. Manufacturers are incentivized (by law and
| regulation) to optimize for surviving a collision, and less
| so for avoiding a collision entirely by enhancing visibility.
| I suppose the amount of attention the average driver pays to
| the road necessitates the former as a matter of public
| policy, but...
| estebank wrote:
| It would be "trivial" to expand what the government looks
| at when it comes to safety of vehicles not just by looking
| at the occupants of the vehicle, but also any pedestrian
| struck by them. It's not even a revolutionary idea, this is
| the reason you no longer see new cars with pop-up
| headlights[1].
|
| [1]: https://thebackroads.co.uk/2019/08/10/the-real-reason-
| pop-up...
| whymauri wrote:
| For a particularly dramatic example of this, Tom Scott made a
| video about an intersection in the UK that's poorly designed
| for visibility:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYeeTvitvFU
| kansface wrote:
| This is a _really_ good explanation.
| wwweston wrote:
| So much this. Day-to-day I drive an older automobile (an
| early 90s sedan, design-similar to models as early as 1986)
| and every time I get in the driver's seat of a recent model
| car I'm reminded of how much more limited my visibility is.
| clairity wrote:
| i actually saw one of these accidents a few years ago. a woman
| a few steps behind her companion got thrown over the hood and
| to the side (miraculously not seriously injured though). the
| car started from a stop light, and probably hit her at around
| 15-20 mph. it was unbelievable that the driver didn't recognize
| the pedestrians waiting at the light and further didn't look at
| all when he started moving. that is, until the driver admitted
| to being distracted (by phone, passenger, and music
| simultaneously).
|
| the biggest bang for buck here is to reduce any and all
| distraction in driving (including touchscreen controls), rather
| than trying to slow cars down further or make cars safer.
| olivermarks wrote:
| Also of note: SF is a very pedestrian dense city with people
| wandering into the street looking at phones, not paying
| attention...and sadly a large number of substance abuse
| casualties endangering themselves and others. This reality has
| got increasingly worse since the iphone launch last decade,
| it's a huge problem.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Why are car drivers taking turns so quickly they cannot stop
| fast enough to not kill someone on a crosswalk?
| HPsquared wrote:
| Probably focused on, and wanting to get out of the way of,
| other oncoming cars.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Without going into unreasonable drivers (that surely are
| plenty), how many turns do one make in a trip there, what
| is the speed on the outgoing street, and what visibility do
| they have over the new street.
|
| Anything you do is an exercise of balancing risks. Breaking
| too hard is a risk, taking time slow at a fast street is a
| risk, and turning too fast is a risk.
| spamizbad wrote:
| The problem is, as a pedestrian, I have no way of knowing
| if vehicle intends to take a left turn across my
| crosswalk UNLESS they come to a complete stop and I can
| see their turn signal. So even if I am fully alert I
| ultimately have to trust that you will not run me over in
| the crosswalk if you are traveling fast.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If you as a pedestrian are having this problem, it's
| because the road geometry is completely unfit for the
| purpose and the cars have absolutely no chance of
| reacting to your moves either. This should only happen on
| very low speed streets.
|
| It's certainly not your fault either. Somebody is guilty
| of mass manslaughter.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| You can keep asking that question, but physics doesn't care
| about who is morally right. Everyone should pay more
| attention to increase safety. Drivers, pedestrians,
| cyclists, _everyone_.
| estebank wrote:
| Alternatively, instead of relying on people not acting
| like people, we could design the streets themselves to be
| safer for _everyone_. Doing so most of the time has a lot
| of pushback due to the perception from drivers that doing
| so is somehow punishing them.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| As someone who drives more than walks (except for my
| daily three mile recreational walks), I agree. Roads are
| often designed for speed, not for multi-user safety. I
| think city streets should be narrower in general, to the
| point of being single-lane in residential neighborhoods.
| Changing speed signs doesn't really have a strong effect.
| Changing design works.
| asdffdsa wrote:
| The drivers are still 100% at fault, but left-turns are
| difficult because there's oncoming traffic if it's
| unprotected. Stopping when there's incoming traffic
| feasible isn't feasible.
|
| The best move for drivers making unprotected left turns in
| busy intersections would be to wait until the end of the
| light: no more oncoming traffic, so the driver can wait
| until the last jaywalkers pass. The best solution from a
| city-planning perspective could be more protected left turn
| lights installed at those intersections with lots of
| accidents from left-hand turns.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Probably true, but being distracted or burned out shouldn't
| be punished by being run over... you could equally argue that
| lots of those drivers are distractedly looking at their
| phones too?
| olivermarks wrote:
| It's a fact, a lot of people whether driving or walking are
| looking at their map directions on phones. If you're
| driving you have to really watch out for mad drivers - if
| you're turning into a gap in oncoming traffic it can be a
| huge problem if some clown accelerates up to you as you try
| to make a turn while pedestrian(s) with no peripheral
| vision skills walk out into the road in your path oblivious
| to what could be a pretty nasty accident.
|
| It would also be really helpful if US drivers could learn
| to use their indicators to signal their intentions to
| everyone.
| matsemann wrote:
| Typical driver mindset, blaming those they run over. If
| anything, the "iPhone issue" you mention is probably more
| apparent in distracted drivers, not pedestrians.
|
| Do you also park in the cycle lanes, and then later complain
| about cyclists not using them?
| Toutouxc wrote:
| > Typical driver mindset
|
| You're building your argument on a borderline ad-hominem
| assumption
|
| > the "iPhone issue" you mention is probably more apparent
| in distracted drivers
|
| then on something that may or may not be true and honestly
| doesn't really mean anything
|
| > Do you also park in the cycle lanes, and then later
| complain about cyclists not using them?
|
| and accusing the person some more.
| matsemann wrote:
| You skipped the main part, where I called them out for
| victim blaming. Nothing to say on that?
| olivermarks wrote:
| I was speaking mostly as a pedestrian. The word 'victim' is
| offensive in this context. If I do drive in SF I do so at a
| snails pace as there are so many people there who chose to
| think the laws of physics are irrelevant to them and that
| if they are injured it is someone else's fault.
|
| This goes back years and so does victim scamming: I was
| picking my (then young) son up on a rainy night from
| outside the Davies Symphony hall where he'd been performing
| in a youth choir. I fortunately saw a guy sneak behind my
| car and lie in the gutter: he hoped I'd reverse and touch
| him to get out of the parking space at which point he could
| cry out in pain and sue. Happens all the time. Who's the
| victim in this situation?
| soperj wrote:
| Wow, pretty brutal victim blaming here. You're driving on
| average a 4000 pounds vehicle at speed, you need to be the
| one responsible for it. "They got in my way" doesn't really
| fly.
| kodah wrote:
| Why are both not responsible? Something seems broken and I
| don't think it's just drivers. As someone else noted, a lot
| of these accidents (73%) do not occur at a crosswalk. I
| could only think that means parking lots and people
| j-walking.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29465068
|
| The rush to push blame on either drivers or pedestrians
| with these kind of vague statistics is really weird.
| soperj wrote:
| What would happen if the driver was walking instead?
| They'd bump into each other and possibly even fall down.
|
| If you are operating something that has the ability to
| kill someone, you need to be responsible for it.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I think you might be reacting too strongly? Take a step
| back, and rather than making this a victim/perp situation,
| look for anything that can mitigate the end result. Some of
| that is changing how people drive, but some of it could
| also be how people walk -- at least when they are crossing
| roads. Texting on your phone while going across a sidewalk
| _definitely_ increases the risk. And it doesn 't matter if
| you're right and the driver is wrong, because you're still
| dead either way.
| soperj wrote:
| I don't think so. There's a victim in this situation, and
| it's never the driver.
| matsemann wrote:
| The strong reaction is from being used to getting blamed
| whenever a car and its driver slaughter someone.
|
| Now is the season for the reflective band discussion.
| Where pedestrians are being told they will be mowed down
| if not wearing any. Of course we will wear them, but that
| always moves the discussion away from the true problem
| areas. Pedestrians having to walk in the street because
| there is no curbside walkways, drivers driving too fast
| to be able to react in time, drivers not removing ice
| from their windows and lots of other factors contributing
| to accidents.
|
| But no, lets blame those getting hit.
| belligeront wrote:
| Shouldn't the person driving 2000+ lbs of machinery be
| responsible for how they are operating rather than a person
| trying to walk in a crosswalk?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It is a shared space, which belongs both to cars as well as
| pedestrians. So the responsibility for safety is shared as
| well.
| vegardx wrote:
| Typically in scenarios where it's supposedly a shared
| responsibility, and one is at a significant disadvantage,
| where errors from either side has massively skewed
| consequences, you often want to put most of the
| responsibility on the one with ability to cause the most
| harm.
|
| And I don't agree with it being a shared space. In a
| crosswalk cars are entering pedestrian space. It's not
| pedestrians entering car space. But that might just be
| telling on what continent I live.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I think it probably matters what your preconceptions are.
| I don't know what continent has to do with it. I'm
| pragmatic. It's a place cars and pedestrians both have an
| expectation to be. Therefore, it's shared. We use signals
| to make it safer, but nobody should ever lose sight of
| the reality that they may find a car there, or a
| pedestrian there, at the same time.
| nostromo wrote:
| Other facts about pedestrian deaths:
|
| 80% are at night.
|
| 33% involve a drunk pedestrian.
|
| 20% are elderly.
|
| Contrary to these data about SF, most pedestrian deaths (73%) are
| _not_ at intersections, but at non-crossings.
|
| I try to tell friends to be more careful walking at night, and to
| not walk drunk (take an uber, it's safer).
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/pedestrian_safety/i...
|
| https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/road-users/pedestr...
| csours wrote:
| How many times do you notice a pedestrian AS you pass them?
| After you pass them? Not at all?
|
| Please wear light colored clothes at night. One time I only saw
| a person because they were wearing white shoes, all of their
| other clothes were black.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| You're not wrong, but it's frustrating that responsibility
| has to fall on the pedestrian, not the driver. A pedestrian
| would be perfectly safe walking around with dark clothing if
| there were no cars around.
| bagacrap wrote:
| We need to normalize the use of lights at night by pedestrians
| on roads or multi use paths. I've seen them used by
| recreational pedestrians (dog walkers, runners) but for some
| reason never outside of that context. Sometimes I use my
| phone's flashlight when I find myself in this situation, and I
| leave a bike tail light clipped onto my backpack for this
| reason too.
| ck425 wrote:
| Or you know maybe we should insist that the people driving a
| ton of steel at high speed use their lights.
| notacoward wrote:
| > 80% are at night.
|
| I don't want to blame the victims, but I'll bet the number
| would be lower if it weren't for all the people who go ninja at
| night - dark clothing, and not a stitch of anything reflective.
| That, combined with the increased prevalence of drivers
| blinding others with their high beams 100% of the time, seems
| like a recipe for more vehicle/pedestrian collisions.
| watwut wrote:
| > non-crossings
|
| Which is and should be completely legal provided crossing is
| not close.
| pharmakom wrote:
| It's time for pedestrian infrastructure that is safe by design.
| Most of these fatalities could be prevented by lowering the
| speed limit.
| jwagenet wrote:
| Lowering the speed limit doesn't make sense if there are wide
| streets with wide lanes (more comfortable to drive in) and no
| enforcement.
|
| In SF it would be preferable to reduce street width in
| reality or artificially with protected bike lanes, bus/muni
| right of way, etc on wide streets like Geary or Van Ness .
| colpabar wrote:
| > In SF it would be preferable to reduce street width
|
| Absolutely. It seems like the best way to reduce speeds in
| cities is to make it uncomfortable to drive fast in them.
| Big wide streets make it feel like you're going "slow" at
| 25mph, so people go faster.
|
| Of course, we could also slowly carve out areas of cities
| where cars are not allowed, but how will businesses survive
| if people can't park directly in front of them? /s
| Gigachad wrote:
| It's funny that in my city, the most active retail area
| is a pedestrian only street. Anything with heavy car
| traffic tends to have more intentional destination type
| stuff.
| laurent92 wrote:
| The end game is no cars.
|
| I live in France where cities with 3-lane streets were
| replaced with 2, then 1 lane, and now they are limiting
| to 30km/h.
|
| It has the added benefit of pushing right-wing people out
| of the cities back to the countryside, and this is nice
| because cities is where you get connections and a role in
| society, and we wouldn't want them to have a role.
|
| They have been protesting for 4 years now, and I'm happy
| our president ordered to shoot rubber balls in their eyes
| (89 successes it seems). This is a well working
| democracy. See what we can do using lane width! Plus
| we're raising taxes on them because they need their cars,
| so it's double win.
| wahern wrote:
| As a country France might not be going in the direction
| you _think_ it 's going:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/world/europe/france-
| albi-...
|
| I see that echoed in your post: "It has the added benefit
| of pushing right-wing people out of the cities back to
| the countryside". Perhaps what's happening is that France
| is seeing a transition to suburban communities. If so,
| enjoy your walkable town centers now while commerce
| remains viable. At some point in the future you may find
| yourself needing to trek to the big box retailer outside
| town, just as many of us urban Americans unfortunately
| have to do. :(
| OnlineGladiator wrote:
| The speed limit is 25 mph through most of San Francisco, even
| some of the major routes (like 19th Avenue which is 6 lanes
| wide with its own divider) are limited to 30 mph. Narrow
| alleys are 15 mph by default, Market Street is 20 mph, Van
| Ness is 25 mph. This city probably has the lowest speed
| limits I've ever seen, and I've lived on 3 continents.
|
| https://data.sfgov.org/Transportation/Map-of-Speed-
| Limits/tt...
| Levitz wrote:
| Well, in Spain it's 30km/h max in the whole city, 18mp/h.
|
| Thing is, nobody normally goes that slow, from a point on
| drivers will start ignoring it and decide on a speed
| themselves.
| alex_young wrote:
| My observations in Europe are pretty much opposite to this.
|
| Many EU cities are max 30 kph (18.5 mph) on most roads.
|
| https://qz.com/2056530/european-cities-are-slowing-down-
| thei...
| Gwypaas wrote:
| You have to separate the road from the stroad. Roads in
| Europe might be up to 60-70 kph even in a city center,
| but they also have calming intersections with roundabouts
| and to get on an off regularly or even ramps. Streets
| tend to be 30-40 kph depending on the place with lots of
| calming.
|
| The Ugly, Dangerous, and Inefficient Stroads found all
| over the US & Canada:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
| dahfizz wrote:
| They could have just as easily (easier, even) been avoided if
| pedestrians followed the law and used the existing
| infrastructure.
| elgenie wrote:
| If the physical design of the street says that it expects to
| be traversed at 40mph, people will drive 35 to 45mph on it
| even if the posted speed limit says 25.
|
| This situation offers tremendous benefits to traffic police
| officers a bit behind on their ticket writing, but minimal
| benefits for pedestrian safety, because the people likely to
| notice the sign and slow down were already the people likely
| to notice pedestrians and drive defensively.
| encoderer wrote:
| Speed limits are set in part by how fast people actually
| drive on a street. You need to go further up-funnel and
| redesign streets so speeding doesn't feel safe.
| atom_arranger wrote:
| In Bangkok the roads are very wide and busy. Every couple
| hundred meters they have bridges that go over them. It's an
| interesting solution to the problem. It's nice that you just
| walk up the stairs and cross, no need to worry about the
| traffic.
|
| They're all over the place, most of them much more minimal,
| but similar to this: https://previews.123rf.com/images/ruslan
| _kokarev/ruslan_koka...
| pharmakom wrote:
| Why should pedestrians be inconvenienced? Make the cars
| wait or send them the long way around.
| twiddling wrote:
| sucks if you're mobility impaired ( wheelchair ) , and with
| ADA the costs will be too prohibitive for most locales, so
| they'll just paint some zebra stripes and put up a flashing
| light
| riffic wrote:
| signs and fines have minimal impact on driver behavior. Apply
| treatments to the road that alter driver behavior - the
| perception of danger is quite a motivator in reducing speeds
| (tullock's spike for instance).
| cronix wrote:
| The quite large homeless population living all along the
| streets also contribute, although hard to quantify in stats as
| I don't think they're kept. The number of people who 1) are
| stoned out of their minds on x (not just alcohol, but things
| like meth/heroin) or 2) just don't care (they'll see you and
| step out anyway, and slam your hood when you stop), just
| suddenly step out in front of you from between 2 other parked
| cars. You have a split second to react, even at 15mph. Combine
| that with less than ideal visibility, especially during
| fall/winter (dark early/foggy/rainy) and it's a recipe for
| tragedy. I think I see more bike accidents caused by that than
| cars because the bikes are typically driving on the shoulder
| between the parked cars and the closest lane, so even less
| chance to see them step in front of you at the last second. You
| can see this around any large homeless population living on
| sidewalks in any large city in the US and it's not unique to SF
| at all. Just stand on a street corner for 15-20 minutes and
| observe the road all down the block.
| vkou wrote:
| As both a driver, and a pedestrian, I have felt threatened by
| a lot more distracted, dangerous, and outright reckless
| drivers, than I have by pedestrians as a driver.
|
| While people stepping into traffic is a thing that sometimes
| happens in some parts of town, reckless driving is the sort
| of thing that is happening _all_ the time, anywhere. There 's
| an incredible amount of entitlement that many people feel
| when they get behind the wheel, which is not matched by their
| ability to operate one.
| dekhn wrote:
| I call this dance the "Tenderloin Lurch" (1, not 2, and I
| think it's often mental illness not drugs). You can sort of
| spot the folks who look like they're completely unaware of
| traffic laws and/or reality and predict when they're going to
| change directions and lurch out into traffic.
| kodah wrote:
| That's interesting, though non-crossings seems vague. Are those
| parking lots combined with people j-walking?
| takk309 wrote:
| I am a traffic engineer that deals with crash reports quite
| often. One thing we include at the beginning of every crash
| analysis we do is a disclaimer that the contents of the crash
| report are subjective and solely the work of the responding
| officer. This means that junction/non-junction or
| crossing/non-crossing can vary a lot. The data are very messy
| with inaccuracies in location and direction of travel. (Side
| note, it is super frustrating when the road winds a lot and
| the eastbound direction is traveling westerly, for example.)
| The data that are reported to FHWA and NHTSA are even more
| generalized that those kept by the individual states.
| Additionally, pedestrian and bicyclist crashes tend to be
| underreported unless there is a severe injury. This can
| greatly skew the data to look more rosey than reality.
| tfehring wrote:
| The cited data [0] is presented in a super confusing way -
| the categories are "At Intersection" (18%), "Not At
| Intersection" (73%), and "Other" (9%). Apparently "other
| locations such as roadsides/shoulders, parking lanes/zones,
| bicycle lanes, sidewalks, medians/crossing islands, driveway
| accesses, shared-use paths/trails, non-traffic way areas, and
| other sites," which make up the "Other" category, are neither
| intersections nor non-intersections.
|
| I'm gonna guess the "Not At Intersection" category refers
| solely to jaywalkers.
|
| [0] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublicati
| on/...
| watwut wrote:
| > I'm gonna guess the "Not At Intersection" category refers
| solely to jaywalkers.
|
| That is absurd guess. Plenty of crossings are outside of
| intersections.
|
| Plus it is often completely legal to cross when there is
| not crossing close.
| Talanes wrote:
| >Plus it is often completely legal to cross when there is
| not crossing close.
|
| Though not always, got burned by this as a teenager when
| I got hit crossing the highway in front of my trailer
| park. The intersection I crossed from was a private road,
| which stuck my family with liability on the ambulance
| ride (which luckily was the worst of it.)
| kodah wrote:
| > Plus it is often completely legal to cross when there
| is not crossing close.
|
| Jaywalking is an act, I don't think anyone in this thread
| cares about it's legality with respect to the situation.
| We're just discussing how to interpret the statistics.
|
| The point here is that a majority of these accidents
| occur at non-intersections which are not covered by
| "Other".
| brailsafe wrote:
| The amount of left turns that exist in Canada & the U.S where
| you're yielding to 3 or 4 oncoming lanes of traffic, 1 or 2 of
| which could also be waiting to turn left, is absurd. Now try
| doing it while you're learning to drive manual. People should be
| afraid of cars.
| tzs wrote:
| What percent are on right turns?
| cdolan wrote:
| Tesla FSD 10.X will increase this number. The left turns I have
| seen the system try to take on Youtube are downright terrifying.
| [deleted]
| madars wrote:
| Clearly need to correct for selection bias: we don't watch
| YouTube videos of non-eventful Tesla turns.
| sedatk wrote:
| I'm very anxious about left turns for that reason alone and move
| my head around the left column to see if I'm missing someone like
| trying to watch a movie with a taller person sitting in the
| front. It's amazing that we think we can take on self-driving
| before we can take on not killing pedestrians on left turns.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Well it is a lot easier to put a camera in a blind spot than an
| eyeball. Human hardware isn't going to get better any time
| soon; my money is on safe self driving long before safe human
| driving.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| This is why I live in a public transit friendly city.
|
| I hate driving, I think most people are bad drivers. Even
| completely sober, you might just be tired.
|
| In places like LA driving is so essential people ignore license
| suspensions. Police often don't care, a friend of mine from
| nonchalantly talked about driving without a license or insurance.
|
| I happily haven't had a car in about 2 years. No tickets, no
| insurance, no clown kissing my bumper. I'd love for more cities
| to invest in public transit.
|
| I refuse to live in a city where I need a car! If I ever have to
| RTO, I'd rather ride a train. I can goof off on my phone, play
| video games, etc.
| [deleted]
| Animats wrote:
| There's something called "left turn hardening". This involves
| minor barriers to channel drivers into making wider left turns.
| New York City does a lot of this.[1]
|
| [1] https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pedestrians/turn-
| calming....
| baybal2 wrote:
| Why US can't simply install left turn signals onto traffic
| lights more widely?
|
| I noticed how few of them are there in North America.
| wahern wrote:
| 1) Because pedestrians walk against the signal all the same.
|
| 2) Because if it's a _dedicated_ turn signal, you
| dramatically increase cross-traffic wait time. To compensate
| you need better signal timing to minimize the number of
| stops, but that tends to increase speeds, which is not good
| for pedestrians. If the signal isn 't dedicated, it doesn't
| actually make it easier for the driver to see pedestrians as
| their attention is still split.
|
| The problem with San Francisco is it's reliance on surface
| transportation, both cars and buses. I live in the city but I
| can drive downtown 2x faster in a car then if I took the bus,
| whether there's traffic or no traffic. And while I'd _prefer_
| to take public transit, I don 't prefer spending 45m-1h in a
| bus (the "rapid" line) when driving only takes 20-30m. That's
| an _additional_ hour out of every work day, and an hour spent
| _sitting_ at that. (I wouldn 't mind walking 15m to a subway
| that would speed me downtown, but that's just not in the
| cards here. They're even discussing cancelling the Geary BRT
| project after only building a few bulb outs and painting some
| lanes, which in actuality saved 10 minutes at the very best.)
|
| As a pedestrian I hate cars. However, in this city I can't
| _only_ be a pedestrian. To get from one part of the city to
| another, I need to take surface transportation, which to be
| efficient needs fast, smooth flowing traffic. (And to be most
| time efficient for me, that means driving a car, at least to
| any place where there isn 't a direct bus line.)
|
| Doing things correctly requires a comprehensive solution
| which includes building new infrastructure rather than simply
| tearing down old infrastructure. Unfortunately San Francisco
| politics is too paralyzed. One the one hand you have the
| people who want to tear things down--close streets, etc. On
| the other hand you have people who don't want anything to
| change. And on the third hand... well, there is no third
| hand.
| azundo wrote:
| The linked page describes exactly that - "Left Turn Calming"
| projects.
|
| > At SFMTA, we're working hard to help drivers make left turns
| the right way. We've installed Left Turn Guide Bumps at
| designated intersections around the City, with painted safety
| zones and raised bumps to remind drivers to slow down and make
| squarer left turns. We'll test how well these treatments make
| left turns safer, with a long-term goal of installing calming
| project at other intersections where they are needed most.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I never knew that's what those were for. Thanks for sharing.
|
| I know you see a lot of concrete (+ grass) road medians in the
| South. Do those have a similar effect or do the cones need to
| extend out to really work?
| mlex wrote:
| There's one of these at 10th Street turning left onto Folsom.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| All those examples are honestly still awful. What is needed is
| traffic/refuge islands so you has a pedestrian only have to
| deal with the possibility of crossing traffic coming from one
| direction and no chance of getting stuck in a unprotected
| position.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refuge_island
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| Those can work on areas with lower speed traffic, but they
| can be very dangerous on wide roads with faster vehicle
| traffic. Poorly designed refuge islands give pedestrians very
| little protection if a vehicle looses control at an
| intersection. Even if the pedestrian is paying attention, the
| only escape option is likely straight into traffic.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Good then that I can't remember the last time I saw a bent
| light pole due to a car losing control. I actually haven't
| seen it happen in my life. I have seen bent light poles,
| but I couldn't tell you when or where last.
|
| Escape shouldn't be an option, it won't work on the
| sidewalk either. Optimizing for that is optimizing for
| failure.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| Anecdotally, I've seen several bent "walk button" poles
| located right in the middle of refuge islands. When you
| live in a place that gets snow and ice in the winter,
| cars slide out of control frequently.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| I think that comes down to mandating winter tires,
| effective snowplowing and drivers education including
| driving in slippery conditions. Important is enforcing it
| also, let people slide out of control in a controlled
| fashion so they know to be scared of it.
|
| I literally drove all around town yesterday, a nice cool
| -5C (23F) with about 30-40 cm of snow which came in the
| last week, no problem at all. No bent poles anywhere
| (anecdotally). Always fun feeling the ABS kick in at the
| slightest too hard touch of the brake pedal, even with
| studded tires.
| chmod775 wrote:
| That's information that anyone with a driver's license should
| have learned and been tested on, both theoretically and
| practically.
|
| Besides making roads safer, I wonder how long society can go on
| without _re-testing_ people 's competence for moving tons of
| steel at 60 miles per hour on a regular basis.
|
| There's very few dangerous activities that don't require regular
| re-certification and training, and driving really shouldn't be an
| exception.
|
| Some main contributing factors to road fatalities are going too
| fast for conditions, exceeding the speed limit, failing to look
| properly (left turns!), reckless driving, and various forms of
| inexperience.[1] That means it's mostly people who don't
| know/forgot how to drive safely and mouth breathers who don't
| realize most traffic laws exist for a reason and are _written in
| blood_.
|
| Can't hurt to remind people occasionally and make sure they can
| actually be trusted on roads.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000145751...
| wonnage wrote:
| The problem is that taking a driving test in the suburbs is
| generally much easier than in the city, but the license counts
| all the same. People joke about how driving well in
| NYC/SF/LA/etc. traffic means you can handle driving anywhere,
| but that's not a joke, that ought to be the default you expect
| from every licensed driver.
| clairity wrote:
| i totally agree on more frequent and more rigorous
| certification, but there's much more to traffic collisions than
| fatalities, and focusing on speed (a factor in fatalities but
| not really in collisions) tends to take attention away from the
| biggest all-around culprit, distracted driving.
|
| distracted driving unfortunately is relatively resistant to
| testing for rules. we need to create games/simulations as part
| of that driver certification process where the outcomes of our
| millions of little distracted driving events become very clear.
| acdha wrote:
| This is true but I think simply having drivers think of
| licenses as something they can lose would be an enormous
| improvement. Right now even killing people will frequently
| not lead to a revoked license and everyone knows that. If
| there was a non-zero chance of losing your license, many
| people would decide that Facebook could wait.
| jwagenet wrote:
| I agree that society doesn't want to touch this issue because
| it impedes freedom of mobility in a car oriented country. I
| would be in favor of 5-10 year relicensing requirements and
| higher license fees to incentivize higher quality drivers.
| ars wrote:
| How would you even test this? People will be careful during the
| test, and then back to typical afterward.
|
| I suppose a yearly knowledge check could help a bit. Could even
| be automated, so not very expensive to implement.
| abeppu wrote:
| I think in addition to more regular testing, we need more
| "levels" of drivers licenses.
|
| Driving in a rural or suburban area where there are almost no
| pedestrians or cyclists, and very few vehicles doing
| pickup/delivery etc is very different from driving in a dense
| area with many pedestrians, cyclists, scooters, etc. Should
| having passed a test in the suburbs with very little traffic
| when I was 16 really confirm I can drive in the urban center?
| acdha wrote:
| This is especially true for the gigantic trucks with poor
| visibility and handling which a lot of commuters are now
| picking as their daily driver.
|
| You should need a CDL with regular retesting to drive those
| in a city because they're far more likely to serious injure
| someone when misused. Actual cattle ranchers have the space
| for that but anywhere shared with pedestrians and bicyclists
| does not.
| colpabar wrote:
| I'm in favor of this, but I think it's a complete non-starter
| politically. It would largely affect the elderly, and the
| elderly love to vote.
| watwut wrote:
| The big issue is that many places are not walkable at all nor
| have good public transport. So, taking someones ability to
| drive implies taking away their ability to work, ability of
| their kids go to school, to go get ID or vote and even to go
| shop for food.
| lucasmullens wrote:
| In California you only need an 80% on the written test to pass.
| And if I remember right you can retake it the same day.
|
| To phrase that another way, you can be wrong about 20% of the
| driving laws and still drive. They should raise the bar.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Or if peoples can't remember all the rules, they should
| reduce the number of rules while stiffening the consequences
| for causing a crash.
|
| For example, if you're at fault you loose a drivers license
| for life (or perhaps are restricted to operating only
| motorcycle-class vehicles and lighter).
|
| As it stands we have all these rules that drivers forget or
| ignore. Then when a crash happens, they receive no
| consequences. I'd rather have people using intuition to
| driver safer for fear of punishment vs a set of rules that
| only increases safety in theory (see the unenforced three
| foot bike passing law).
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Society wants to pretend the issue doesn't exist because the
| consequences of taking away a person's ability to drive is so
| outsized. In some states you can go over half a century without
| taking an eye test. Though my license doesn't require me to
| have them, I always wear eyeglasses at night now when I drive
| even though most of my life I had excellent eyesight. Time
| simply comes for all of us and our laws don't always reflect
| that.
| warning26 wrote:
| Exactly -- furthermore, I wish the US did things more like
| Germany; getting a license should be both _extremely
| difficult_ and _extremely expensive_.
|
| Driving should be considered a luxury, not a necessity, but
| sadly the entire US is designed around the assumption that
| _everyone_ has a car.
| maccolgan wrote:
| Yeah, moving from point A to point B autonomously without
| relying on public transit i.e. sharing space with other
| people totally depending on other people's whims and
| fancies should be a luxury.
| ahepp wrote:
| I used to live in Michigan, where we have a thing we call the
| "Michigan left". To turn right at an intersection, you continue
| straight through the intersection, then take a left turn at gap
| in the median to return to the intersection from the other side
| of the boulevard and proceed to make a right turn.
|
| I'd be interested in what the trade-offs are. I imagine space
| usage is a big one.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Looking at the diagram [0], I'm dubious if this is a good
| "authoritative" solution. The problem with left turns is
| collision with oncoming traffic moving straight through.
| Especially at yellow lights where the turning vehicle is trying
| to make it out of the intersection before the light turns red
| and they feel like they are blocking 90-degree traffic [1], and
| end up colliding with oncoming vehicles running the yellow.
|
| This design seems to shift that problem 100 meters down the
| road, but the challenge of crossing oncoming traffic remains (I
| guess without the pressure of trying to get out of a turning
| Yellow Light situation).
|
| So it's definitely an improvement, but isn't there a simpler
| one called "Dedicated Left Turn Signals"? If both directions
| had an "advance left" light where both could turn safely, and
| there was a dedicated light for turning (i.e. no entering the
| intersection to turn except in a dedicated Left turn sign),
| this solves the problem, no?
|
| Dedicated Turn lanes and signals need space, so they're not
| always possible in dense urban environments, but the Michigan
| setup doesn't suffer from a lack of space. So i feel like the
| Michigan solution is useless for San Francisco, and also not as
| good as the alternative for Michigan
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_left#/media/File:Mich...
|
| [1] Which, incidentally, FEELS unsafe, and inexperienced
| drivers panic trying to get out as soon as possible, but isn't
| actually - these vehicles are starting from 0 and accelerating
| - they are unlikely to accelerate INTO you. In rushing to get
| out before the light turns red, they are more likely to collide
| with an oncoming vehicle trying to run the yellow.
| Sparkyte wrote:
| Probably one of the safest ways to turn left as you have no bi-
| directional flows to compete against. When in a city and it is
| a grid I would just do the UPS right turn to make a left. One
| extra street down, right, right and straight.
| exhilaration wrote:
| I feel like (in Manhattan, pre-covid) that would add at least
| 5 minutes to your trip. More doing rush hour.
| dahfizz wrote:
| This sounds like a weird way to implement a jughandle turn.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jughandle
| caspper69 wrote:
| It is sort of a jughandle, but the diagrams on wiki don't
| really do it justice.
|
| These exist on major thoroughfares where the destination road
| is divided. So you make a right and go to the far left lane,
| then go into a u-turn in the median where you can make a left
| turn in the desired direction without worrying about crossing
| oncoming traffic.
|
| Here's a link, and if you look at Telegraph Rd. just north of
| Maple (a few hundred yards from where Jimmy Hoffa was last
| seen alive), you can clearly see the traffic flow: https://ww
| w.google.com/maps/place/Telegraph+Rd+%26+W+Maple+R...
| tyingq wrote:
| If that's hard to visualize:
| https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/tctimes.com/con...
| red_hare wrote:
| That's very helpful. Thanks!
| jldugger wrote:
| > To turn right at an intersection
|
| Pretty sure you mean 'to turn left'
| cornstalks wrote:
| > _To turn right at an intersection..._
|
| You mean to turn left, correct?
|
| I've seen this technique used by people as an optimization.
| Some lights have very long wait times for left turns, so people
| will do what you describe rather than waiting in the left turn
| lane.
| jedberg wrote:
| Instead of installing bumps and doing a marketing campaign, why
| not actually fix the problem and install roundabouts? They're
| safer, cheaper than lights, and more environmental because they
| keep traffic moving.
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| ... "San Francisco outlaws turning left"
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| We have roundabouts everywhere in France, but in the US, they
| seem not very popular.
|
| They do removes the need for traffic lights, make priority
| checking a non issue and avoid left turns among other benefits.
| Although they prevent you from going to fast locally, they tend
| to make traffic more fluid on average.
|
| Why are they not used that much in the US ?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Unpopular locally. The Seattle area has quite a few and people
| adapted pretty well to it, but the few in SF are stop-sign
| controlled as well, which makes them prettification projects.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| There's roundabouts where I live in the USA with stop signs.
| People didn't know who has right of way and it led to road rage
| confrontations so the government had to add stop signs to them.
| People in the area now complain that roundabouts suck. Which
| they do when you have to stop before entering. So now we get
| more four way stop signs and traffic lights instead which cause
| traffic to stop and start, wasting fuel and increasing
| congestion. Sigh.
|
| On the other hand at least you can turn right on red which is
| something my home country needs to allow by default since I
| haven't once seen an issue with it in my years in the USA.
| estebank wrote:
| > On the other hand at least you can turn right on red which
| is something my home country needs to allow by default since
| I haven't once seen an issue with it in my years in the USA.
|
| > Right-Turn-on-Red (RTOR), in its "Western" version allows
| motorists to turn right on a red signal after stopping and
| yielding, unless specifically prohibited by a sign. The
| objective of this study was to determine the effect of
| Western RTOR on pedestrian and bicycle accidents in selected
| jurisdictions adopting the rule in the mid-1970s. The results
| showed significant increases in pedestrian and bicyclist
| accidents involving right-turning vehicles at signalized
| locations following the introduction of Western RTOR. These
| increases were: 40 % for pedestrians and 82 % for bicycles in
| New York State; 107 % for pedestrians and 72 % for bicycles
| in Wisconsin; 57 % for pedestrians and 80 % for bicycles in
| Ohio; and 82 % for pedestrians in New Orleans. Analysis of
| police accident reports suggested that drivers stopped for a
| red light are looking left for a gap in traffic and do not
| see pedestrians and bicyclists coming from their right.
| Countermeasure research and development was recommended to
| deal with this well defined problem which involves between 1
| % and 3 % of all pedestrian and bicycle accidents.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002243.
| ..
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > People didn't know who has right of way and it led to road
| rage confrontations so the government had to add stop signs
| to them.
|
| "Yield to traffic in circle" clarifies things just as well,
| is commonly used, and restates the actual right-of-way rule
| applicable to an otherwise-uncontrolled roundabout. An
| amateur generalist politician like most city councilors and
| mayors I can see thinking stop signs are the answers, but
| presumably they had a roads department with at least one
| professional to consult, so one hopes that there was more at
| issue than people not knowing the rules if they chose stop
| signs.
| mazugrin2 wrote:
| You have roundabouts in the middle of Paris in areas with lots
| of pedestrians? Please show me. Certainly not any parts where
| anybody would think, hey, this is a great bit of infrastructure
| for people traveling on foot.... Roundabouts may be great for
| vehicular traffic, and yes, I believe they should be far more
| widely used in the US, but not in dense urban areas where
| pedestrian safety is meant to be a priority.
| [deleted]
| rossdavidh wrote:
| They have started to appear in Austin, Texas, where I live, but
| only in the last 10 years. There are many more places they
| could be added, but I think when two country roads meet you
| just make a plain "+" intersection, and as it gets gradually
| more urban it just never gets rethought as to whether it should
| be turned into a roundabout. But it is (where I live at least)
| slowly starting to get adopted.
| underdeserver wrote:
| Hi.
|
| Left turns where the pedestrians have a green light, or oncoming
| traffic does, are batshit crazy. Kill them before they kill more
| people.
| cjensen wrote:
| It's odd to me that such a significant source of fatalities is
| being addressed in a very unambitious way. Left turns are clearly
| difficult maneuvers in many parts of SF. Why not turn them into
| protected left turns?
|
| This "just blame the drivers" attitude is really odd. Their
| response is to tell drivers that they need to take more care and
| then enforce the care with an obstacle course. Why not do
| something harder that would be more effective? Protected lefts.
| Separating walk signals from green lights. Tickets to penalize
| poor driving. Tickets to penalize anyone walking out of turn.
| Tickets for anything that makes the left turn more complicated so
| drivers can focus on the job.
| aeternum wrote:
| Another option is to make left turns illegal on more streets
| and make right turns easier.
| wonnage wrote:
| Protected lefts require a dedicated turn lane, and many of the
| intersections where this is a problem simply don't have room
| for them. Removing parking spaces to make room is unfortunately
| a fraught process that can take years. So you wind up with
| training that nobody's going to take
| aqme28 wrote:
| You got me a bit confused by this. You say we shouldn't "just
| blame the drivers," but then advocate for increased ticketing.
| That's a contradiction.
| pm90 wrote:
| Just blame the drivers is shorthand for asking drivers to do
| better, without any other changes. Rules and laws to penalize
| drivers are a more effective strategy since people respond
| better when there are real costs associated with driving
| poorly (or so I hope; it seems logical but maybe it doesn't,
| maybe the laws will be selectively enforced, not sure).
| aqme28 wrote:
| I'm a little skeptical that people's driving behavior
| changes a lot when you increase the penalty.
| rkk3 wrote:
| It's a systemic issue drivers are one stakeholder and many
| are responsible. Vehicle designers & manufactures, Urban
| Planners etc.
|
| > people respond better when there are real costs
| associated with driving poorly
|
| The real cost is that driving kills 40,000 people a year in
| the US.
| pm90 wrote:
| The mortality rate is an externality to most drivers.
| Financial penalties or better designs have a more direct
| effect. Similar to how coal power plants kill thousands
| due to air pollution but don't really care until they're
| penalized financially or made to design systems to reduce
| emissions.
| aqme28 wrote:
| People don't react to incentives the same way that
| corporations do.
| pm90 wrote:
| Congratulations for adding absolutely nothing to the
| conversation.
| pm90 wrote:
| The obvious answer is that it's easier to blame drivers than
| enact meaningful change, which requires time and effort.
|
| You're absolutely right though, this is a systemic problem fand
| needs a systems-based approach to solving it. Speed limits,
| limiting hours for motorized traffic... there are many ways in
| which this problem can be alleviated.
| mint2 wrote:
| Protected left turns don't work well without insanely wide
| roads. There is not room for protected left turn lanes in most
| of sf, and too much traffic to do one direction at a time
| signals.
| pavon wrote:
| I've not driven in San Francisco. Are cars allowed to sit and
| block an entire lane until they can turn left? That is how
| things worked in the rural town I grew up in, but I can't
| imagine it working in a city. All the streets in the city I
| live in now which are too narrow for a turn lane are either
| one-way (thus have no need for a protected left) or they
| prohibit left turns.
| nharada wrote:
| Many streets have "no left turn" signs that apply during
| busy hours to prevent this (but of course those are often
| ignored anyway).
|
| In practice the thing that determines if you can turn left
| and block traffic is how high your tolerance to honking
| behind you is.
| agilob wrote:
| In a lot of delivery companies drivers are forbidden (or
| discouraged) to turn through oncoming traffic, I knew that about
| RoyalMail and DHL, but here is an article about UPS:
|
| >UPS have moved away from trying to find the shortest route and
| now look at other criteria to optimise the journey. One of their
| methods is to try and avoid turning through oncoming traffic at a
| junction. Although this might be going in the opposite direction
| of the final destination, it reduces the chances of an accident
| and cuts delays caused by waiting for a gap in the traffic, which
| would also waste fuel.
|
| https://theconversation.com/why-ups-drivers-dont-turn-left-a...
| frankus wrote:
| Even when they have a dedicated signal and plenty of time, I'm
| surprised at how terrible most drivers are at turning left
| (US/Canada perspective here).
|
| The standard approach seems to be, as soon as they enter the
| intersection, to point their car at the lane they're heading
| into, and then at the last second attempt to correct the fact
| that they're entering that lane diagonally. That usually means
| either cutting the corner of the oncoming lane or swerving into
| the adjacent lane/bike lane/shoulder (or both).
|
| This is easily remedied by proceeding straight into the
| intersection for roughly a car length before starting the turn.
| This lets you maintain a roughly constant turning radius and sets
| you up to enter the destination lane more or less straight-on. A
| bonus is that it's safer (it's easier to see people in the
| crosswalk) and more comfortable (than the sudden-jerk-at-the-end-
| of-the-turn that the typical maneuver requires).
| azinman2 wrote:
| It's been well recorded that something like 70% of motorcycle
| fatalities are left-hand turns. I don't think this is somehow
| endemic to SF versus other cities.
| piinbinary wrote:
| I wonder how much of this is because SF rarely uses left-turn
| signals.
|
| This forces drivers on streets like Guerrero or Valencia St who
| need to make left turns to do so against oncoming traffic. When
| that oncoming traffic doesn't give you a good opportunity to make
| that left turn, you are forced to take bad opportunities. This
| usually involves dashing across the oncoming lane quickly at the
| last second. I can't imagine that this is safe for pedestrians.
| piinbinary wrote:
| Maybe a more interesting question: How does this compare to
| other US cities, and what do those cities do differently?
| ghaff wrote:
| Between the density/congestion, the street layout in much of
| the city, the hills, etc., I'd say SF is generally more
| difficult to drive in on average than most US cities.
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| Time to quarantine all cars for an unknown amount of time!
| hmmmhmmmhmmm wrote:
| As with COVID-related outcomes, focusing only on fatalities
| ignores other meaningful negative outcomes.
|
| Based on personal experience after living SF/Oakland ~ 10 years,
| I'd also take measurements like "in pedestrian cross-walk" with a
| grain of salt.
|
| Anecdotally, 1st-degree friends have been involved in:
|
| * Pedestrian killed by a MUNI bus, intoxicated and just out of
| the cross-walk, the bus driver deemed not at fault.
|
| * Cyclist killed by a delivery truck, while biking in a bike line
| on Folsom.
|
| * Cyclist in bike lane on Valencia hit by a truck, dealing with
| TBI and anxiety years later but with no visible damage.
|
| * My Uber driver, turning left onto Valencia, hit a pedestrian
| holding a red cup. A police officer happened to witness the
| incident, saw the red cup, and sent the driver on their way in
| under a minute.
| lxe wrote:
| Maybe we should turn some of these left turns into a protected
| "arrow" signal? Or separate the pedestrian right-of-way with the
| "red human" signal?
|
| _insert boardroom meeting getting thrown out the window meme_
| chaostheory wrote:
| A left turn traffic light would fix this problem.
| pindab0ter wrote:
| I don't understand why oncoming traffic and pedestrians all have
| a green light the same time as when you're green for a left hand
| turn.
|
| Here in the Netherlands almost all traffic light intersections
| are set up so that when you've got green you're good to go unless
| specifically indicated otherwise by signs.
|
| Not to mention roundabouts completely bypass this problem, though
| those might not have the traffic throughput needed in a city
| centre.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Of course far better than just begging drivers to square up their
| lines would be to simply ensure that anyone who tries to cut off
| their turn destroys their car in the process. It's quite simple
| to put a rigid object at the point of the centerline to protect
| pedestrians.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@47.3625432,8.5339337,3a,75y,196...
| ozzydave wrote:
| Has any city tried combining those HAWK Signals (flashing amber
| on crosswalk) triggered by a camera looking for pedestrians (/
| cyclists etc)? I think that would be a cost-effective combination
| by making the pedestrians much more obvious.
| ffggvv wrote:
| this seems to put all the onus on drivers. in my experience
| driving in SF, i'll be in the middle of the intersection waiting
| to turn left (its unprotected) and light will be yellow turning
| red. And i have a shot to go left but then an idiotic biker or
| pedestrian will walk even though it says "dont walk". leaving me
| to be stuck in the intersection.
|
| people often ignore those pedestrian lights completely and dare
| you to hit them.
|
| dont get me started on bikers who ignore all lights and zip out
| in half a second
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