[HN Gopher] The built environment and the determination of fault...
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The built environment and the determination of fault in urban
pedestrian crashes
Author : luu
Score : 37 points
Date : 2024-03-05 03:23 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jtlu.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jtlu.org)
| dredmorbius wrote:
| A possible tie-in to this topic is this 1968 interview with Ralph
| Nader, discussing _Unsafe at Any Speed_ , by Studs Terkel:
|
| <https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/ralph-nader-discusses-...>
| (Audio, 32:31).
|
| Direct audio link: <https://s3.amazonaws.com/wfmt-studs-
| terkel/published/11364.m...> (MP3).
|
| Nader covers a number of topics, including auto safety. Among the
| key points he makes is that (as of 1968), the contribution of the
| automobile itself to accidents was simply not _legible_ , in the
| James C. Scott sense ( _Seeing Like a State_ ), to the point that
| police accident report forms had no options for noting the
| contribution of the vehicle to the accident.
|
| Built environment and highway design are another factor, of
| course, but the Nader interview came immediately to mind. I've
| listened to it several times, and it bears a few more listens as
| well.
|
| (The Studs Terkel Archive itself is a true gem and recommended
| for those who enjoy podcasts.)
| hettygreen wrote:
| I was waiting for Chinese food and watched as a Left-Turn light
| went green for cars at the same time the Pedestrian crossing
| light turned "OK to cross".
|
| The waiting car sped up, made it's left turn right into the
| crossing pedestrian. Pedestrian died in the hospital and I never
| ate my Chinese food.
|
| How can that sequence of traffic lights even happen? For the
| pedestrian to get the OK, she must have hit the crossing button -
| system knows a person is there, why give cars the OK to turn
| right into her, leaving the responsibility on the driver to see
| and yield?
| ghaff wrote:
| That is extremely common at city intersections. The pedestrian
| has priority but the car also has a green light for a turn. I
| don't know about the exact timing of the sequence but there are
| many intersections where the pedestrian has a right to cross
| and a car has a right to turn (but must yield).
|
| The same city (like many places) also has pedestrian crosswalks
| that aren't light controlled at all.
|
| The cars need to watch for pedestrians. Lights don't
| necessarily means that cars obeying the lights never ever have
| to watch for pedestrians also crossing with the lights.
| mindslight wrote:
| The problem is that people tend to interpret a green light to
| mean "you can go" rather than "this specific light isn't
| telling you to stop". Hence all those signs that say
| something to the effect "turning cars yield to oncoming
| traffic on green" as a reminder. And the effect is likely
| worse for a green arrow, which implies having the right of
| way.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| IME, the pedestrian has a Don't Walk sign if the car has a
| green left turn arrow.
|
| If the car has a plain green light and is turning left, then
| they need to watch for pedestrians and for oncoming traffic.
| itronitron wrote:
| Yeah, left turn on green always scares me as I have twice come
| close to hitting pedestrians that I just didn't see (at first)
| because my line of sight to them was blocked by the driver side
| pillar. Notably, both of these streets were three or more lanes
| in each direction, not sure if that adds a risk factor.
| throw0101d wrote:
| For the history in the US of how streets when from being 'mixed
| use' pre-automobiles to being basically only about automobiles
| see _Fighting Traffic_ by Peter D. Norton:
|
| > _Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets
| were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at
| large. By 1930, most streets were primarily a motor thoroughfares
| where children did not belong and where pedestrians were
| condemned as "jaywalkers." In Fighting Traffic, Peter Norton
| argues that to accommodate automobiles, the American city
| required not only a physical change but also a social one: before
| the city could be reconstructed for the sake of motorists, its
| streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where
| motorists belonged. It was not an evolution, he writes, but a
| bloody and sometimes violent revolution. Norton describes how
| street users struggled to define and redefine what streets were
| for. He examines developments in the crucial transitional years
| from the 1910s to the 1930s, uncovering a broad anti-automobile
| campaign that reviled motorists as "road hogs" or "speed demons"
| and cars as "juggernauts" or "death cars." He considers the
| perspectives of all users--pedestrians, police (who had to become
| "traffic cops"), street railways, downtown businesses, traffic
| engineers (who often saw cars as the problem, not the solution),
| and automobile promoters. He finds that pedestrians and parents
| campaigned in moral terms, fighting for "justice." Cities and
| downtown businesses tried to regulate traffic in the name of
| "efficiency." Automotive interest groups, meanwhile, legitimized
| their claim to the streets by invoking "freedom"--a rhetorical
| stance of particular power in the United States. Fighting Traffic
| offers a new look at both the origins of the automotive city in
| America and how social groups shape technological change.Peter D.
| Norton is Assistant Professor in the Department of Science,
| Technology, and Society at the University of Virginia._
|
| * https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2924825
|
| * https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262516129/fighting-traffic/
| skhunted wrote:
| What's disheartening is how ingrained car prioritization has
| become in the U.S. Our communities are largely un walkable and
| consist of large underused concrete parking lots. Everything is
| spread out. It is abnormal to see kids playing in the streets
| now and most people seem to be O.K. with this. We've become a
| people who rarely go outside other than to drive from one
| building to another. And when we do go outside we end having to
| drive to a place where one can be in a location away from cars.
| itronitron wrote:
| I stayed at a place in the US a few years ago where I should
| have been able to walk the half mile to the grocery store but
| there was no path through the neighborhood to the strip mall
| where it was located, and there was no sidewalk on my side of
| the highway that was the other option.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| >Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets
| were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at
| large.
|
| This is not true and there are numerous counter-examples.
|
| City streets have always been dangerous for pedestrians and
| notable illustrations of this are the separate gates at city
| entrances for vehicles (pulled by beasts of burden of course)
| and pedestrians and the construction of sidewalks and
| crosswalks one example of which I've seen in person is the
| civil engineering of Pompeii where pedestrians were segregated
| from road traffic over two thousand years ago.
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pedestrian_crossing_...
|
| Another example is the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris. Completed in
| the early 1600s it was built with wide sidewalks to keep
| pedestrians out of the road.
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/P1140241...
|
| Oldest photograph of London: https://londonist.com/london/art-
| and-photography/oldest-phot...
|
| Amsterdam, 1891: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Old-
| Amsterdam_1891-stre...
|
| What do you see? Sidewalks.
|
| In various paintings and engravings of city scenes from the
| 1600s and 1700s a common theme emerges: every area that could
| afford them built sidewalks and pedestrians were segregated
| from road traffic. Raucous examples of people teeming in the
| streets in similar works seem to be trying to depict scenes of
| anarchy or poor slums.
|
| Another is the fact that numerous Roman emperors banned
| carriages from city streets during daylight (both for safety
| and noise pollution reasons) with varying degrees of success.
| That was much easier when you had an army of slaves to carry
| goods into the city.
|
| One glaring expression of the dangers of pre-automobile urban
| streets is the fact that in New York City fatalities due to
| horse-pedestrian collisions greatly surpass the rate of
| fatalities of automobile collisions. In both "Herald Square,
| 1896" and "A Trip Down Market Street, 1906" you can see
| pedestrians travelling with the road along sidewalks and
| crossing the road at any point. This indeed used to be common,
| before the invention of traffic signals and crosswalk and is
| the primary reason for the increase in fatality rates due to
| collisions.
|
| The fatality rate for deaths due to horses in Chicago was seven
| times the present rate of pedestrian fatalities and in New York
| City is was double.
|
| From Horse Power to Horsepower:
| https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6sm968t2
|
| Herald Square: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRf5z75-GbU
|
| Market Street: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q5Nur642BU
|
| Children didn't play in city streets because it was a death
| sentence.
|
| Pedestrians DID cross from sidewalk to sidewalk at any location
| because crosswalks didn't exist (in most places) yet.
|
| Regardless of all of that, in positive news more and more
| cities all over the US and the world are pedestrianizing their
| streets. Not because "users of city streets were diverse and
| included children at play and pedestrians at large" but because
| mixing pedestrians and ANY vehicle to include pre-automobile
| vehicles is dangerous and pedestrians should either stay out of
| the street or have it dedicated solely to their use.
| bedobi wrote:
| Private automobiles do not belong in cities. They are guests
| there. But they've invited themselves in and taken over the
| place.
|
| It's disturbing how common it is for people's default assumption
| to be that it's the pedestrian/person on the bike/scooter/what
| have you 's fault that they got hit by a car. Rarely the driver's
| fault, and NEVER the urban designer's fault.
|
| Most crashes are fundamentally caused by designs that encourage
| them.
|
| We _know_ drivers speed, we _know_ they text while driving, we
| _know_ signs and even enforcement doesn 't work etc etc. The ONLY
| conclusion is it's the built environment that must disallow
| crashes and people being hit by cars from being possible in the
| first place.
|
| Narrower, more winding streets, cobblestone, speed humps and
| other calming surfaces, more vegetation, raised crosswalks,
| dedicated and physically segregated (by bollards, concrete blocks
| etc) spaces for pedestrians, people on bikes etc etc.
| ghaff wrote:
| Cities are welcome to erect whatever barriers they like to
| private cars. But don't think there wouldn't be economic impact
| if far fewer people commute in, come in for the evening, or
| decide to move out because visiting the suburbs or the
| mountains is too much hassle. But maybe it's a worthwhile
| experiment.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| The misunderstanding here is that cars are the primary way
| people commute into the city. This might be true in some
| places, but for most cities PT and residents make up the bulk
| of commercial traffic in a city - it makes sense when you
| consider that most roads only let a few dozen cars a minute
| through, vs a few hundred people per train (and way more
| during peak hours).
|
| However, you look at the built environment in a city and the
| pedestrians often only get 20% of the road area between
| buildings, while cars get 80%.
| ghaff wrote:
| I can't speak to averages but I'll say car traffic into
| Boston is at least as bad as ever and commuter rail is
| still way down relative to pre-pandemic. So, yes, people
| take train but a huge number of people drive. (I try to
| take train the rare times I go in although it takes about
| the same 2 hours as driving.) And the commuter rail is
| totally impractical to use for an evening event.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Hah, I was about to respond roughly the same thing:
| Taking the rail into Boston is so impractical that it's
| easier to drive.
|
| FWIW: The T/Commuter Rail (apologies for blending the
| two) has more than 90% of US rail accidents. I noticed a
| ton of maintenance problems the last time I rode it (in
| 2021) and I don't know if/when I'll try it again.
| ghaff wrote:
| I know there have been efforts to improve things but
| service was also cut back during the pandemic. (There are
| some express trains again.) I'll still take it
| preferentially for 9-5ish situations like one I'll have
| next week but it's not actually any faster in general
| (though I can sort of relax for most of the trip) and is
| totally unusable for going in for an evening play.
|
| And that's almost certainly a pretty _good_ commuter rail
| system by large urban US standards. (Not as good as NYC
| of course.)
|
| So, to my original point, saying "don't drive" is
| essentially equivalent to saying stay out of the city in
| general.
| bedobi wrote:
| Car skeptics are not saying "don't drive"
|
| They're saying "allow viable alternatives to driving"
| ghaff wrote:
| You wrote "Private automobiles do not belong in cities."
| I'm not sure what's ambiguous about that. Certainly if
| you tell me I don't belong someplace, I would take that
| literally.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Why makes it impractical for an evening event?
|
| I've seen in other cities that, bizarrely to me, the rail
| shuts down before the end of sporting events, concerts,
| and other things that would attract people to the city.
|
| Maybe they don't want drunks?
| ghaff wrote:
| There are very few nighttime trains and it would take me
| a good extra hour to get home even once I caught one of
| the sparse trains. If I had to take the train in for a
| play I'd simply pass.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Out of curiosity, how hard would it be to take a
| rideshare home? Too expensive?
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes. Probably close to $100. (I'm about 45 miles
| outside.) And probably hard to get a driver later at
| night. I do book a private car to and from the airport
| but I'm not going to do that for a random evening out.
| (The small theater I have a subscription to also has a
| free parking deal at a nearby garage so that doesn't even
| factor in.)
| bedobi wrote:
| Meanwhile in Tokyo 40 million people virtually all take
| the train, and those who do drive never experience
| traffic or gridlock
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > you look at the built environment in a city and the
| pedestrians often only get 20% of the road area between
| buildings, while cars get 80%.
|
| How is that significant? I very rarely have run out of room
| on the sidewalk. Cars are larger than I am, they need more
| space.
|
| I agree with the general consideration that cars waste real
| estate, but sidewalk width hasn't been a problem that I've
| seen.
| bedobi wrote:
| Uh, I encounter that everywhere from San Jose to NYC to
| Miami
| wolverine876 wrote:
| You run out of room on the sidewalk? Like a traffic jam?
| Maybe we're talking about different things. I rarely have
| to stop moving on a sidewalk, or if I do it's not for
| more than a moment, and I'm talking about the most dense
| cities.
|
| Maybe NYC in the theater district when some plays are
| letting out ...
| ghaff wrote:
| Times Square can get pretty bad. But, yes, that's
| unusual.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> for most cities PT and residents make up the bulk of
| commercial traffic
|
| "According to the American Community Survey (ACS), public
| transportation commuters constituted about 5 percent of all
| workers in the United States in 2019. Though public
| transportation (transit) was a relatively uncommon method
| of traveling to work in the United States as a whole, it
| played a prominent role in certain places, like the cities
| of New York, where over 2 million people commuted by public
| transportation, and San Francisco, where over one third of
| workers did so."
|
| -- https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/public
| atio...
|
| So even pre-pandemic when public transportation was in
| higher usage, there was maybe one city in the US that meets
| your criteria. For the other 19,494 of the 19,495 cities in
| the US, private transportation was a large majority.
|
| 5% of commuter trips in the US are by public
| transportation. Under 3% are walking. 85% are car, truck,
| or van, either alone or carpooled. If cars only get 80%,
| sounds like they are being cheated. They should get 85%
| instead.
| bedobi wrote:
| So your observation is US cities don't have transit,
| therefore we should invest more in car infrastructure?
| treyd wrote:
| On the contrary, building cities to be nicer places to be a
| pedestrian in means you can design them more around people
| without cars. Look up statistics on how much land we dedicate
| to parking. You end up with far more effective use of land,
| higher overall productivity, and a larger tax base which
| helps support the infrastructure investment in a virtuous
| cycle.
|
| Park and rides in suburbs so commuters don't have to take up
| disproportionate space in the more valuable city environment
| are just _a part_ of this, but the root of the issue is
| providing _viable alternatives to driving_. Housing policy
| and public transit policy are deeply linked with this.
| SECProto wrote:
| > Cities are welcome to erect whatever barriers they like to
| private cars.
|
| This is inaccurate - for liability purposes, most road design
| in the US conforms to the MUTCD (and other design standards),
| which have very car-centric requirements. For example, the
| minimum lane width it allows is 11 feet (3.3m). If you design
| and install a 10 foot lane, you're not supported by that
| standard, and will likely get sued for damages if someone
| sideswipes someone, etc. The same applies for many other
| features that can improve pedestrian safety. It's one of the
| fundamental reasons north American built environment looks so
| much different (even compared with a car-centric design in
| other countries)
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes, but cities can presumably limit parking, make it very
| expensive, perhaps implement congestion charges. They have
| lots of levers to keep cars out if they want to without not
| complying with design standards.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > But don't think there wouldn't be economic impact if far
| fewer people commute in, come in for the evening, or decide
| to move out because visiting the suburbs or the mountains is
| too much hassle.
|
| Maybe more people would commute in, parking outside the city
| and taking public transit, and enjoying all the benefits of a
| low-traffic, pedestrian city: No parking problems or costs,
| no traffic, no fuel costs, highly available transit, things
| built for pedestrian and transit travel. Maybe they'd move
| in.
| ghaff wrote:
| Outside of some big commuter lots, I'm skeptical a lot of
| people are going to do a lot of multi-mode transport into a
| city outside of regular commuting. I certainly don't do it.
| And more pedestrian friendliness wouldn't tempt me to move
| into a city either.
| itronitron wrote:
| I find single lane one-way streets to feel much safer to walk
| through as I can generally manage to anticipate the actions of
| one driver at a time.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Agreed; my thought is that it greatly reduces variables for
| drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists.
|
| More specifically, I'd specify road width rather number of
| lanes. Roads where drivers feel they have room to squeeze by
| pedestrians and cyclists seem to increase risk.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > Private automobiles do not belong in cities. They are guests
| there. But they've invited themselves in and taken over the
| place.
|
| You seem to be ignoring what actually happened. A huge number
| of the people in those cities _wanted_ automobiles. That 's why
| governments taxed people to pay for the roads for those cars.
|
| I think I agree with the rest of your post.
| slifin wrote:
| https://roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Um... somebody wrote a book, and here's an ad for it? OK,
| so?
|
| I mean, it does have a catchy title, but no, I'm not going
| to go order the book, and read all 170,000 words it boasts
| of, in order to try to figure out how you think that
| refutes my statement. If you've got an argument, make it.
| smokel wrote:
| I for one would like a system where I could simply cast
| FHQWGADZ as a combination of tokens that each support my
| stance on complex matters.
|
| It can be tiresome to have to repeat facts and opinions.
| It seems that grandparent has read a book, and found its
| contents convincing enough to share it here. A bit terse,
| but still relevant, no?
| djrobstep wrote:
| That is not how it works. What people want is a function of
| the choices available.
|
| When the government builds a ton of car roads, people want
| cars. When they build great rail, bike lanes and walkable
| streets, people want cars much less.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > What people want is a function of the choices available.
|
| > When the government builds a ton of car roads, people
| want cars. When they build great rail, bike lanes and
| walkable streets, people want cars much less.
|
| Is there evidence of that? I haven't seen an American city
| where bike lanes are utilized more than sparsely, even when
| an extensive network is built.
| bedobi wrote:
| Everyone from kids to phd urban planners and traffic
| engineers know that viable alternatives to driving lead
| to people switching modes. This isn't controversial.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I'm not claiming it's controversial. Do you happen to
| know where I can track down the factual basis?
|
| My many but anecdotal observations of bike lanes do not
| support it (I wish it did).
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > A huge number of the people in those cities wanted
| automobiles. That's why governments taxed people to pay for
| the roads for those cars.
|
| What is the basis of that? Perhaps, having the option of
| roads; and being led, to a degree by leaders' belief in
| roads, they wanted cars. Seeing public transit and seeing
| leaders' belief it it, they might have used that.
| bedobi wrote:
| Akshully it's you who need to read up on first thing about
| the history of the invasion of cities by the automobile.
| Complete, total regulatory capture of the government by the
| automobile and oil industry, purchase of transit only to rip
| it to shreds etc etc.
|
| The funny thing is, traffic in general and life for ardent
| motorists in particular would be better the better
| alternatives to driving are. Instead, they shoot themselves
| in the foot by shutting down anything other than adding more
| and more traffic, making things worse and worse for
| themselves.
| itronitron wrote:
| Considering the topic of the paper it would have been nice if the
| authors provided a less useless Abstract.
| bombcar wrote:
| Pedestrians being hit by cars are often considered the car's
| fault (and let's grant that).
|
| But pedestrians can be hit by trains, too.
| michael1999 wrote:
| Nobody is every hit by a turning train.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > The conclusion argues that the designation of individual
| responsibility for crashes preempts collective responsibility,
| preventing wider adoption of design interventions as well as
| systemic changes to the processes that determine the built
| environment of US roadways.
|
| I don't quite understand (based only on the abstract): Are they
| suggesting that we alter the data (re: who is responsible) to
| achieve a certain outcome? Do they want to 'prevent wider
| adoption of design interventions'?
|
| I expect the answer to those questions is 'no', of course, but I
| don't understand their argument or conclusion.
|
| @luu: as submitter, what did you see in this paper?
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