[HN Gopher] Bollards: Why and What
___________________________________________________________________
Bollards: Why and What
Author : mooreds
Score : 201 points
Date : 2024-05-05 19:54 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (josh.works)
(TXT) w3m dump (josh.works)
| philips wrote:
| > The lanugage in the article is full of 'this was an unavoidable
| tragedy', though i think it's obvious a local city engineer ought
| to be held criminally liable for their neglect.
|
| > Because not only was it entirely preventable, it was also
| statistically inevitable. Not putting bollards where they need to
| be is like not only not wearing a seatbelt when driving, but
| arguing that seatbelts should not be available in cars because
| usually they're not needed
|
| This is 100% correct. A woman in Portland here was killed when a
| street racer plowed into a bus stop. The racer lived and the
| woman died. The racer got 36 months. Totally preventable.
|
| https://www.kgw.com/article/news/crime/portland-street-racer...
| dumbo-octopus wrote:
| In the case in the article, it sounds like the killed person
| was walking down the middle of a totally ordinary sidewalk, not
| a bus stop or intersection or storefront or anything. Are you
| proposing we place bollards on the edges of _every sidewalk_ in
| existence?
| BeefySwain wrote:
| Only the sidewalks next to roads.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| What sidewalk isn't next to a road? It's in the name: side-
| walk.
| naikrovek wrote:
| Which is why they are so dangerous for pedestrians, even
| though nothing bad happens _most of the time._
| geraldwhen wrote:
| Anywhere street racing happens, legal or no, probably yes.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Building streets is going to become pretty expensive if we
| follow that advice.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It is probably much more doable, and less hostile, to
| traffic calm streets so that people cannot get up to such
| speeds, and also to reduce the necessity of driving so
| that there is no car to crash in the first place.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| There's a residential road not too far from me that is
| legitimately 8 cars wide. The people there continuously
| wonder why cars are literally drag racing next to houses.
| That's why.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| "won't someone please think of the money"
| philips wrote:
| > "They say [the car] hit so hard, it exploded the bench,"
| explained Misty Nicholson, McGill's mother.
| runeb wrote:
| Lowering the speed limit where there are sidewalks next to
| cars driving seems to work well in Europe. But that also
| requires policing of those speed limits so they are not
| considered mere suggestions by drivers.
| jajko wrote:
| Just put enough speed cameras, they are much cheaper than
| any human police guys in long run, can watch 24/7 things
| like red lights, stops, seat belts, using of phones while
| driving etc. They can be even connected together for those
| a-holes who slow down in front of them just go enter again
| lightspeed right after, its not rocket science in 2024 and
| all required tech is there for decade and a half.
|
| Here in Switzerland even foreigners have their cheeks so
| tight on the roads even sharpened hair wouldn't cross, they
| behave like angels and traffic is generally well behaved.
| And when they don't, punishment is heavy and it doesn't
| matter how many millions you have on your account or whom
| you know.
|
| Have this, and peace comes. Don't have it, fast a-hole
| drivers doing whatever they want is not your biggest
| problem anyway.
| briHass wrote:
| These are only useful for otherwise-law-abiding people
| who go a little too fast. The trend in big cities in the
| US is to joyride/race with your license plates removed,
| obscured, or fake, and that's assuming the car isn't
| stolen (Kia/Hyundai.)
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Meanwhile in Texas, red light cameras cannot be used to
| catch traffic violations as of 2019:
| https://guides.sll.texas.gov/recording-laws/red-light-
| camera...
|
| In Houston, bollards and raised pedestrian paths were
| removed recently (after being installed last year)
| because drivers kept hitting them.
|
| It's not a tech issue.
| gpm wrote:
| It's like most issues, political will is needed to
| implement solutions, technology gives access to better
| solutions.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| If people keep hitting the bollards, doesn't that mean
| they're working?
| piva00 wrote:
| Or even better: put speed bumps, narrow lanes, add
| chokepoints, lots of design features that physically
| force drivers to slow down instead of speed cameras that
| don't impede anything for someone wanting to speed.
|
| Physical features are much harder to ignore.
| Vinnl wrote:
| A proper speed limit is not just a number on a sign. You
| can add curves, change the surface material, road width,
| etc. Not much policing required.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| And raising speed limits where appropriate. US speed limits
| right now are often set at about the right level on urban
| and suburban roads, but _far too low_ on highways and other
| roads intended for long-distance travel. This effectively
| causes people to speed at dangerous levels in the suburbs
| and cities - it does not slow everyone down everywhere.
|
| Edit: The statement "speed limits are about right" does not
| mean "current travel speeds are about right." If you read
| the rest of the comment, it means that current travel
| speeds are about 5-10 mph too fast for most roads, but you
| don't actually need to change any signs if you start making
| speed limits a credible fact about the actual speed _limit_
| of the road.
| aspectmin wrote:
| I'm curious. Do you have data to back this up?
| alistairSH wrote:
| Of course not. "Speeds are correct on non-highways"
| doesn't match the level of pedestrian fatalities in the
| US. He might be 100% correct about the highway speed,
| though I doubt it, since most highways
| (interstate/limited access) seem to be 65 or 70, except
| in urban areas.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It's a good thing that the pedestrian fatalities you are
| trying to cite very often happen _due to someone
| speeding_ (that is a fact that you can corroborate with
| police data if you would like). If people don 't obey a
| speed limit, you can't cite a consequence of their
| driving speed to say that the limit is too high.
|
| Also, I have exactly as much data as everyone else is
| bringing to this discussion, including you and the GP
| comment, who have brought no relevant data either. This
| is just my opinion.
| willy_k wrote:
| Just anecdotally, I've experienced the same. The speed of
| traffic on highways is regularly 5-25 mph above the
| limit, and this mindset does translate to other types of
| road.
| esteth wrote:
| I'm very curious where your data comes from to back up
| this statement. "The current level of pedestrian
| fatalities from motor vehicle collisions is the right
| level" just seems wrong to me.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I never said that. Go back and read closely.
|
| The obviously-too-low speed limits cause _all_ speed
| limits to be called into question. Thus, Americans drive
| about 10 mph over the limit on suburban roads, where lots
| of fatalities occur. If Americans drove at the speed
| limit, fatalities would probably drop a lot.
| gregmac wrote:
| Europe has a lot more roads with a lower design speed.
| Curves, narrow lanes, on-street parking, trees/poles/etc
| close to the road. These things cause people to drive
| slower, because it doesn't _feel safe_ to go fast.
|
| In North America, roads are usually built in the complete
| opposite way, with long straight roads and wide lanes, so
| the design speed is actually quite high -- even if that
| wasn't the intent. People go fast, because it _feels safe_
| to go that speed, but isn 't, because there are pedestrians
| and turns. We then "fix" that shit road design by having
| low speed limits.
|
| This video is all I think of when this discussion comes up
| now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bglWCuCMSWc
| spoonjim wrote:
| A good start would be life without parole for the murderer
| paulgb wrote:
| > it sounds like the killed person was walking down the
| middle of a totally ordinary sidewalk, not a bus stop or
| intersection or storefront or anything
|
| Are we talking about the same article? The article says she
| was at a bus stop.
|
| > Ashlee McGill was waiting at a bus stop at Southeast Stark
| Street and 133rd Avenue
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Correct. Cars need to be separated from people by barriers. But
| that goes both ways. Deaths by pedestrians getting into places
| they shouldn't are very common even absent roads (ie railroad
| crossings). Some have called for all railroads to be fenced
| off. But few want to live in a world with fences around every
| possible dangerous area. When I went to school there was no
| fence. Now schools are surrounded by so many that they look
| like prisons. Barriers can go too far.
| hmottestad wrote:
| It's an article about bollards and how they stop vehicles
| from hitting pedestrians. Fences to keep people out of places
| where they can easily kill themselves is very important, but
| doesn't have anything to do with the article. A trend I see
| on Twitter is that someone will bring up an important issue
| and comments will highlight that it's very important, but
| what about this other thing that is somewhat related but also
| unrelated. Not saying that you intended to do that here, but
| be aware that fences provide no security against cars and
| that the whole point of bollards is to stop cars from killing
| pedestrians who are not on the road.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> the whole point of bollards is to stop cars from killing
| pedestrians
|
| Except all those bollards that have nothing to do with
| pedestrians. Many are there to prevent cars deliberately
| accessing protected areas with absolutely zero thought
| about stopping a crashing vehicle. The most common use of
| bollards is to stop vehicles from parking where they
| shouldn't. Some bollards are even soft so that they can be
| driven over without damage to either party.
|
| https://www.maibach.com/en/soft-bollard.html
| estebank wrote:
| > Some bollards are even soft so that they can be driven
| over without damage to either party.
|
| That's not a bollard. I'm assuming you're thinking of
| flex posts, or how some of us call them, car ticklers.
| bombcar wrote:
| People in general are pretty good at assigning blame -
| pedestrian hit by car is usually blamed on the car unless the
| pedestrian was doing something exceptionally stupid -
| pedestrian hit by train is usually blamed on the pedestrian.
|
| The job of government should be to evaluate and require
| safety equipment where it makes sense - to protect the
| innocent and reduce issues. And part of that is recognizing
| when people are using something regularly "against the law"
| and fixing the underlying issue, not just make it "more
| illegal" (for example, people using a railroad bridge to
| cross a river).
| sandworm101 wrote:
| That barrier looks bad, but i think the designer is doing two
| things by putting it inside of the sidewalk. It looks to be doing
| double duty as a normal fence, something to keep pedestrians and
| such from falling into the gully. If it were a wooden fence
| nobody would notice it. But they went with a metal barrier
| normally used for cars that now looks out of place.
|
| The other possibility is that the sidewalk may have been added
| afterwards. Turn the right lane into a sidewalk or bike lane and
| the old vehicle barriers will indeed appear out of place. There
| are far stranger thing out there on the roads. Strange doesn't
| mean evil.
|
| A third possibility is that the sidewalk may be designed for
| vehicle use. This is most common in "traffic calming" devices
| such as those tiny roundabouts. The sidewalk is kept low so that
| the occasional long truck (ie fire trucks) can still negotiate a
| corner by driving partially onto the sidewalk. If we want
| obstacles to slow cars down, we must still think about emergency
| vehicles. Even the most dedicated anti-car advocate doesn't dare
| complain about ambulances driving through pedestrian zones.
| DanHulton wrote:
| I cannot imagine being okay with an ambulance rocketing down a
| sidewalk that is explicitly designed as a "pedestrian zone."
| The solution to emergency vehicles being unable to navigate
| streets in a timely manner is to redesign the streets, not to
| normalize the practice of endangering pedestrians.
| Additionally, if it is necessary to design a mixed
| pedestrian/vehicle zone, there are absolutely ways to go about
| that, with specific and different buildout and signage. Any
| city planner whose solution is "Oh, well, the emergency
| vehicles can just use the sidewalks to turn or pass other
| vehicles, and they'll be careful so it's okay" is committing
| malfeasance and should be held legally responsible for the
| deaths and injuries arising from said decision.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Who said anything about speed? A vehicle like a fire truck
| can simply be too long/wide to get around a corner even at a
| walking pace. So they use the sidewalks. Emergency vehicles
| in pedestrian areas is a very common. So any barrier system
| needs to accommodate them.
|
| Every, and I mean every, neighborhood is laid out on the
| premise that firetrucks can get to every location. The size
| of buildings, even the width of city blocks, is often tied to
| the capacities of the local fire departments to push water
| using pumper trucks. Want multi-story residential areas? The
| roads better be able to handle ladder trucks too.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's possible to reduce the size of the fire trucks, too.
| Not every ladder truck needs to be a full double-steered
| classic hook and ladder; modern extension trucks can be
| relatively compact.
|
| Amusingly enough around here the widest streets are the
| oldest; because they were wide enough to turn a wagon and a
| team of horses. Some of the newest streets are quite narrow
| - a truck can go down them easily enough but turning around
| would involve a driveway.
| yowzadave wrote:
| > The solution to emergency vehicles being unable to navigate
| streets in a timely manner is to redesign the streets
|
| There is another option: redesign the emergency vehicles. I
| grew up in a city (Salt Lake City) whose streets were
| designed to be extra-wide to accommodate the turning radius
| of a horse-drawn wagon; similar considerations are made for
| fire engines in many cities. By contrast, in Tokyo, they
| simply designed a smaller fire engine, which offers the
| benefit making streets more pedestrian-friendly in typical
| non-emergency situations.
| EnigmaFlare wrote:
| Or the footpath is so little used that extra safety provided by
| the clear zone is greater than the extra safety to pedestrians
| from having the barrier next to the road.
|
| Safety is often about statistics rather than being 100%
| perfect. I used to work in a sawmill where occasionally logs
| would fly off the machines and crash through walkways. The
| solution was requiring workers using the walkways to never
| loiter there so the odds of having a person there at the time a
| log hit it were reduced.
|
| By the way, it's funny you said "inside" and the article said
| "outside". Thinking as a pedestrian, I considered "inside"
| means next to the bushes like how you used it. But if you're
| thinking in terms of the road/cars, that would be the outside.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> workers using the walkways to never loiter there so the
| odds of having a person there at the time a log hit it were
| reduced.
|
| Also the #1 safety factor when in avalanche country. When a
| threat is deadly, inevitable and unstoppable, speed becomes
| your best safety device. You don't loiter when crossing a
| gully on skis, nor do you stop to admire the view when
| driving though certain mountain valleys.
| matsemann wrote:
| The article touches upon how news stories shift the way problems
| are thought about, often in a way where problems stemming from
| cars are played down. This one is a go-to for me in showing how
| that works and what to do about it, it's Cam Cycle breaking down
| a news story about a collision:
| https://www.camcycle.org.uk/magazine/newsletter110/article8/
|
| I can btw recommend following the World Bollard account the
| images are sourced from. I find the playful seriousness
| hilarious.
|
| It's sad that we need bollards so many places. Both for safety in
| regards to accidents. A more humane design of a street would make
| it impossible to speed too much or put pedestrians in harms way -
| if you need two hundred bollards somewhere along a street, other
| measures should've been taken instead (like traffic calming). But
| also because without them, some drivers will drive wherever, park
| wherever. No pedestrian zone remain untouched by cars without
| bollards. In my city we had to petition to get them up to keep
| cars out from somewhere they weren't allowed to be.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I only have the energy to refute 2 points in the article
| breakdown:
|
| 1) (paraphasing) "why was it relevant to say he was wearing a
| helmet". To raise awareness that it's critical that cyclists
| wear helmets to increase their chances of survival.
|
| 2) "he was struck...use of passive voice , not the result of
| one or other party's action", maybe because that information
| isn't available yet? And part of journalistic integrity is to
| not report that which isn't proven.
|
| It baffles me why cyclists expect to have any lower incident of
| traffic accidents than any other vehicle using common roadways.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Bollards are fantastic technology: cheap to manufacture, easy to
| install, and _life-saving_ (both in terms of crashes and also
| forcing drivers off of curbs, crosswalks, &c.).
|
| It's a shame that so many US cities are focused on installing
| pseudo-bollards and flexible strips of plastic, rather than
| putting down permanent protections for cyclists and pedestrians.
| One recent example of this is NYC's Gowanus[1]: they're
| redeveloping the area for residential use, including bike lanes
| and daylighting down 4th avenue (historically a high-volume,
| industrial avenue). But these bike lanes and daylight zones are
| protected only by plastic bollards, which even a sedan can
| comfortably park over.
|
| [1]: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/plans-
| studi...
| bombcar wrote:
| Flexible markers (which aren't even attempting to be bollards,
| to be clear) are usually a step up from a simple painted line
| and often recommended by fire departments and other emergency
| personnel as they can ignore them with their equipment.
| woodruffw wrote:
| They're often sold as "flexible bollards"[1], so I think it's
| fair to evaluate them by that title.
|
| I don't object to the idea that EMS or other emergency
| responders might need roadside access. From my experience,
| many European cities do this admirably by having retractable
| bollards embedded in the street, or by redesigning streets to
| have a bollard-free section (e.g. by the fire hydrant, where
| it's already illegal to park or idle).
|
| (There's also the irony of not placing bollards into a street
| crossing because emergency services might need it, when
| bollards might _prevent the need_ for many emergency
| responses.)
|
| [1]: https://www.reliance-foundry.com/bollard/flexible-
| bendable
| krisoft wrote:
| > when bollards might prevent the need for many emergency
| responses
|
| I doubt that? If a bollard stops a car which would have
| caused an emergency that is often reason enough for an
| emergency response in itself. It doesn't change the number
| of emergency calls, just changes the form of the emergency.
|
| Also the whole argument you are making is silly. A bollard
| on a street crossing can prevent some kind of emergencies
| (the kind a runaway vehicle would cause). It absolutely
| does nothing to prevent other kind of emergencies (like
| fires caused by faulty wires, or hearth attacks) but might
| lenghten the response time for those. There would be maybe
| some form of irony if emergency responses were only
| required because of runaway cars, but that is far from the
| case.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Flexible markers (which aren't even attempting to be
| bollards, to be clear) are usually a step up from a simple
| painted line
|
| There's a T-intersection near my house which is very far off
| of a 90-degree angle, and they finally upgraded to those not-
| quite-barriers. I'm glad they did, since it curbed the number
| of people who were ignoring the stop-sign and driving through
| the paint-striped gore-point. In other words, acting as if a
| different road had the stop sign instead.
|
| Some of the sticks have been lost to attrition now, and I
| kinda wish they'd get replaced with much heavier ones
| guaranteed to at least leave dents and scratches...
| apwheele wrote:
| Bollards are also good ideas to prevent intentional terrorist
| acts of driving cars into pedestrian areas,
| https://www.nbcnews.com/slideshow/terrorist-truck-attack-sho....
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| The automatic bollards in my city, designed for exactly that
| purpose, have claimed over 200 tailgating cars since their
| installation.
| titanomachy wrote:
| How does that happen? Are they tailgating maintenance
| vehicles or emergency vehicles who are authorized to access
| those areas, and then the bollards go up again after they've
| passed?
| fsckboy wrote:
| "tailgating" at a red light or in a parking lot might mean
| "following the car in front of you closely at low speed",
| and as such the driver might not realize there is an
| automatic bollard there. this pleases people because
| schadenfreude
| jdietrich wrote:
| Yep. The bollards rise much faster than you'd think, so
| you're in real trouble if you ignore the no entry signs.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_Cw0QJU8ro&t=32
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I don't know if it's just me, but it is very hard to parse the
| title headers that say "What are not bollards." It's not a
| standard way to construct that thought into a headline.
| beAbU wrote:
| Author is clearly not a mative speaker. I noticed one or two
| homophonic errors after a brief scan.
|
| But I like the headers, as I interpreted it as "bollards" and
| "not-bollards", kinda humoristic and fun.
| bun_terminator wrote:
| Funny that this is coming up. About 30 minutes after this post, a
| bollard played a pivotal role in the currently ongoing Formula 1
| race
| leoc wrote:
| Did a car in fact pivot around it?
| otikik wrote:
| Who is going to tell this person about stroads?
| andrewaylett wrote:
| One happy side effect of the response to terror attacks in the UK
| is that we've become quite good at bollards.
|
| For example, the Scottish Parliament has a number of benches and
| ornamental ponds: https://maps.app.goo.gl/biSpACmL1fSihqPL7. Or
| there's the classic ARSENAL:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/xopzGGu8rUdWaTCe8.
|
| We're even getting better at providing more than merely paint as
| protection for cyclists:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/2VT3SbjrK27w72826.
| nmc wrote:
| Bollards are good at preventing the inconsiderate from parking on
| the sidewalk. For fewer people to be killed by cars, however, you
| want transportation infrastructure which does not rely on having
| fast metal boxes in close proximity to pedestrians (or cyclists,
| wheelchair users, etc).
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| There are old cannons that have been used as bollards:
|
| https://westevan.org/bollards/cannonbollards3.htm
|
| > The one on the right is a real cannon outside the main gate
| into the original Chatham Dockyard. It is one of a pair (see the
| gateway photograph in the gallery below). It had been one of the
| Royal Navy's biggest smooth-bore muzzle-loading (SBML) guns but
| when it was no longer fit to be used on a warship it was buried
| breech-down to protect the brickwork of the gatehouse from damage
| by carts and other vehicles. The muzzle of this one has been
| sealed off with a cross-shaped piece of iron.
|
| You can also see them as mooring bollards in harbours around the
| world.
| trhway wrote:
| Between our house and the road turn 30ft away was a thick
| reinforced concrete pole, a bollard of a kind, severely leaning
| from being regularly hit by tanks - the road was used by tanks
| driving from/to loading point, and the tanks in the convoy
| would regularly miss the turn due to the dust raised by the
| tanks in front of them.
| mlhpdx wrote:
| Indeed. I din't know the term bollard applied to anything other
| than large mooring cleats. TIL.
| leoc wrote:
| Above all I want to see automatic bollards which pop up along the
| full length of both sides of a pedestrian crossing when the light
| is green for pedestrians.
| tonymet wrote:
| LA started installing plastic bollards on main boulevards like
| Venice, Olympic.
|
| I've had a few buddies injured, one severely, because the well-
| meaning bollards interfered with organic cycling paths and led to
| collisions.
|
| An organic cycling path is one where either there's no formal
| cycling path or the painted path is not actually safe for
| cyclists.
|
| Often engineers who install these devices are not regularly
| cycling on the routes, or even cycling at all. They are not aware
| of the natural flow of cyclists and how they interact with
| vehicles. They see a deterministic cause and effect of road
| markings to road behavior. True road dynamics among cyclists &
| motorists are non-deterministic.
|
| Another terrible example was installation of bollards along
| popular "group" ride routes where hundreds of club cyclists ride
| before commute times (before dawn). Thankfully we worked with the
| city to have them removed, but it likely cost $500k+ for the
| installation & removal.
|
| My point is that often well meaning safeguards end up causing
| harm, and that policy makers don't actually use the systems they
| are managing.
| hellcow wrote:
| Wilshire in Santa Monica also installed these bollards, and I
| feel less safe as a pedestrian, cyclist, _and_ when driving
| because of them. We know the solution -- build protected bike
| lanes, tax cars by weight, and close of some streets to
| encourage walking through neighborhoods.
| titanomachy wrote:
| > Maybe it would feel poetic if he was also a car-user, having
| his life destroyed by a car, but he didn't even have a car.
|
| Jesus Christ, does this author ever have a bone to pick. Implying
| that anyone who ever operates a car deserves (at least a little
| bit) to die a horrific death.
| bombcar wrote:
| An alternative (often temporarily) to bollards are jersey
| barriers - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_barrier
|
| They're about $2k per 12 feet and are widely used to protect
| construction workers on roads.
|
| They're also kind of ugly, to be fair.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Just a minor counter- point... bollards are great for keeping
| cars out of places they don't belong.
|
| But bollards on bike paths can be deadly to cyclist. My area used
| to place them at path-street crossings, to keep cars from turning
| onto the bike path, but after a few cyclists clipped them and
| died, the bollards were removed. The incidence of cars turning
| onto the bike path is low enough they weren't worth the risk to
| non-cars.
| senkora wrote:
| I am curious how the bollards were deadly to the cyclists (I'm
| not saying I disagree, I just don't understand the mechanism).
| Maybe they were just going a lot faster than I'm thinking of?
|
| The primary bike path that I use for commuting is the Hudson
| River Bike Path in Lower Manhattan, and there are bollards
| there at every intersection as a reaction to this terrorist
| attack: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/sayfullo-saipov-
| be-sent....
|
| I sometimes find the bollards annoying, but I can't disagree
| with the city for placing them after that...
| alistairSH wrote:
| They were cente-trail (what would be the physical centerline,
| though there was no lane marking) about 5" in/back from the
| road surface. A car could get up onto the sidewalk that's
| parallel to the road before striking the bollard. So, a
| cyclist would have to pass the bollards before stopping to
| check for traffic. I assume they clipped the bollard, lost
| control, and either ran into the road or something like that.
| This was 20 years ago now, so I don't remember details.
| egypturnash wrote:
| The bollards were _right in the middle of the cycle
| path_?!? Yeah that 's some shitty placement that's gonna
| endanger the cyclist by shoving them out into traffic.
| gpm wrote:
| Yeah bollards right in the middle of the cycle path are
| unfortunately common around here.
| londons_explore wrote:
| With the advent of more and more cars with smart features, it
| might be cheaper to simply have "virtual bollards" which are
| programmed into the cars computer, and the car will never drive
| over them.
|
| Virtual bollards take up no space, are free to install, require
| no maintenance or repairs, etc. They also don't destroy any car
| that hits them.
|
| Virtual bollards can also be passed by ambulances and emergency
| vehicles easily when needed, unlike real bollards which often
| slow emergency response.
| tikhonj wrote:
| We can do this as soon as 100% of cars are self-driving and we
| can write software that is 100% reliable. How long can that
| take?
| londons_explore wrote:
| It doesn't need to be 100% reliable. It just needs to be
| better than current bollards - which are perhaps only ~10%
| effective since many accidents happen where there is no
| bollard to prevent a bystander being killed.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| That's a nice idea but it would require a _lot_ of elements to
| work in perfect synchrony to be really safe and reliable. In
| the foreseeable future, probably easier just to put physical
| bollards in.
|
| Your comment reminds me of a funny aside in Arthur C Clarke's
| _The Fountains of Paradise_ (wonderful novel, about the
| construction of a space elevator). A famous architect,
| designing the world's longest and highest bridge, fights to
| avoid putting guard rails along the sides. His justification is
| a) cars are all computer-controlled and totally reliable in the
| book's setting, so rails are unnecessary; some suspect it's
| actually b) the bridge will look nicer without guard rails; or
| even darker, c) if a car _does_ somehow go off-course, he'd
| prefer it doesn't damage the bridge before plummeting half a
| mile into the sea.
| quasarj wrote:
| This is so poorly written, I can't tell if he's advocating for
| bollards or not bollards???
| dullcrisp wrote:
| He wants the bollards.
|
| Post some initial confusion about whether the road is on the
| inside or the outside of the sidewalk, this wasn't very hard to
| follow.
| tmorgan175 wrote:
| That's some writing under the influence if I've ever seen it. A
| shame, since the underlying argument is interesting.
| netaustin wrote:
| The purpose of the article is persuasive but the HN title is
| ambiguous and reads much more expository. I'm a New Yorker who
| walks, bikes, and drives, in roughly that order and it was
| clear to me that the author is pro-bollard.
| crazygringo wrote:
| This article is a bit difficult to read, as it seems to be
| written with a heavy dose of sarcasm/irony.
|
| I genuinely can't tell what the author is arguing for, as it's
| extremely difficult to tell if he's quoting things because he
| agrees or disagrees with them.
|
| My biggest question is: is the author arguing that there should
| be spaced bollards along literally every sidewalk in the
| country/world, and around all edges of every parking lot?
|
| If so, it's an interesting idea, but I also can't help but think
| that would not just be expensive, but also possibly extremely
| ugly.
|
| I'm curious if there are estimates of both installation cost as
| well as lives saved and other damage to buildings avoided.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Can't speak for the author, but IMO...
|
| Everywhere a pedestrian might be? Probably not. But, we can do
| a MUCH better job building sidewalks and roads to increase
| safety. Lower speeds (not just posted limits, but road design).
| Raised sidewalks that are continuous, not the disjointed mess
| we have in much of the US.
|
| At bus stops, schools, and any shopping area where cars are
| parked directly adjacent to eh store front? Yeah, bollards
| should be installed.
| chatmasta wrote:
| The trouble is that we're rarely "building sidewalks and
| roads" in a large empty space. Either there is already a road
| there, or there's other immovable constraints like buildings
| and landmarks. If you've got some large empty space, then
| sure you can build a safe road and sidewalk. But the reality
| is that's rarely possible, especially in urban areas that
| were originally planned in the horse and buggy era. The roads
| in the UK are narrow, _and_ there's limited parking space, so
| people park half on the sidewalk and make the road even
| narrower.
| drozycki wrote:
| While vehicles partially on the sidewalk are a nuisance,
| they do provide a barrier between pedestrians and vehicles,
| and do have a traffic calming effect by narrowing the
| travel lane.
| drozycki wrote:
| I would argue that the status quo is already expensive and
| ugly. Shouldn't any aesthetic claim be relative to the beauty
| of the parking lot itself, or of the carnage left by a vehicle
| after striking a pedestrian?
| strken wrote:
| A pedestrian safety feature doesn't need to be ugly. Consider
| trees, or big rocks, or unusually sturdy art installations, or
| nice wrought iron poles with decorative flourishes.
| ktosobcy wrote:
| If only cars weren't gigantic, oversized killing buckets...
|
| NotJustBikes just posted another video
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRbnBc-97Ps) about the speed
| limit but touching on the same issue - less speed x less mass =
| safer environment -> less need for physical barriers (they even
| removed some street lights). Honestly, there wouldn't be that
| much need for bollard is majority of cars would be city-car like
| the one in 4:39 min (https://youtu.be/JRbnBc-97Ps?t=279)
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| That first image is from this junction[1] in Singapore.
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/cwAerb4uPN4KD6sR7
| spencerchubb wrote:
| I've never thought about in my life. Now that I have read about
| it, I'm probably going to notice them everywhere.
|
| It seems like a remarkably simple technology that saves lives.
| nvader wrote:
| I was recently introduced to the World Bollard Association
| Twitter channel, which is extremely compelling to scroll through,
| albeit not entirely wholesome.
|
| There's some amount of malicious joy as errant cars are punished
| by contact with bollards, as well as the gratitude for safety of
| pedestrians this purchases.
|
| It might be worth a scroll through:
|
| https://twitter.com/WorldBollard
| lazyeye wrote:
| Related: ad for a lubricant (it might take a minute)
|
| https://9gag.com/gag/aggY2Aq
| fsckboy wrote:
| in NYC, I don't worry about getting hit by a car; I worry about
| getting hit by bicycles/bicyclists. Most NYC streets are one-way,
| but I have to look both ways before stepping off of a curb.
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