What blows my mind is there are small towns all over America (like my own home town) that actively votes AGAINST putting in sidewalks between commonly walked sections of town. One local resident even stated they "don't want poor people walking in front of my lawn all the time!"
NGL, this was kinda hard to watch. My daughter was killed as a pedestrian in a crosswalk in 2015. She was hit by the same bus that had just dropped her off near the intersection. Unfortunately, it was night, the intersection was not lit well, and the driver didn’t see her as he made a right turn. Hard as it was to watch, I’m glad you made this video. I hope it raises awareness and helps to bring pedestrian safety more to the forefront.
I'm so sorry to hear about your loss. As a parent, losing one of my kids is an absolute nightmare. I can't imagine the pain you've had to go through. Lots of love from the Netherlands.
My brother was cycling one night, just grabbing some groceries, and he ended up being hit by a pickup and died on impact. Because of that, I ended up pursuing a degree in civil engineering, and am now working towards a masters in transportation engineering where I am researching cyclist safety. Not a day goes by that I don't miss him, but at the same time not a day goes by that I am not thankful to be working in a capacity where I might be able to prevent someone else from experiencing that same fate. Thank you Rob for making engaging content that works for people of all backgrounds and technical experience and that helps more people consider our built environment.
You should plan a visit to Copenhagen or The Netherlands. Cycle for a few days in these locations and your head will spin! It's truly nirvana for the two-wheeled crowd. Although I've never taken the "bicycles shouldn't mix with traffic," approach to transportation safety, these models make for a VERY strong argument. (I don't like the segregated safety approach because it lets drivers off the hook. Drivers are ALWAYS near people, so if you let them act like animals, they will continue to injure, maim & murder, even if you have separated bike & pedestrian paths everywhere.) But effective transportation models exist that promote sensible means of getting around that also promote happy, healthy lives.
@@dudeonbike800 funny, I actually studied abroad in the Netherlands this past summer. Never got the chance to make it out to Copenhagen though. You make a very real point about separation though.
@@jjrneptune Did you cycle? I can only assume you did. I spent 10 days in Utrecht last year on our tandem and it was incredible. I've ridden in The Netherlands and toured Europe by bicycle before, but I was still amazed. Riding with everyone was like riding in a Pro1/2 field. Everyone holding their lines, no squirrels, no yo-yo or anything. In 10 days of cycling among thousands of cyclists, all weaving in and out and co-existing, I never saw a single crash. Yes the Dutch can ride! But the infrastructure sure doesn't hurt either! Wow, what a place!!!
@@dudeonbike800 I only got to bike around a little, but it was a delight. Significantly nicer than my bike to school here in the states. I absolutely love how the people out there move around each other though. Everyone picks up on everyone else’s body language because everyone knows how to ride a bike so it all just works.
People are also forgetting that pedestrians have the right of way. My mom got hit the other night crossing at a crosswalk by an old guy who thought he could turn left because his light was green. Thankfully, she’s just a bit bruised. I also saw a guy almost get creamed out in New Orleans the other day by someone that decided to make a left turn because I wasn’t going. I wasn’t right turning because there was someone in the crosswalk. I really thought he was going to get hit.
News flash, the only people I know who shrug and use that "right of way" excuse are parents who never taught thier kids to look before crossing the street. Is that obsolete now because you can just sue the driver for heaps of money when they hit your kid? Good to know that they are worth more to parents dead than alive. They still teach defensive driving for a reason, because there will always be idiots behind the wheel, but teaching kids situational awareness has been obsolete, for more than 30 years and that "it is everyone elses responsibility to keep my kids safe" attitude is getting people killed. (I used to be a teacher, so don't tell me I don't know what I am talking about.)
@@rosameryrojas-delcerro1059 Even if you look both ways, some asshole on a smartphone might hit you because they decided that would rather pay attention to their phone instead of the road.
So? Then your family will be justified in suing the driver. If you did nothing (or did not teach your child that idiots exist and that they need to look) then you would be 50% to blame for the accident, because if you had seen the idiot, you would have stayed on the curb. Your argument is just another "it is everyone elses responsibility to keep my kids/me safe". I don't have to do shit, I/my family can just sue the hell out of them after I weep enough on the 6pm news. FISHING for reasons to sue someone is what that is. Litigious spaz.@@ballsquid4135
15:15 John worked for an "unnamed" EV manufacturer! We all know who he worked for. Road Guy Rob was very clever, because he never said the word Tesla himself. Don't get any copyright strikes Rob, we need you!!
Could touch screen dashboards be a contributing factor? They seem like a huge step backwards in safety, requiring the driver to take their eyes off the road to do anything.
I'd be surprised if it was more than a few percentage points. Anything distracting could contribute but I would venture to say that most of the time people aren't adjusting their car settings so the statistics would probably lead elsewhere.
Yeah, many manufacturers don't even give you the option to buy a smaller car anymore. It's a giant SUV or nothing! The law that incentivizes building giant vehicles needs to change. It's bad for everyone. And I heard on a city planning channel that people are distracted while they drive because they would rather not be driving at that moment, which is a great point. If they had public transit to ride where they were going, they would have been free be on their phones.
It’s not just the incentives for manufacturers. Because survival of an accident is largely a matter of relative mass, people who drive smaller vehicles are significantly at risk. Even if you don’t need or want to drive an SUV or truck, there is a temptation to upsize just to improve the survivability of accidents with other large vehicles.
@@amicaaranearum There are a few basic changes that could make SUVs less terrible (like the front Actually Slopeing Down so the blind spot is much smaller and impacts less lethal). They'd still suck, but they'd suck Less. Or just making small vehicles with stronger frames and panneling (sure, fuel efficiency goes down, but apparently people already don't care about That!) in the relevant parts for increasing accident survivability.
To be fair, while the really small cars are disappearing, automakers do still sell moderately sized sedans, crossovers, etc. But the really gigantic trucks and SUVs should absolutely require a commercial or some other type of license to drive with more stringent safety requirements. Anything the size of a modern F150, Chevy Tahoe, or larger should not be driven by any rando with a standard license. Every day, both as a driver and as a pedestrian, I see so much dumb, risky driving behavior that I wonder how these people passed both their written and driven test!?
@@amicaaranearumI don't fully buy larger/heavier cars being safer. If an accident occurs, you will want more mass. But I'd argue an attentive driver in a light car will be able to maneuver away from potential or imminent crashes easier than a driver in a heavy car. Even if that's cope, the more people subscribe to that idea the truer it becomes, as there will be less and less big cars on the road.
@@wrong1029 yeah, it’s a self perpetuating problem. The arms race for mass and height on the road. But North Americans seem to have an acute problem in seeing how their individual choices affect other people and society at large. I see this in so many areas of life, even among friends and family I generally love/admire. It’s a really unfortunate societal character flaw.
A lot of drivers have lost respect for the fact that they’re piloting 2+ tons of fast moving metal. Even with smaller vehicles, one has to be aware that they’re throwing around a lot of kinetic energy. Unfortunately, attitude is a far more difficult problem to address than technical knowledge. You can put everyone in classes for many hours, but if they don’t respect the forces they’re wielding, there’s little point.
A lot of pedestrians have lost respect for killer machines that are hurtling down highways. Almost lost a friend a few years back. He lived luckily, but even he agrees that if he'd been paying attention would have prevented the distracted driver from hitting him
Yeah, I have noticed an uptic in overly aggressive driving. Even in my small town, I see people blindly whipping cars around corners, going down narrow roads at speed greater than 30mph, driving the wrong way on my one way street (and usually fast) because they dont feel like going one street up to use the proper street. Its ridiculous. Kids play on these streets, elderly walk on them, people are getting in and out of their own cars to go into their homes. I shouldn't feel nervouse mowing my front lawn in a town like this, yet I do.
Humans are not evolved to travel at superhuman speeds or pilot contraptions that go more than maybe 15 mph. If you're bombing down the highway at 65 or 70 it's simply not possible for you to react quickly enough to avoid collisions. Compound this with what @Lauren_C mentioned about ignorance of laws of momentum and inertia and pedestrians are just gonna die.
Pedestrians too, have a responsibility to pay attention to traffic. The cellular phone has to be among the top contributing factors to pedestrian/vehicular accidents (by BOTH the pedestrian not paying attention to traffic and drivers texting). I see pedestrians in my city all the time who step off the sidewalk into an uncontrolled (no traffic light) cross-walk, their faces firmly planted in their phones, without looking in either direction for traffic (waiting for traffic to stop) before they did so as if the cross-walk has some magical power to protect them. They are asking for a posthumous Darwin Award. Even at controlled intersections, if a car is making a LH turn or RH turn opposite, I always make sure I have eye-contact with the driver before proceeding through the crosswalk. I'm more than half-way through this video and not once did the issue of pedestrians walking on the WRONG SIDE of local/rural roads without sidewalks, even come up. I was taught as a child in the '60s that when walking on a road that has no sidewalk, to walk on the opposite side of the road, towards oncoming traffic, so that you can see and react to traffic if it ventures onto the shoulder (you do not have eyes in the back of your head, so you can't see what's approaching from behind). Nowadays, I am completely baffled by the number of stupid people (adults) I come across on local rural roads walking on the RH side of the road, on the shoulder, with their backs to oncoming traffic. They too, are vying for a posthumous Darwin Award.
The rise of truckasaurus Rex is a concern, but I think a large part of the uptick at 2020 is that everyone forgot how to drive during covid lock down. We really should have practical driving tests more often than once at 16.
The real reason so many more fatal collisions occurred on roads during covid is due to the decrease in traffic. It turns out the horrendous traffic on suburban roads was also the only thing keeping them safe due to the slow speeds. Once traffic cleared out during lockdown, the speeds increased significantly leading to many more fatal accidents.
My state doesn’t give driving tests anymore at all. It’s strictly based on age. Any adult can just pass the written test and pay the fee. Teenagers still have certain restrictions, but not a driving test
I was hit by a car about a decade ago, this brought back a lot of rough feelings but you made so many good points that I had to watch all the way through. I'm glad people are here to bring awareness, but one day something needs to be done about the vehicles being sold here in the USA.
pedestrian infrastructure in the US is so insanely bad compared to Europe it almost feels like this is partially intentional to scare people into buying a car at all cost.
People have already had the cops called on them for walking in the US, thinking they were suspicious-looking. That’s how bad car-culture has gotten in the US.
Another factor that you did not mention: the 2010 law that pushed Americans from cars to trucks also made those trucks larger and heavier. Surely the increased physical size of automobiles over the past 15 years has an impact.
He hinted at this when talking about the rising popularity of SUVs and trucks, but there is a video by Not Just Bikes that goes into this in more detail.
Sedans and hatchbacks are designed to flip pedestrians up onto the hood if struck. But with SUVs and trucks there’s nowhere for them to go except under.
Not true. Look up the GHSA statistics used in this video. There is no statistical difference between class of vehicle and fatality count. Each vehicle type is responsible for percentage of fatalities equal to their road usage.
@@TheBaldrif smartphones were the leading cause, you would expect to see a trend in increasing pedestrian deaths in many countries correlated with increased smartphone adoption. But in most European countries, pedestrian deaths went DOWN over the same period that smartphone usage was increasing. The US trend in increasing pedestrian deaths is an outlier, so we should look for factors unique to the US to explain it, such as our increased adoption of light trucks and increasing size of vehicles.
As far as the trouble at night, I'd bet that even if it's not the main culprit, light sources that compete w/ a pedestrian (well lit or not) have been on the rise. I've wondered if insanely bright headlights have anything to do with this. Headlights on your own car are good for seeing what's in front of you, but from an oncoming vehicle, modern LED/Laser headlights (I don't mean the high beams even) are bright enough that my eyes don't adjust to the actual darkness. It's made worse by the typical height of headlights on trucks/SUVs since when they're in the rear view mirror of my normal, sane car the high beams might as well be active due to the angle. Aside from this, a ton of cars also have absurdly bright infotainment screens even at night (the worst offenders having max brightness by default, white background, no automatic switching to dark mode). Digital gauge clusters, but even the analog ones thru the 2010s, got brighter and moved from often being red or orange to being white.
Not to mention a lot of people who buy those really big trucks and use them to tow trailers don't know to readjust their headlights to counter the natural tilt that the front of a truck experiences when a load is on the hitch.
As someone who drive at night for a living, I can SEE details on some of those infotainment systems, despite being in a different vehicle behind them. I couldn’t imagine driving with the sun right next to you 😬 And LED headlights have gotten considibly worse in the past 5 years, the biggest ones being the “automatic high beams”. Look, my daily driver has H6024 headlights, and my work truck H4651/H4656 combo lights. I can see more than well enough on unlit roads at night with these on Low beams, LED headlights do not need to be as dangerously brights as they are. Between your mentioned points, and the fact that I have troubles seeing the road when my mirrors are lit up like the sun, they’re more hazardous than helpful
I guess it's a double-edged sword, because thanks to the IIHS, headlights are much better now which should make pedestrians and obstacles easier to see. IIHS does significantly dock points in their headlight ratings for glare, though. I guess you can't get around the fact that there is a higher chance of glare if you're in a Civic and most people nowadays are in RAMs, RAV4s, and F-150s.
Completely agree. Additionally, texting and driving is far worse at night, because you are basically shining a flashlight directly at your face, good luck trying to use your peripheral vision. It's just yet another light source that makes seeing out of the care way harder.
I lost 2 friends and was injured because some drunk hopped the kerb, and drove down a pedestrian path along I-74 across the Mississippi River. It was a brand new bridge, absolutely beautiful. Not a single bollard or anything to prevent it. That's since changed, but just 1 of those concrete posts on the bettendorf side, and they'd still be here. They are 2 of the 2022 stats. It happened very early in the morning but the path was well lit. The driver is definitely at fault, but so is the lack of infrastructure to prevent it.
@CharlesB9496 I am very sorry for your loss. I also live in the Quad Cities & this horiffic collision could have easily been prevented if designers AND government officials would give a crap about transportation safety, especially pedestrians & cyclists. But they just do not care. Tragically, we've normalized traffic fatalities as "just a part of life" in the United States 🇺🇸 . Every year, nearly as many people die (pedestrians, cyclists & motorists) in traffic crashes as our total combat deaths from the Vietnam War. Many more are severely maimed or injured. Yet there is no sense of public outrage. When we advocate for policies like complete streets, Vision Zero, or the like, elected officials say we're being "impractical" or "too idealistic" and that these policies are "too expensive." We can not ever put price on the lives of the friends you lost. However, by some estimates, on average, every individual in the US generates something like $3 to 4 million in economic output over their lifespan. You'd think *THAT* consideration certainly would motivate more priority public safety, but it doesn't.
9:39 One thing I noticed is in my country we typically don't have driveways and parking lots connecting directly to arteries. Instead, these either connect to the cross streets or service roads. This doesn't necessarily solve this problem, but it slows the cars down and potentially increases the attentiveness of the drivers before crossing the sidewalk.
I agree non motorized traffic is often overlooked out on rural roads I wanted to bike from my suburban subdivision in Everett (Seattle area) to Snohomish, WA to meet up at my swim club but I realized really quickly this wasn’t feasible Once neighborhoods disappeared and you got out into farmland the sidewalks disappeared and your only option was to walk on a dirt shoulder next to the road with cars whizzing around corners at 50 miles per hour. There was no way to safely travel between these areas unless you were going by car or bus. If there was a trail a few feet over from the road as you described it would have made it possible for me to bike between Everett and Snohomish without much worry
Just bike along the trestle! Nice and safe!😊 /s But yeah, too many rural roads don’t even have a 3ft shoulder to help with that. Lowell-Snohomish Rd is so dang narrow.
@@windywednesday4166 bicyclists are already licensed and insured. For their cars that they typically also own, and which are the more significant component of the extraordinary cost of modern roadways
I drive a box truck for a living so let me help you out. Its driving habits. Things that people used to know to do they don't do anymore. I rarely see people stop BEFORE the crosswalk. Most people don't stop BEFORE the sidewalk when pulling out of a driveway. I see way to many people run stop signs and red lights. I see ALOT of people turn right on red without stopping. I had a lady in a van once yell at me to get out of the street while I was riding my bicycle in the BIKE LANE. I have to go through a training course to drive my truck.The problem is driver training or lack of it.
The police in Provo, UT frequently did the right turn without stopping or looking to the right when I worked there. One time I had started crossing when the pedestrian signal changed I ended up jumping back in time to only get brushed by the side mirror. They never saw me.
When I was in primary school here in the Netherlands we had 'traffic' lessons and the one thing I always remembered and I taught my own children (because this seems to have been dropped at schools) was that whenever there is no dedicated side walk you walk on the left side of the road. That way you can see oncoming traffic and step out of harms way. Also that as a pedestrian you are always the weakest party in any collision, even if it is with a bicycle or skateboard and will always lose. It may not prevent all pedestrian deaths but it is a beginning. Naturally the most effective way to reduce accidents is to have people (drivers and pedestrians and others) stay focussed on what they are doing.
I live in the US, I had to bike down a 6 lane stroad with a 45mph speed limit. There was maybe 6 inches of asphalt between the white line and the dirt (no sidewalk) and a semi truck doing 60mph missed me by 3 inches. 3 INCHES!!!!! That is the single closest time I came to dying in my life!
How many times of walking on the left and crossing the street to access locations on the right does it take for the danger of crossing the street to cancel the safety of walking on the left?
@@scottfw7169 You would think so, but actually the big advantage is that you see oncoming trafic and can step away from the road if needed. When crossing the road is required you (as you should always do) look left, look right and look left again as a minimum (just like they taught me and i taught my kids) before crossing. And off course only cross when you feel it is safe to do so. otherwise wait patiently until it is safe. Anyway it seems wiser to me than walking on the right (not seeing the traffic coming up behind you) and then crossing to the location on the left. When you cross you can choose when and where. When you walk on the left side you can see danger coming towards you. When you walk on the right you cannot see danger coming up behind you. And yes, anything can happen, a car can loose control and swerve across the road and hit you, but you can try to minimize the risk. Also when you walk left an occasional glance over your right shoulder gives you a better view of traffic overtaking you than when you walk on the right as then you nearly have to turn around to see what is coming.
@@zeeman1975 Point noted. Also a point to note, and I try to keep in mind myself, is that I have lived in a little farming burg for the last 16 years and this is a whole different ballgame from the suburbs or city. When I did live in the city, personal experience soon taught me to avoid crossing streets as much as possible; crossing intersecting streets while staying on the one side's sidewalk was bad enough, did not want to add crossing the main road to that.
@@scottfw7169 Yes I understand it. I also try to avoid crossing whenever possible. Luckily here in the Netherlands we have a lot of pedestrian crossings where you have the right of way as pedestrians and most drivers do observe the rules. However even there you have to look out. Anyway: nice discussing this with you. Stay safe!
something interesting about the chart on 5:19 - the spike that starts in the mid-2010s coincides with when high-pressure sodium (HPS) streetlights started to get replaced with LED lights, and when all new streetlights became LED only.
It's also when copper theft started to really skyrocket. At least in Hawaii we constantly have street lights that are out because thieves steal the copper wiring.
RE pedestrian deaths at night: I do valet in Florida and drive cars every night that have their windows tinted illegally dark and I have to lower the windows to see out. There are people that even tint their windshield dark and you can't see sh*t out of the car...I think its a subculture and/or trend. Sadly the kind of people that tint their windows illegally dark are the same kind of people who are leaving the club at 1 in the morning while impaired.
Between auto manufactures going "yup every other driver will be just fine staring directly into the sun on our cars at every intersection" and the fact lyft/uber charges have tripled if not quadrupled in the last 5 or so years, yeah I can see why people are getting hit at night.
Another factor not mentioned directly here is the increase in blind spots in modern cars. Get in a vehicle from the 90's or even 2000's and you'll feel like you have a full panoramic view compared to today's vehicles. This is especially apparent in sedans which already have less outward visibility than larger vehicles. Now, the A, B, and C pillars are also much larger and bulkier, among other things in the vehicle reducing visibility.
Ya, my current vehicle's left A pillar has obstructed me from seeing people and other hazards many times, and it's always frightening. Like even if I'm plenty vigilant, I literally can't see some hazards until they shift into view. This was never a problem when I drove a small Ranger pickup a decade ago.
@@LucMMailloux agreed. I drove a newer Tundra last year and nearly struck a bicyclist since he just happened to be moving at the perfect speed in the blind spot of my mirror and A-pillar on the road I was approaching. Luckily my wife saw him and alerted me. Oddly enough I had the same thing happen a few months earlier with an F350, except I was the cyclist and the only one paying attention.
Giant and very powerful SUV and pick-ups, bad road design, cell phone usage, and if you want to kill someone a car is the way to do it. Basically since the laws are so driver friendly there is very little recourse. These are some of the major reasons why we have an increase in pedestrian death. I can definitely go on. Ohh and the lack of public transit is also huge.
cellphone usage is really just a subset of 'driver distraction'. And possibly not even a very big one, as accident rate increases don't line up with cellphone ownership increases. Driver distraction in general is a big contributer though, to my understanding... and many cars have electronic control systems that are Very badly designed, where the driver has to take their eyes off the road to interact with them to do Really Basic things (that in older dash designs would have been in the driver's field of view while their eyes are on the road, or could have been done by touch/muscle memory)
Not only do we need transit but we need dedicated transit infrastructure so PT can get people places faster than driving, making people less inclined to drive. Vehicle weight taxes could disincentivize driving for the vast majority of trips. A large portion of trips people take are less than 5 miles, which is easily bikable, and ebikes make that ride even easier.
@@laurencefraser Absolutely! I was just driving a 2024 Crosstrek for a loaner while mine was in for repair. The screen was huge, easily the size of a 12 inch tablet and the only things I could adjust by touch (physical controls) were the cabin temperature and the radio volume. Everything else was a soft button on the screen. Including the HVAC vent controls. Had to tap the vent icon button to get the options displayed, then touch the icon representing the direction I wanted the air to take. Not a problem while parked but more difficult while driving down the road and fog is slowly building up on my front windshield.
@@ambiarock590 Public Transit only really works in dense urban cities which just doesn't cover much of the U.S. at all. Sure, maybe you could make it work within the largest cities but up here where I live, it will never be able reach certain areas based on cost alone. But go ahead and keep thinking that everyone should be living exactly how you do and doing things the way you choose to. I personally make a two hour road trip every week. There is no PT I could take to make this trip, not because of the location but because of the times I do it.
I'm loving how every time you have included footage of SLC, you can always catch a glimpse of Blue Stakes markings I personally painted. 3300 s between State and 1000 w is absolutely one of my least favorite stretches to walk through, specifically because of how dangerous (and mind numbingly boring) it always is.
Around here, I can tell you a few of the things I've noticed as a driver. In SC, Driver aggression has gone up since around 2020. People driving 10 to 20 or more miles per hour above the speed limit has gone from around a few drivers around me per drive to nearly everyone. I still drive the speed limit, but get passed by well over 90% of the drivers on every drive out and back again no matter which path I take. And the amount of hard-speeding, what I call the act of accelerating hard into 20+ miles per hour or WAY WAY more above the stated speed limit, has gone from one or two times every week you'd see them, to at the very LEAST 3 or 4 cars per drive out, and about the same coming back... if not much higher than that. Not to mention the aggressive lane switching, the lack of common sense stuff like using your blinkers to indicate a left or right turn or lane switch... Here's a road video for you Rob: Make America Blink Again, or MABA (started just for funnsies as a saying over at JoeyWhispers1776 here on RU-vid ru-vid.comevQPcFWPvJM ). The sheer amount of stupidly aggressive moves is up by a LONG shot from around the moment that the streets cleared because of COVID, and no one has come back down to reasonable maneuvering since then. Not to mention how many times I see sheriff's deputies just letting either of these types of drivers right on by them. Why? I was told by one that "usually they are already on another call." OK, fair to some degree. So why don't we have more traffic cops, especially in areas more likely to see speeding like out in the rural areas where cops usually aren't at the moment? That I have no answer for and is a good question to ask. I'm sure there's a legit reason, but then... I've also seen the cops themselves with no lights on or anything speeding, tailgating me, then passing me to turn into a local convenience store to buy snacks and/or gas. So there's that as well... what happened to cops upholding the laws upon themselves as well as those they pull over, let alone actually doing the pulling over? COVID? To afraid to get the small timers due to that? I dunno.
Officers in low vis cop suvs are 100% in the dangerous driver group themselves. The lack of professionalism both in the choice of police cruisers and cops is astounding. Bring back crown vics and make cops go to school.
I've watched people use the right turn lane to pass a line, then turn left at the intersection, get stuck blocking set intersection when the light turned red, and not get pulled over despite doing this directly infront of a cop.... There is no enforcement on anything other than absurd speeding around Atlanta... But this stupid aggressive behavior started before I moved here in 2011 so it's not a new thing everywhere. A new highpoint was having someone tailgate me, honk, flash his high beams, swerve back and forth, because I was only going 2 MPH over the speed limit in a residential area a couple weeks back.... I try to not leave the house at this point.
Driving has become such a nightmare lately. I used to regularly drive 5-10 *under* the speed limit, and never had any problems. Now, even going 5 over the speed limit feels dangerously slow compared to the other traffic. What's absolutely insane to me is that people have even started using highway entry/exit lanes as passing lanes! I used to love driving, but the sheer amount of aggression, impatience, entitlement, and carelessness on the road for the last few years has become infuriating. Is it really that hard for people to slow down a little and be aware of their surroundings? Is putting themselves and each other through the constant stress and danger really worth it to get to their destination 2 minutes earlier? As my grandma used to say, "If they wanted to get there earlier, they should have left earlier."
@@AlphabetSoupABC the only people who drive 5-10 below the speed limit when there is not traffic limiting them are clowns that shouldn’t have a license and people with warrants.
I think that modern car headlights are also a contributing factor. Many modern vehicles are now equipped with lights ranging from 5000K to 8500K in color temperature. At the extreme end of 8500K, that's like strapping sunlight on a completely clear day at noon onto the front of car and now its is shining sideways instead of down at the ground. It severely distorts the driver's depth perception and shadows are incredibly difficult to see with any clarity. This also pretty much mutes most colors to the point that some objects may not even stand out from the background until a driver to far too close to react. Did I mention that I'm talking about low-beam headlights? This doesn't even start to mention the Height at which these lights are mounted on modern SUVs and Trucks. I do not understand how there has not been any regulation made for modern car headlights in the US.
The USA only JUST legalized adaptive beam headlamps last year. you know those LED Matrix systems that Europe has had for like a decade that can alter the beam to not blind oncoming cars. Well that system was not legal in the USA for a long time despite being proven functional and safe the NHTSA still took a decade to approve them.
In NZ we have a special road light just for zebra crossings. It's a big orange globe that flashes when a pedestrian is crossing. It's also code that pedestrians have complete right of way at a zebra crossing and they are always illuminated at night. They are great, but expecting it to work the same way in the US almost got me killed when I moved here.
Thought you guys just used an orange disk? In the UK they have to blink, which is an expensive pain when you have to dig up the road to put in a simple zebra crossing.
The lack of integrated thinking to accommodate non-drivers incents risk taking too. If you're at a "Don't Walk" signal or a quarter-mile from the crosswalk when the bus shows up, and the bus only comes once an hour you're going to run across the street in traffic to catch it because if you miss it you're screwed.
For anyone interested in digging deeper into pedestrian safety and the benefits of non-automobile transportation methods, I highly recommend you check out "Strong Towns" and "Not Just Bikes". This includes you too Road Guy Rob! I'd love to see your videos on roads include more non-car topics!
RGR is aware of NJB, and NJB is aware of RGR. There is a lot of agreement among both creators about what the problem with North American development is, where there is disagreement is how and where to fix it. But I do know that NJB is not going to collab with RGR anytime in the near future.
@@Awesome_Aasim Pretty sure RGR and NJB both agree that putting in sidewalks, multiuse paths, removing driveways on stroads, and having safer crossings are all good.
@@Awesome_Aasim As RGR said himself, he likes cars, and he likes driving. NJB doesn't, for the most part, so you've got two people who have made very different lifestyle choices and therefore are going to disagree on solutions. Plus a significant proportion of NJB's audience are very much the stereotypical car hating urbanist so probably aren't going to appreciate any collaboration.
@@Croz89 NJB doesn't hate cars; in fact he has a video on why driving in the Netherlands is so much better than most of the US. What I think they both hate are stuff like traffic congestion, overcrowding, pollution, etc. Where they disagree is whether it is worth solving North America's problems; NJB thinks it is not, RGR thinks about actionable steps to work toward safer cities immediately.
@@Awesome_Aasim I'd agree that NJB isn't as car hating as some of his fans, who really do fit the stereotype sometimes. But I don't think he *likes* them that much either, if you catch my drift. His arguments about driving in the Netherlands are at least partly predicated on the idea that people there drive a lot less on average, and many more people don't drive at all. I get the impression that he at least concedes that some people will need to drive, but he would not agree with a society where cars and driving are popular among the vast majority of the population. As an aside, I think driving in the Netherlands is reflective of the same reason the infrastructure as a whole is of high quality, there's a lot of people who are relatively wealthy living on not a lot of land. To get the same effect in the US you'd have to empty out most of the country and really concentrate the population into a few key regions, which isn't going to happen. The US has to spread its infrastructure around a lot more, so it has to look for cheaper solutions than what you might be able to do in a more densely populated environment.
Glad someone made a video on the GHSA report. I got into an argument with a coworker (he thought pick up trucks where inherently more dangerous). We looked up IHS and GSHA data and were shocked that pedestrian fatalities declined from 1980-2010, then just decided to flip trajectory and now we have more pedestrian fatalities than ever before. I find it more crazy that more people die at night now than in 1980. I thought lighting would be greatly improved from then.
At least in my city, if lights are even there, 70% of the time they are off and no amount of complaining to the city or state will turn them on. It's dangerous out here!
@@deltaalpha You are right, I neglected change in population. Using my same GHSA and IHS data sources but for vehicle on road count, I calculate a comparable figure of 3.6 in 1980, and 2.5 in 2022. From 1980-2020, in decade steps, I get 3.6, 2.6, 1.7, 1.4, 2.5 So we are safer than 1980, but we have still regressed to 1990 levels.
That bit where you tried out a light truck really reminded me of a Not Just Bikes bit. Hope you can collab soon! Your topics covered have a good overlap, ultimately urban planning and traffic safety go together hand in hand.
As some others have commented, the problem is all the gadgets in cars these days. Want to change the radio station? Want to turn up the fan on the heater? It used to be you could do everything without taking your eyes off the road using "muscle memory." Not anymore. Manufacturers feel compelled to out-do each other by imitating the bridge of the Enterprise. Add to that the texting while driving and your car turns into a death machine. There's starting to be some blow-back on this trend to the point where some manufacturers are redesigning and undoing the ridiculous gadgetization and going back to manual controls.
Honestly, this shows me that we need more research to link or disprove the correlation of crashes and cell phones. Subjectively, I believe that cell phones are a huge reason behind these crashes, but if RGR wasn't able to find any sources definitively linking them, then it's definitely an area I'd love to see more research on in order to confirm or debunk the hunch
@@qwaszx2 It can't just be homelessness and people walking because the increase in homelessness and walking comes after the increase in crashes. And there's definitely interaction between different factors given that non-US developed countries like those in Europe and East Asia have seen continuing declines even as the US still saw rises. And its also true that Europe and East Asia have just as ubquitous cell phone usage. My working hypothesis is it's an everything problem working together to make a perfect storm of bad results. In the US so many major streets neither cut off almost all pedestrians (like freeways) nor are pedestrian friendly (like city streets), but the big problem there is the suburbs more than rural areas simply due to population density creating more opportunities for crashes. Upsizing cars makes close in visibility worse (bigger blindspots especially right in front) even as long distance visibility improves which increases the problems of night time driving where visibility beyond your headlights is going to be bad negating the distance visibility advantage. Homelessness doesn't help which is related most strongly to housing costs in an area vs incomes and the point that homelessness spiked in 2022 (though by most accounts was quite a bit lower than normal in 2021) and is coming back down helped. But also lack of car traffic on the roads during the earlier parts of COVID meant what cars were on the road could go a lot faster. So what this means is we've got immediate problems, needing to reduce homelessness and slow down vehicles on arterial roads, medium term problems of encouraging smaller cars and fewer arterial conflict points, and long term problems, turning more arterial streets into either slower, denser business/population city streets or into fully separated highways, either policy would also tend to concentrate destinations in ways that make public transit a better option for more people and thus necessitate a greater share of funding going to transit. I do have hopes that because of the low traffic effects of COVID fading the highest spikes in deaths we've seen over the past few years will drop at least for a year or two, but that will only give us breathing room and won't help with the still way too high deaths we saw in 2019.
The data already supports the position, phones are everywhere. But deaths are growing where the cars are growing. I’m not attacking you personally, but it reeks of this typical dilemma. Americans putting yourselves through the dumbest punishment by forgetting there’s an entire world out there who already know better.
A friend of mine was hit by a car in a small city street, right after dark walking home. He died. A few months ago an 8th grader got hit right at sunrise, the car that hit him was driving directly into the sun and was blinded and did not see the red light. I wonder how many happen at dusk or dawn. The 8th grader died. He was taking advanced classes at the high school across the street.
I'd guess the biggest factor is increased homelsessness and drug decriminalization. Lots more people wandering around streets often in no state to safely do so...
I wished you just here used the "stroad" terminology here at 9:37 because these aren't really aterial roads. These are roads serving high speed traffic, with the services of a street. I think it's important to use the "stroad" terminology so we can effectively focus on what's wrong in all American cities: A bad lack of planning that sets up pedestrian threatning areas.
I wonder if urban sprawl has shifted traffic to stroads. Since stroads are the deadliest type of road, increasing the amount of traffic on stroads could contribute to the spike in fatalities. I know my own town has grown dramatically in the past 15 years as more and more people move out this way. (Many people can’t afford to live in the nearest major city, so they end up overflowing into new suburban developments.) New tract subdivisions are springing up everywhere, and the once-quiet country roads leading out of town are now congested stroads lined by strip malls, fast food restaurants, etc.
I dislike stroads immensely. They try to be roads (high speed connections between two places) and streets (complex environments where people actually go to) at the same time; and in doing so the stroad fails at being either a road and a street. You can have speed, or you can have safety; you can't have both. Pick one and design a street for it, you cannot build a road for safety and speed at the same time.
"Stroad" is not a technical engineer term. It's one author's clever term he uses in his book. If the profession adopts it officially, I'll start to use it more. Meantime, I prefer pointing out specifics wrong with the road (e.g., too many driveway accesses)
Distracted driving is by far the biggest issue imo. Every one text and drives, looks at GPS or touch screen dashboards. Basically people do every thing but watch the road these days. Never mind speed limits are generally broken by at least 5-10 mph at all times.
I live in quiet suburbia, the problem is people drive too fast for residential areas to begin with. I wear a class 3 vest even walking my dog at night, and keep one in the car for emergencies. A high visibility vest is relatively cheap, and the added personal safety it brings is priceless.
it's the design of the roads which make ppl drive faster; put speed bumps after every 50 ft or just add planters to the road and watch the speed drop dramatically
@@alexdhall just for the record, paint, flimsy sticks and 20 centimeter curb extensions aren't the traffic calming we're talking about. we mean shit that isn't physically possible to ignore without damaging your car
@@alexdhall yep, what @blitzn00dle50 said. unless the implemented measure can cause damage to the car (high speed bumps without middle cut-outs, bollards, street narrowing), ppl will ignore & drive fast. it NEEDS to be physical structures. a dent to a car is nothing compared to potential loss of life
There's a little bit of a problem with the statistics used for new car purchases. In reality, full-size pickups are only about 11%, the reason why it's the top selling model from each manufacturer is that each manufacturer only makes one single full-size pickup. So there's no split. That 11% is about the same figure for sedans. Where it gets washy in the middle is that SUVs and crossovers are counted together but a crossover can be very small with a sedan style front end or very big with a truck style front end, it can describe anything from what's effectively a station wagon to what's effectively an off-road van.
There's a huge incentive for automakers to class a vehicle as a "light truck" and a very loose legal definition. The only reason why Honda didn't certify Rob's Fit as one is that they don't make any thirsty full-size pickups they needed to offset.
My minivan is classified as a truck. I assume it's to help increase the average miles per gallon for that category. The dealer said it's because it has the same frame structure as a regular truck.
@@kweejee Unless you have an Astro (not-quite S-10 chassis) or Aerostar (not-quite Ranger chassis), your dealer is dead wrong. Minivans were classified as trucks because of cargo volume, OEM lobbying, CAFE chicanery, and DMV dartboards. Case in point: both my '10 T&C & '76 K5 were considered "station wagons" by MI despite the latter being a shortbed half-ton pickup with rear seats bolted to the bed and a non-removable top.
@@ChrisCaramia huh interesting, somehow I always figured the Astro was on the C/K 1500. I know minivans were built on a Sedan platform, the biggest evidence is they all tended to be front drive. I should note the S-10 was honestly the perfect size for a personal pickup.
the biggest contributor is cultural, although sheer numbers also have an effect. we are trending more towards a me-first culture, and that results in more people expecting other people to do the work of collision avoidance. we can build all the safety furniture we want, but as long as two people are both expecting the other to do the work of being safe, there will be a collision, eventually.
I agree. It seems like far too many people care about themselves in North America even when it comes to sharing the roads. Compare that to places like Japan where it seems most people care about each other and the number of road fatalities seems to be much less even though the infrastructure isn't that much different. Tokyo has practically zero bike lanes and plenty of stroads and yet it doesn't seem like there's many people killed or injured riding their bikes there because both drivers and cyclists watch out for each other and are careful around each other. Then you also see cyclists regularly riding their bikes on the sidewalk even in crowded areas and yet there's few problems between cyclists and pedestrians because again both are courteous and mindful of each other.
I noticed you forgot another potential factor: there may have been a massive jump in the number of pedestrians. Ive noticed a pretty big increase in the frequency in which there are pedestrians (i live in a suburb of dallas, so normally theres no pedestrians outside of the parking lots due to heat and car centric urban planning). Suburban drivers never think to look out for pedestrians because 99.9% of the time, there arent any, so the culture of yielding to peds and looking for them in general just isnt there.
Streets belong to everyone, not cars. We need to repeal "jaywalking" laws everywhere and build safer streets. No more stroads! And no more lecturing about "personal responsibility" to lazily blame victims.
American modern infrastructure was built on stroads, so good luck there. Repealing jaywalking laws will create traffic jams all over the municipalities where previously there were none.
9:00 Or they can widen the hard shoulder half a metre on each side, paint a bike on it, and call it "World Class Bikeway!" like the HWY-101 in Oregon near Coos Bay.... Or any freeway between the 101 and i5... but at least the tunnels get a flashing "Bikes in Tunnel, please go 30" sign that flashes..!!
From 6th - 11th I rode my bike all over town. Even now bc I still don’t drive, I walk most places & whenever I cross there’s always someone making a turn who almost hits me then they look more pissed off than me. I pushed the button to have the right of way. Car people are funny. They get mad to pedestrians & ppl on 2 wheels like they’re the ones who will die by impact.
Those suburban boulevards, more frequently being known as "stroads", are the real issue here. Much more so than rural roads. They seek to serve many different types of businesses, all while keeping speeds high. Hotels, apartments, business parks, fast-food restaurants. Combine people naturally attempting to talk between these places with the unnatural high speeds that are just feet away and a ton of crashes is what you get.
I've been hit a couple of times, and had many, many more near-misses on these types of roads walking and particularly running along them. Some of these times were crossing the street, but the majority of these collisions/near collisions anecdotally occur at driveways and curb cuts...
19:21 I recall reading in the news many times how during the peak of COVID drivers were more aggressive and driving faster. That alone would certainly result in more crashes and deaths.
The scariest thing about the covid blip theory is that the reason ya'll don't have more accidents is that your roads used to be so clogged that people couldn't drive faster. During covid times, roads cleared up, speeds increased and as a result more crashes happened.
"every hour Ford sells over 100 f-series pickup trucks" "that's one every 40 minutes" No, it's one every 36 seconds, obviously the intent was one every 40 seconds, but this should have been easily caught in editing Otherwise great video, very informative.
Your videos are so well put together and put in so much info and explain it all in simple terms. I love your videos and all these random topics you cover.
The problem with SUV's, Trucks and other big cars is they are generally built with the safety of the driver in mind. For years they have been pushed as the safest cars on the road and people generally care more about their own lives and families more than the people they hit.
I once saw a city bus wrapped with a reminder that if theres no sidewalk the saftest thing is to walk against traffic, a sad reminder that good public transit is no good without complimentary pedestrian infrastructure.
We have a major intersection near me. The 'No Turn on Red' signs are LED signs. They are only on when someone is crossing, and I've nearly been hit multiple times when crossing with the signal. It seems to be at its worst right before dusk and dawn, because the glare on the signs makes them completely unreadable. I complained, and they did at least replace the bulbs so they are a bit brighter, but really, they need to make it a red/green arrow thing. Trucks hitting pedestrians... don't forget stopping time and pedestrian visibility. Also, it's interesting to notice that what had been a pretty steep decline flattened out considerably in '95, when the Federal speed limit was raised.
Having travelled to Vancouver BC, Seattle and Portland recently, from the UK, something relatively minor that could help at intersections, especially on major roads is a pedestrian refuge, so that you only need to focus on 1 traffic direction at a time when crossing. Another thing is separate pedestrian crossing aspects from the vehicle aspects, as a pedestrian I should not be hoping a driver gives way to me. Another things is kerb drops, they are crap (in comparison to what I am used to). I am able bodied, but for someone who is in a wheelchair or mobility scooter, the steep ramp and the fact many intersections only have one ramp per corner is unacceptable
I believe the UK, Netherlands and maybe Ireland are the only countries where if you have a green man, no traffic should be passing that crossing and having to give way. Makes you feel very uneasy when you go somewhere that doesn’t have it.
I believe we need to also stress to the general public what is expected of both drivers and pedestrians. There are too many people that have the false notion that the pedestrian always has the right-of-way. With this dangerous idea, they'll walk right out in front of a car on a busy street, expecting the car to not only see them, but stop. Walking around my college campus, my fellow students would walk out in front of traffic against the signal and would say things along the lines of, hit me, I'll take the payday. Or they would walk out in front of cars from between two parked cars. Forcing traffic moving at 25-30MPH to slam on their brakes. We also need to remind drivers the importance of remaining vigilant while driving. There are too many people driving distracted these days. From looking at their cell phones to trying to messing with their car's touch screen info centers. I also believe too many people are relying on these new safety technologies thinking that the car will save them/alert them when something is wrong. Too many people also believe that speed limits are really a suggestion. I've had to explain to people time and time again about why a speed limit is what it is. Are there some that I think are artistically low, yes. But the majority of speed limits are right where they are supposed to be.
Thank you for mentioning the pedestrians. I've noticed that there are far too many pedestrians who are paying far too much attention to their phones and not enough to their surroundings while wearing ear buds. It's a wonder they can hear or see anything. We focus on the drivers, but there's plenty of blame to go around here (ditto with bicyclists).
My street just got a bunch of speed bumps installed this week. Despite the fact you can hardly feel them at 25 mph, people have really slowed down a lot and I’m all for it. I walk the neighborhood every day and before the bumps people were driving 35 to 50 mph despite the posted 25 mph speed. With the short sight distance, people are going to get killed at 50 so I’m glad the city took action. Bunch of parks and housing here.
In Fort Wayne, Indiana last year, a police officer (in an unmarked police truck) struck and killed a pedestrian. Security footage more than proved the officer was in the wrong. After trial, the police officer was fined $30. Records show the officer had multiple other on duty traffic violations.
Canada did not see a comparable rise in pedestrian deaths since 2010, so I don't think the size of cars or cell phones are to blame since those trends were just as big in Canada as the United States.
We need to eliminate the incentives which encourage auto manufacturers to sell SUVs and pickups as well as change our road design manuals to match what we KNOW actually improves safety. Together those two steps would go a long way to reducing fatalities. But the best strategy by far to reducing car-pedestrian collisions is to reduce the number of cars on the road. To do that we need to provide better alternatives, such as biking, walking, and public transit while also eliminating the subsidies our government gives toward driving.
18:48 Recently I've felt it has gotten a lot more dangerous to drive just after the sun goes down. That time has always been a little tricky, since there are still a lot of cars out during that time of day and street light coverage isn't always great. It seems to have gotten worse in the past few years, and I think the reason is how much higher and brighter headlights are now. Instead of halogen headlights positioned low on a sedan, we see a lot more LED headlights positioned high on SUVs. The light from oncoming vehicles completely blows out my vision and makes it hard to see pedestrians.
I’m surprised to see your video taking place in my neighborhood, out in South LA on 66th and Broadway. Poor woman didn’t deserve to die the way she did. My prayers for her and her family. 11:50 Also, I love how you poked fun at Harbor Freight with your fake Marina Freight logo 😂
Heartbreaking story. Can't believe how poor the lighting is in that neighborhood! Glad you enjoyed the Harbor Freight joke. I think that joke cost me $60 in the end -- just couldn't help myself.
It's worth pointing out that when I get home from several weeks of being on the road in the big truck (what you might call a semi or an 18 wheeler) and get back into my personal vehicle, the latter feels like a toy that I'm gonna break... and I'm not the only driver who experiences that sensation. Some 80% of my fellow truckers that I've talked to about it experience the same thing. We can mitigate that by having bigger pickups for our personal vehicles, but that feeling will always be a thing the moment you go from the 24" steering wheel to the 14" steering wheel
As a road worker, who knows these dangers as well as anyone, I didn’t hear any mention of probably the biggest factor. Which is there are just more people LIVING in the streets than we’ve ever had before. So it’s no surprise.
After coming to the states I'm surprised how many areas in big cities are not as well lit as some of the smaller towns in China. We had lights that turn nights into days
Around that 2010 mark, there was an aggressive push for SUVs, Crossovers, and trucks. These larger vehicles take up much more space as they have evolved in 2024. This incombination with city, state, and federal lobbying for the automotive industry, it has led us to become hyper focused on excess and label it as ,'being comfortable'. There is billions for companies to gain from making things more car focused and has lots of backing behind their advocacy. But there much financial backing when it comes to advocating for pedestrian safety.
Good work rob appreciate the video. I couldn’t finish the video in one sitting, but I will definitely return to finish it. I can already tell you put a lot of work and effort into it, great job.
9:10 where I live (one of those WA islands) the only parts of our rural arterial road pedestrians get hit are the parts without the near-island-long bike/ped path along it. Luckily other locals and I got the town to approve bridging one of the bigger gaps in this bike/ped network and they're now in the "seeking public input" phase and presenting the different path options; nobody voted for the typical right-side bike path sliver and most votes are for the actual protected, non-enterable-by-car lanes. Things like this are only possible since the community at large wants this place to be very bike/ped/skate/family friendly while wanting to revitalize our "downtown" post-pandemic. I'm glad that while my area is mostly fiscally conservative, people at large still vote for things that matter even if it means prop tax goes up a bit. Meanwhile back home in Delmarva, bike/ped safety? ptttttch all you get is a "good luck" at best, but more usually "get a car" and walking ~2ft alongside side mirrors.
I just had an issue with a pedestrian yesterday, I have noticed before exactly what he did to me. I was riding my bicycle (slowly as I am a bit out of shape) when he made a right hand turn off the sidewalk and into a mid-block crosswalk without warning and without looking. I was thankfully able to avoid colliding with him, but he was pissed that I almost ran into him. While I am all for crosswalks, even mid-block crosswalks, but for some reason people seem to forget that you should look before crossing a street. I know it is their "right" but all it takes is a moment's inattention and if I had been a car, I would have really ruined his day. Please, at least look up before starting to cross. It's your right to cross, but better safe than sorry.
From my experience driving here in Sydney Australia, my car and driving style has been the same for 14 years, but I have noticed something over the past few years. Pedestrians themselves are getting careless, they are either too busy on their phones or have headphones distracting them. Another big one is people just jave an awful attitude to crossing the road, they have the balls to just step out onto the road to cross it and expect cars to slow down for them. They then have the gall to flip you off after you honk at them. But even worse than that, ive noticed a huge increase of people using their phones (texting etc) while driving. I see it all the time.
I've been a truck driver for 10 years with a lot of night driving experience on rural roads. Something I've personally noticed is new LED headlights, while being much brighter, do not show a level of detail like older, more yellowish halogen headlights can show, I'll explain. My old truck (20Freightliner Coronado) had halogen headlights with a brownish / yellow tint to the light, animals and road debris/hazards were more noticeable as the colour reflecting back had more detail, and I could easily determine the oddities in the road or on the edge because the contrast was different enough. However, my new truck (2022 Western Star 49X) has very bright LED headlights, which are very white, I notice as I can see more of the road, everything has a very faded, low contrast look to it, and it is harder to really make out animals and debris, as the light reflecting back, is just as bright as the light I am putting down, and tend to blend in with the road and the tree line to the sides. I am not sure if anyone else is noticing this with new LED headlights (not to mention that it tends to blind other traffic even more too) but I thought it was something to point out and maybe look into? Thank you for another insightful video Rob!
I live in a desert. I’ve had near misses during the day because pedestrians sprint or saunter across the road mid block. It’s too hot to walk to the next crosswalk. I’ve noticed at night there isn’t enough light to see everyone. I drive a sedan. I’ve had to tell my parents if I’m in the car that there’s someone crossing mid block at night…They’re nearing 70 I’ve noticed a lot of pedestrians assume if they can see your car, you can see them I had a man walk behind an SUV into my blind spot in my A-pillar in a parking lot. I was going quite slow but when I finally saw him and stopped, he lost his mind because it felt too close for him. I normally like to leave 15 feet between me and a pedestrian. He didn’t understand that I couldn’t see him. Another guy during the day decided to…dribble his basketball through active traffic to cross the street… I’ll assume since the dawn of time that young men assume they’ll be ok because they’ll react quickly and that you’ll see them and react just as quickly The other issue going on is even if he doesn’t think we’re paying attention and we’re texting, many people assume your car will stop you. No matter how old the car is, I’ve had people tell me this It’s a dangerous assumption as while my car could stop itself, it’s only at low speeds AND if the sensor isn’t off AND if it’s reacting properly I’ve had my car freak out at me over passing leaves in the wind Not enough people watch the news showing that self driving cars and newer safety features aren’t foolproof They either only listen to their friends or only to the marketing that’s put out by the companies. These are the same people who can’t tell you a damn thing about cars (not even age, make, model, etc) and there are more and more of them as time goes on. Lots of apathy and misinformation going around These same people also drive the vehicles. Not knowing anything about its capabilities or really even physics as a whole. Deciding it’s cool to race down a 45mph road at 60-65mph with either poor lighting or blinding everyone around them. A road that leads to my home is a 30mph street. It’s also a good choice to avoid traffic on larger roads and is over engineered. Regularly, mostly at night but also during the day, people race down the road because it’s fun. It twists a bit and it’s not always busy so isn’t that fun. Lots of pedestrians in my neighborhood…Thankfully no accidents like that lately but someone racing did plow into someone’s backyard wall. They sheared the siding off of their house and destroyed the wall. Me and my neighbors demanded the city do something and we were told they would but there’s been no update…
11:54 there are no light pick ups anymore because of cafe standards, if you need a pickup you have to get something that you can't see what is below your hood line or buy a very old used small pickup..
After seeing the intro "factors you'll look into" and before watching the whole thing, I just have to say: Why don't any of the RU-vidrs speaking about people ran over, never, ever consider looking at the pedestrian's customs? It seems to me that looking both ways and not crossing in front of a moving car has kept me alive for a very long time now.
Another factor you didn't address is the thickness of the pillars. I've heard it addressed elsewhere. My normal-sized car has less visibility from the driver's seat than the last vehicle I habitually drove, which was bigger, but also older. The A pillar is probably somewhere between 4 and 6 inches thick, after including the door window frame. The rearview view is a tunnel between all four of the whiplash arrestors, to the EVEN THICKER frame elements framing the rear window. I love my car, but I don't love the visibility. Even at stop signs, I feel the need to "rock and roll" to make sure I'm not missing something in one of the vehicle's blind spots.
I'm in the service, so when I was stationed in Hawaii, crosswalks weren't well addressed when I first arrived there (western side of Oahu). We're talking no well lit crosswalks at night and people who tended to wander at night, unfortunately, liked to wear dark clothing. It was always stressing when driving because it is hard to stay ever vigilant when people are difficult to see, even if I tried being careful coming up to crosswalks. So the only thing they did in the few years I was there was install speed bumps. I don''t know why they couldn't add lights for night time. Now I am stationed here in the UK, and you know what they use at crosswalks? Pedestrian activated stop lights. I think this works well, imo.
"Nighttime didn't just appear within the last ten years..." well, maybe not, but LED street lights did. From my experience, their light is much, much patchier on the road, far dimmer on average, and also much more glaring to the eye of a driver. It's as if we threw away all of our lighting design prowess in tandem with the new technology! To be specific, my experience is from within Wisconsin. The old sodium and mercury lights are much better at actually doing their job.
Ive seen too many people staring at their phone and walking into traffic. We have had several people locally walk in front of trains and didnt pay attention to it due to their ear buds or cell phone screen.
as a driver, a bicyclist, and a avid walker, one avoidable consistent factor i personally keep seeing: Just about everyone wears black, or dark colours. at night, on rainy days, or just in the fall, wearing dark colours and walking on the sidwalk or road is a suicide mission.
As a driver, I constantly feel like the road infrastructure doesn't give me any tools to be aware of pedestrian positions and movement. I can't look to my traffic signals to actually know if it's safe to proceed -- they only tell me about other cars. Sometimes I can hunt for a pedestrian signal but they are of course placed to be easy for pedestrians to see, not for cars to see. So I have to hope I spot the actual people, which is really hard seeing as they aren't shiny and huge and don't light up at all 4 corners. And of course, pedestrian-car conflict points are concentrated at places with more complex car movements, leading to me already having a higher cognitive load and also being more likely to conflict with a pedestrian. There are a few places with "Hawk" signals which feel so much nicer. There's only a few things to check for, so I can feel confident that I actually successfully saw all of the things I needed to to safely pass through. They're where I feel safest both as a pedestrian and as a driver.
Traffic has become much, much worse since I was young, to the point of insanity. We had fewer drivers, no cell 'phones, and no fuel-injected vehicles. It's a deadly mix.
me (150 pound soggy bag of flesh) on my phone (it's been over 10 minutes since I checked tiktok) walking out in front of a F-350 (8,127 pound steel rocket @55 MPH) (I have the right of way) (it's illegal for him to not stop)
comes down to bigger cars & road design; the amount of car bloat in the past decade has massively increased & there has been no major effort on designing roads for the most vulnerable users. just stroads after stroads with bike gutters & sub-par sidewalks & crossing facitilies. i think you'll enjoy the work by strong towns & not just bikes on this! thanks for doing a video on this!
The US has always had big cars; look at the land yacht sedans from the 50s-80s, those things are as long and wide as a full-sized truck today. Even in the 30’s they had some large, multi-row seating cars with long engines. Yesterday’s land yacht sedans are today’s full-sized pickup trucks and SUV’s.
As a long time pedestrian I would say that night time visibility was much better before the mass adoption of LED technology. More light does not equal better. The high pressure sodium lamps that were a orangish light caused much less glare, obviously because longer wavelength means less energy and less glare. And I also need to wear a hat when i go outside at night for the street lights and headlights incase someone x rays me.
It's discouraging how crazy the backlash gets when you try to make roads safer. In Chicago, the city tried to put up speed cameras near schools and parks that would ticket drivers going 6-7 mph over the limit and people were furious, as if they were entitled to break the law? And as if we don't live in a city with traffic lights every 200 feet....what good is speeding exactly in a place like this? Obviously it's a multifaceted issue but I don't see us changing until we can get over our collective sense of entitlement to put others at risk.
Too bad a lot of traffic control measures are based on people going 6-7mph faster then the speed limit already. It can be more hazardous to drive the speed limit when everyone else is speeding. Rob had a previous video about this. We do not want speed cameras. Were quite a few example of cities where speed cameras were being exploited for profit. Plus when chigago did it, it was actually unfair to charge some people for speeding, while others are speeding all around the city. Some cities also have parking ticket traps.
The City of Chicago has acknowledged that they use the speed cameras to fill their budget holes. They're for revenue, not safety. Of course, one of the best ways to get drivers to calm down and follow a speed limit is to time the signals so one can get through several of them at the limit. This isn't done in Chicago. The signals are intentionally set up to frustrate drivers. Then they wonder why drivers speed between them and run the reds.
In general most drivers are just not paying attention, aren’t taught properly, and willingly look at their phone during the worst time. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve seen people on their phone in the middle of a turn.
I'd love to buy a small pickup like they used to make back in the 90s, but unfortunately the government sets ridiculous CAFE standards that mean automakers have to make their vehicles larger to not pay a fine for not being hyperefficient with a smaller wheelbase.
There's a bridge i have to cross to get to the nearest town. It also has like half a meter of space to walk, dingy little divider, and then the road. I walked on that bridge hundreds of times and its still scary when a SUV passes me by. There is a railway bridge nearby with a walkway thats over a meter wide that has a literal solid wall between the walkway and the rail, but for some reason its for trainworkers only and you can get fined if someone catches you on it. It's like they want people to get hit.
Here's an odd one. I used to live on a down hill street that has about 3 - 4 street lights hanging in the center of the street. By my house halfway down, no street light, so I put a big sodium vapor on my house. Just before the 4 year city council election they'd fill the potholes recoat the street. Without the potholes drunks would nod off and smash into the curb, or a parked car or the tree in front of my house. But never on the other side. After talking to one (enabler) about her husband I figured out the second reason this might be happening. Her partner hit a parked car, hit the curb, launched into the air, spun upside down and landed in my front yard. (He survived, broken arm DUI, the chihuahua showed up down the street the next day. Com'on boy! Let's go in the car! probably just triggers his PTSD.) So this guy had just left a family member's house after a huge fight (Ken Bruen "You know where all my buttons are. You put'em there.") He got in the car, sucked down a large quantity of something. Higher cognitive attention blurring he locked into following the street lights down the middle of the street. Except one was off to the side which to a drunk reads: 'you're veering off to the right, turn to the left!" So I took out the light, and put in a 6" diameter fence post 4' in ground, many bags of Readimix, including in the pole. I decided it would be better if one of these drunks died on that pole instead of ending up in my child's room. Six months later an old guy, completely sober, in a 1970s Muscle car, got hung up on a post in the neighbor's yard, gunned it in reverse, went through the fence, missing the post and hit my house. The potential lesson here is that if a municipality put in a series of streetlights that veered off into one of those gravel brake traps? They snag a lot of drunks. And not everything about potholes is bad.
rollover protection/roof crush resistence rules were implemented. This caused an increase in the size of A pillars resulting in a loss of peripheral vision for drivers. It also seems to be the case that drivers sit lower down in vehicles than in the past (no doubt for crash protection reasons).. I was in need of a new car in 2017 and was shocked at the appalling lack of visibility from the various new cars I test drove. I really needed a ca, so I gave up and got one anyway. I can't see squat out of that thing. I constantly worry about running people over when I am in places with pedestrians. The newer car designs have traded pedestrian deaths for vehicle occupant deaths.
