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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Daylighting, which involves removing parked cars from around crosswalks in order to improve visibility and just wiped out about 14,000 street parking spaces, has proved especially controversial.
“If someone doesn’t die because of it, we will never know, while the living have to suffer,” Nina Geneson Otis wrote in an email to The Standard. The real estate broker said daylighting is the kind of policy that makes Democrats lose elections.
Others say the city’s actions remove responsibility from pedestrians to look out for their own safety. “A pedestrian can do anything, and be irresponsible, and no harm will come to them?” Brandi said, describing the policies as “idiot-proof.”
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The idea that a pedestrian walking anywhere but on a limited access highway would ever be at fault for a collision with an automobile is a direct result of century-old propaganda by the moral equivalent of the NRA.
If i made a self-propelled battering ram with remote controlled steering I would rightly be held to strict liabily if anyone was hurt. But if we put a a chair in the same thing and call it a “vehicle”, suddenly the rules change in our favor.
I like cars and driving, and can easily imagine a number of mitigating circumstances that would shift liability away from the driver, but the presumption that once-walkable city streets are for cars is the result of fierce industrial lobbying and not a reasoned public policy process.
The origin of the word “jaywalking” is exactly that. Blame the victim.
Always remember that “vehicular manslaughter” was created with lower penalties than manslaughter, because juries were consistently not finding motorists guilty of manslaughter.
It was too easy for jurors to identify with the driver, and think, what if it was me driving that car, killing that person by accident?
We need safer infrastructure in this world than one allowing anyone to be a killer just by being distracted.
For all its faults, the NRA knows that guns are unsafe. It promotes “gun safety” not “shirt safety” – it doesn’t blame people who get shot accidentally because they were wearing the wrong kind of shirt. Whereas cities around the world talk about “bike safety” when the unsafe element is not the bike at all.
In my country its normal for pedestrians to walk in highways. The result is that drivers expect pedestrians everywhere, and collisions are rare
“If someone doesn’t die because of it, we will never know, while the living have to suffer” is such a wild thing to say oh my god. Yeah, thats the point. Less people die because of it.
“If someone doesn’t die because of it, we will never know, while the living have to suffer"
Man, I could not have done a better job of distilling the effects of the toxic “rugged individualism” ingrained in American culture down to a single sentence…
absolutely. Individualism is gonna be the death of us all at this rate
Especially after we all saw what they mean by the living “having to suffer,” during COVID. The “suffering” of having to wear a mask. The “suffering” of maybe getting a perfectly safe vaccine in order to protect yourself and others (including people you don’t know and will never meet, wow imagine that)…
But hey, it means that I don’t have to pay for some homeless person’s health care through my income tax, so worth it amirite?
She’s an estate agent. What do you expect?
“If someone doesn’t die because of it, we will never know, while the living have to suffer,” Nina Geneson Otis wrote in an email to The Standard. The real estate broker said daylighting is the kind of policy that makes Democrats lose elections.
The fuck? Is parking at the corners of intersections legal in the US then? Because where I live it isn’t for that exact same reason of it blocking visibility. And I’m sure she’s suffering deeply for lacking a few parking spots… Dumb entitled cunt.
I don’t think she’s complaining. She is making the very good point that the benefit of the bill is invisible, while the downsides are visible. Making policy decisions based on what’s right instead of what’s marketable makes a party unpopular because the electorate is dumb and shortsighted.
FWIW, it’s not allowed in Chicago but people tend to use the space for short-term parking and pulling over. The city has started blocking the road surface near corners to make this impossible, both with curb bump outs and simple flexible reflective posts.
I think they recently passed a bill to make it illegal, but it won’t be enforced till sometime next year.
It’s legal in many places. My city is just now starting to enforce corner parking.
Nina Geneson Otis wrote in an email to The Standard. The real estate broker said daylighting is the kind of policy that makes Democrats lose elections.
Urbaninsm, like climate change, shouldn’t be a political issue but oddly is. I wonder who could be behind it all?
Is this what we are going to do now, anything remotely good say “things like that is why Dems lose elections” as we watch people and our planet die.
Cool. This is great.
This is funny because in the bay area as nowhere else I’ve ever lived, pedestrians actually take the right of way as they should. In Berkeley they don’t even glance over their shoulder, it is completely up to the driver. Doesn’t work where the driver can’t see them, though, so I think peds and (most) drivers are more conscious of that as a bad situation. I don’t believe real estate agents speak for residents.
I found it much more annoying as a driver elsewhere where people wait two feet from the curb and wave at you to come to a complete stop before they start crossing. Or while walking, after I’ve stepped off the curb drivers half a block away assume I must not have seen them so they honk at me. A lot of theatre and emotion for what is really just a normal part of driving (don’t run into people even if it means you have to slow down).
Drivers don’t stop. I’m not stupid enough to step off the curb until it’s clear you’ve seen me and are stopping
You might, I might, but Kids and some adults don’t have the awareness. And it’s not their fault they don’t have the awareness either
Exactly. If I’m putting myself in front of a vehicle, I HAVE to know that it will not run me over. Especially since drivers in my area seem to be unable to stop in front of stop lines.
So common to see the rear wheels past the stop line. I wish cops would at least give out warnings to reduce this habit. Its so normalized most don’t even realize to stop before the line.
One thing that I didn’t realize, as an American, is that having traffic lights on the far side of the intersection isn’t universal. If we only put them on the near side, drivers would have to stop behind the line, or else they’d be unable to see when the light turns green. Another example of better infrastructure being better than enforcement.
Dude so many intersections around me don’t even have the stop lines, because they were either never painted in the first place, or they’ve faded or been paved over
I like to go in front of a vehicle with the knowledge that either they will see me and stop, or I’ll be ready to jump out of the way. I’m very stressed out when walking around.
I’m not suggesting you go blindly, but it’s common practice to step off the curb – they don’t have to pay any attention to you at all until you do. My practice is to avoid eye contact until I’m really in front of them, but obviously if they aren’t stopping you don’t keep walking.
More bad driving practices in the US, that became worse as people forgot how to drive over pandemic ….
- we allow “right turn on red”, but everyone seems to have forgotten “after coming to a complete stop”. So many times they don’t even slow down, and yes I’ve almost gotten hit like that several times
- many drivers stop across the crosswalk or ahead of the stop line. Even if people stop, they could have already run over a pedestrian. So many times I’ve had to choose whether to walk out into the intersection, or behind the car blocking my right of way.
- then there’s the ”suicide lane”, where even though a car sees you and stops, that doesn’t mean the next lane will. What happens when you’re partway across and no one else stops?
- and the ever more popular running a red light. Just yesterday, I slowed to an easy stop at an already red light and two cars behind me pulled around to go through.
I agree drivers got crazy after the pandemic. I haven’t been in the bay area since then and maybe my remembered experience just doesn’t exist anymore.
I almost got nailed by a city bus on 5th and Market in SF after the green walk signal turned on. Somebody literally grabbed my jacket and pulled me back and maybe saved my life.
Half a block seems really close unless it’s a huge block or they’re going really slowly to begin with
Oh I just mean ample space the details vary, as you say.
The most braindead article ever…
“People die from leopards attacks, leopards say people should be more careful”
I mean, there are plenty of warnings and advice on how to do things like hike through bear or cougar country. Someone who gets mauled trying to pet a bear cub isn’t going to get much sympathy.
Well, an argument that would fly over their heads is that this “daylighting” rule is in place in more than half of the world.
So maybe there’s a good reason ?
It’s such a common-sense rule that it’d never occurred to me that such a developped country wouldn’t have it.
America’s more of a developed company than it is a developed country, and the CEOs don’t work for the employees.
The beating heart of American progressiveism: San Fransisco where the residents would rather kill the poor than inconvenience everyone else. If only you could patch a caved in skull with a pussy hat…
This article is because san francisco is actually trying to address pedestrian fatalities instead of just writing them off as the cost of modernity. Most of the article is from reactionaries, who may not even live here, mad about progressive, at least by American standards, policies that the city is implementing like daylighting.
You could live in a socialist utopia and you could still find people to quote saying they liked it back when the poor knew there place.
San francisco isn’t perfect but it’s still miles ahead of almost every city in America. That may be a low bar but it’s something.
I hear you, but the article is full of dissenting opinions and quotes from people that disagree with what should be a very common sense policy. Like, why even give a platform to someone who says stuff like “If someone doesn’t die because of it, we will never know, while the living have to suffer"? Why disingenuously portray the issue of pedestrian deaths as some back and forth battle between two equal parties, instead of the incredibly one sided bullying it really is?
Lmao. No. Where I live drivers have no problem going right though the crosswalks while people are in them.
I thought they were going to talk about the people who cross at random places, wearing dark clothing, at night. But no they chose to complain about the people crossing correctly who get harassed by cars.
Onion?
It sounds like satire, but it might just be 2024.
Normally, I’m 100% on the pedestrian’s side, and I think drivers bear the responsibility in basically all urban traffic situation. However, after visiting San Francisco, I can see why it’s a bit different. Those hills severely limit visibility on so many of those crosswalks, and if you’re driving up one of them, and the sun is in your eyes, I don’t know how you would approach an intersection safely. After less than a week in that city, I realized that pedestrians really do have to cross responsibly (and also I would never, ever drive there).
That being said, I’ve never seen less people jay walking in an American city than I did in San Francisco. Also, all of the measures laid out in this article seem like good, common sense ideas. If drivers think that the pedestrians need to be more responsible, fine, but that’s no reason to demand the rollback of potentially lifesaving safety measures.
Those hills severely limit visibility on so many of those crosswalks, and if you’re driving up one of them, and the sun is in your eyes, I don’t know how you would approach an intersection safely.
If you can’t see where you’re going then your speed should be as low as possible. I’m not from SF so maybe it already exists, but ideally there would be traffic calming measures such as lane narrowing, speed bumps, etc and so going faster than around 20 mph or so would feel very unnatural.
Yeah, but those hills are so steep that you’ve got to give it a ton of gas just to get up them. Like, imagine laying on the gas super hard just to keep yourself going above 20. As you crest the hill, the sun hits your eyes, blinding you to the person that was invisible to you until a millisecond ago, who is crossing against the light at exactly the time you’re trying to lay off the gas so you don’t start accelerating.
Don’t get me wrong, I support every measure listed in the article, and I think the people who want them repealed because they find them inconvenient are assholes. If Daylighting makes it too hard to park, well, maybe don’t drive; it’s an extremely walkable city with a good public transit system anyway. But this is the only city I’ve ever been to where, when I hear drivers say, “pedestrians need do better,” I think, “well, that’s not just entitlement, everyone really does need act responsibly here, even pedestrians.”
Sounds like a safety issue to me – you can let off the gas as you get to the crest of the hill and slow down, until you can see that the coast is clear. You could slow to a crawl, even down shift if necessary in a standard.
If you can’t do that at 20 mph in an urban area where people walk, then 20 mph is too fast.
Manual transmissions were better for this stuff too. You can pick a lower gear with more torque to give you power to get up the hill without high speed. Most automatic transmissions can let you force a specific gear as well but many people don’t know how to use that function of their car, which can partially be blamed on poor driver education.
In the automatics I’ve driven, the car automatically downshifts if it needs more power to climb the hill – do some automatics just stall out?
Sometimes you really gotta ask it to downshift by pushing the pedal down then most follow through with high speed cause they are worried to lose it. Way easier to just start in a good gear.
For me if I let up on the gas, it will slow down, and then downshift to be able to maintain the slower speed on the hill.
I mean, I agree it’s a safety issue, I just don’t think it’s as simple to say, “go slower.” As I’ve said, I’ve never driven in San Francisco, but I have driven in Vermont, and trying to make a turn at the top of one of those mountain hills is tough, and keeping your momentum going down them is equally tricky. I can only imagine doing that in the middle of a city, and I don’t know how I would stop on one of those hills when driving stick.
I think this is like any other hazardous road condition; yes, the driver has the responsibility to slow down and be cautious, but pedestrians also need to be more alert. Like, I expect drivers to stop at crosswalks. I’ll take my right of way and won’t take shit if they honk or get pissy. But if I’m crossing the street in the middle of a snowstorm, I’m not going act that way; I’m going to acknowledge that, even if the driver is going slow, low visibility and bad conditions means he might not stop in time, and I’m going to wait to make sure he’s coming to a stop before I start crossing.
To be clear, I’m not saying that San Fran drivers are all responsible and that the pedestrians are being reckless. It’s very possible (likely, even) that these traffic deaths are mostly the fault of bad driving. I’m just saying that I get what people are saying when they say that pedestrians need to be responsible too. I’m someone who jay walks all the time, and I don’t do that in that city.
I really don’t think there is any defense for driving too fast for the conditions. You might hit a pedestrian. You might hit another car. You might hit an object in the road. If you cannot stop in time to avoid crashing into a relatively stationary object, you’re going too fast.
“What about hitting a bolder on the road behind a blind turn?” That’s bad luck. A lot of us routinely drive too fast for the conditions, but it’s still our responsibility as operator of the vehicle.
When I see pileups from drivers going too fast in the snow and ice, I blame them for not going slow enough, not having the right equipment, or even going out at all. So many of these collisions are not “accidents”, they’re so preventable.
In fog, weather, or low light conditions, it makes sense to be a defensive driver or pedestrian, in case the other driver is being irresponsible, but the responsibility is still on the driver to drive safely.
You’re right it’s not as simple as saying “go slower” we have to improve the roads to encourage safe driving and discourage dangerous driving. Things like flashing signs that say dangerous turn, slow down. If there is a dangerous turn at the top of the hill, maybe put a no turn sign there. Or make it less dangerous some other way.
If you could explain more about the difficulty of driving in hills, maybe that would help me understand what you’re getting at. I drive stick but also automatic. For me, if anything, more speed makes it easier to slip/skid or go wide at the top of the hill, but if you slow down you can do it. I’ve never worried about stalling or going backwards, just downshift into the appropriate gear. It does take practice to do it smoothly though.
On super steep driveways you might need to depress the clutch partially in to go “slower” than first gear, which isn’t great for the clutch, but it’s necessary, just like it is for controlling your speed when reversing. With automatic transmission I haven’t worried about any of this at all, just use the gas and brakes normally to slow down to make the turn.
For automatics driving a long down hill I’ve noticed that some newer ones automatically downshift to help you brake, but some of the old ones you have to downshift manually (in the automatic) so you’re not burning out the brakes.
If you could explain more about the difficulty of driving in hills, maybe that would help me understand what you’re getting at. I drive stick but also automatic.
I only drive automatic. When I was in Vermont, I found it tricky to make some of the sharper turn-offs going uphill, having to gun it a little more than I wanted on a turn just to keep moving, then having more momentum on the turn than I intended. Coming downhill, it made me very nervous to try and turn off some of those side roads; I’d pull out as far as I could to get as much visibility as possible, but the crest of a hill would mean I couldn’t see traffic more than 20 or 30 feet. I’d find myself wanting to turn as quickly as possible for fear of getting hit by someone with right of way, but accidentally giving it a little too much and turning too fast and hard.
I also just generally found myself constantly needing to monitor my speed downhill, to the point where it was a little distracting. I’ve never driven stick, but my friend does, and after listening to her break it down a bit, it seems even more stressful; accidentally rolling downhill because you’re not properly maintaining momentum seems insane to me.
A lot of us routinely drive too fast for the conditions, but it’s still our responsibility as operator of the vehicle.
I agree that the driver is responsible for maintaining safe speeds, and I know my biases lie way more with pedestrians than drivers. I grew up in New York City, and I think there’s nothing wrong with crossing against the light or outside of a crosswalk if you’re paying attention. However, whenever I see someone going 5 miles over the speed limit or not using their blinker, I can’t help but think they’re an irresponsible asshole.
Honestly, I’m in my late thirties, and I didn’t even have a license or car until 2 years ago, when my wife and I had a kid. Public transit where I live now (Boston) is not great, and the two ER visits we’ve had to make with my son alone have made the car worth it to me. If we never had kids, though, I don’t think we’d ever own a car.
In fog, weather, or low light conditions, it makes sense to be a defensive driver or pedestrian, in case the other driver is being irresponsible, but the responsibility is still on the driver to drive safely.
I mean, what you’re saying about being a defensive pedestrian is basically what I’m getting at. There are cities I’ve been to (mostly in the South) where drivers are just pieces of shit. In New Orleans, no one yielded to pedestrians, and I almost got hit by some asshole at 40 mph because the giant SUV parked in front of the crosswalk meant I couldn’t see them coming. I don’t think there’s any reason pedestrians need to be the ones behaving defensively in the flattest city I’ve ever seen in my life.
But to me, half of the intersections in San Francisco felt like a hazardous condition. While I think that all safety regulations should be aimed at cars, and I normally get annoyed at safety campaigns that focus on pedestrians’ behavior instead of drivers’, I do think encouraging cautious pedestrian habits is justified there.
Sounds really dangerous. Maybe cars should be banned from them?
I mean, that’s the dream for every city. But, on the off chance that we can’t immediately reverse a century of car-centric urban design, maybe we should look at some alternatives?
