Safety island in a middle of high speed avenue, beg buttons and flowers in a memory of the previous victim.
this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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Holy shit. There's already a memorial there. We have a few roads like this in Portland where pedestrians and cyclists get killed over and over. The city responded by putting up new speed limit signs and one of those radar speed displays but it hasn't changed anything. Folks still drive as recklessly as ever.
@const_void @qnick While enforcing speed limits does help, the real problem is enforcing right of way; i.e. that it doesn't always default to *me*
I think the real problem is the pedestrians don't have any physical protection. It is a numbers game. Even if 99.9999% of drivers can navigate that intersection fine, it doesn't take long for the 1/1,000,000 that is drunk, up all night with a sick infant, etc to plow into pedestrians. Probably every month or two based on that kind of road's capacity. People need to start suing and make it too expensive to not put barriers around the pedestrian island.
@neanderthal precisely - drivers need to internalize not only that right of way applies to "softer" targets, but also that they don't have the right to operate a 2 ton weapon when impaired. Uber is expensive, but cheaper than murder.
The point with impaired driving is that car dependent infrastructure is the problem. Plenty of drivers use Uber or cabs when impaired. When you have millions of drivers going through intersections like the one pictured with no feasible alternative, deadly crashes are going to happen.
Unless we fix the mandatory car ownership prevalent in most of North America, it really should be treated as almost a right. How else are people going to realistically safely get where the need to go?
@neanderthal so true. But public transit was invented like 120 years ago, must be outdated...
Just think for a moment about what you just said: "[car ownership] should be treated almost as a right". I.e. it shouldn't really matter how terrible of a driver you are, you should pretty much guarantee that you will be allowed to drive.
Well, that is how it already works today, and look at how safe the roads are. The lack of safety is a consequence of allowing shitty drivers to stay on the road.
Maybe we should do the opposite: have more stringent licensing requirements for heavier vehicles. Maybe if only good drivers were allowed to operate heavy machinery like pickup trucks and SUVs then the roads would be safer for everyone as the worst drivers would have to use lightweight vehicles, which are less deadly to others.
And if we took away people's cars along with their driving license when they drive dangerously, it would be even better.
The lack of safety is because we can't get shitty drivers off the road because there is no other feasible way to get around much of NA. Even taking licenses away doesn't do much because people will drive without them due to necessity.
We can't get start imposing more barriers until we provide alternatives. I.e. usable transit, usable bike infrastructure, abolishing euclidean zoning. Until that is done, people all but have to drive to get around.