Canadian_watcher wrote:
Yes, exactly - pedestrians have their own infrastructure. (Gawd, isn't there another word I could use, that one is getting dull)
I like it. Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure! Here's the thing, though: They don't.
Solving the Epidemic of Preventable Pedestrian Deaths
The decades-long neglect of pedestrian safety in the design and use of American streets is exacting a heavy toll on our lives. In the last decade, from 2000 through 2009, more than 47,700 pedestrians were killed in the United States, the equivalent of a jumbo jet full of passengers crashing roughly every month. On top of that, more than 688,000 pedestrians were injured over the decade, a number equivalent to a pedestrian being struck by a car or truck every 7 minutes.
Despite the magnitude of these avoidable tragedies, little public attention – and even less in public resources – has been committed to reducing pedestrian deaths and injuries in the United States. On the contrary, transportation agencies typically prioritize speeding traffic over the safety of people on foot or other vulnerable road users.
Nationwide, pedestrians account for nearly 12 percent of total traffic deaths. But state departments of transportation have largely ignored pedestrian safety from a budgetary perspective, allocating only about 1.5 percent of available federal funds to projects that retrofit dangerous roads or create safe alternatives.
More at
link.
Granted, they still dart out into traffic, causing a hazard (to whom? mostly to themselves, right? but a hazard it is, nonetheless.)
When I was 23, I was hit by a taxi that ran a light pretty much going full-speed. I did not dart into traffic. I was just crossing the damn street. Since it's pretty nearly miraculous that I'm alive and whole today, I tend to look back on that incident with more gratitude for my inexplicable good luck than I do resentment for my misfortune. But the excruciating pain and lengthy hospitalization weren't exactly fun.
While I didn't earn them by being a hazard to myself, the cabbie wasn't really the hazard either. The intersection (33rd and Park, second highest pedestrian fatality rate in the city at the time, IIRC) was. a. major. hazard. And it still is. There are fewer fatalities there, but it's usually leading the borough in number of pedestrians struck, most years I've looked. From which I infer that the city did something that was better than nothing but not actually enough, though I don't really know. I haven't crossed the street there in almost thirty years.
Pedestrian non-safety due to any number of factors (including inadequate infrastructure, infrastructure, ooga-chaka, ooga, ooga) is actually a pretty significant problem in most urban-industrialized countries. It's just not a very sexy one.
the thing with cyclists is this: there are no separate spaces for them in most cities. They are mercilessly tossed out there with grandmas sitting on booster seats, peeking out from over the dashboard of V8 SUVs!!! Over 17,000 cyclists were injured/killed last year in Britain. And those are only the reported cases. That's outrageous. How many people were killed by guns in Britain last year? Does that make bikes more dangerous than guns, or what? Depends how you look at it.
No. It really doesn't, unless you know what killed/injured them. I mean, for one thing, they all might have been shot.
If over 17,000 people were killed/injured
by bikes rather than while
on bikes, you'd have a point.
I believe that they are throwing the "you hate mother earth!!!!' argument out pretty heavily and for no good reason, which in my opinion equates to we should all be trying to rid ourselves of personal automobiles and if you don't support that unquestioningly you are a worthy target of slander.
I'm still not seeing that.
