this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
160 points (66.6% liked)

Fuck Cars

9666 readers
26 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] WoahWoah@lemmy.world 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

"The driver inches into the crosswalk, watching the oncoming traffic to his left and waiting for a gap to appear. He finally spots one and accelerates into the turn"

Um, what? There are cars zooming across the crosswalk, which definitely wouldn't have a crossing signal. In this imaginary scenario, a pedestrian is trying to sprint across an intersection against a crossing signal.

There are enough horrific traffic situations created by cars and urban congestion, do we really need to make up a stupid and unlikely one where the pedestrian is the idiot? If anything, this article should be against right on green. Good luck with that.

[–] schrodingers_dinger@lemmy.world 31 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think the article means that a pedestrian is trying to cross in front of the turning car where the pedestrian does have right of way, so perpendicular to the turning car and parallel with the traffic which has the green light and walk signal.

[–] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)
======    ====
           P
         C

P is pedestrian, C is car. Equal signs are cars going right.

Pedestrian is crossing the road going left. Pedestrian has a green light/cross walk. The car C isn't looking at P; the car C is looking at the gap in the equal signs.

[–] WoahWoah@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

So a pedestrian walks in front of a car that has pulled into a crosswalk while the driver is looking the other way? And then after all of these specific conditions are met, a pedestrian is hit by a car that is starting from a dead stop and, given the width of a crosswalk (which it's already pulled into), travels three feet before impact?

My point is given how many actually dangerous traffic conditions that exist that inhibit walkability, this statistically unlikely (see the report to congress on "RoR" accident frequency below) and extremely specific scenario seems like a stupid one to focus on.

[–] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm surprised you're surprised that people are talking about it. I have personally experienced this multiple times as a kid, and judging from the downvote ratios going on, it seems like other people have had similar experiences.

Tl;dr it's a very common occurrence

[–] WoahWoah@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

My point, which I will repeat one more time, is that there are significantly more dangerous and more commonly occurring issues created by the interface between pedestrian and car infrastructure in urban environments.

Our current conversation is about a relatively rare and less pressing concern, and our attention would be better spent addressing more dangerous scenarios, of which there are many, and about which there will be less resistance.

[–] jerkface@lemmy.ca -2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Dude. It fucking happens. People die. It's not hard to find out. Don't rely on your own thought experiments when there is actual fucking data at your fingertips.