Tag Archives: pedestrian safety

July 2020 in Review

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Coronavirus certainly continues to be the main thing going on in current events globally. I just don’t have a lot of new or insightful things to say about it. Here’s some other stuff I read and thought about in July. WITH THE STUPID WORDPRESS BLOCK EDITOR, I CAN’T SEEM TO PUT A SPACE BETWEEN THESE PARAGRAPHS NO MATTER WHAT I DO. Most frightening and/or depressing story:
  • Here’s the elevator pitch for why even the most hardened skeptic should care about climate change. We are on a path to (1) lose both polar ice caps, (2) lose the Amazon rain forest, (3) lose our productive farmland, and (4) lose our coastal population centers. If all this comes to pass it will lead to mass starvation, mass refugee flows, and possibly warfare. Unlike even major crises like wars and pandemics, by the time it is obvious to everyone that something needs to be done, there will be very little that can be done.
Most hopeful story:
  • In the U.S. every week since schools and businesses shut down in March, about 85 children lived who would otherwise have died. Most of these would have died in and around motor vehicles.
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:
  • The world seems to be experiencing a major drop in the fertility rate. This will lead to a decrease in the rate of population growth, changes to the size of the work force relative to the population, and eventually a decrease in the population itself.

decrease in U.S. child deaths

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This blog crunched the monthly numbers on death from all causes in the U.S. (something the CDC still manages to do well) and came up with an unexpected result: the number of children (under 18) who died each week since mid-March is down 15-20% compared to the long-term average. The conclusion? Children have not been in and around cars, and CARS KILL CHILDREN. “15-20%” seems a bit abstract, but it means 85 U.S. children per week DID NOT DIE, who otherwise would have been killed by cars. Cars are a worldwide serial killer of children – why do we put up with it? Our children need to be able to walk or bike to school, and we all need safe walking and biking infrastructure that is completely separated and protected from cars. Now!

The blogger is a self-described climate change skeptic by they way, and I don’t full endorse all of his views, and there are many nuances to the data that he made choices how to deal with. So have a look and make up your own mind, but I actually find it convincing.

“paint and pray”

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This article makes a case against Bill de Blasio in New York City talking a good game on climate change while refusing to make safe bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure happen. I could ask exactly the same thing of my mayor, Jim Kenney in Philadelphia.

Bike lanes have expanded in de Blasio’s time but at a shameful pace and in a frankly dangerous way. Most new lanes are not protected. Instead of a firm barrier that moving cars are unable to cross, all that separates bike riders from their deaths is a painted line or a plastic stick every 20 or 30 yards. This has been referred to as a “paint and pray” policy: painting bike lanes and praying nobody will get hurt. It might be sufficient if several other things existed that do not. They include the following:

Drivers respecting the lines and not driving into bike lanes.

Delivery trucks and other vehicles not parking in bike lanes.

Drivers not opening their doors in front of bikers.

Police enforcing these rules.

These things do not prevail, which is the main reason bikers and pedestrians are being killed and injured by the tens of thousands every year. On my daily commute, it’s not unusual to encounter several delivery trucks, Ubers, or other vehicles parked in unprotected bike lanes on a single block, requiring me to merge into moving car traffic. Often the vehicles, rather than being stationary in the lane, are moving into it.

This could describe my bike commute in Philadelphia. And I am a (relatively) young, able bodied person. Biking should be the mode of choice for families with small children and healthy older people, and we are not even close to that being a safe option.

NACTO intersection design guide

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The National Association of City Transportation Officials has a new guide for safe intersection design. I’m thinking about buying a few hundred printed copies and sending them to the local engineers, planners and politicians who have caused Philadelphia to fall well behind peer cities (and many cities that should not even be peer cities) in safe street infrastructure.

Oslo has removed onstreet parking

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Oslo has apparently removed all or most onstreet parking.


“Cities, like Oslo, have been built for cars for several decades, and it’s about time we change it,” Hanne Marcussen, Oslo’s vice mayor of urban development, said in an email. “I think it is important that we all think about what kind of cities we want to live in. I am certain that when people imagine their ideal city, it would not be a dream of polluted air, cars jammed in endless traffic, or streets filled up with parked cars.”

To help support the shift, the city made “massive improvements in public transport and making cycling safe and comfortable,” says Rune Gjøs, Oslo’s head of cycling. The city is adding new trams and metro lines and more frequent departures, and lowering the cost of tickets. For the last few years, the city has also been quickly building out a better-connected bike network, converting parking to bright-red bike lanes. It handed out grants to help citizens buy electric bikes. The city bike-share system has quickly grown, tripling to nearly 3 million trips a year between 2015 and 2018.

As more people bike, that opens up room on overcrowded public transit. “Usually when you have these discussions you say, ‘Oh, we need bikes to replace cars,’ but there’s a missing link there, and that’s public transit,” says Bentsen. “What we see is that actually we take people out of the bus and onto the bike and walking, which leaves room for people to leave their car and take the bus.”

What, no entitlement to use part of the public realm to store my car for free?

6,000 U.S. pedestrian deaths per year and getting worse

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If you ever wondered how many pedestrian deaths there are per year in the United States, 6,000 is the depressing statistic, and it does not seem to be getting better.

The Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) projects nearly 6,000 pedestrians were killed in motor vehicle crashes in the U.S. in 2017, marking the second year in a row at numbers not seen in 25 years…

“Two consecutive years of 6,000 pedestrian deaths is a red flag for all of us in the traffic safety community. These high levels are no longer a blip but unfortunately a sustained trend,” GHSA Executive Director Jonathan Adkins explains. “We can’t afford to let this be the new normal.”

States reported a total of 2,636 pedestrian fatalities for the first six months of 2017. Adjusting the raw data based on past data trends, GHSA projects that pedestrian deaths in 2017 will total 5,984, essentially unchanged from 2016, in which 5,987 people on foot lost their lives in motor vehicle crashes. Pedestrians now account for approximately 16% of all motor vehicle deaths, compared with 11% just a few years ago.

The worst state for pedestrians, at close to double the national average death rate? Arizona.

They go on to speculate, without providing evidence, that cell phones and legalized marijuana might explain these trends. Interesting, although there are some studies suggesting that marijuana legalization has not impacted traffic deaths, and at least some that contrary to all expectations it has decreased them. I’m not saying drive stoned. I’m just saying the governors may be making a claim not only without providing evidence to back it up, but contrary to evidence that already exists and is very easy to look up. If I were going to speculate on causes of the increased death rate without doing any research, I would go with increased driving spurred by the economic upturn and relatively low gas prices, coupled with the continuation of low-density car-dependent urban design, ignorance of and consequent failure to adopt safer street design practices that have been known and applied elsewhere in the world for decades.

Oslo vs. cars

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Oslo had a plan to go car-free, but “conservative” politicians are pushing back.

One big idea: ban cars from the city centre. If pulled off, the plan would see Oslo become the first major European city to have a permanent, complete no-car-zone, racing ahead of a long list of cities seeking to do the same…

“A Berlin Wall against motorists,” declared one conservative party politician. “Car owners feel ‘bullied’ in Oslo”, blared an English-language news site.

The biggest backlash, however, came from the city’s trade association, the Oslo Handelsstands Forening (OHF). It said it feared the plans would create a “dead town”, and a “poorer city [with] less life”.

That’s silly, of course. When pedestrian-only streets have failed in the United States, it is because nobody lived there to begin with. Pedestrian-only environments work just fine where people live, work, and shop all within easy walking distance.

What is it about the “conservative” impulse that loves cars so much? “Conservatives” come in many stripes, but what they seem to have in common is a belief in some kind of natural social order. Whether it is based on race, religion, nationality, business success, family wealth, or whatever, if it benefits you, a “conservative” mind set allows you to mentally justify the existing social order that benefits you, and to justify “conserving” and strengthening it, sometimes even by force. And you don’t have to be at the top of the ladder to have the “conservative” impulse, all you have to be is not on the bottom rung of the ladder, so you have someone to look down on and a vested interest in the existing social order. This mindset is complemented nicely by a lack of imagination – if you perceive that the social order as it exists benefits you, you can convince yourself that it exists for a reason, and you will find ways to rationalize any change to the existing order. You end up opposing anything new and different, whether it is immigrants, religions other than your own, bike lanes, renewable energy, a functioning health care system, or the idea that humans have wrecked Earth’s atmosphere to the point of no return. The people higher on the ladder than you are very good at manipulating and exploiting these impulses for their own benefit, of course, but although you do not lack raw intelligence you are now too closed-minded to give a new idea like that any consideration.

street violence

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A man was run over and killed by a car on the sidewalk just outside my office building recently. Not only was it a tragedy, but there was some small irony because he was a prominent local safe streets activist.

Here is what the Mayor of Philadelphia had to say:

My administration, through its Vision Zero initiative, remains committed to preventing all traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries by 2030, and the death of Peter Javsicas is a stark reminder of the importance of that mission.

Tacky. People are dying from violence on our poorly designed streets every day, and if anything is being done about it the pace of change is imperceptible to me.

Here is what the Philadelphia Police had to say:

A police captain on Tuesday afternoon said he didn’t expect charges to be filed because the crash was an accident. It was not immediately clear Wednesday, after the pedestrian’s death, whether charges were being considered.

Because people being killed on the streets of Philadelphia every day (and this was not even the street, it was the sidewalk) is not the kind of thing the police are paid by us taxpayers to take an interest in. Now, I want to say the Philadelphia Police have been there for me when I have experienced other types of crimes, and have always treated me courteously (yes, I am a white male just in case you were wondering), so I don’t necessarily blame individual officers. But there is a whole institutional and political culture that does not treat reckless driving and traffic violence as serious crimes, when they are killing people just like any other type of crime, and they are disproportionately deadly to children, the elderly, and people with disabilities.

Here is what the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia had to say:

The circumstances of the crash — a vehicle encroaching on the sidewalk, sacred space for people on foot — is easily preventable. A parking protected bike lane on the north side of JFK Boulevard would have eliminated the right lane, providing a space cushion of nearly 15 feet from the between the sidewalk and the travelway.

Instead of running into people on the sidewalk, the driver would have smashed into parked cars. Secondly, bollards on the sidewalk: this exposed street corner could have also absorbed the impact of the crash. Bollards were cited recently in saving many lives last month in Times Square.

Is this tacky, trying to score some advocacy points off the man’s death? Just from what I have read about him, I don’t think he would think so. And I wouldn’t think so either if it were me. And it could easily have been me. Or my wife and our baby daughter. Or my son’s entire kindergarten class out for a lunchtime walk.

best practices for sidewalk closures

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Here are some best practices for sidewalk closures published by the city of Oakland, California. In a nutshell, contractors have to provide a walkway rather than make pedestrians cross the street in downtown areas, expect for very short periods. The walkways have to be ADA accessible. If the walkways take up a bike lane, there has to be a safe place for the bikes to go. Barriers have to be substantial enough to actually protect pedestrians if vehicles hit them. I could walk 5 minutes in any direction in Philadelphia and see every one of these principles violated.

UPS trucks don’t turn left

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UPS claims to save a lot of time, fuel, and reduce accidents significantly by avoiding left turns at intersections with no left turn signals. In other words, they circle right until they get where they need to go, and it ends up saving time, energy, and lives. I’m glad to see this – as someone who makes 99% of my own trips on foot, I know vehicles turning left with fast-moving oncoming traffic are incredibly risky for pedestrians. Some people are jerks and have no respect for human life. But during those other 1% of trips where I am the driver, I understand why even well-intentioned, ethical people can put pedestrians at risk – because you are so focused on the cars and making a safe turn you are just not looking for pedestrians. I think most left turns should be eliminated (or left turn signals put in, or pedestrian scrambles, or lights turned off in favor of stop signs) purely on safety grounds, but if doing that wouldn’t even cost drivers any time or money the argument gets even stronger.