Everyone Involved Was Following the Law
strongtowns.orgLaw #5: "Crash standards" that have steadily increased the width of the A pillars, at great cost to visibility. With the details and that picture of the intersection, I don't see how this couldn't have played a part.
I bob my head side to side when making turns, and even then I'm surprised how well those pillars are able to hide people.
Also FWIW in one of the news articles there the driver in the right most lane is quoted as saying they waved to the pedestrians to go. This was likely a contributing cause too, as people have a tendency to process "go ahead" from one party as if it reflects the whole situation. I've seen many near/crashes due to this phenomenon. (The pedestrians had the right of way and obviously they shouldn't have had to dodge oncoming traffic, but it would have helped)
In the UK, I was taught by my driver instructor to never wave on pedestrians for precisely this reason.
One thing that I’ve noticed is that in the UK (and much of Europe), there aren’t nearly as many 4 way intersections where pedestrians need to cross. A lot of pedestrian crossings are in the middle of a straight road, where cars aren’t going to be turning. There are often also islands between the lanes, and significantly more road furniture more generally.
When I’m driving in the US, I feel like the roads are somewhat naked in comparison.
> There are often also islands between the lanes, and significantly more road furniture more generally.
When I went to Berkeley roads felt weirdly wide to me, and I could never put my finger on why. They just felt a lot less safe to cross than back home.
It took me a while after getting back to realize the big difference is islands. They're everywhere in France, and I haven't seen any in the Bay Area.
But they weren't. All turning traffic has to give right of way to pedestrian traffic, in all cases, unless there is a green arrow in for that turning direction.
There's no case where you can blindly turn at an intersection just because you have a green light.
I get what the author is saying in terms of bad intersection design, but ffs bad design does not absolve the driver of responsibility for what they are required to do at every intersection. If you are making a turn, and you can't see that the crossing is clear you slow down. If you can't see it because of a neighboring car, you slow down. If you can't see it because of the weather or time of day, you slow down. If you are turning, and you do not have a green arrow in the direction of your turn you do not have right of way.
Green light for people turning right while also providing a green light for pedestrians crossing that stream is common in the US, but also just begging to kill people. Frankly the same applies to "right on red".
Another bonkers thing I've noticed since moving to the US:
In the UK, zebra crossings (pedestrian crossings not protected by traffic lights) have two features which help make them safe:
1. Flashing orange lamps, which allow a driver to see the crossing from a distance, even if their view of the roadway is obscured by vehicles in front of them.
2. No parking zones for several car lengths either side of the crossing, which allow a driver to have an unobstructed view of the pavement (sidewalk) on either side of the crossing, so they can see if there are pedestrians about to start crossing.
In contrast, when I drive here, I have to be really vigilant to watch out for crossings that have neither a stop sign nor a traffic light. And then, because there are cars obscuring my view of the sidewalk and first few feet of the crossing, I have to slow down and look directly to the right as I pass, lest I see a pedestrian a second too late.
This poor design makes pedestrians distrustful (and rightly so) so, in many places, pedestrians will wait at crossings until there are no cars in sight, and only then start to cross, even though they had right of way all along.
“Right on green” and “right on red” are both bad for pedestrians, although I see more mistakes on right on green just because many drivers see the green light as a free to go. This could be solved by controlled right lights (which correspond to left turn light cycles), but those require more lanes, meaning more space. Traffic flows so well in Switzerland than the USA because of the way they do this.
Strangely, I think right on red might even be safer, as:
- you must come to a complete stop before making the turn, and
- as your light is red, you know to look out for pedestrians or vehicles that have right of way
Neither of those assumptions are true, unfortunately. Most drivers define “complete stop” as “I am slowing under 15mph and not currently pressing the accelerator”, and especially in the right turn on red scenario most of them are only looking for high-speed traffic from the left. I see this frequently in front of the local school where people make the right at 10-15mph and then get annoyed that they’re expected not to kill students in the crosswalk. No, not every driver does it but if you actually come to a complete stop for a stop sign or right-turn-on-red you’ll get angry honking.
We have stop sign cameras here and a bunch of old people got annoyed enough about tickets to get a local news cycle claiming the cameras were unfair. Literally every single video they produced as evidence showed them rolling through without ever stopping, and what they were claiming was the their brake lights being visible meant they’d stopped. I don’t think any of them had paused to consider whether their subjective impression while driving actually matched the motion of their vehicles.
I believe there is some … difference … between theory and practice, however!
At least in my experience over the last couple of decades in the US.
Depends on the state. In my state, people seem to be very careful drivers, and drivers seem attentive enough to react to unexpected events.
Meanwhile it seems like drivers in California don't even know what a stop sign is.
We have right turn on red here, and if you were to run someone over while doing that, you'd not have many friends left for being such an asshole.
I disagree entirely with the article. Rule number one of driving is "watch where you are going and don't run into anything", which the driver in this case clearly failed to do. The two lanes turning right means that your view of the crosswalk could be obscured, but in that case, it is your responsibility as a driver to only continue moving if you are sure it is safe. I do not give a crap how supposedly "unsafe" the intersection was designed, it is your responsibility as a driver to not drive into people.
Many people don't even slow down that much, just enough so the car won't skid making the turn.
Yep, They barely slow down and definitely don't look.
Or look to their left for automobile traffic crossing with the green.
But when people are turning right on red, they tend to only look to the left to see if there are any oncoming cars, and not see pedestrians crossing in front of them coming from the right.
BTW in California, left on red is legal when it's one-way to one-way. Most people don't realise it so I don't do it if there is any ped around.
Also no-stop right turns at red lights are made by putting a triangular island that forms a "protected" right lane. I put "protected" in quotes because it's protected in traffic engineer jargon but affords no protection to peds. Few pedestrians realise that the driver is not supposed to stop when making this turn, and that even when a crosswalk is marked there is no pedestrian signal. Super dangerous. With these it's often hard to even see a pedestrian even when you slow down.
Again, this is California; I don't know about anywhere else. CA has it's own traffic laws; for example I believe it's the only state in which it's legal to overtake on the right hand side (the equivalent is called "undertake" in the UK I believe).
I think most places are "turn on red is legal, if you don't have to cross traffic?" In practice, this means right for most intersections, and left for 1-way to 1-way. (And to be fully fair, they usually are codified individually.)
Similarly, many places are taking up the "Idaho Stop law" for cyclists. Gets rather annoying to have to explain to random folks that you can, in fact, not fully stop at a stop sign as a biker now.
Nothing would increase pedestrian safety as much as ending right turn on red, no matter how convenient that is for drivers.
As a frequent pedestrian, I can't square this thought at all. If the right has a red that means the crosswalk directly in front of the car has a green. I've never had issues walking perpendicular to traffic because almost no one thinks they have right of way sitting in front of a red. The issues I've had is when I'm walking parallel to traffic and people turning right on green have the thought "Oh, he's far enough away from my lane, I can squeeze in", causing a cascade of people having the same thought. Or even people who just don't notice me b/c they're looking straight at the light more than they're looking right at who is waiting on the sidewalk.
Right on red isn't a convenience for drivers. Very often it results in multi-minute waits for an opportunity to make an unprotected left or intersection crossing for tens of blocks downstream from a busy street that people are constantly turning right off of.
It's a convenience for the drivers at the light.
You're right about the downstream, I am in such a situation and it's miserable trying to make a left onto the arterial cross street near me.
I can see how that discussion is tangential to this one, but I can't see how it's directly related.
> Green light for people turning right while also providing a green light for pedestrians crossing that stream
It's actually not that big of a problem - in the right situation. My country does something similar, but only in low-traffic situations and with good visibility.
For example, imagine a junction between a high-traffic road and a low-traffic street. A left turn from the low-traffic street might turn out to be nearly impossible without traffic lights. However, the right turn onto the low-traffic street does not warrant a dedicated turning lane, and in space-restricted environments that often isn't even a possibility at all. And even a moderate pedestrian volume will lead to the high-traffic road being severely limited in the straight-ahead direction just because a pedestrian wants to close the low-traffic street.
I'm baffled/terrified that that is common. We have a few intersections near us that are definitely the other way, if anyone has a green to go through an intersection, everyone else has a yellow or red. Preferably red. We have a few intersections with specific "no right" signs so that those can be red while the crosswalk is green.
What about kids exiting buses on the street side, instead of on the curb side.
School busses have stop signs that come out when dropping off/picking up students and require that traffic stop in both directions. As long as drivers follow the law, it is perfectly safe.
SF does crosswalks at the same time as green lights, which I guess is to maintain higher throughput, but it makes both the ped and driver experience terrible.
I appreciate the article's focus at the conclusion that responsibility for system design of the intersection is ignored by the bureaucracy. At a meta-level, I would like to see a system where citizens can report unsafe intersections for a nominal fee (to limit spurious reports) and everyone reporting the intersection is paid out X dollars for every fatal crash. At some point, the liability for the intersection would get so high that the system might notice (particularly if individual compensation was affected).
This is plain ridiculous "monetize everything" and litigate at the drop of hat mindset.
American officialdom is just plain pathological.
I fully agree about the pathology in the US.
The system I'm proposing is like a prediction market. How do officials know what to prioritize when they have limited data? The signal to noise ratio likely improves when people have paid money to report a problematic intersection and are incentivized to only report ones where they actually believe danger is present.
My back of the napkin proposal suggests creating a market surrogate to provide information in a context where a market does not exist (due to the public monopoly on most roads).
Maybe making some modifications to a "pedestrian scramble" intersection and using those should be reconsidered.
I remember using these in downtown Toronto - they were fun and seemed to work pretty well.
They article suggested this -
>This is the site of heavy pedestrian activity at all hours of the day. If safety were at all the city’s top priority (rather than traffic volume and speed), they would have long ago implemented a solution such as a pedestrian scramble: a crossing phase in which people can enter the intersection on foot in all directions, and, at the same time, all motor vehicles have a mandatory stop.
Most cities have poorly designed roads. This is one intersection, but I have plenty of other examples which could easily lead to accidents and fatalities:
1. 25mph narrow suburban street with pedestrian crossings in the middle of the block while cars are allowed to park all the way up to the crossing.
2. Protected bike lanes between sidewalk and street parking. Drivers absolutely cannot see bikes coming in at any point when they’re trying to turn.
3. Streets where one lane (next to the curb) turns into a street parking lane at night. Aka, you’re driving in a lane at night and a parked car appears out of nowhere.
There are many more examples in just my neighborhood, but a lot of times it feels people designing the cities have no experience as a user themselves. The best move here is for everyone on the streets to always be vigilant and never assume everyone else will be vigilant too.
> She doesn't have the judgment to look at a situation and size up the physical danger she's in or anticipate ways she could be hurt.
Half the problem is, when you are tiny in height, you cant see past parked cars, or get a proper sense of whats going on around you.
I think people with dwarfism can explain this better than me, but it might explain why kids like to sit on the shoulders of adults, they can see and take in much more, making understanding of risks easier!
You don't need to have dwarfism, you just need to be standing to a modern pickup truck. I'm 5'11" (180cm) and I've stood next to trucks whose hood I couldn't see over.
Some such trucks, a child is not visible over the hood until 50 feet away.
Solution: outlaw pedestrianism entirely; require everyone to be surrounded by an armored pod at all times. let's make "outside" illegal. If we never encounter a natural environment, it can't hurt us, right?
Actual, long-term solution: stop making our roads prioritize cars and start making them prioritize pedestrians and bikes.
Yours is probably the better suggestion; however in the world we live in i fear its actually about as unrealistic of implementation as mine.