The Road Dangers That We Face & Why

[AngryScientist]

Originally Posted by benb

I think it all boils down to no one cares.

The drivers are not motivated to behave.

Car companies are not motivated to care about whether what they are doing actually improves safety.

Smartphone manufacturers don't care about the negatives they've caused, including distracting drivers.

Police don't seem to care about enforcing the rules as much anymore, and they're too distracted by their smartphones.

I agree with all of this.

I'll add that regulators dont care either. Car companies will do what they can get away with. They all try to make a car safe for the occupants of the car, but little to prevent distracted driving and pedestrian safety IMO. In the US we have all sorts of rules about making the people inside the car safer, but I dont know about too many designed to make the cars safer around vulnerable road users.

I strongly believe that massive touch screen tablets in cars are a bad idea.

[5oakterrace]

I am of the view, noted in the article, that we have a lot of angry people in the world, angry and anxious. Worse than previous decades? Who knows. I drive slow on roads that do not have a lot of traffic. Everyday I pull over to the shoulder so someone can rocket by me. And what is so irrational is that we end up next to one another at the light. They gain nothing. That is a spiritual inner issue - anger, anxiety - manifest by the way we drive. Driving is a proxy for our emotional health/peace.

Throw in these screens in the cars, our cell phones and drivers cannot pay appropriate attention to driving.

Why are we so angry? Clearly, it affects our politics (my view.) But moreso than the past? I do not know. Congress is balkanized, unable to get along. A mess and - perhaps it is because we have dismissed a transcendent reference point for our lives which may the effect of keeping some of that inner stuff - a bit more at bay.

As a nation we are wealthy. Unemployment is way down. I know some struggle but is it worse than other periods. I do not think so. I am interested to read other commentary.

[cgolvin]

Again, no data, just my perception.

People enjoy a sense of isolation and control in the cocoon of their metal enclosure and that contributes to a sense of entitlement to do what they want, rules and norms be damned. Whether feeling angry, vengeful, aggressive, whatever, being surrounded by (at least) a ton of metal insulates them from a sense of responsibility for their actions in their private domain. I'm frequently amazed at the things I see people doing in their cars as if no one can see them.

[PurpleBikeChick]

Agree that our culture is not one that cares for cyclists.

Contrast this with the Dutch view (old 2013 article but best that came up in a search )

https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2...e-netherlands/

TL/DR

"The Dutch do indeed try to avoid accidents from happening in the first place."

"Children under the age of 14 are always protected" - "With one exception: in case of intent, similar to that of people of 14 years or older, then the parents or legal guardians are liable for the damage."

".. motor vehicle user is liable for financial damage, unless that driver can prove the incident was caused by circumstances beyond his/her control. That will be hard, because the driver must then prove he/she drove flawless, or that his/her mistake was not the cause of the incident.

If mistake.. was made by the non-motorised road user, that mistake has to be so unlikely, that a motor vehicle user could not reasonably have considered it to happen. Failing to give way or jumping a red light (deliberately or by mistake) are not such unlikely events, they happen regularly, so drivers are not granted ‘circumstances beyond control’ very often.

[merlinmurph]

Originally Posted by AngryScientist

I strongly believe that massive touch screen tablets in cars are a bad idea.

Absolutely.

We just bought a Hyundai Tucson Hybrid this week with a 10" screen and I hate the f-ing screen. Lots of functions require using the screen which is no different than using a phone.

[bikeboy1]

Since Covid drivers are driving with anger even here in Ont, Can as I have seen more ppl passing vehicles with oncoming vehicles with what seems like little care. I also think there is too much distracted driving. The auto manufacturers need to design their IP screens function so that your phone will not function unless its plugged in to the IP, and then the only functions you have is voice only for incoming or outgoing calls along with gps functions controlled only with voice commands for search, POI, destinations or whatever. We have to start somewhere and it will have to be enforced by our governments for automotive to do it. Its amazing how many drivers I pass with their heads down looking at a device. It seems many refuse to use the handsfree options that automotive offers.
In the past couple weeks I think I had few if any close calls while riding and thought maybe its getting better but that was a premature thought as my last ride I had a close pass. Thankfully I have retired and spend as little time as I can driving. Car Culture is killing us.

[mhespenheide]

Originally Posted by Mark McM

How do you know whether it is the number of drivers who are scofflaws that has increased, and not the number of dashboard cameras that have increased (or the number of dashboard camera videos that have been uploaded to youtube)?

It has been my distinct personal experience that the number of gratuitously selfish drivers has increased over the last five or six years. You can call that anecdotal, but on a relatively consistent commute, I see far more incidents now than I used to.

[JMT3]

Our government protects the stupid. Where I live they are putting in this 10 million dollar highway exchange because truckers and car motorist don’t follow the speed limit slide off the road and best case is they tear up lawn or get injured or killed. Thinning of the herd. If they would obey the speed limit the number of accidents and those with fatalities would be greatly reduced. Thank God our government protects us from ourselves!

[paredown]

Originally Posted by mhespenheide

It has been my distinct personal experience that the number of gratuitously selfish drivers has increased over the last five or six years. You can call that anecdotal, but on a relatively consistent commute, I see far more incidents now than I used to.

Same. My personal beef are the high speed passing manoeuvres--far too close for comfort. Idiocy like that used to be remarkable (in the old sense of the word--out of the ordinary), but it seems to be a thing that I see on every drive when there is traffic congestion

We live off the Palisades Parkway--like the other parkways around NYC, they were mostly built in the '20s, so short entrances, narrow lanes, bad sight lines etc. The average speed has been climbing since we moved up here--it used to be 55-60-ish (posted 55)--now lots of clowns are doing 70-80 mph with predictable results. Major crashes are now an almost daily occurrence--cars flipped over, multi-car pile-ups etc, often resulting in road closures.

A few weeks back (probably in response to complaints) they did a blitz enforcement--300+ tickets were issued for speeding over a day. But I doubt that it changed anyone's behaviour.

[C40_guy]

Or...if you live in the NY five boro area and have a card, you can do whatever the h*#$ you want on the road...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/n...smid=url-share

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by mhespenheide

It has been my distinct personal experience that the number of gratuitously selfish drivers has increased over the last five or six years. You can call that anecdotal, but on a relatively consistent commute, I see far more incidents now than I used to.

Agree..Kinda a perfect storm. LOTS of angry, anxious, often drunk, aggressive drivers out there. I'd say it got really bad around 2016-17...worse today. Throw in large screens, lots of cell phones, distracted, angry drivers...COVID, liquor stores on every corner and grocery.....Smaller, poorly trained, poorly motivated police forces and gonna say it...LOTS of heavily armed people 'out there' also.

I see road rage, aggressive, breaking the speed limit(often by 20MPH+)drivers every time I drive to nanny my grand daughters...3-4 times a week, Boulder to Broomfield.

I read about people with 3-4-5+ DUI's that are still driving and having accidents.

What's the 'solution'?..beats me...try to protect me and mine the best I can.

This next year is gonna be a real peach....Not looking forward to it. National anger and anxiety...in cars and trucks.

[54ny77]

great article.

validates what i've seen and experienced, for sure.

the first several months of covid had a ripple effect of the best road conditions for riding i can remember via very few cars (no commuters).

after a year of that, no more.

[bikinchris]

Originally Posted by EB

It's interesting that the article talks about the failures of municipalities to build infrastructure that encourages safer driving - that our built infrastructure often encourages the opposite.

Pragmatically, we can reduce deaths by building better and safer infrastructure, and to replace unsafe infrastructure with safer infrastructure.

But (typically) when faced with these problems, Americans focus instead on the behavior of others - if only everyone was a great driver (like me!) and followed the rules (also like me!) then everything would be OK. Like that old line about how 100% of drivers think that they're above average drivers.

The reality is - you're always going to have a lot of bad drivers. If you build a better system for them to operate in, they'll kill fewer people.

Or we could ban cars, which is my preferred approach, but I'm being pragmatic here.

The engineers in the USA are trying to make smoother, faster traffic. Some countries identify problems in traffic and find ways to calm the traffic instead of making it faster.

[dmitrik4]

Exactly. “Better” road infrastructure in the US is defined as “move as many cars as possible as quickly as possible,” with every other consideration running a distant second place, if considered at all.

Not to mention that so many drivers feel entitled to make cycling dangerous because one time they saw a cyclist roll through a stop sign.

[cgolvin]

Originally Posted by bikinchris

The engineers in the USA are trying to make smoother, faster traffic. Some countries identify problems in traffic and find ways to calm the traffic instead of making it faster.

Indeed; I have firsthand experience in this regard, interacting with the Los Angeles Dept. of Transportation. Talking with them about traffic calming and minimizing traffic impact on the neighborhood was, initially, like speaking a foreign language to them. The head of the project acknowledged that we were asking them to think completely differently.