The Road Dangers That We Face & Why

[bikinchris]

When traffic engineers in most communities make room for cycling, they paint lines.

Please repeat after me: Painted lines are NOT infrastructure.

Another point I want to mention is that while watching dashboard camera channels and seeing Instagram videos from companies that make video cameras for bicycles, the comments are ALWAYS overwhelmingly negative toward the cyclist.
I often comment that watching dashboard videos, NO ONE seems to make a legal stop at stop signs or red lights. Pointing fingers at bicycles for not driving perfectly is mentioning that the three other fingers point back at you.

[verticaldoug]

Roads are just dangerous for everyone. 3x the rate of other developed countries.

Shared linked from a paying account, so should work.
https://on.ft.com/3U8tih5


I have good news and bad news about America’s roads. The good news is the number of people killed in traffic collisions fell by almost 4 per cent in 2023. The bad news is the mortality rate on US roads is still 25 per cent up on a decade earlier, and three times the rate of the average developed country.

[5oakterrace]

I understand the focus on fatalities. They are terrible and they can be measured. But for every fatality, how many injuries are there, notably to cyclists.

Smartphone use, car computer screens are a cause, but as well consider the effect of smartphones on our general manner of being. I suggest they ramp up the go,go pace of life - in general - and promote a hurry up mentality/spirit. That moves us to drive faster as well. Not much will change that.

I have been humbled by a return to my old town and the old roads I cycled. Now, I am in cycling nirvana. Little traffic. People go slower on these curvy country roads. When I went back I could understand folks being reluctant to go on roads I once saw as pretty decent. One almost has to live in a sparsely populated area or be very bold to cycle these days.

[Turkle]

Originally Posted by verticaldoug

Roads are just dangerous for everyone. 3x the rate of other developed countries.

Shared linked from a paying account, so should work.
https://on.ft.com/3U8tih5


I have good news and bad news about America’s roads. The good news is the number of people killed in traffic collisions fell by almost 4 per cent in 2023. The bad news is the mortality rate on US roads is still 25 per cent up on a decade earlier, and three times the rate of the average developed country.

Thanks for sharing. This article is sort of getting at something that seems very obvious to me, but I don't see anyone else talking about when we look at the appalling rate of road deaths and injuries in the US.

The fact is that we have allowed a small minority of utterly insane, antisocial, aggressive drivers to do whatever the heck they want on the roads without the slightest fear of consequences or enforcement of traffic infractions.

While things like larger vehicles, unwalkable suburbs, high-speed arterial road design in residential communities, and other structural factors clearly have a part to play, I think that these are only increasing fatalities around the margins.

When I'm out cycling, I am clearly in danger not because of all the above things, but because I know I am out on the road with antisocial maniacs who would kill you to get to Target 30 seconds faster or wherever the heck they think they're going.

And I do mean a minority of awful drivers. In NYC, the ongoing joke was every time you looked up the plate of someone that killed someone with their vehicle, they had 25+ speeding tickets in school zones, 3+_infractions for driving without a license, $100,000 in unpaid parking tickets, etc. etc. etc. These people are not normal! And we are allowing this small minority of people to put the rest of us in mortal danger!

Road safety is going to have to start with aggressive enforcement of the laws that are already on the books, with jail time and similar penalties for messing around. That's how it was when I drove in the 90s and I see no reason that can't work again.

[benb]

Is it even a minority? Drivers don't have to actually be malicious when you just have far more of them than you should. Once they are stuck in traffic they get more aggressive and frustrated and problems build.

Ignoring cycling and walking (which are problematic here) the issue we have here is you also can't really drive your car around town for 4-5 hours every day without it taking longer than it takes to bicycle and almost longer than it takes to walk.

And the issue is housing is unaffordable but jobs are here, so we have so many out of state NH residents who work here and other folks who live far away in MA that commute extreme distances to the office.

What that means for the town I live in is that there are 3x as many cars that come through than people who live in town. 14k people, and likely much less than 14k cars in town, but we have 50k out of town/state cars coming through every day.

At this point they are filling up neighborhoods as Waze directs them down ever more local roads since the highway is full and the main routes through town are full.

There is no way any traffic engineer can figure out a way to move even more cars through really. Realistically we need to start thinking about in-town tolls to try and incentivize drivers to sit in the highway traffic jam instead of making a traffic jam on residential roads.

The real solution would probably be to extend the current passenger train lines into NH where these people live, but trains are communist so NH has been blocking it for decades. (These lines used to function but got shut down cause cars are a Utopian solution)

I thought I heard NYC is talking about putting in a toll to go into Manhattan like London. Seems like a step in the right direction, but NYC probably needed it 30 years ago and lots of other places in the US need it now.

[Gummee]

My 'neighbors' continually complain about cyclists in the road. Lately they've been kvetching about dump trucks driving unsafely around them

Now y'all know how I feel.

Too bad none of them equate THEIR bad driving around me to how they feel when dump trucks drive badly around them. Complete lack of self-awareness.

M

[ridethecliche]

I had an 'essential' job during the height of the pandemic and was often shocked at how fast and aggressively people were driving then. I feel like I see way more of it these days.

Folks have mentioned some of this already... blowing reds, pulling around from turn lanes, etc.

I think this also has to do with policing in some ways. I feel like a lot of places are more interested in traffic policing to increase revenue vs increasing safety...

[cgolvin]

Originally Posted by bikinchris

The number of drivers who are scofflaws has dramatically increased over the years. It's one thing to be distracted and/or do something dumb on the road. It's a totally different thing to pass in turn lanes, cut drivers off or speed far too fast, pass on shoulders etc.

Lacking any actual data I'm reluctant to claim an increase, but anecdotally I certainly see a lot more of this dangerous and extreme behavior than I used to. Running red lights as well -- I now assume that approaching traffic won't stop when the light initially changes.

Originally Posted by bikinchris

The fines for doing these things is FAR too lenient.

Wholeheartedly agree with this. In addition (still anecdotally), the level of enforcement seems to have declined. I'd be a lot happier about funding local law enforcement if the money went to more traffic enforcement rather than military grade equipment.

[Mark McM]

Originally Posted by bikinchris

I have watched dashboard camera channels on YouTube for years. The number of drivers who are scofflaws has dramatically increased over the years.

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)?

[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.