Month: September 2017

BY ALISSA WALKER, Curbed
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A campaign that launched today is the newest misguided attempt to prevent traffic deaths by shaming pedestrians—not by addressing the root causes of our country’s frightening epidemic: too many drivers using increasingly inadequate infrastructure.
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https://www.curbed.com/platform/amp/2016/10/28/13455962/pedestrian-shaming-streets-safety-campaigns

BY DANIEL HERRIGES, Strong Towns
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This dynamic should be familiar. If you’ve waded into local politics around growth and development almost anywhere, “traffic” is a drum that citizen activists love to beat. It makes sense: traffic is one of the most visible aspects of quality of life that local government is in a position to affect for better or worse. It matters.
So let’s talk about traffic. It’s a truism that people in every city believe they have a traffic problem (just like everyone believes they don’t have enough parking). But for all the talk of traffic problems down here, I’ve heard comparatively few viable solutions, and I suspect part of that is because we so rarely bother to really define the problem.
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https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/3/16/everyone-knows-we-have-a-traffic-problem
[B’ Spokes: A lot of good points in here, amazing what can be gleaned from just defining the problem. ]

-> MI DOT released its “User Guide for R1-6 Gateway Treatment for Pedestrian Crossings.” The R1-6 Gateway Treatment consists of In-Street Pedestrians signs used across an entire roadway – lane lines, center lines, bike lane lines, medians, etc. to highlight a marked pedestrian crosswalk. The perceived narrowing of the road is one factor influencing the treatments efficacy. Research data show that when appropriately used, the gateway treatment increases driver yielding compliance from 0-10% to 60-100%. Data also show that driving speeds are reduced around these devices, regardless of pedestrian presence. These results have been sustained over time and suggestions are included in the guide to increase survivability for maintenance. https://bit.ly/2oLVjfb
from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.

-> A CityLab article presents the forgotten history of how the auto industry won the right of way for cars. Browse through New York Times accounts of pedestrians dying after being struck by automobiles prior to 1930, and you’ll see that in nearly every case, the driver is charged with something like “technical manslaughter.” And it wasn’t just New York. Across the country, drivers were held criminally responsible when they killed or injured people with their vehicles. In the automobile’s earliest years, the principles of common law applied to crashes. In the case of a collision, the larger, heavier vehicle was deemed to be at fault. The responsibility for crashes always lay with the driver. The auto industry lobbied to change the law, promoting the adoption of traffic statutes to supplant common law. The statutes were designed to restrict pedestrian use of the street and give primacy to cars. The idea of “jaywalking” – a concept that had not really existed prior to 1920 – was enshrined in law. https://bit.ly/2pz6gUr
from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.

[B’ Spokes: My prominent thought after reading this is why not have have a program that after your second speeding ticket you are required to have a governor on your our car, much like the Ignition Interlock program for DUI, we have the technology but no one is pushing it.]
By Stephen Miller, Streets Blog
More than 112,500 people lost their lives in speed-related crashes from 2005 to 2014, accounting for 31 percent of all traffic deaths in America over that period. In a draft report released earlier this week, the National Transportation Safety Board says excessive speed is a deadly problem in our nation’s transportation system — one that federal and state officials aren’t doing enough to address.
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The NTSB’s 19 recommendations should be a wake-up call, especially to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), state legislatures, and transportation and police departments across the country.
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The way motorists think about speed also needs to change. Using GPS or sign-reading sensors, cars can now alert drivers when they’re speeding, and even prevent motorists from exceeding the limit. The NTSB said the availability of these features should be included in car safety ratings, but didn’t endorse them as mandatory equipment.
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There’s also a need for better speed camera technology, the NTSB says. The United States relies on fixed site cameras, but “point-to-point” enforcement, which tracks vehicle speed over a greater distance, has proven effective in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand and should be used and evaluated here.
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“For too long, proven policies to reduce speeding in our communities have been held hostage by outdated standards, costing more than 10,000 lives lost each year,” said Leah Shahum, director of the Vision Zero Network. “We urge every state and community to adopt NTSB’s recommendations to stem the tide of preventable suffering on our roadways.”
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https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/07/27/ntsb-speed-kills-and-were-not-doing-enough-to-stop-it/