{"id":314772643,"date":"2014-12-23T04:50:43","date_gmt":"2014-12-23T04:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=314772643"},"modified":"2014-12-23T04:50:43","modified_gmt":"2014-12-23T04:50:43","slug":"injustice-at-the-intersection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=314772643","title":{"rendered":"Injustice at the Intersection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Benjamin Ross, Dissent<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nThe rules for pedestrian crossings nationwide are set out in the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, known to specialists as the MUTCD. Chapter 4C specifies when red lights can be installed. One rule concerns vehicle traffic that approaches busy highways from a side street. It takes 240 cars in four hours to justify a traffic signal.<br \/>\nUnder the same conditions, at least 300 people must walk across the main road before a red light can be installed. A pedestrian, in other words, counts for four-fifths of a driver.*<br \/>\nEven then, no signal is allowed if there is another light within 300 feet. This distance is considered a short enough detour to impose on pedestrians, even though, at a steady pace, a 600-foot round trip on foot takes two-and-a-half minutes. Drivers\u2019 time is valued quite differently: engineers classify an intersection as \u201cfailing\u201d if an average car is delayed in rush hour by a minute twenty seconds.<br \/>\nIf pedestrians don\u2019t use the crossing because it is unsafe, moreover, no light may be installed. Determining where to install traffic lights by counting people who step onto a dangerous highway, critics point out, is like deciding whether a bridge is needed by observing how many people swim across the river.<br \/>\nAbsent a traffic light, might Cobb County at least paint simple crosswalk stripes at the Nelsons\u2019 bus stop? No, it may not. The 2009 revision of the MUTCD banned new crosswalk markings on roads where heavy traffic moves faster than 40 miles per hour\u2014just the sort of environment where the only people likely to walk are those who cannot afford a car.<br \/>\nThe ostensible rationale for this edict rests on a little known and less enforced provision of traffic law. In most states, a pedestrian crossing the road at an intersection with no traffic signal always has the right of way, whether or not there are stripes on the pavement. Pedestrians, therefore, should need no help getting across the street. In theory, markings exist only to prevent collisions by warning drivers of the need to stop. But in a massive federal study, researchers observed that, in practice, \u201cvery few motorists stopped or yielded to pedestrians either before or after marked crosswalks were installed\u201d at intersections with no traffic light.<br \/>\nThis much, surely, was already obvious to anyone who\u2019s ever navigated the suburbs on foot. But the study\u2019s conclusion was somewhat more surprising: on roads with four or more lanes, pedestrians were more likely to be hit by drivers in a marked crosswalk than when crossing at a corner without crosswalk markings.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nThey concluded that the absence of stripes makes it safer to walk across wide roads.<br \/>\nNot only does this defy common sense, but the highway officials\u2019 own behavior contradicts it. Their safety campaigns never advise pedestrians to avoid striped crosswalks and cross at unmarked intersections.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dissentmagazine.org\/online_articles\/injustice-intersection-suburbs-traffic-engineering-poverty\">https:\/\/www.dissentmagazine.org\/online_articles\/injustice-intersection-suburbs-traffic-engineering-poverty<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Benjamin Ross, Dissent &#8230; The rules for pedestrian crossings nationwide are set out in the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, known to specialists as the MUTCD. Chapter 4C specifies when red lights can be installed. One rule concerns vehicle traffic that approaches busy highways from a side street. It takes 240 cars in &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=314772643\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Injustice at the Intersection&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-314772643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking-elsewhere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314772643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=314772643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314772643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=314772643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=314772643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=314772643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}