IIHS researchers analyzed pedestrian crashes to develop injury risk curves showing how speed affects crash outcomes. They found that the effect of crash speed on injury risk was magnified for vehicles with taller front ends. Compared with risk curves developed using crash data from Europe, where tall passenger vehicles are less common, risk curves for the U.S. show pedestrians here begin to suffer more serious injuries at lower speeds.
The issue isn’t data, the issue is breaking the car culture. I’ve seen people nearly hit a pedestrian with right of way at a crosswalk while their car was turning right on red. Most of the time they freak out along the lines of “get out of the road, this is for cars.” We’ve adopted a terrible attitude of the car driver is always right and the pedestrian is always wrong and that is the biggest thing that needs to change. We constantly accept dangerous designs that take pedestrians, drivers, and cyclists lives to save people literally SECONDS on their daily commute and whenever someone is hurt we blame the human factors instead of the designs of roads and cars.
We can throw as much data as we want, unfortunately it seems most drivers are on the side that seconds are more valuable than life.
I’d argue that in order to (help) break this insane car culture, you need empirical data to prove it. This to counter the “it’s not really proven, there’s no evidence, just feelings” crowd.
We have the data. In my area an ancient subway moves more people than the widest highway in north america. They fight tooth and nail to prevent any new rail projects and literally have to print new laws to keep building highways that only make congestion worse. In my opinion it is way more of a culuture war than a numbers war. Many places, and even people, in north america will treat you as a second class citizen if you take transit but we bend over backwards to shave seconds off of car travel.
Hello Torontonian. Fuck bills 212 and 197, eh?
Kingstonian.