That’s because that’s where the people are

The crosswalks in New England are like nothing I’ve ever seen back home. In Pennsylvania, I’ve never seen a crosswalk anywhere without either a traffic light or a stop sign. The idea that you just plop down some paint in the middle of a street where people are driving 35 mph, and expect them to stop when they don’t normally have to, appears to me as the root of the problem.

I know that you (Jef) are not a huge fan of speed bumps, but I would very much like to see them on both Broadway and Westminster (the West End part), because people get going way too fast on both of those streets. The speed limit ought to come down to 20 even, too, so that the 5 mph give-or-take that police can give to speeders should only at most bring people up to 25 mph. I’ve seen cop cars that are apparently set up to catch speeding drivers just sit and allow most of the violators past. I don’t know if that’s because they want to just catch the most egregious violators, or if there’s some other strategic policing reason, but it makes no sense to me.

The idea that crosswalks, signals and beg buttons are there for pedestrian safety is a fraud and an insult. Their purpose is to limit the occasions when pedestrians may interfere with the flow of vehicles. They make sense only where pedestrian volume would otherwise grind traffic to a lasting halt.

The most dangerous thing of all is to think that crossing in a crosswalk with the walk signal means you do not have to look out every bit as carefully and remain just as alert as when you cross against the signal or mid block. Added safety, if any, obtains only if you are in a knot of pedestrians, less likely to be unnoticed by drivers. At most times and places in this city a pedestrian is an isolated phenomenon. Crosswalk, signal, stop sign – – none of these improve your odds of survival. At all times you are on your own to judge when a gap in traffic allows you to cross. Mid block, where traffic approaches from only 2 directions, is usually safest.

There is a dog bites man element in the story, but lets backup a second. It may be true that most interaction occurs at a crosswalk, so yes, your premise is right Jef, but I think you miss the detail of the study. 44% of the people injured (not killed, they aren’t counted in this study) were injured because the vehicle driver entered the crosswalk during a phase when they’re required to either stop, stop and yield (right on red) or yield (protected right) to crosswalk users. This is unacceptable.

Andrew, your argument sounds suspiciously like blame the victim. Regardless of commonness, which is relative to the environment, Signalized intersections with crosswalks, probably exist in an urban environment primary with people crossing the streeet not being uncommon.

Absolutely, there is responsibility for the person crossing to do so safely and not just step into traffic because of magic paint, but the big finding is of those injured at signalized intersections with crosswalks, not mid-block or non-signalized crossing. What’s being shown to be effective for those type of crossings is the placards in the middle of the street reminding drivers to yield to people using the crosswalk, partly I suspect because it’s perceived as an obstacle more than any great desire to slow down and obey the law.

I’m with James, government clearly doesn’t want to invest police officer time to enforce speed and other traffic law, so outsource it to machines, who can do it far more reliably and consistently.

I think for starters, we should make turning right on red illegal. It’ll cost money to do so in putting signs up at every intersection, but it would make it a bit safer for pedestrians, since for most drivers, turning right on red means just going, not stopping first.

I still like the idea of speed cameras on certain streets (Broadway and Westminster west of 95, for example). I also think red light cameras should be added to other intersections in the city and cover the full intersection rather than just certain directions.

Finally, we need the police to actually enforce traffic laws. I once complained about people speeding on my street (it’s used by people to cut from Chalkstone to River Ave (and vice versa), avoiding the traffic light). The lieutenant said he had a car check for speeding and there wasn’t anyone speeding. I don’t know if he actually send someone out there or not, but if he did, it would have been blatantly obvious and no one would have sped. Streets like Broadway and Westminster have more places for a cop car to hide out of sight than my little street.

What James Kennedy says about cameras is exactly right.

If anyone thinks I am blaming the victim, I did not make myself clear enough. I am blaming the system. The degree to which the system makes pedestrians responsible for their own safety is a disgrace. Most of the time when someone gets hurt, the pedestrian gets blamed. Most of the time when the pedestrian can not be blamed, gee whiz, no one is to blame. The ZOMG you hear is people finally waking up to what a failure the system is.

It all went wrong when “Where and when a pedestrian may cross the street” was allowed to become the exceptional circumstance, and everyone accepted that this circumstance could be created by a traffic control device, and that if people are not safe enough we merely need better devices. The root of the problem is that the street became a place people enter only at the pleasure and convenience of drivers. The city needs to be a place where every driver proceeds at a speed and attentiveness required by an ironclad assumption that any collision with a person is the driver’s fault and the consequences are severe. Period. Then the problem becomes how to encourage a level of forbearance by pedestrians toward drivers that allows traffic to move.

Pie in the sky? Yeah, my stock in trade I guess. The reality otherwise, which no tinkering with traffic control devices will change, is this: Routine bloodshed by people who are not driving has been deemed an acceptable price of the “Level of Service” to which drivers are entitled.

I mean, Lord, there was a situation recently in Washington D.C. where a bicyclist was run off the road by a pickup truck driver intentionally, the driver confessed, and there was bike-cam video evidence of top of that, and the driver got to keep his license and do zero time in jail. So, there’s definitely a blame-the-victim mentality when it comes to anything that involves pedestrians or cyclists.

Do we have to put up signs about No Turn on Red if we change the law statewide? We had signs everywhere in urban/suburban Pennsylvania outlining that people couldn’t do that at intersections, but I always assumed that was because we couldn’t get the rednecks in Pennsyltucky to go along with a statewide change. Wouldn’t it be pretty easy to pass such a change in a relatively homogenous state like Rhode Island? And if it was statewide, wouldn’t people just be responsible to know the law?

Very good catch. This is essentially arguing for normalizing events like cars hitting pedestrians to the amount of risk exposure. People are typically not at risk of getting hit except when they’re in the crosswalk (except for very rare occurrences in which cars come onto the sidewalk).

This is a bit similar to the old aphorism that “Most accidents occur in the home” that prompts people to say “Wow, even our homes are dangerous”. But as Jef astutely recognized, it’s just because our homes are where we spend the greatest amount of time, and thus total exposure to risk will be higher.

To get a meaningful measure of the safety of crosswalks, we’d need a more detailed study (probably almost impossible to conduct) that calculated rates of getting hit per crossings of different types (in crosswalk, in crosswalk against light, at intersection with no crosswalk, between intersections). Even this type of study would have its methodological issues. But it would get us closer to answering the question of where pedestrians are most ‘safe’.

First, despite the bad news I note much of the time drivers do stop for me in crosswalks (at least on streets like Smith, Hope, Academy…) though maybe because I m so evidently a senior, they often even stop for me as a bicyclist crossing roads on the bike paths even though they have the right of way!

Second, for the dangerous scofflaws, I agree with using automated cameras. I’ve already testified for them in opposition to the ACLU, holding up my ACLU card but noting they didn’t ask me as a member and I don’t think there is a constitutional right to run red lights (just to due process.) I also support
more serious enforcement against dangerous driving, and to close a gap in the law whereby there are almost no penalties when a motorist kills or inures someone if they are not drunk, a hit-and-run, or acting with criminal intent. Indeed there are 3 bills to address this situation being heard at Senate Judiciary this Tuesday 4/9 (see S350, S491, S625.) There is also a RIDOT bill, H5655, to strengthen driver education on distracted driving dangers, and numerous bills to tighten controls on drunk driving.

I hope the bike/ped advisory committee will take up some of the suggestions posted here on gcpvd.org.

Matt,

I’ve only been to Pittsburgh a couple of times, but in the Philly area I got the impression that there was a state law that allowed the turns, but that local communities had the ability to override it by putting up signs. Almost every signalized intersection I remember had a sign that said no right turn on red above it. The reason I remember this is I remember as a kid asking my mom why they would spend the money to put a sign up at every intersection if it was always illegal, and she said she thought maybe out in rural areas you could do it.

But I’m not sure. . .

My take on the cameras is that they definitely ought not to bother the ACLU (I am also a member, although I think lapsed in my dues) because it’s the sort of thing a police officer would be able to see without infringing on the 4th Amendment. I’m very against things like stop-and-frisk, because you should have a right to privacy on your own person, or within your car, house, etc., but you certainly can’t claim any privacy to how you drive. Everyone can see it plainly. The only difference is that to have camears means that you have a verifiable record, and it’s not a matter of a cop’s word against a driver’s.

On the matter of “magic paint” and crosswalks without signals, I think the *indignant* pedestrian creates far more hazard for everyone than the oblivious or distracted ones. I live near Brown, but work near MIT in Cambridge, where my job has me walking between several buildings on my company’s urban campus. In Providence, I’ve had College Hill pedestrians look right at me driving towards them as they step off the curb into their mid-block-no-signal-no-stop-sign force field. It’s a nose-thumbing move to be sure, but really dumb, especially if I have a line of cars behind me.

In Cambridge, where drivers are rightfully wary of getting tickets, they will stop short – screeching tires and all – if a pedestrian even looks like she’s contemplating crossing at one of these crosswalks without signals. (So misunderstood is the law, I often see drivers giving pedestrians the right of way at mid-block cross-walks that actually HAVE signals when the light is clearly in favor of the road traffic.) As a pedestrian in Cambridge, I’ve taken to standing way back on the sidewalk before crossing, just so my look of anticipation doesn’t create the hazardous situation I’ve seen play out too many times: From the near side of the crosswalk, a driver stops short, leaving himself open to being rear-ended, and endangering himself, the drivers behind him, and the pedestrian to whom he is giving he right of way. From the other direction, the driver continues, leaving the pedestrian wide open to being hit anyway.