Item — HN Reader

same re: runner+kids. It's insane. I watch people blatantly blow through red lights on a daily basis. Someone once grabbed my mother-in-law and pulled her back because she walked when the signal said walk and she would have been hit.

Until now I didn't really have any data, just my eyes, and my brain, and I knew things weren't trending well.

Sad.

3 comments

Same. I live within a mile of an elementary school and giant park that I was excited to allow my kids to roam to and to run to myself. There's 300m of 35mph road and a network of 25mph residential streets. The latter feel pretty safe, the 35mph section, though, sees people going 55mph while staring at their phones on a regular basis.

I bike to and from work most days, decked out in fluorescent colors and reflectors and blinky lights that should make a negligent vehicular homicide civil suit a slam-dunk for my wife, plus an excellent set of life insurance policies if that doesn't work.

To my shame, I have a large old SUV that I use on days I can't bike, but it brings me a perverse joy to drive at or just under the actual speed limit on my road and watch the traffic pile up behind me.

Besides slowing the vehicles behind you down to a safe and legal speed, a secondary advantage of obeying the speed limit on neighborhood streets is to influence routing algorithms.

Many routing algorithms base their decisions on past travel time and current traffic conditions. If you convince enough of your neighbors to drive legally then eventually the routing algorithms increase their anticipated travel time for those streets which (depending on what the alternatives are) may result in fewer people being routed onto those streets.

this is the way. don't feel bad. whoever is angry about you can't really complain about it. If you are often late by car, the solution is to start a few mins earlier, not reckless speeding.

There's also a social media element. There are many accounts who post close calls along with questions like "who was in the wrong?"

The answers you see are sometimes jaw-dropping[1] and I suspect there's an element of "the blind leading the blind" as people assume some of this is correct.

[1] For example someone posted a close call where a truck turning left nearly hit a pedestrian crossing in the crosswalk and the top comments claimed that it was the pedestrian's fault because the red hand was flashing and she should not be in the crosswalk.

Edit: There are also sooo many incidents of psychotic road rage posted on social media that it makes you lose faith in humanity. But it's hard to tell if this is an uptick in incidents or an uptick in visibility.

One thing my parents taught me even in the '70s was that a red light or stop sign isn't going to make anyone stop. You never step into a crosswalk just because the light says it's OK.