"Vision Zero" Aims To Eliminate Traffic Fatalities In San Diego 203
An anonymous reader writes: San Diego city officials Monday expressed support for a plan called "Vision Zero" to make San Diego's roadways safer for pedestrians and bicyclists over the next 10 years. Vision Zero aims to eliminate traffic deaths in the city by 2025 by improving crosswalks, raising medians, creating buffers between vehicle and bicycle lanes, and improving sidewalks. NBC 7 in San Diego reports: "Allison Street next to La Mesa City Hall provides a blueprint of sorts. Diagonal parking lines reduce the size of the street. Jim Stone, Executive Director of Circulate San Diego, says studies show smaller streets help slow traffic. Then there's the crosswalk with lights on the ground and signs that alert drivers when someone crosses. The curb extension also provides better visibility. 'They can see cars coming but more importantly the cars can see them coming,' Stone said about the curb extensions. 'So it's a great way to improve pedestrian safety.'"
What would Monderman say? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: What would Monderman say? (Score:2)
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I live in San Diego. This is just another example of city officials funneling money to their buddies. It was the same with illegal hi-rise development and some other larger projects. The city is also a partner with ACE Parking corp and has effectively removed all free parking space downtown in exchange for ACE's paid parking and red 'no parking' curb. Bullshizzle.
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...
There was never free parking in any downtown area. There were just spaces that the government paid for but couldn't directly monetize. There's plenty of street parking in rural towns - move there if you want to park your car for free.
There were several building removed and space turned into parking lots. Some of these buildings were taken from their rightful owners through the abuse of the imminent domain laws. Some of these ex building owners even won their cases against the city, after their buildings and businesses had already been leveled.
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Developers own San Diego, they get whatever they want. Always.
Good luck fighting City Hall when the real estate interests have the council in their pocket.
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The better question is, why should all citizens subsidize a business whose model it is to use public facilities to turn a profit?
Perhaps you didn't really comprehend GP's post. Those parking spaces are being monetized by a private corporation. Said corporation throws some chump change at the city government. And, taxpayers are still paying for all that paved area, the corporation has not assumed any responsibilities in providing parking spaces.
Taxpayers are ENTITLED to park on the city streets, because t
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The problem with this approach is that ambiguity doesn't really mesh well with traffic laws.
Lets say you follow his design approach and you remove curbs, crosswalks and signage from a busy intersection. While trying to navigate through the intersection, I accidentally hit someone who has run into the street. There's no signs, no lights or anything...who is to blame? In California, the pedestrian always has the right of way, but this doesn't make it easy to navigate traffic in a busy city where you are t
Re:What would Monderman say? (Score:4, Insightful)
When you have trouble paying attention to your surroundings, you should slow down to a reasonable and prudent speed for conditions [ca.gov]. That's the law.
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You are oversimplifying how the ambiguity technique works. On a busy intersection you wouldn't just remove curbs and crosswalks. You would try to separate pedestrians and traffic completely, and the ambiguity would come from say removing lane markings in order to slow traffic.
The only place you would completely remove barriers between pedestrians and vehicles is in areas where vehicles must travel at extremely low speeds anyway. Certainly not in a busy area.
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This guy suggests they're going about it the wrong way. It's counterintuitive, but he found that making things more ambiguous causes people to use more caution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Yes but this guy obviously didn't consider ego and the Dunning-Kruger effect. Remove all the road signs and make the rules unintelligible and you'll end up with a problem with attitudes like "I have right of way, am perfectly safe doing eleventy thousand KPH and can drive on the phone" making up their own rules which will make things more dangerous.
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Yes but this guy obviously didn't consider ego and the Dunning-Kruger effect.
How do you know he didn't? He also went out and performed experiments, and found that shared space [wikipedia.org] can make things safer and more efficient.
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The ideas for changes they are describing go a long way towards making them more like eastern europe or soviet roads.
I suggest you go over to youtube and search for "russian car crash" and view a couple hours of video in the results.
Then come back and explain how fewer, and less defined rules will make things safer.
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Then come back and explain how fewer, and less defined rules will make things safer.
Ask the guy who proved experimentally that it can work. He apparently knows what he's doing when it comes to shared space, which is not simply "removing all the roadsigns" or "making it more like Russia." It's not meant to be applied globally without thought to specific local conditions.
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It's the exact opposite. People think they know the rules of the road and are fully aware of their surroundings, so assume that any accidents will be someone else's fault and drive with unwarranted confidence. By making them sell certain they tend to behave more conservatively.
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You want less traffic deaths? When the light turns red have spikes come up from the ground right before the crosswalk. People will learn to stop before the crosswalk, or they will go broke repairing their car.
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Except experience with the "risk compensation effect" has been mixed. It turns out that sometimes taking away street markings and traffic control devices makes a place safer; in other cases it makes it more dangerous. Specifics matter, that's why it's called "traffic engineering".
If you look at places put forward as examples of "shared space" traffic design they look distinctly Old World -- they're in neighborhoods that are designed around pedestrian traffic. American Sun Belt cities aren't designed aro
how do you stop jaywalkers? (Score:2)
Seattle too (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, we've got the same thing around Seattle, including radio ads where they ask people "how many yearly traffic fatalities do you think are acceptable" and of course people say zero. How silly. If someone is senile and doesn't look before taking a left turn...if a kid rides their bike directly into the road ignoring crosswalks...if someone is staring at their phone and walks in front of a moving bus...those are sad but they are pretty acceptable to me.
Re:Seattle too (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh man, do we ever. Did you read the article written by our transportation director?
http://www.seattletimes.com/op... [seattletimes.com]
The summary is that he wants to redo all the sidewalks around schools (most of which are already abundantly signed, reflective, and lighted/flashing), implement massive lane reductions, and a 5-mph speed reduction across the board (lowering it to 25mph on arterials), all of which are very expensive projects. I'm sorry, but anyone who is old enough to walk alone has an infinite number of stupid ways they can kill themselves and an infinite number of places. If you're going to speed money anywhere, fix the key dangerous spots (if any still exist) and then spend the rest on mental health. Or police/fire/ambulance are good services too (most of the time), and they safe innocent lives. They are going to ask us in the Fall to vote a nearly billion dollar road-fixing proposition that only spends around $200M on fixing roads, $100M million on fixing bridges, and $600M on other stuff, like "safety projects." I wonder if the voters know that passing that means they will get fixed roads, but not for their cars to travel on!
Re:Seattle too (Score:5, Insightful)
It's safety Culture. And Safety Culture never sleeps, and is never satisfied. Coupled with our increasingly reactionary nature, it's the perfect storm of hysteria.
And some times very stupid. Regarding those 25 mph limits, sometimes they backfire. A small town near mine was trying to get control over the main route that went through it. Speed limit was 35 mph. But they had to think of the children. So they lowered it to 25. The result was more accidents, as vehicles spent longer going through town than before, and backups were common. And a child darting in front of a car can be hurt just as easily as going 35. They ended up raising the speed limit back to it's original value.
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I'm amazed they didn't just create a tunnel under the road for pedestrians to walk under. You know, make-work shovel ready jobs in which the tax payer gets it up the ass. Obviously the politicians haven't been getting their evil on right.
Yeah, tunnels make sense to me too. Though on our local campus, they had a tunnel under a busy intersection.
They filled it in because of......... safety concerns. Someone thought it was a place for people to get attacked or robbed. Despite not once ever happening. And despite people getting attaced regularly out in the "Safe" open Sheesh.Tunnels are dawk and scawee I guess.
Saftey culture is reaching the point where they kinda look insane.
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It's more along the lines of people feeling indestructible when wearing one that they act in much more dangerous ways.
And every time cars are made safer, people just drive faster.
Really, it's the failure of safety culture. aside from making more restrictive conditions, they don't take into account that at least half of us are pretty stupid.
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The problem is that any accident has a pretty good chance of harming/killing someone who did not do anything wrong. That senile person doing a left turn might run into a minivan with two kids on board. That kid riding their bike in traffic might cause someone to swerve into the opposite lane and collide with someone else. It's not that easy to say "eh, those are acceptable".
Unless you are a safety culture zealot, you cannot say that anything over 0 is unacceptable. Perhaps Sowelu might have phrased it better, but at core, his argument is how exactly are you going to save that person? I've personally saved two students who were doing something very important on their smartphone, and started to walk out into heavy traffic. And in the last year, we've had a couple fatalities that I know of. One was a jogger in the zone who ran out into traffic and was sent airborne, and the other
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You totally don't get it. What you aim for, and what you get is sometimes totally different things, but that doesn't mean that you a) shouldn't have aimed for your original target,
I'm saying that dreaming the impossible dream should be reserved for Don Quixote as he tilts at windmills.
otherwise, I can assure everyone that thes project will fail in meeting their stated goal.
You want to try to minimize deaths? Hey - I'l sign on. Eliminate them? my bullshit sensor is triggered, and I suspect other motivations, like cash grabs. I worked long and hard and experienced much to get this cynical.
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You do not aim for zero accidents. You aim for as safe as possible within budget.
Correct - I have no idea why that is so hard to grasp.
It's like asking how many bug pieces are acceptable in grain for sale.
The obvious answer is none at all.
Except that is impossible, and we would all starve to death while good grain rotted in elevators.
Some things are simply not possible, so we have to set some practical limits.
I think some of the problem is that safety culture is so entrenched and invasive, that there are a lot of people who would have no issue with bankrupting us for an impo
Capital of bad drivers (Score:2)
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I think you mean that it must be the world capital of bad murderers. I mean, the drivers aren't even trying.
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There were only 32 people murdered in San Diego in 2014. As cities go it's a pretty safe one.
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There were only 32 people murdered in San Diego in 2014. As cities go it's a pretty safe one.
This. We're the sixth or seventh largest city in the US (or Greater San Diego taken as a whole), but it's really more of a large small town. Our Downtown is nice, but it's nothing next to the urban monstrosity that composes most of the other big cities in the US.
Crime was higher in the 90's, but crime was higher *everywhere* in the 90's.
Also, we have a ton of cars, and a freeway system that's twice as dense as the Bay Area, LA, or most of the rest of California.... So yeah, that statistic is quite believabl
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America's Finest City (political scandals notwithstanding).
I love the place except for one thing. Flying into the airport. Nothing like the rapid drop from the mountains - never seen so long a approach flying just over the rooftops. But once you land - yeah, pretty darn nice place.
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Most people who live here consider the airport approach a feature.
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Most people who live here consider the airport approach a feature.
I could see the swimming pools pretty easily, Probably could watch people skinny dipping
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I think flying into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
was probably far more pants wetting.
Mind you there are still some fun ones out there.
http://dailynewsdig.com/top-te... [dailynewsdig.com]
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Is that the greater city area or just the centre portion zoned as being the local government district. I have noticed more and more fudging going on, where positive propaganda calls up greater city statistics and negative reports are down played by only calling up the specific city centre local government.
Want safer cities with regards to cars, have less cars and that means substantively bigger buildings, where people can work, live and play within the one structure and receive services support from dire
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Is that the greater city area or just the centre portion zoned as being the local government district. I have noticed more and more fudging going on, where positive propaganda calls up greater city statistics and negative reports are down played by only calling up the specific city centre local government.
Want safer cities with regards to cars, have less cars and that means substantively bigger buildings, where people can work, live and play within the one structure and receive services support from directly adjoining major structures. Arcologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] would have to become the norm else, cities will choke to death with traffic problems and making traffic flow worse will certainly no solve problems just lead to permanent traffic jams and economic avoidance of problem traffic areas.
That phrase / metric refers to the City of San Diego, although I guess we've dropped down to 8th at this point.
That being said, unless you're comparing jurisdictions or running for office we refer to the overall area as just "San Diego". The city of San Diego is huge and broken up into about 100 different neighborhoods, some of which are just as large as the smaller cities that the City of San Diego now adjoins but which were once 10 miles away. cf http://www.sandiego.gov/planning/community/profiles/index. [sandiego.gov]
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Congratulations, your murder rate (~2.4 per 100,000) is above that of Syria (2.2). A good rate would be more around the 1.0 mark
That's because stoning people for religious infractions is considered entertainment and not murder there.
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You realize that you're comparing a city to a while country, right? Cities tend to have higher crimes rates than countries as a whole.
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According to http://www.neighborhoodscout.c... [neighborhoodscout.com] San Diego is safer than 24% of cities in USA. So it's in the bottom quarter.
It's about average for California.
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You're comparing it to cities a fraction of its size. San Diego is the 7th largest city in the country. You need to go down the list to the 19th largest city, El Paso, to find one with a lower murder rate.
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San Diego population 1.35M
Murder rate: 2.4
Auckland population: 1.37M
Murder rate: 1.1 (higher than the country rate of 0.9)
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USA murders in 2013: 14,196
USA road fatalities in 2013: 32,719
It would be strange if there were more murders than road fatalities in San Diego
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my first thought was "what an idiot! murder rate is lower than traffic fatality rates pretty much everywhere".
The only way he's going to get traffic fatality rates below murder rates is to really encourage murder, or alternatively, redefine "traffic fatality" to not include 80% of what is currently defined as traffic fataliti
Not so fast, ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The curb extension also provides better visibility. 'They can see cars coming but more importantly the cars can see them coming,' Stone said about the curb extensions. 'So it's a great way to improve pedestrian safety.'
They call these "bulbed intersections" where I live.
Here's the problem. By law (also where I live) vehicles are not required to stop for pedestrians unless they are in the crosswalk. Not standing on the corner looking helpless, not waving at cars going by to get their attention. Actually in the crosswalk.
A bulbed intersection forces pedestrians to be much close to active traffic before that traffic has to stop for them. Instead of putting a foot into the street that is still ten feet away from the moving traffic (the width of the parking lane), they will be putting that foot into, or very close to, the lane that has moving traffic. That cannot be a safer situation.
It will certainly create confusion for the hapless pedestrian who thinks that because the drivers can see him better they will be more likely to stop for him when he stands on the sidewalk. "Why aren't they stopping", he will ask, from his protected perch on the sidewalk where nobody is required to stop for him.
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Maybe it's mostly intended for intersections where traffic comes to a stop for a light or sign and then pedestrians get to go? The major danger for those intersections is that the driver simply doesn't think to check for a pedestrian in the first place, since pedestrians aren't usually there anyway. Instead, the driver will pull up to the intersection and won't see the pedestrian, will look towards oncoming traffic to see whether they're clear to turn/cross, and then will advance into the intersection, putt
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A bulbed intersection/curb extension would ensure that the pedestrian was visible to the driver as they were coming to a stop
When they put in the bulbed pedestrian extensions in my city, it took the snowplows 4 times as long to clear the streets. Previously, they would send two big plows down the street, and clear it in one pass. Now they have to take four separate passes in four smaller trucks
We can decide if that change was an improvement in safety or not. The highways are happy to have the bigger trucks at their disposal, but the locals are pissed it takes longer to clear the roads now, as the smaller trucks have been divert
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You are making assumptions about laws and construction. The simple solution is to have part of the 'bulb' be the crosswalk. Have the lines for the crosswalk start ON the bulb (say, on the wheelchair pedestrian ramp) and then you have a safe place to stand where cars must legally stop for you.
Now I'm not in San Diego, so I have no idea if this is part of their plan or what their laws are. I'm just saying that even with your example law there are simple, safe solutions.
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You are making assumptions about laws and construction. The simple solution is to have part of the 'bulb' be the crosswalk.
Sorry, but I know the law. You assume that the sidewalk can be the crosswalk, and that isn't how the law is written.
Have the lines for the crosswalk start ON the bulb
The lines are irrelevant. We have crosswalks without lines -- in fact, many more of those than ones that are marked. The only benefit from lines is when a courteous pedestrian steps outside the lines and allows traffic to proceed before it could otherwise legally. (E.g., on a two lane road where there is no traffic he needs to worry about coming the other way, he can step out of the marked
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There ought to be a law against loitering in a crosswalk.
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By law, where I live, anything in front of you has priority. Pedestrian, Bicycle, car or pretty much anything (oddly dogs and cats are exempt). It is your responsibility to not hit something in front of you. You are the one driving, you are the one that can see what is in front of you (I hope) So it is your responsibility. It is odd that Jay walking laws do not exist in Europe (apart from Autobans, Motorways etc which are difficult to walk on to)
Oddly it seems to work
As a pedestrian crossing streets Califor
quote: "nothing more than a can of paint" (Score:2)
Where are the round-abouts (Score:5, Insightful)
I am always surprised that American cities don't learn from the rest of the world and install round-abouts instead of intersections. Many European countries have been aggressively converting their intersections to traffic circles; and they found that accident rates go down, throughput goes up, there are zero operating costs (i.e. no need for traffic lights), and often the round-about needs the same or even less space than traditional intersections.
It takes a little bit of time for everybody to get used to the new design -- and that means both city planners, drivers, and pedestrians. But in the end the benefits are very obvious.
Re:Where are the round-abouts (Score:5, Informative)
I am always surprised that American cities don't learn from the rest of the world and install round-abouts instead of intersections.
Because roundabouts consume a lot more land and are not that much safer for pedestrians. The drivers are busy looking for traffic going around the circle and not compelled by personal protection to look both ways like they are at intersections. I care what vehicles are coming from the left. The ones coming from the right have to stop for me.
Many European countries have been aggressively converting their intersections to traffic circles;
Where I live, traffic circles and roundabouts are two different things with two very different sets of rules.
and often the round-about needs the same or even less space than traditional intersections.
You must be talking about something other than the roundabouts that I know of in Europe. How can a circular roadway be smaller than a simple intersection? You can't put a median in the middle of an intersection and force the traffic to go around it without it being bigger than a simple cross.
But in the end the benefits are very obvious.
The benefits of a simple, cheap crossing intersection are also obvious. We're dropping half a million dollars in our area to replace a simple intersection because a few people don't like waiting at the stop signs on the intersection side streets. I see no obvious benefit to that waste.
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At the intersections, but what about between intersections?
Re:Where are the round-abouts (Score:4, Interesting)
yeah, rounabouts destroy cities, too. converts a vibrant intersection with cars, peds, bikes, shops, parking, businesses to a sterile area that feels like a perpetual onramp. it's like a mass fish kill event for the city life.
if you've ever been to paris, you've likely seen the arc de triumphe - the fanciest traffic circle in the world.
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Because roundabouts consume a lot more land and are not that much safer for pedestrians.
Even a little safer is better. Roundabouts generally bring the speed of traffic approaching the intersection down.
How can a circular roadway be smaller than a simple intersection? You can't put a median in the middle of an intersection and force the traffic to go around it without it being bigger than a simple cross.
They put one in by the school near where I live, and the new roundabout doesn't take any more space than the old intersection did.
And that's a residential simple one lane going each way intersection, with parking along the curb. At the roundabout the curbs bulb out preventing parking, and create the room for the circular space.
Previously, there was effectively 2 lanes of room at the intersection
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Thing is roundabouts are not just a little bit safer than a crossroads/intersection they are massively saferm we are talking 90% reduction in fatal accidents by converting an intersection to a roundabout, 40% reduction in pedestrian collision and a 37% reduction in collisions overall.
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Roundabouts actually consume the same amount of land as an intersection of similar traffic, they're also self regulating and dont require power. They're also more efficient and help the flow of traffic, with a crossroad or traffic light, you can only be using a maximum of two lanes, with a roundabout you can use all four at once.
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"How can a circular roadway be smaller than a simple intersection?"
No turning lanes on the approaches.
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I am always surprised that American cities don't learn from the rest of the world and install round-abouts instead of intersections.
Because roundabouts consume a lot more land and are not that much safer for pedestrians. The drivers are busy looking for traffic going around the circle and not compelled by personal protection to look both ways like they are at intersections. I care what vehicles are coming from the left. The ones coming from the right have to stop for me.
But you still have to care about what's coming from the right - namely pedestrians as you're still required to stop for them.
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We have a few, especially in New England, but we can't keep the European drivers from turning clockwise.
We had a traffic circle where we couldn't keep the locals from going clockwise. It's gone now. Good riddance.
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You're supposed to go clockwise.
The real problem is you drive on the wrong size of the road.
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You do know that you are not supposed to drive your vehicle if you CAN NOT FUCKING SEE where you are going or what is driving at you?
I would have thought that there would be Darwin awards there.
Did you also know that backing off to give a large truck space to maneuver is also a good idea. Or perhaps stopping when there is a wall in front of you.
You do know that there is a break peddle along with the accelerator. Perhaps a clutch to confuse the american masses.
Sorry that was not directed at you but the conce
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This just in: Maryland has just dropped the requirement to be able to parallel park to get a driver's license. With this, you can get a driver's license anywhere in the metro Washington DC area without being able to parallel park at all.
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Doomed, I tell you, Doomed ;)
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I am always surprised that American cities don't learn from the rest of the world and install round-abouts instead of intersections.
No, the only place we install them is in the country, in the path of heavy freight. Here in Lake County, CA, they are actually taking out a traffic warning light and installing a second roundabout on the highway 20. I believe the project overall will cost eight million dollars, for a tiny fraction of which they could have put in a traffic light and maintained it for quite some time... because much of what they needed was already there, including power and all lane markings for both left and right turns (it'
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I go through 3 round-abouts on my way to work, in the USA.
The main 'problem' is that a traditional intersection is more space efficient - so in a lot of places there simply isn't room for one.
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no need to plan for round about, soon the only means available for the peasents.. err i mean citizens will be their feet so planning for bikes and feet.
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We have two round abouts in my US mid-western town, they are not that great and are in places of low pedestrian traffic. The rest of our intersection are more like the ones vision zero are purposing. They work very well in business areas, slows the cars down so they see the businesses, the angle parking allows more cars parked on a block, and is generally easier than parallel parking. Crosswalks are usually at the end of the blocks where there are traffic lights or have a pedestrian signal that's activated
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My area (rural northern AZ) is going whole hog for roundabouts. They have worked really well once people got used to them, but this area is really tourist-intensive, and that's where we get problems. They are a great replacement for 4-way stops and low-volume signals, and we even have some two-laners.
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i've seen more intersections in europe than round a bouts. a lot of americans want to walk into the street without paying attention and then complain why the world doesn't revolve around them
If I walk into the center of a round about it will look like the world is revolving around me.
Slow traffic (Score:3)
What fsking idiots thought this up?? Want crosswalks to be safer, build a walkway, install traffic circles, build tunnels. Stop stealing time from people by slowing traffic.
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there are two goals here. one, keep people safe. Two, take back the streets from the automobile. building tunnels or walkways just cedes more territory to cars. we want walkable, vibrant communities, not traffic islands and expressways. cars will slow down and they will take heed.
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Ever been to vegas the strip is pretty walkable and vibrant, it's a good compromise. This is a proposal to pretty much punish car drivers.
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This is an amazing change from the way it used to be in Vegas. People dashed from resort to resort in cars, ad you never saw a pedestrian on the street. But now the Strip has become a highly walkable place, with shops right on it, as opposed to being only in resorts, and even food trucks and pushcarts. I even saw a Segway being ridden in the wild there once - not by a mall cop, not a tour group.
Not in New England (Score:4, Informative)
I serve on the Planning Board in my small New England town. We've looked at some of these same measures, but many of them are eliminated because they make it more difficult for snow plowing. Anything involving raised crosswalks or bump-outs gets push-back from the DPW. Paint gets mostly sanded off every winter.
Separated bike lanes ("cycletracks" is the buzzword here) are great. The problem is our roads are too narrow and old, so even if we have the money to put them in, there simply isn't enough space without using eminent domain to take land for widening. That doesn't go over very well.
It's great that they can do these things in San Diego. It's unfortunate that we can't do all the same things here. Every location needs to find solutions to improve safety that work in that location.
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Separated bike lanes ("cycletracks" is the buzzword here) are great.
Separated bike lanes are a total nightmare. On a major arterial route where there is no more than one junction every 3+ miles then they're great for the very small proportion of cyclists who are doing 50+ mile rides but in towns they're a disaster. (The vast majority of cyclists don't make journeys where there are no turnings for three miles - they're going from A-B because it's just about walkable but cycling is less effort and faster)
For
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welcome to the 20th century. Build a bypass. But then the 21st century will rapidly catch up. So a highway around that. Then pedestrianise the town centre.
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Yes. And let them fugure out why their car was fucked and how to get it out of the way. There will be many willing hands to push it anywhere but where it is.
No Vision (Score:5, Insightful)
"provides better visibility"
Then what idiot ad company exec came up with "Vision Zero" as the name?
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Oh Magoo. You've done it again.
I've got it! (Score:2)
says studies show smaller streets help slow traffic
Make the streets too small to drive down.
Zero vehicle fatalities if everyone has to walk.
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says studies show smaller streets help slow traffic
Make the streets too small to drive down.
Zero vehicle fatalities if everyone has to walk.
Never lived in So-Cal, eh? :)
Call me cynical, but... (Score:2)
/ San Diego resident
Smaller streets? (Score:2)
What I read in a related study, is that there is a "sweet spot" for the correctly sized lanes. 10 to 10 1/2 feet in width makes for safer driving. Reducing below 10 feet in width and increasing over 10 1/2 feet both make driving less safe. Those skinny little streets with 8, or even 7 foot wide lanes are definitely UNSAFE.
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Why are you on Slashdot if this story isn't interesting to you?
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If you punch the cop who's trying to arrest you, there are immediate penalties - like being tasered or pepper sprayed.
People still do it.
The streets will be full of cars.
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Except that car drivers are in the majority, they vote, and have power. So when lots of car drivers start getting 72-hr suspensions for minor infractions, you can be sure that they will rapidly replace the municipal leaders who stop "mollycoddling" them. yes urban roads were built for peds and bikes originally. Welcome to the future.
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Very funny. Now, go look for photographs of downtown Manhattan pre-1900 What you'll see are horse-drawn vehicles in the streets, pedestrians on the sidewalk.
Here's a clue. One of the inventions necessary for automobile travel was also necessary for useable bicycles: pneumatic tires. Widespread bicycle use preceded widespread automobile use by less than 10 years.
Don't confuse high quality paving with a road.
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If people know there is an 80 percent chance they will be stopped, forced to park their car, and not able to use that car for three days (72 hours), or any other car, they will stop doing certain risky things.
I have no idea where you got this from. Who is forcing people to park their cars and not drive for three days? Is just visiting a store in an urban area and arriving by car supposed to be considered a crime sufficient to justify such nonsensical punishment? Do we not value the concept of "considered innocent until proven guilty" enough that we would force someone to park for three days just for being stopped for a traffic infraction?
Stop molly-coddling car drivers.
Allowing people free access to visit downtown businesses and do so from d
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Huh, I see mostly horses and carriages. They should really make the streets safer for those. Oh, and ox carts. Won't someone think of the livestock?
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The other day, I was driving on a narrow street in an older area and had to pull over to give the car going the other way room. My mom said something about the narrow street, and I commented that it was probably wide enough when it was built for the horses.