Fast Company:
As cities strive to improve the quality of life for their residents, many are working to promote walking and biking. Such policies make sense, since they can, in the long run, lead to less traffic, cleaner air and healthier people. But the results aren’t all positive, especially in the short to medium term.
In Washington, D.C., for example, traffic fatalities as a whole declined in 2018 compared to the year before, but the number of pedestrian and bicyclist deaths increased by 20%. Pedestrian deaths also have risen in New York, and pedestrian and cycling fatalities have increased in Los Angeles in the past several years.
It’s a sad irony that as cars get safer, the world outside of them that they share with pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists, gets more and more dangerous.
Ultimately, for this — and other environmental reasons — we need to get back to a world where car traffic in cities is rare, rather than the norm.
Large, congested cities that can’t bring themselves to limit automobile traffic and enhance public transit are effectively asserting that pedestrians and cyclists are fair game.
I think a lot of it has to do with more pedestrians having more attention on their “devices” while walking than on their immediate respective environments.
For example, just today, I heard of someone in our area walking into an open manhole due to inattention. Now that kind of thing just didn’t used to happen before this current “device era”!
As a bike commuter, I can attest that a) many drivers just aren’t paying attention and swerve into bike lanes willy-nilly – I got hit in such a situation, b) some drivers are hostile to cyclists, and c) some drivers are just hostile to everyone – speeding up when someone is signaling to turn (e.g. merge), whether it’s a driver or cyclist doing the signaling.
When on the bike, I obey the laws and I make myself visible. Unfortunately, on every ride, there’s at least one bozo who’s needlessly put my life in jeopardy.
I used to ride a bike in NYC, but found it way too risky. I’ve seen some terrible consequences of car-v-bike that should never happen, but regularly do.
It’s a problem. As walkers and cyclists in a city that is building more lanes for us, we see the danger every week with aggressive, ignorant drivers (oh, the south). Just last week my SO was walking in a crosswalk, with the green, when an angry driver rushed and honked at her to get out of the way. She pointed to YIELD TO PEDESTRIANS sign, and he just called her an F-ING B, and acted like a crazy person.
Drivers are to blame. Drivers are the problem.
I think that 20% increase in deaths needs to be compared to the increase in pedestrians and bikes over the last decade in big cities as many people try to be more “green”. I wouldn’t be surprised if deaths per capita are actually much lower than they used to be. I could be wrong, but I’d love to see the data.
Also, there’s the factor that bicyclists riding in bike cities are flagrantly reckless much of the time with a chip on their shoulders. Which isn’t to say that some drivers attitudes towards bicyclists has also contributed, but there are a lot of factors that could influence these numbers.
You’re free to think that, but you have absolute no data or facts, I suspect. Do you even walk or bike in cities?
Also, what makes you think drivers are not likewise distracted?
Why are you coming down my throat for no good reason?
As far as having “no data or facts”, my data and facts are my own personal observations while out and about on my Segway PT (for over a decade) and on foot in cities.
And just because I said, “a lot of it” doesn’t mean “all of it”, and that drivers aren’t also distracted.
I see these distracted people all over, all the time, every day—both in and out of vehicles, both in and out of crosswalks.
But the bottom line “distractedness”—irregardless of whether the person is staring at a device—is that most people (by my own observation over years of looking around at them) simply are not looking—where they’re going; both ways before crossing streets; around behind them while in a crosswalk for turning vehicles; at other people, or looking into others’ eyes for a simple acknowledgement of the person’s presence to give the person a nod or greeting. It’s “blinders city” and it’s sad.