You wrote "I'm not singling out the pedestrians - the drivers are equally at fault". The article highlights that we need to look at more than just pedestrians and drivers.
> In the UK, Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Austria and Iceland, for example, pedestrian deaths occur at a per capita rate roughly half of America’s, or lower. Are we really to believe that the citizens of these countries are 50% less susceptible than Americans to distraction, by their phones or anything else? Plus, within the US, pedestrian death occurs disproportionately in neighbourhoods populated by people with low-incomes and people of colour. Is distraction really more endemic in those neighbourhoods, or among people driving through them, than it is in wealthier, whiter areas? Or is it more likely that these neighbourhoods are more likely to be criss-crossed by high-speed roads, and less likely to receive investment in transit interventions that protect pedestrians?
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> “All this talk about pedestrian distraction, driver distraction? It’s such a distraction,” says Ben Welle of the World Resource Institute for Sustainable Cities. “It puts all the responsibility on individuals, and none on the environment they operate in.”
While not mentioned in this article, the premise of Vision Zero (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero ) is "In most road transport systems, road users bear complete responsibility for safety. Vision Zero changes this relationship by emphasizing that responsibility is shared by transportation system designers and road users". Emphasis mine.