What's the volume of pedestrians on pedestrian crossings in places where this is implemented?
Seems dangerous to get a 'cross' / 'walk' signal when there's still traffic.
Seems dangerous to get a 'cross' / 'walk' signal when there's still traffic.
In many U.S. cities the Idaho Stop, while not technically legal is already what most cyclists do, myself included. Either the crossing volume is low enough that it is trivially easy and safe to find a gap to fit through, or high enough that you simply wait for an opening, or dismount and squeeze through on foot.
Big difference is being hit by a 90kg human on a 10kg bike going 15mph is much less likely to kill you than a 2000kg SUV doing 20mph.
Additionally bike still have to yield to pedestrians, not to mention a bike is only 50-90cm wide, compared to 1500cm-2000cm for a car. Makes it much easier for both bikes and pedestrians to evade each other, should one or the other be behaving irresponsibly.
A bike has less mass than a car, but I'd rather not be hit by a bike at all, to be honest. Let alone a child or someone more vulnerable.
Sure, it's not a car crash but this is still equivalent to someone throwing a full bodyweight punch which can easily knock you unconscious and kill you when your head bounces off the pavement.
Something to consider, in the UK, a pedestrian is killed once every year or two by bikes, and it’s front page news with public outrage. a pedestrian is killed once everyday, on average, by cars (it’s actual a little higher, but close enough), but it’s never news, and there’s never outrage.
Pedestrian injuries and deaths by bikes are so low, government basically doesn’t really consider it worth the effort to collect the data. It’s far easier to derive bike caused pedestrian fatalities from counting news articles, than it is to use official stats, because the stats basically don’t exist.
We also have speed limits that are rarely followed because they are often set far below safe driving speed on a road, so without the stop signs many people have the impulse to drive 10+ mph over the speed limit.
Interesting statement. Do you have some data? I’ve often mused anecdotally that the initial acceleration from the first pumps on the pedals give a pretty abrupt change in momentum.
Now that I think about it, it depends on a lot of factors. I don't know how the roads look in Idaho, but I assume they're much wider than where I live, which gives you more time to get up to speed. I haven't considered e-bikes either.
E-bikes are changing this dynamic pretty quickly. And unpredictably. They can get from 0 to 20 faster than a car.
How cold is the sun? How shallow is the ocean? How dark is a light?
The question makes no sense when applied to an area the size of a state.