Comment by thatswrong0 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thatswrong0 | Hacker News Reader

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Yep. It's dangerous and it's just not appealing. Even in SF, despite parking being a pain, I've grown to prefer driving places to walking (beyond ~10-15 minutes radius) because:

A) Sidewalks are just too damn cramped. Pedestrians feel like 2nd class citizens to cars

B) Public transit, to get longer distances, is unreliable and often chaotic

C) It's faster

D) Besides some parks, there aren't very many places I want to hang out outside at en route to most destinations. There aren't enough nice, safe public spaces

E) I keep my head on a swivel and I still have to dodge clueless drivers who run stop signs or don't use turn signals _far_ too often for how little I walk now. Although I will say that this seems to have gotten worse since COVID for whatever reason.

I don't really see a solution to the problem.. there's opposition to pretty much every baby step towards progress. They tried "slow streets" (with minimal investment into said infrastructure) and... local residents seemed to hate them, drivers didn't care, and police didn't enforce anything.

If you can't beat 'em..

If there's one thing I've learned from urbanist YouTube videos, it's that drivers don't base their speed based upon posted speed limits, they base their speed on how comfortable they feel on a given roadway. You can't just tell people that what was an arterial yesterday is now an alley. You have to physically change it into an alley.

For sure. Whenever I drive in the sunset, I'm blown away with how unnecessarily wide all of the streets are, how it encourages drivers to go 30+ when they should be going 20, and how few protected bike lanes exist taking advantage of all the extra asphalt.

They could take even just a couple streets, convert them to be narrower, calm traffic, and create safer spaces for pedestrians and bikers all in one go.

> If you can't beat 'em..

Hard to fault people who try to getting a larger, safer vehicle - which not only means joining them, but going further, going all the way to buying a SUV. Sit higher for better visibility, more cage around you. Can't change the city planning, can't prevent people from looking at their phones, but you can decided what vehicle you drive.

I hope you realize that you just screamed for some form of government intervention. If the only solution to personal safety is to redirect the danger at your fellow citizens (actually, intensify and redirect that danger), there needs to some level of intervention to halt the arms race. Because we can't all have the largest vehicle. And at some point, even in a parking lot, we all have to interface with those brodozers on foot.

I'm usually anti-regulation and very pro-capitalism, but the feedback loop has to work correctly. Positive feedback for positive things, negative feedback for negative. If the system goes off the rails, such as monopolies in capitalism's case and vehicle size arms race in the US, then yes regulation is needed. Speed limits are fine. Another alternative to regulation is for the US to change it's city planning polices.

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