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Comment by woodruffw | Hacker News Reader

Something that stood out to me in the Discussion:

> Yet notably, speeding as a behavior surprisingly did not show any effect on fault outcomes in our models. The only effects related to driver behavior to decrease the likelihood of a pedestrian being found at fault were driver distraction and vehicle turning.

In other words: speeding by drivers is normalized to the extent that it doesn't appear to factor into the likelihood of being found at fault for an accident.

This is a distressing finding, but not a surprising one given the urban environment surveyed (pictures in Figure 2): wide, straight streets with ample spacing between lights mean that drivers drive at an "intuitive safe" speed, not the speed that is actually marked (much less the speed that is actually safe for pedestrians moving through crosswalks).

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I’ve observed time and again how street width affects walkability and safety.

You’d think a wider street means more leeway to notice a pedestrian, but it also works the other way: drivers assume that pedestrians will see them earlier, and assume priority. (Compare to narrow streets in a dense city, where busy pedestrian can suddenly quickly cross from around a corner, requiring awareness.)

More often, though, stroads with many lanes that take a while to cross get traffic lights, and intuitively drivers consider traffic lights “enough”, so unless there is a speed camera & automated ticketing then between traffic lights anything goes speed-wise, especially on lanes further away from the sidewalk, and on straight roads that “anything” is sometimes a drag race, and once you’re going fast it’s so frustrating to stop so red lights are being violated frequently, etc.

It’s amazing how a strategic mess of narrower, often one-way streets can result in similar overall throughput to support denser population, require less car traffic due to better use of public transport and foot traffic, while being more safe and satisfying to navigate.

I have two additional thoughts. The first is blindspots. Car manufacturers must be held responsible for blindspots built into cars that keep drivers from seeing pedestrians, and cities must be held accountable for not creating crosswalks with enough clear sightlines appropriate to the vehicle speed of that road. The faster the road, the more space is required around the crosswalk.

My second thought is lighting. Nighttime lighting can create blindspots via veiling glare. It is frightening when a pedestrian pops into view as they move out of a glare spot or a glare-induced shadow. Some of the worst offenders of glare are unregulated "security" lighting.

I know I'm an unusual driver, but I'll take being accused of driving like an old man and avoiding cities over putting others at risk.

> The faster the road, the more space is required around the crosswalk.

Which further increases the distance for a pedestrian to walk, even if it’s literally next door… Small things, but they add up and together make driving more appealing as the dominant way of transportation, meaning more congestion.

> I'll take being accused of driving like an old man

As mostly a pedestrian, I appreciate what you do. When I do drive or am getting somewhere by car, I don’t mind the same…

> Which further increases the distance for a pedestrian to walk, even if it’s literally next door

Rotate your thoughts 90 degrees. As you rightfully point out, there is no need to lengthen the crosswalk nore is there any need to increase the distance between sidewalks, which would be counterproductive. Increasing the width of the entrance and exit points of the crosswalk increases the visibility of cars and pedestrians to each other. This space prevents pedestrians from popping out from behind cars. This widening usually means removing 3-4 parking spaces "upstream" from the crosswalk.

> As mostly a pedestrian, I appreciate what you do.

As a favor to this drives-like-an-old-man, could you set an example for others and use something that makes you more visible at night? A black hoodie with black pants on a black road at night makes it hard to see you at enough distance to give you safe clearance.

True story: I was traveling at 11 p.m. on 89, a few miles south of Burlington, Vermont, when I saw a faint flicker of white in the distance. My lizard brain started slow braking until I could see the white flicker was a doe standing in the right lane. Then I braked hard. It was a happy ending for all as the deer stood still as I slowly passed it.

If I hadn't seen the white, it could have been disastrous for all.

The street belongs to people, not cars. The rest follows.

the simpler explanation is that speeding just isn’t as dangerous to pedestrians as distracted driving and sketchy intersections are, which certainly tracks with my experience as a pedestrian.

cars traveling in a straight line at any speed are pretty safe as long as they stop when they are supposed to.

edit: my second paragraph above is sort of stupid and makes the wrong point. my point, which i think is in line with this paper, is that it’s important to differentiate between “speeding” and “speed”. drivers are responsible for the former, DOTs are responsible for the latter, and the latter has more of an impact on pedestrian safety.

In Hungary, almost all of serious accidents are caused by speeding on some level. But you can’t see this in official statistics, because the national statistics office gathers data after one month of the accidents, at which time it usually isn’t decided officially the cause, so it defaults to “speeding is not involved”.

Another interesting info is that almost 100% of fatalities of car passengers are people who don’t use seatbelts. There were years when all of the fatalities were cases just like that.

> In other words: speeding by drivers is normalized to the extent that it doesn't appear to factor into the likelihood of being found at fault for an accident.

How much does it affect the likelihood of there being an accident?

I suggest that the likelihood of accidents is connected to the ability to see hazards hidden by blind spots caused by obstructed sight lines and nighttime lighting glare.

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