Common factors link rise in pedestrian deaths—fixing them will be tough

A new AAA study finds common factors in the rise of fatal pedestrians crashes.

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[betam4x]

I do disagree with parts of this article, and yet also agree. Most of the pedestrian deaths in my area ARE due to distracted driving, yet they wouldn’t have happened if we had sidewalks and guarded bike lanes.

Another unmentioned factor that possibly contributes at least somewhat is the work from home explosion. Many go out for walks in their neighborhood during daytime, where as before they would not or would walk while at the office (office parks tend to have less traffic l and slower speeds, some companies also provide gyms.)

Overall I disagree this needs to be hard to fix. Forcing traffic to slow down, working on better safety features in cars (my car already applies the breaks if I am running up on a pedestrian or vehicle, even in a parking lot) and driver education will help.

Just my opinion, however.

We do need sidewalks and actual guarded bike lanes and should work on those, however what I mentioned before is basically already happening somewhat.

 

[betam4x]

It’s not mentioned becuase the increase in deaths has all been at night. On arterial roads. So not during the day in residential neighborhoods.

I'm in one of the study states (TN), and I'll say that for every 1 death at night, we've had something like 6-8 during the day. This is off from my memory, which definitely has gotten worse over the years, but I do watch this pretty closely because I walk and bike on our roads due to me biking and walking, and it is a HUGE issue here.

The most tragic recent event that happened recently (last year) was a young 20yr old college lady riding her bike down the road. She was killed by a distracted off duty POLICE OFFICER (in a personal vehicle) next to a state park. The police tried to blame speed of the driver (not that it matters as no charges were filed), and while drivers do speed, speed alone causes very few deaths. Even if he were doing 75-85mph (it is 45mph and EVERYONE does 75-85 mph there due to it being a 4 lane highway with little traffic, I won't even begin to rant on that...I'm not against slight speeding, but good lord...) he would have seen her well in advance (think 15-30 seconds).

She was on what little shoulder we had, NOT EVEN COMPLETELY IN THE ROAD. I posted about how that road should be dropped to 2 lanes bike lanes added. I got laughed and told that it is hard to shrink a 4 lane road to 2 lanes...it isn't, just repaint the lines and put up concrete pillars to make sure people don't drive in them (which is a huge issue) . Shoot, just start by repainting the lines, concrete pillars can be added later.

You can't blame government nonsense when the government is literally the folks paving and painting the roads. I understand laws exist, but they are easily changed and outside of salaries and such, cost little. The government failed, as usual.

Every couple months I see similar incidents make the news, and only rarely is it at night, or in the rain, or in the fog, it is almost always in broad daylight without a cloud in the sky.

While I follow some folks that are anti-car, I'm absolutely not. I grew up in rural america and have lived in all environments. I've also had enough close calls to make me want to beat a few folks up. Shoot, even in PARKING LOTS this happens here.

Sorry for the rant.