The only way to feel safe. The really big ego-support vehicles are no safer than a subcompact to be inside of, but they are far more likely to kill your own family.
That's a feeling, not a lack of safety. Intimidating people into buying big cars on purpose is still vile, but the people who cave are giving in to irrationality and putting their feelings above the safety of their kids and of others. Tragedy of the commons is when defecting improves your utility. The SUV/emotional support truck arms race is only decreases the utility of others in exchange for feelings of power.
Which does not override the lack of safety of a tall heavy vehicle. Small cars are not less safe than emotional support trucks and full sized SUVs, because the latter get specific exemptions from safety regulations.
"I'm going to increase the probability of killing my kid, innocent hystanders because of this one specific critereon i've cherry picked" is an emotional argument.
The feeling of power and safety, itself, has utility. Feelings matter.
No argument that there's been an active propaganda campaign to make people in smaller cars feel less safe, but propaganda works. You can't just dismiss it.
Physics says that in a collision, the heavier vehicle will always come out better. Higher mass means more resistance to acceleration, so it will take longer to change speed and impart less force on the occupants. This is one reason why buses sometimes don't have seatbelts, when the bus collides with much lighter cars it will be largely unaffected.
If everyone has a heavy vehicle, it's worse overall because of higher kinetic energy causing more dramatic collisions. And obviously significantly worse for everyone outside a car.
Which is offset by the lack of safety regulation, high center of mass, heavier weight to crush the cabin in a rollover, and much higher likelihood of running over your own kids.
Citation needed. SUVs tend to be modern which would generally have stricter safety regulations
high center of mass, heavier weight to crush the cabin in a rollover
I wouldn't have though that rollovers are a common cause of deaths or serious injuries in cars. The higher center of gravity is going to be offset by the wider wheel base, so it depends on the car.
Traction seems like a much bigger problem, although many SUVs solve this with bigger wheels.
and much higher likelihood of running over your own kids.
Agree 100%
Stop spreading propaganda by cherry picking,
Look, fuck SUVs, obviously. If you aren't a psychopath you should not feel safe driving those things. My point was specifically about the physics of collisions. What you're bringing up can't be answered with physics because it depends on the details of the car, we need real world statistics to continue this conversation.
"Buy a new big car because it will be later year than a new small car and thus have newer safety features" is an incredibly wild way of drawing the exact opposite conclusion to the one you should have from that data.
Citation needed. SUVs tend to be modern which would generally have stricter safety regulations
what? that makes no sense. SUVs in the US are generally regulated as light trucks, which have historically had laxer safety requirements for a given model year
Ironically enough, this is how the pavements are in the ski resort I live in. It's a "shared zone", pedestrians have the same rights as vehicles. It slows everyone down because nobody knows when the next braying snowboarder trust-fund baby is going to stagger out in front of you.
Oh and as for the snow, we have adorable little mini snowploughs for the pedestrian bit
If you are walking you're either poor or up to no good, in both cases we don't want you around these parts. Oh, your kids need to walk? Don't be lazy and DRIVE them where they need to go!
For the briefest of moments I felt a spark of blinding hot rage in my heart. Now I am left with the lingering feeling of wanting to smash my head against a rock.
Weirdly enough it is a walkable neighborhood legit this is the entire street in the picture, for some reason they decided to paint these people lanes instead of just leaving it.
Idk. We have similar things around here for when they want to add more walkable spaces and less space for cars but they cannot or do not have the money for a full walkable path. Although usually they put some plastic bollards to avoid people parking or stopping on it.
They ain't bad, usually is in town and the max speed is 20 - 30 Km/h with the exception of main roads inside the town/city which is 50 Km/h.
So although a proper sidewalk would be better they ain't bad and they are quick to install.
Except that they are bad if you consider safety and convenience of pedestrians. It is a testimonial of terrible planning in the first hand and the most 'I don't give a shit' solution second hand.
Yeah, it seems like there should be something to separate the vehicle traffic from the pedestrian traffic though. Like some kind of low concrete barrier that would actually curb an errant car's trajectory and direct it back on to the road.
Some are exaggerating a little bit how much a curb protects pedestrians... And yeah that's the correct approach but as I said this fast to implement, the rest can be done later.
In our local case we are talking about reducing car space in benefit of extra pedestrian space, although keeping safe distanced. Not like the picture were there wasn't pedestrian space at all to begin with.
I keep seeing joggers in my area choosing the bike lane over the sidewalk, presumably because asphalt is softer than concrete sidewalks. If paving a ped lane next to the bike lane is what it takes to isolate these wrong-way bike-lane-jogging scufflaws, then let's just do it and be done with it. We can cannibalize a car lane to make it happen. >:-)
Sidewalks in car-brained areas are super dangerous to jog on. People backing out of their driveway or turning across the road at 10-20km/h without looking. Trip hazards. Ankle destroying driveway cutouts or curved surfsces. Uneven grading.
I'm a bit late to reply, but this is a great explanation. I always assumed it was just the softness of asphalt vs concrete on the knees, but there is absolutely a case to be made for visibility. It's unexpected as a cyclist, but I am 100% empathetic to the struggles of anyone not in a car, more specifically one of those Dodge Ram 3500s with smokestacks and truck nuts on the bumper that seem to be so popular right now. :-)
Imagine seeing this when house hunting and still buying the house. You'd have to have worms in your brain to want one of these ugly McMansions with no sidewalk
If the garage is used as internal space, then row houses are plenty high enough density. The occupant could have a much nicer back yard without the setback (front yards are car infrastructure), but the road is not too wide, just awful to be on.
If we assume 1.8-2.1 people per house, then these blocks are about and 300m^2 with about 100m^2 out the front in tye public spacs
e per house (property boundary to middle of road]. 5000 people per km^2 for the residential area, assume 50% as much commercial/parks elsewhere (~100m^2 per resident) and you're at over 3000 people per km^2
This is in the ideal missing middle range if a little bit low, it's just awful missing middle (that will probably also have its density ruined hy a sea of carparks in the commercial areas and a highway, but that's a separate issue).
Those aren't really "rowhouses" how I think of that term. They look quite wide, and have a fairly deep setback from the street. Additionally the street is very wide, and the development looks far too homogenous.
Whatever you want to call them, they share at least one wall, are two story, have a deep aspect ratio and side access on the other wall is minimal (if there at all). The only awful features are the set back and the giant garage (which can just be used for indoor space|.
Most of Britain doesn't have sidewalks. But there's a slight difference in the law... In Britain, pedestrians have priority on ALL roads at ALL times (except for dual carriageways, obv). Pedestrians can even legally cross the road on red light as all traffic control signs and lights are merely suggestions for pedestrians and not a requirement.
In my opinion, if this was done in a community that was not designed for sidewalks (the house are very close to the curb), then it's better than nothing. I'd like to see some bollards or post reflectors or something, but at least there is some effort.
On the other hand, if this is a new community and this is the sidewalk "solution" then fuck them.
Ideally we would have a car free utopia, but that doesn't happen overnight, so any step forward, even if it's a shuffle, is good, I think.
Each house has a driveway long enough to park in. Remove the pointless front lawn and driveway, switch to on-street parking, narrow the absurdly wide road a bit, and BAM, you got enough space for sidewalks, bike lanes, and trees. There is PLENTY of space on this street for everyone.
Well sure, if you were designing from scratch, but with existing neighborhoods, the city may not have the necessary right-of-way rights to do that, so what they've done here may be the only option, even if it could be executed better.
My point is that working to make cars less necessary is a process and if the only way a city can add a "sidewalk" is by carving it out of the existing road, then so be it. After all, by making some of the road devoted to pedestrians only, we are effectively reclaiming space back from cars, right? Isn't that a good thing?
Places like this are all many of us can afford. Downtown is either expensive af or shitty. Schools in the burbs tend to be nice enough, there's enough room for kids and friends.
Yeah, there are other options, but most of us can't afford them or don't want to take the immediate lifestyle hit.
"downtown is .. shitty" so move to the "shitty" area, help make it better.
unless you mean "I am prepared to live in a car-brained hellscape as long as my neighbours are all white" as most suburbanites have done through history, in which case please move into the sea
And Canada. Half the residential streets in my city don't have sidewalks, the rich folks get walking paths behind their houses so they don't have to mingle with the poors walking out in the street
Fake, but not terribly far from reality in some areas.
Anywhere upper middle class enough to have lawns like that will have proper sidewalks. But in poor neighborhoods, sometimes local government just doesn't bother spending money to make sidewalks at all. But they also don't bother to paint any lines in the road. It's just road - no sidewalks, no bike lanes, no whatever these are. Just roads.
It is exactly reality on some roads in my area. My town is growing and decently high income for the area, but some of the very first neighborhoods have drainage ditches along the roads rather than proper storm drains. So they are smaller, less expensive houses, but they are in the center of town with good access to everything.
So that leads to lots of sidewalks being built, trying to make things more connected and walkable, but certain roads have this exact “we painted a line and a walk symbol” sidewalk. The walk symbol looks correct though, not the weird one in the op.
SUV, Truck, SUV, SUV, SUV, SUV, sedan, SUV, SUV, SUV, SUV.
The culture problem around big vehicles we've created with bad regulation and aggressive marketing is depressing.
It isn't just a culture problem, it's a tragedy of the commons.
When you're surrounded by giant vehicles, the only way to
befeel safe and see the road is to have a giant vehicle.The only way to feel safe. The really big ego-support vehicles are no safer than a subcompact to be inside of, but they are far more likely to kill your own family.
Well sure, though not being able to see anything around you when deep in truck/suv traffic is pretty scary in a sedan.
That's a feeling, not a lack of safety. Intimidating people into buying big cars on purpose is still vile, but the people who cave are giving in to irrationality and putting their feelings above the safety of their kids and of others. Tragedy of the commons is when defecting improves your utility. The SUV/emotional support truck arms race is only decreases the utility of others in exchange for feelings of power.
Reduced visibility while driving is absolutely a lack of safety.
Which does not override the lack of safety of a tall heavy vehicle. Small cars are not less safe than emotional support trucks and full sized SUVs, because the latter get specific exemptions from safety regulations.
"I'm going to increase the probability of killing my kid, innocent hystanders because of this one specific critereon i've cherry picked" is an emotional argument.
The feeling of power and safety, itself, has utility. Feelings matter.
No argument that there's been an active propaganda campaign to make people in smaller cars feel less safe, but propaganda works. You can't just dismiss it.
I can object to it being used to justify killing kids for a feeling though. Which is what you were doing by suggesting it's a prisoner's dilemma.
Object all you like? It doesn't change the actual reality of what is happening and why people drive murder machines.
Physics says that in a collision, the heavier vehicle will always come out better. Higher mass means more resistance to acceleration, so it will take longer to change speed and impart less force on the occupants. This is one reason why buses sometimes don't have seatbelts, when the bus collides with much lighter cars it will be largely unaffected.
If everyone has a heavy vehicle, it's worse overall because of higher kinetic energy causing more dramatic collisions. And obviously significantly worse for everyone outside a car.
Hence the arms race.
Which is offset by the lack of safety regulation, high center of mass, heavier weight to crush the cabin in a rollover, and much higher likelihood of running over your own kids.
Stop spreading propaganda by cherry picking,
Citation needed. SUVs tend to be modern which would generally have stricter safety regulations
I wouldn't have though that rollovers are a common cause of deaths or serious injuries in cars. The higher center of gravity is going to be offset by the wider wheel base, so it depends on the car.
Traction seems like a much bigger problem, although many SUVs solve this with bigger wheels.
Agree 100%
Look, fuck SUVs, obviously. If you aren't a psychopath you should not feel safe driving those things. My point was specifically about the physics of collisions. What you're bringing up can't be answered with physics because it depends on the details of the car, we need real world statistics to continue this conversation.
"Buy a new big car because it will be later year than a new small car and thus have newer safety features" is an incredibly wild way of drawing the exact opposite conclusion to the one you should have from that data.
what? that makes no sense. SUVs in the US are generally regulated as light trucks, which have historically had laxer safety requirements for a given model year
Its deadly.
So glad they put that thick protective white line there so I know I won’t be hit 🥰
It’ll be super protective when it snows!
Ironically enough, this is how the pavements are in the ski resort I live in. It's a "shared zone", pedestrians have the same rights as vehicles. It slows everyone down because nobody knows when the next braying snowboarder trust-fund baby is going to stagger out in front of you.
Oh and as for the snow, we have adorable little mini snowploughs for the pedestrian bit
Edit to add pic -
Of course it uploaded upside down
And the snow will pile up on that lane, because the street needs to be free and nothing else.
What in the stupid is this?
Cheaper than a sidewalk, apparently.
The cost being the life of pedestrians? This is insane.
That doesn't show up on the balance sheet 😬
What do you mean? The white line keeps the cars out..
It's an impenetrable force field apparently.
If you are walking you're either poor or up to no good, in both cases we don't want you around these parts. Oh, your kids need to walk? Don't be lazy and DRIVE them where they need to go!
For the briefest of moments I felt a spark of blinding hot rage in my heart. Now I am left with the lingering feeling of wanting to smash my head against a rock.
Thank you for that experience.
Why even allow people in this neighborhood? Just have cars and no people
Don't worry, self driving cars will get us there eventually
Megatron, is that you?
This what I hate about North America. Non walkable neighbourhoods.
Weirdly enough it is a walkable neighborhood legit this is the entire street in the picture, for some reason they decided to paint these people lanes instead of just leaving it.
There is no pavement/sidewalk...
Hardly walkable
Can you believe it that some see walkable neighbourhoods as a conspiracy? I just can’t wrap my head around why…
Wow it’s like you guys are trying as hard as possible to not put in sidewalks.
Next they'll eliminate the stripe and put up share-the-road signs with the stick figure
Is that a pedestrian symbol or the chalk outline of a pedestrian who got hit?
Must be a pedestrian symbol. If it was a chalk outline, it would stretch for two blocks.
I'm just wondering why that corpse was wearing such an unhealthy corset.
Unrealistic beauty standards. The corset is the reason they died.
What dystopian fuckery is this?
Idk. We have similar things around here for when they want to add more walkable spaces and less space for cars but they cannot or do not have the money for a full walkable path. Although usually they put some plastic bollards to avoid people parking or stopping on it.
They ain't bad, usually is in town and the max speed is 20 - 30 Km/h with the exception of main roads inside the town/city which is 50 Km/h. So although a proper sidewalk would be better they ain't bad and they are quick to install.
Except that they are bad if you consider safety and convenience of pedestrians. It is a testimonial of terrible planning in the first hand and the most 'I don't give a shit' solution second hand.
Yeah, it seems like there should be something to separate the vehicle traffic from the pedestrian traffic though. Like some kind of low concrete barrier that would actually curb an errant car's trajectory and direct it back on to the road.
Some are exaggerating a little bit how much a curb protects pedestrians... And yeah that's the correct approach but as I said this fast to implement, the rest can be done later.
In our local case we are talking about reducing car space in benefit of extra pedestrian space, although keeping safe distanced. Not like the picture were there wasn't pedestrian space at all to begin with.
Yeah but money though…
More like it was a guy who got flattened by a car and got painted over, because that's exactly what's going to happen if you try and walk there
I keep seeing joggers in my area choosing the bike lane over the sidewalk, presumably because asphalt is softer than concrete sidewalks. If paving a ped lane next to the bike lane is what it takes to isolate these wrong-way bike-lane-jogging scufflaws, then let's just do it and be done with it. We can cannibalize a car lane to make it happen. >:-)
Sidewalks in car-brained areas are super dangerous to jog on. People backing out of their driveway or turning across the road at 10-20km/h without looking. Trip hazards. Ankle destroying driveway cutouts or curved surfsces. Uneven grading.
Ya. I think it's more the cut-outs that they're trying to avoid. Hard to blame them.
Would running on the road be safer, though??
Running against traffic on the road improves pretty much all of these and puts the new threat (oncoming cars) under their control.
It does leave the runner vulnerable to cars turning right (in drive-on-the-right countries) though if they aren't hyper aware of it.
I'm a bit late to reply, but this is a great explanation. I always assumed it was just the softness of asphalt vs concrete on the knees, but there is absolutely a case to be made for visibility. It's unexpected as a cyclist, but I am 100% empathetic to the struggles of anyone not in a car, more specifically one of those Dodge Ram 3500s with smokestacks and truck nuts on the bumper that seem to be so popular right now. :-)
Who would use this? Wouldn't you either walk on the grass or clearly in the middle of the street?
I'd walk on the grass, the resistance is good for the muscles.
Imagine seeing this when house hunting and still buying the house. You'd have to have worms in your brain to want one of these ugly McMansions with no sidewalk
Oh these ain’t McMansions, they’re the “missing middle” it’s basically row houses but with car centric infrastructure
That doesn't look like middle-density housing, it's just slightly more dense low-density housing
If the garage is used as internal space, then row houses are plenty high enough density. The occupant could have a much nicer back yard without the setback (front yards are car infrastructure), but the road is not too wide, just awful to be on.
If we assume 1.8-2.1 people per house, then these blocks are about and 300m^2 with about 100m^2 out the front in tye public spacs e per house (property boundary to middle of road]. 5000 people per km^2 for the residential area, assume 50% as much commercial/parks elsewhere (~100m^2 per resident) and you're at over 3000 people per km^2
This is in the ideal missing middle range if a little bit low, it's just awful missing middle (that will probably also have its density ruined hy a sea of carparks in the commercial areas and a highway, but that's a separate issue).
Those aren't really "rowhouses" how I think of that term. They look quite wide, and have a fairly deep setback from the street. Additionally the street is very wide, and the development looks far too homogenous.
Whatever you want to call them, they share at least one wall, are two story, have a deep aspect ratio and side access on the other wall is minimal (if there at all). The only awful features are the set back and the giant garage (which can just be used for indoor space|.
No I haven't.
I think that's a "cycle lane" everywhere else.
Well, yeah, I figured that out. I was just pointing out that not everyone has encountered the term before.
Soooo...a sidewalk without the extra pavement?
Wow, I sure am glad that the kerb is there to protect those blades of grass!
Most of Britain doesn't have sidewalks. But there's a slight difference in the law... In Britain, pedestrians have priority on ALL roads at ALL times (except for dual carriageways, obv). Pedestrians can even legally cross the road on red light as all traffic control signs and lights are merely suggestions for pedestrians and not a requirement.
Who the hell designed this? I want to see the person who made this burn in hell
They are probably laughing on their yacht right now.
I’m guessing they call this “multiuse”? And I’m guessing it gets filled with parked cars immediately.
In my opinion, if this was done in a community that was not designed for sidewalks (the house are very close to the curb), then it's better than nothing. I'd like to see some bollards or post reflectors or something, but at least there is some effort.
On the other hand, if this is a new community and this is the sidewalk "solution" then fuck them.
Ideally we would have a car free utopia, but that doesn't happen overnight, so any step forward, even if it's a shuffle, is good, I think.
Each house has a driveway long enough to park in. Remove the pointless front lawn and driveway, switch to on-street parking, narrow the absurdly wide road a bit, and BAM, you got enough space for sidewalks, bike lanes, and trees. There is PLENTY of space on this street for everyone.
Well sure, if you were designing from scratch, but with existing neighborhoods, the city may not have the necessary right-of-way rights to do that, so what they've done here may be the only option, even if it could be executed better.
My point is that working to make cars less necessary is a process and if the only way a city can add a "sidewalk" is by carving it out of the existing road, then so be it. After all, by making some of the road devoted to pedestrians only, we are effectively reclaiming space back from cars, right? Isn't that a good thing?
They could have used the same space and created a proper (if narrow) sidewalk with it, instead of this death trap.
Poor Polish village style infrastrucutre, now in your nearest city! (Authentic hole ridden roads not included)
What hell would this be to walk in, jesus christ...
You can be lying inside this line just like that guy!
Ask for a bike lane and hopefully you can get multi-use gutters
if lines can keep out sea bears, obviously they can keep out these pesky pedestrians from getting in front of my SUV!
It's the Sea Rhinos you should be more concerned about.
oil
On the other hand, there isn't another option you have in that community.
This community is super walkable and is a good 5 min walk to a big grocery store too
indeed. it's a systemic problem, not an individual problem. we need a network of protected bike lanes, a fuck ton more transit, and zoning reform
Fuck those people for being middle class! /s
Places like this are all many of us can afford. Downtown is either expensive af or shitty. Schools in the burbs tend to be nice enough, there's enough room for kids and friends.
Yeah, there are other options, but most of us can't afford them or don't want to take the immediate lifestyle hit.
we need to densify the suburbs
"downtown is .. shitty" so move to the "shitty" area, help make it better.
unless you mean "I am prepared to live in a car-brained hellscape as long as my neighbours are all white" as most suburbanites have done through history, in which case please move into the sea
This is blasphemy. What should we call walking on the side of the road in some sort of designated zone?
"Asking to get hit by a car"
It is a joke...
Only in America
And Canada. Half the residential streets in my city don't have sidewalks, the rich folks get walking paths behind their houses so they don't have to mingle with the poors walking out in the street
I saw a similar thing on the Amalfi coast in Italy, though the roads are so damn narrow there idk how else it could possibly work.
Awesome, now bikers can roll over stickman nuts every day to work and pretend it's the boss.
Yo that's unreal
Fake or not in the US? It definitely looks like standard USA fare, but this is not a pedestrian symbol I've ever seen
Fake, but not terribly far from reality in some areas.
Anywhere upper middle class enough to have lawns like that will have proper sidewalks. But in poor neighborhoods, sometimes local government just doesn't bother spending money to make sidewalks at all. But they also don't bother to paint any lines in the road. It's just road - no sidewalks, no bike lanes, no whatever these are. Just roads.
It’s not fake, and weirdly enough it’s in a rich neighbourhood (or at least u need to be rich to be able to buy a house here)
It is exactly reality on some roads in my area. My town is growing and decently high income for the area, but some of the very first neighborhoods have drainage ditches along the roads rather than proper storm drains. So they are smaller, less expensive houses, but they are in the center of town with good access to everything.
So that leads to lots of sidewalks being built, trying to make things more connected and walkable, but certain roads have this exact “we painted a line and a walk symbol” sidewalk. The walk symbol looks correct though, not the weird one in the op.
Not in the US, but Canada!
You’ve heard of “fuckcars”? Get ready for “fuck_cars”!