I've never really understood this type of thought when it comes to safety. Simple self preservation should lead you to the same conclusion. When it comes to safety, the squishiest one loses.
We don't blink an eye when told to not stand under something being lifted by a crane, so why balk at being told to be safe around the two ton travelling metal boxes?
We don’t blink an eye when told to not stand under something being lifted by a crane, so why balk at being told to be safe around the two ton travelling metal boxes?
Nobody is saying that you shouldn't act safely around cars. People are saying we shouldn't design transportation infrastructure that prioritizes driver convenience over pedestrian safety. Cranes are only allowed to operate in much more tightly controlled situations than drivers.
I take it you've never been on a job site, because there is a TON of infrastructure and protocol that cranes and crane operators have to follow to make sure everything is as safe as possible.
You need to have extensive training to be allowed to do overhead materials handling, the ground conditions need to be thoroughly checked, the job site needs to be planned and laid out, in general there are a ton of constraints and checks to make sure that there is virtually zero risk that a random person could accidentally walk into a danger zone and get hurt.
That's pretty much the exact opposite as with cars. Pretty much every parking lot I have ever been to is front-loading, which REQUIRES that pedestrians have to cross the main driving path to get to their destination and there is very little training and certification required of drivers compared to crane operators.
Pretty much every parking lot I have ever been to is front-loading, which REQUIRES that pedestrians have to cross the main driving path to get to their destination
Do you have an alternative in mind? Because the only one I can think of is to move the whole sidewalk.
Don't be so quick to make assumptions.
Have you never been in a shop that uses bridge cranes? I can see a half dozen 200 ton versions from where I'm standing now. At best the operator might hit the warning buzzer. And no, there's no formal training requirements to use them.
The poster is alluding to other approaches to road safety. You can prevent fatal interactions through infrastructure and city design. Failing to do so and pinning it on everybody outside of a vehicle is absurd.
Of course, we all need to be mindful of dafety, no matter what form of transport. But our roads are designed and the dialog is set up so that all responsibility is focused on pedestrians and cyclists who aren't the ones in control of a potentially deadly machine.
Simple self preservation should lead you to the same conclusion. When it comes to safety, the squishiest one lose
Also, this is a dangerously devoid of any sense of responsibility. It sounds like what someone would say after blowing a red light and running someone over.
The dead don't care about responsibility, and hence I'm not really commenting on it. I'm just saying it's not in your own best interest to rely on others for your own safety, when it's entirely possible to handle it yourself.
I should be mindful of my own safety, yes, but also we should improve overall safety by having proper urbanism
Because the driver is it immediate and instant control of the vehicle and should be expected to stop on a dime when someone runs in front of them while starting at their phone or looking at some stray cat that's not on a leash.
Human is also operating that crane. You wouldn't trust the operator AND the machine to work flawlessly enough to walk under the load
The stationary crane comparison doesn't carry over to dangerous machines in the context of transport.
The only proven way to make cycling and walking safe is by separating motor traffic from other modes of transport, by way of cycleways along main roads, and filtering minor roads to restrict through-motor-traffic.
When you have no such safe infrastructure and the entire dialog is "be careful around those dangerous cars", then there is clearly a problem.
You're right in that there should be safe space for pedestrians and cyclists to travel, but it's exactly the same reason as the crane case: to keep them safe from dangerous cars and other heavy vehicles.
Repeating again, I do agree with your point but the reasoning you used was just wrong. You don't walk blind in front of a moving car because it's fucking dumb thing to do. There's an imperfect human driving a 2 ton imperfect vehicle traveling at high speed. You WILL always lose if anything goes wrong, were you right or wrong.
Who is saying it's OK to walk blind in front of a car? Nobody is claiming you shouldn't be wary around vehicles because we all know how dangerous they can be. The point is that telling pedestrians to be careful is often a substitute for a complete lack of action on safe infrastructure.
That's not entirely the case that we put everything on pedestrians.
If a car drives over a family the driver is going to have a trial for manslaughter charges. The driver is liable for their injuries and they legally have to have insurance to cover that.
Cars need to get safety tested, need to be licensed, drivers need to be licensed, etc.
It would be difficult to kill someone on a bike or walking by comparison.
You'd be shocked at how little traffic violence is treated as manslaughter. In Ontario, Canada, a lady only got a temporary driving suspension for driving through a group of girl guides at 120km/h in a school zone, killing one and injuring several others. The driver even denied responsibility in court.
The public dialog is still that pedestrians and cyclists need to be careful around cars with victim blaming when people are hit. When school starts, the kids better be careful. Where are all the signs and messaging around how drivers need to be careful? I constantly see drivers speeding and rolling stop signs in school zones but it's completely normalized and shrugged off.
That story was about an 80 year old woman who got the wrong pedal, she wasn't cruising at 120 just flying down the road. She shouldn't have been driving at all.
You're not wrong though.
What the fuck are the tests and license for if this person is able to obtain one. We need stricter testing and license requirements
No disagreement there.
I’ve always felt we should retest frequently even for healthy young people.
Traffic laws change. Street signage changes. Car safety features change.
It’s in all of our best interest that people aren’t driving with 25 year old ideas and 25 years of bad habits.
If a car drives over a family the driver is going to have a trial for manslaughter charges. The driver is liable for their injuries and they legally have to have insurance to cover that.
This rarely happens (at least, in Canada), from what I've seen in recent pedestrian and cyclist fatalities.
For starters, most are hit and runs, and often go unsolved.
When someone is caught, they almost never see a manslaughter charge. To add insult to injury, they'll usually get a traffic violation and not a criminal charge. Failure to obey a road sign (even if that caused someone to die), for example.
And any consequences for actually killing someone tends to go with the lightest jail sentence you can imagine.
We had a truck driver kill sixteen people. He was sentenced to eight years in prison, but only served 3. Less than six months for every person killed. He would have gotten more if he hit someone's mailbox.
I've heard of testimonies where people who have had their partner killed by a driver are not covered financially and any money that gets paid out goes to their insurance company, and not their family.
Being a pedestrian or cyclist in north america is incredibly high risk.