What blows my mind is there are small towns all over America (like my own home town) that actively votes AGAINST putting in sidewalks between commonly walked sections of town. One local resident even stated they "don't want poor people walking in front of my lawn all the time!"
My brother was cycling one night, just grabbing some groceries, and he ended up being hit by a pickup and died on impact. Because of that, I ended up pursuing a degree in civil engineering, and am now working towards a masters in transportation engineering where I am researching cyclist safety. Not a day goes by that I don't miss him, but at the same time not a day goes by that I am not thankful to be working in a capacity where I might be able to prevent someone else from experiencing that same fate. Thank you Rob for making engaging content that works for people of all backgrounds and technical experience and that helps more people consider our built environment.
You should plan a visit to Copenhagen or The Netherlands. Cycle for a few days in these locations and your head will spin! It's truly nirvana for the two-wheeled crowd. Although I've never taken the "bicycles shouldn't mix with traffic," approach to transportation safety, these models make for a VERY strong argument. (I don't like the segregated safety approach because it lets drivers off the hook. Drivers are ALWAYS near people, so if you let them act like animals, they will continue to injure, maim & murder, even if you have separated bike & pedestrian paths everywhere.) But effective transportation models exist that promote sensible means of getting around that also promote happy, healthy lives.
@@dudeonbike800 funny, I actually studied abroad in the Netherlands this past summer. Never got the chance to make it out to Copenhagen though. You make a very real point about separation though.
@@jjrneptune Did you cycle? I can only assume you did. I spent 10 days in Utrecht last year on our tandem and it was incredible. I've ridden in The Netherlands and toured Europe by bicycle before, but I was still amazed. Riding with everyone was like riding in a Pro1/2 field. Everyone holding their lines, no squirrels, no yo-yo or anything. In 10 days of cycling among thousands of cyclists, all weaving in and out and co-existing, I never saw a single crash. Yes the Dutch can ride! But the infrastructure sure doesn't hurt either! Wow, what a place!!!
@@dudeonbike800 I only got to bike around a little, but it was a delight. Significantly nicer than my bike to school here in the states. I absolutely love how the people out there move around each other though. Everyone picks up on everyone else’s body language because everyone knows how to ride a bike so it all just works.
NGL, this was kinda hard to watch. My daughter was killed as a pedestrian in a crosswalk in 2015. She was hit by the same bus that had just dropped her off near the intersection. Unfortunately, it was night, the intersection was not lit well, and the driver didn’t see her as he made a right turn. Hard as it was to watch, I’m glad you made this video. I hope it raises awareness and helps to bring pedestrian safety more to the forefront.
I'm so sorry to hear about your loss. As a parent, losing one of my kids is an absolute nightmare. I can't imagine the pain you've had to go through. Lots of love from the Netherlands.
I lost 2 friends and was injured because some drunk hopped the kerb, and drove down a pedestrian path along I-74 across the Mississippi River. It was a brand new bridge, absolutely beautiful. Not a single bollard or anything to prevent it. That's since changed, but just 1 of those concrete posts on the bettendorf side, and they'd still be here. They are 2 of the 2022 stats. It happened very early in the morning but the path was well lit. The driver is definitely at fault, but so is the lack of infrastructure to prevent it.
@CharlesB9496 I am very sorry for your loss. I also live in the Quad Cities & this horiffic collision could have easily been prevented if designers AND government officials would give a crap about transportation safety, especially pedestrians & cyclists. But they just do not care. Tragically, we've normalized traffic fatalities as "just a part of life" in the United States 🇺🇸 . Every year, nearly as many people die (pedestrians, cyclists & motorists) in traffic crashes as our total combat deaths from the Vietnam War. Many more are severely maimed or injured. Yet there is no sense of public outrage. When we advocate for policies like complete streets, Vision Zero, or the like, elected officials say we're being "impractical" or "too idealistic" and that these policies are "too expensive." We can not ever put price on the lives of the friends you lost. However, by some estimates, on average, every individual in the US generates something like $3 to 4 million in economic output over their lifespan. You'd think *THAT* consideration certainly would motivate more priority public safety, but it doesn't.
People are also forgetting that pedestrians have the right of way. My mom got hit the other night crossing at a crosswalk by an old guy who thought he could turn left because his light was green. Thankfully, she’s just a bit bruised. I also saw a guy almost get creamed out in New Orleans the other day by someone that decided to make a left turn because I wasn’t going. I wasn’t right turning because there was someone in the crosswalk. I really thought he was going to get hit.
News flash, the only people I know who shrug and use that "right of way" excuse are parents who never taught thier kids to look before crossing the street. Is that obsolete now because you can just sue the driver for heaps of money when they hit your kid? Good to know that they are worth more to parents dead than alive. They still teach defensive driving for a reason, because there will always be idiots behind the wheel, but teaching kids situational awareness has been obsolete, for more than 30 years and that "it is everyone elses responsibility to keep my kids safe" attitude is getting people killed. (I used to be a teacher, so don't tell me I don't know what I am talking about.)
@@rosameryrojas-delcerro1059 Even if you look both ways, some asshole on a smartphone might hit you because they decided that would rather pay attention to their phone instead of the road.
So? Then your family will be justified in suing the driver. If you did nothing (or did not teach your child that idiots exist and that they need to look) then you would be 50% to blame for the accident, because if you had seen the idiot, you would have stayed on the curb. Your argument is just another "it is everyone elses responsibility to keep my kids/me safe". I don't have to do shit, I/my family can just sue the hell out of them after I weep enough on the 6pm news. FISHING for reasons to sue someone is what that is. Litigious spaz.@@ballsquid4135
Could touch screen dashboards be a contributing factor? They seem like a huge step backwards in safety, requiring the driver to take their eyes off the road to do anything.
I'd be surprised if it was more than a few percentage points. Anything distracting could contribute but I would venture to say that most of the time people aren't adjusting their car settings so the statistics would probably lead elsewhere.
Yeah, many manufacturers don't even give you the option to buy a smaller car anymore. It's a giant SUV or nothing! The law that incentivizes building giant vehicles needs to change. It's bad for everyone. And I heard on a city planning channel that people are distracted while they drive because they would rather not be driving at that moment, which is a great point. If they had public transit to ride where they were going, they would have been free be on their phones.
It’s not just the incentives for manufacturers. Because survival of an accident is largely a matter of relative mass, people who drive smaller vehicles are significantly at risk. Even if you don’t need or want to drive an SUV or truck, there is a temptation to upsize just to improve the survivability of accidents with other large vehicles.
@@amicaaranearum There are a few basic changes that could make SUVs less terrible (like the front Actually Slopeing Down so the blind spot is much smaller and impacts less lethal). They'd still suck, but they'd suck Less. Or just making small vehicles with stronger frames and panneling (sure, fuel efficiency goes down, but apparently people already don't care about That!) in the relevant parts for increasing accident survivability.
To be fair, while the really small cars are disappearing, automakers do still sell moderately sized sedans, crossovers, etc. But the really gigantic trucks and SUVs should absolutely require a commercial or some other type of license to drive with more stringent safety requirements. Anything the size of a modern F150, Chevy Tahoe, or larger should not be driven by any rando with a standard license. Every day, both as a driver and as a pedestrian, I see so much dumb, risky driving behavior that I wonder how these people passed both their written and driven test!?
@@amicaaranearumI don't fully buy larger/heavier cars being safer. If an accident occurs, you will want more mass. But I'd argue an attentive driver in a light car will be able to maneuver away from potential or imminent crashes easier than a driver in a heavy car. Even if that's cope, the more people subscribe to that idea the truer it becomes, as there will be less and less big cars on the road.
@@wrong1029 yeah, it’s a self perpetuating problem. The arms race for mass and height on the road. But North Americans seem to have an acute problem in seeing how their individual choices affect other people and society at large. I see this in so many areas of life, even among friends and family I generally love/admire. It’s a really unfortunate societal character flaw.
A lot of drivers have lost respect for the fact that they’re piloting 2+ tons of fast moving metal. Even with smaller vehicles, one has to be aware that they’re throwing around a lot of kinetic energy. Unfortunately, attitude is a far more difficult problem to address than technical knowledge. You can put everyone in classes for many hours, but if they don’t respect the forces they’re wielding, there’s little point.
A lot of pedestrians have lost respect for killer machines that are hurtling down highways. Almost lost a friend a few years back. He lived luckily, but even he agrees that if he'd been paying attention would have prevented the distracted driver from hitting him
Yeah, I have noticed an uptic in overly aggressive driving. Even in my small town, I see people blindly whipping cars around corners, going down narrow roads at speed greater than 30mph, driving the wrong way on my one way street (and usually fast) because they dont feel like going one street up to use the proper street. Its ridiculous. Kids play on these streets, elderly walk on them, people are getting in and out of their own cars to go into their homes. I shouldn't feel nervouse mowing my front lawn in a town like this, yet I do.
Humans are not evolved to travel at superhuman speeds or pilot contraptions that go more than maybe 15 mph. If you're bombing down the highway at 65 or 70 it's simply not possible for you to react quickly enough to avoid collisions. Compound this with what @Lauren_C mentioned about ignorance of laws of momentum and inertia and pedestrians are just gonna die.
Pedestrians too, have a responsibility to pay attention to traffic. The cellular phone has to be among the top contributing factors to pedestrian/vehicular accidents (by BOTH the pedestrian not paying attention to traffic and drivers texting). I see pedestrians in my city all the time who step off the sidewalk into an uncontrolled (no traffic light) cross-walk, their faces firmly planted in their phones, without looking in either direction for traffic (waiting for traffic to stop) before they did so as if the cross-walk has some magical power to protect them. They are asking for a posthumous Darwin Award. Even at controlled intersections, if a car is making a LH turn or RH turn opposite, I always make sure I have eye-contact with the driver before proceeding through the crosswalk. I'm more than half-way through this video and not once did the issue of pedestrians walking on the WRONG SIDE of local/rural roads without sidewalks, even come up. I was taught as a child in the '60s that when walking on a road that has no sidewalk, to walk on the opposite side of the road, towards oncoming traffic, so that you can see and react to traffic if it ventures onto the shoulder (you do not have eyes in the back of your head, so you can't see what's approaching from behind). Nowadays, I am completely baffled by the number of stupid people (adults) I come across on local rural roads walking on the RH side of the road, on the shoulder, with their backs to oncoming traffic. They too, are vying for a posthumous Darwin Award.
My friend died from this (last year 2022). I am very anxious while driving, and take much more responsibility to pay attention, and slow down significantly around people. This topic is very relevant for me. There are a few crosswalks with bright flashing led lights, activated for 30s when someone hits a button. These should be on every major crosswalk, even signaled interchanges. Right turns are blind to pedestrians, due to stopped cars in the straight lanes. No one stops before the crosswalk to turn right. They drive way through, no looking, up to the edge of the perpendicular lane to watch for cross traffic. This is a catastrophic technical flaw, for both the drivers, for traffic design, and even for people walking.
Driving is such an anxiety inducing experience. I would choose not to every time but in so many circumstances it's literally impossible to get where you're going without a car. I hate it and hate to think about what would happen if I hit someone or got hit
One thing I've noticed as well is that is that car headlights (ESPECIALLY trucks and SUVs) are so much brighter than they were even just 5 years ago. Sometimes at night when an oncoming truck is passing me in the other lane I can hardly see in front of me at all. If a pedestrian was crossing while I was being blinded like that I'd probably hit them. I have to imagine extremely bright LED headlights have to be contributing at least a little bit to the increase in nighttime fatalities.
Believe it or not, fuel economy regulations play a big role in why cars are bigger because they’re lenient on bigger cars. The mpg requirements for small cars are so extreme that manufacturers simply discontinued them (like your Fit) and the only way to keep big suvs compliant is to make them even bigger. I actually did a video on this
@@Flash1857 yeah they wanted to keep trucks from getting hit too hard which would drive up costs for people who drove bigger trucks, which before that it was typically people who did work stuff that drove the super duty sized trucks for a very long time. For perspective on this bloating, I drive a Chevy Colorado Z71 and its as big as a 1990s era Chevy 2500 full sized. I doubt GM will ever revive the S-10 in the US. Though if the Ford Maverick is any evidence, a Revival of the S-10 would absolutely have sales numbers
It's almost like these well-intended regulations cause a bunch of unintended consequences, and largely need to be scaled back so people are free to make their own informed decisions. Rather than being viewed by lawmakers like a society of Sims who need constant correction which only perfect people like them could ever offer.
Seeing people at night has become a real struggle for me. All these newer cars have super bright and blinding lights, many of which trucks and SUVs at eye level, make it extra difficult to see people in the dark. Also all these newer electric trucks that weight 7000lbs and can go from 0-60 in 3 seconds are pretty terrifying to think about.
To add onto the SUV/Truck thing, a lot of people modify the suspension of their SUVs/Trucks and never adjust their headlights. This means that their headlights aren't setup properly. It's really obvious to spot yet police do absolutely nothing about it.
pedestrian infrastructure in the US is so insanely bad compared to Europe it almost feels like this is partially intentional to scare people into buying a car at all cost.
People have already had the cops called on them for walking in the US, thinking they were suspicious-looking. That’s how bad car-culture has gotten in the US.
The rise of truckasaurus Rex is a concern, but I think a large part of the uptick at 2020 is that everyone forgot how to drive during covid lock down. We really should have practical driving tests more often than once at 16.
The real reason so many more fatal collisions occurred on roads during covid is due to the decrease in traffic. It turns out the horrendous traffic on suburban roads was also the only thing keeping them safe due to the slow speeds. Once traffic cleared out during lockdown, the speeds increased significantly leading to many more fatal accidents.
My state doesn’t give driving tests anymore at all. It’s strictly based on age. Any adult can just pass the written test and pay the fee. Teenagers still have certain restrictions, but not a driving test
This is a topic that I really talk about all the time. I live in a suburb residential neighbourhood with a small rural roads without sidewalks and many shopping outlets nearby and even a trail park. Yet there are no sidewalks and it makes it hard to walk to shopping outlets less than half a mile from my neighborhood, which is absurd since many people walk there near cars going about 30+ miles even up to 50 miles even though the speed limit is 30. This is really an important topic that many cities aren't taking into consideration. Thank you.
Another factor that you did not mention: the 2010 law that pushed Americans from cars to trucks also made those trucks larger and heavier. Surely the increased physical size of automobiles over the past 15 years has an impact.
He hinted at this when talking about the rising popularity of SUVs and trucks, but there is a video by Not Just Bikes that goes into this in more detail.
Sedans and hatchbacks are designed to flip pedestrians up onto the hood if struck. But with SUVs and trucks there’s nowhere for them to go except under.
Not true. Look up the GHSA statistics used in this video. There is no statistical difference between class of vehicle and fatality count. Each vehicle type is responsible for percentage of fatalities equal to their road usage.
@@TheBaldrif smartphones were the leading cause, you would expect to see a trend in increasing pedestrian deaths in many countries correlated with increased smartphone adoption. But in most European countries, pedestrian deaths went DOWN over the same period that smartphone usage was increasing. The US trend in increasing pedestrian deaths is an outlier, so we should look for factors unique to the US to explain it, such as our increased adoption of light trucks and increasing size of vehicles.
I drive a box truck for a living so let me help you out. Its driving habits. Things that people used to know to do they don't do anymore. I rarely see people stop BEFORE the crosswalk. Most people don't stop BEFORE the sidewalk when pulling out of a driveway. I see way to many people run stop signs and red lights. I see ALOT of people turn right on red without stopping. I had a lady in a van once yell at me to get out of the street while I was riding my bicycle in the BIKE LANE. I have to go through a training course to drive my truck.The problem is driver training or lack of it.
The police in Provo, UT frequently did the right turn without stopping or looking to the right when I worked there. One time I had started crossing when the pedestrian signal changed I ended up jumping back in time to only get brushed by the side mirror. They never saw me.
@@jerseykevin27 You didn't watch the video or try to consider any systemic reasons. There are entitled people in every country, yet we seem to be getting the brunt of this problem in the first-world. Our obsession with "just make people individually responsible" is a damning indictment of our culture.
I was skeptical of this information, because some statistics only compare "apples to apples" so poorer countries aren't counted, but I just checked mine (Brazil, which isn't exactly poor, but definitely not wealthy) also dropped the number of deaths in the last decade. Very interesting.
15:15 John worked for an "unnamed" EV manufacturer! We all know who he worked for. Road Guy Rob was very clever, because he never said the word Tesla himself. Don't get any copyright strikes Rob, we need you!!
It seems almost criminal that on all these back roads they don't just pave a 4-6' wide multi-use strip off to the far edge of the right of way. They have the space and the area is already graded but they never build a small pathway when the road is paved which would be the cheapest, easiest way. If it every happens it's decades later when someone wants to have a ribbon cutting and they spend millions overbuilding a tiny segment strong enough and flat and wide enough to drive a semi-truck down it.
One of my favorite things people do is not say the name of a specific company and blur out the logo, only for it to be 100% obvious who they're talking about. Not only can you see the name TESLA through the blur because of the large black text on white background, but John Bernal just straight up says he was testing a Tesla too, that's hilarious. Keeps him out of legal trouble and everyone else is more informed about these companies.
He also said "Unnamed Fremont, California based Electric Vehicle Manufacturer". That's about as close to saying Tesla as you can get without actually saying Tesla (though Tesla did move their HQ to Austin, Texas, so that's not actually 100% true anymore). I agree with John that self driving tech will eventually make cars safer, though I also think companies like Tesla play way too fast and loose with what truly is a really hard problem. Probably doesn't help that their CEO keeps making ridiculous and unrealizable promises about when they'll be ready and seems to have very little idea of what actually goes into doing advanced tech (of all sorts). Not to say that what Tesla has managed to do isn't quite amazing - the videos I've seen really are amazing. But self driving is a really hard problem that's going to take alot of time to get right and isn't the sort of thing you can just put a timeframe on - the tech will be ready when its ready. I think you need innovators pushing the edge, but then you also need careful people refining the tech to make it rock solid. Both are kinds of technology, just very different. Tesla doesn't seem to have enough of the second kind.
I saw a video (was it @RoadGuyRob? Not sure) where they explained that those "click on photos with [commonly encountered item in public]" things that they have you do online after checking the "I'm not a robot" box (would be super easy to train a robot to check that box anyway, but that's another matter) are actually helping to train self-driving cars to recognize those objects. They should obviously use those to help to train self-driving cars to recognize barriers, too - and, I would add, people dressed up in costumes, given how many times that @RoadGuyRob has broken out the chicken suit when doing pedestrian videos (and one time breaking out a gorilla suit to do a traffic light video!).
It may seem preposterous to censor it like that, but since keeping out of legal trouble is all that matters here, it makes perfect sense and 100% accomplishes the goal.
Thank you for adressing the suv/truck impulse spending causing safety problems. We really need to be offering deal to people to buy safer smaller vehicles, not just to reduce emissions but reducing fatalities as well.
@@ghost307 that’s why I said size and not weight. EV subsidies do need to be phased out and replaced with a carbon tax, but that’s another thread altogether.
As far as the trouble at night, I'd bet that even if it's not the main culprit, light sources that compete w/ a pedestrian (well lit or not) have been on the rise. I've wondered if insanely bright headlights have anything to do with this. Headlights on your own car are good for seeing what's in front of you, but from an oncoming vehicle, modern LED/Laser headlights (I don't mean the high beams even) are bright enough that my eyes don't adjust to the actual darkness. It's made worse by the typical height of headlights on trucks/SUVs since when they're in the rear view mirror of my normal, sane car the high beams might as well be active due to the angle. Aside from this, a ton of cars also have absurdly bright infotainment screens even at night (the worst offenders having max brightness by default, white background, no automatic switching to dark mode). Digital gauge clusters, but even the analog ones thru the 2010s, got brighter and moved from often being red or orange to being white.
Not to mention a lot of people who buy those really big trucks and use them to tow trailers don't know to readjust their headlights to counter the natural tilt that the front of a truck experiences when a load is on the hitch.
As someone who drive at night for a living, I can SEE details on some of those infotainment systems, despite being in a different vehicle behind them. I couldn’t imagine driving with the sun right next to you 😬 And LED headlights have gotten considibly worse in the past 5 years, the biggest ones being the “automatic high beams”. Look, my daily driver has H6024 headlights, and my work truck H4651/H4656 combo lights. I can see more than well enough on unlit roads at night with these on Low beams, LED headlights do not need to be as dangerously brights as they are. Between your mentioned points, and the fact that I have troubles seeing the road when my mirrors are lit up like the sun, they’re more hazardous than helpful
I guess it's a double-edged sword, because thanks to the IIHS, headlights are much better now which should make pedestrians and obstacles easier to see. IIHS does significantly dock points in their headlight ratings for glare, though. I guess you can't get around the fact that there is a higher chance of glare if you're in a Civic and most people nowadays are in RAMs, RAV4s, and F-150s.
Completely agree. Additionally, texting and driving is far worse at night, because you are basically shining a flashlight directly at your face, good luck trying to use your peripheral vision. It's just yet another light source that makes seeing out of the care way harder.
Years ago i was walking onthe sidewalk by a large mall. Someone pulling out of the parking lot hit me. She was in shock and said she didn't expect anyone to be there. She didn't expect anyone to be walking on the sidewalk.
Modern cars keep their instruments illuminated when the headlights are off, leading to many people driving without lights on at night because they don’t know. People will step or pull out in front of a dark car because they are expecting cars to have lights on and primarily look for the lights.
I asked Virginia DOT to put in a crosswalk across a busy stroad between two shopping centers. Their response: "Intersection too wide for pedestrian refuge so crosswalk not warranted therefore pedestrian signals not warranted. Timing of signal will be reviewed"
Vdot if I remember correctly also has a ton of restrictions on what can and cannot be a bus stop because Richmond wanted to increase the amount of bus stops with benches that were a little bit more away from the road for safety and the elderly and they wouldn’t let them because there’s like a long list of items that need to be present to have that kind of a stop.
I wonder if the recent development pattern matters too. Most deaths are on those arterial roads, and the fastest growing cities (sunbelt area) are filled with arterial roads like you mentioned.
Absolutely. Sprawl development and auto-oriented infrastructure and development patterns are the root cause of most of the symptoms/problems around pedestrian injuries and deaths.
Concentrating development around arterial roads (or routing arterial roads through developed areas) is a recipe for fatalities, because it simply creates a lot of conflicting desire lines between pedestrians and fast moving motor traffic
@@RoadGuyRob Walk along... Sure. But cross? Not so much. Because for safe and efficient motor traffic movement you need to limit the number of controlled crossings, which is contrary to the desire to walk directly from one place to another.
I agree non motorized traffic is often overlooked out on rural roads I wanted to bike from my suburban subdivision in Everett (Seattle area) to Snohomish, WA to meet up at my swim club but I realized really quickly this wasn’t feasible Once neighborhoods disappeared and you got out into farmland the sidewalks disappeared and your only option was to walk on a dirt shoulder next to the road with cars whizzing around corners at 50 miles per hour. There was no way to safely travel between these areas unless you were going by car or bus. If there was a trail a few feet over from the road as you described it would have made it possible for me to bike between Everett and Snohomish without much worry
Just bike along the trestle! Nice and safe!😊 /s But yeah, too many rural roads don’t even have a 3ft shoulder to help with that. Lowell-Snohomish Rd is so dang narrow.
@@windywednesday4166 bicyclists are already licensed and insured. For their cars that they typically also own, and which are the more significant component of the extraordinary cost of modern roadways
I heard that since they started selling more of the larger pickup trucks, the number of fatalities has almost doubled since pedestrians tend to go over the hood when hit by shorter vehicles but are actually run over in larger trucks, etc.
Nobody I know under 30 was taught by thier parents to look both ways before crossing the street. None, and I used to be a teacher. I have been told by numerous people that it is the drivers responsibility to stop, even if a kid isn't in the crosswalk. So basically thier kid is worth more to them (the lawsuit for hitting thier kid) dead or disabled than it is worth to teach them situational awareness. They still teach defensive driving for a reason, but I guess teaching pedestrians to stay safe is obsolete in parents eyes. Just last week an 11 year old was hit crossing the street here. Looking at his phone, (according to video from a business) and didn't even look. Alot of the kids are being hit in school zones here also, drivers don't care and parents don't care.
@@rosameryrojas-delcerro1059entitled stupid driver meets entitled stupid pedestrian. I do think the shortsighted selfishness we have culturally is indeed a factor.
@@rosameryrojas-delcerro1059I am under the age of 30. Everybody I know my age knows this. My 4yr old nephew knows to look both ways. Parents and teachers of this generation and the one prior are absolutely still teaching kids basic road safety.
Where I live, a college town full of students without a car, it is very hostile to pedestrians. There aren't even any bike lanes. The campus is beautiful and very walkable, no cars. But outside of that it's just a typical American suburb. Before I had a car I would cycle to campus but again, there's no bike lanes, and the roads have heavy traffic, up to 45mph. There's only sidewalks. In the road I was on, the sidewalks were on only one side of the road too. I was on my way to class one day and another guy came from around the corner and we collided, our heads hit each other. It was no serious injuries luckily. But then a few months later, I was riding my little electric scooter(max speed 15mph) and I hit a big crack on the sidewalk I didn't see, and I fell and broke my arm. My forehead hit the pavement hard too, but luckily I was wearing my helmet and I didn't feel a thing. I have to be very careful not to hurt my head due to medical conditions so I was very lucky. Because of this, I am never riding my bike around town here again. It's too dangerous, especially for me in my condition. I really want to be able to walk or cycle around, but it's just not safe here.
My biggest concern is the lack of crosswalks. My town of maybe a couple thousand at most has three crosswalks. 2 street lights, one signed crosswalk. All are within a quarter mile of each other. There are sections of housing completely cut off from the rest of the town unless you run across a busy, 3 lane total, artery leading out of town. Also that section is too close to the schools for them to send a bus over, so kids can only walk to school or get a ride. Parents work mornings? good luck
In my city there's a crosswalk at every light, but it seems like 90% of people instead opt to run through 6 lanes of traffic instead of using the crosswalk 50 feet away from them
Where I grew up only intersections in the downtown area had painted cross walks and every intersection of the lone short four lane street. All street intersections had implied crosswalks and you could be ticketed if you went thru the intersection with a person in the "crosswalk". Then there was Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in the early 70's where the police dropped the hammer on any person caught going thru an occupied crosswalk - it was extra embarrassing on a four lane divided road (yes, both directions had to stop) with no pull off area, you were stopped and stayed there while the officer wrote up your ticket while two lanes had to work their way around you blocking one lane.
The town I live in is like that. There's a couple of crosswalks "downtown" (downtown being a cluster of strip malls, of course) but once you get to the more residential part of town... nothing. No sidewalks either. The speed limit is 35 MPH, but this is New Jersey, so people do 50. It's pretty bad. They're slowly working on putting sidewalks in the residential areas, but people are bitching because the construction is causing traffic. You just can't win.
Thank you for talking about pedestrian safety more and the crime that is American city planning and policy that encourages SUVs and pickup trucks. You’ve mentioned this topic in prior videos before, but it definitely deserves its own. I heard in a Not Just Bikes video that the 2020 spike comes from the fact that there was less traffic so people who drove could speed more often. Meaning the only thing keeping pedestrians safe on city streets was congestion that slowed cars down. We are so screwed.
@@NightlifeSux I agree. I don't really like him anymore after the whole "North America can't be fixed" fiasco, but his early videos about the basics of urbanism were better. Now he just bootlicks the Netherlands.
Doesn’t explain the jump from 2014, which was the same growth. A personal anecdote: I lived in NYC during the pandemic. Did not own a car, but I did fly through the empty streets on my electric scooter.
Americans seem to wait until a problem is blindingly obvious, and then start fixing it, and mostly doing it right. We are not screwed, but at this point we have to start fighting a bit more. Around here, when streets _have_ to be dug up, afterwards they typically improve them, with amenities like sidewalks and bikelanes. But major thoroughfares still are 7 lanes for cars and sidewalks that end prematurely.
RE pedestrian deaths at night: I do valet in Florida and drive cars every night that have their windows tinted illegally dark and I have to lower the windows to see out. There are people that even tint their windshield dark and you can't see sh*t out of the car...I think its a subculture and/or trend. Sadly the kind of people that tint their windows illegally dark are the same kind of people who are leaving the club at 1 in the morning while impaired.
I was hit by a car about a decade ago, this brought back a lot of rough feelings but you made so many good points that I had to watch all the way through. I'm glad people are here to bring awareness, but one day something needs to be done about the vehicles being sold here in the USA.
My city neighborhood is mostly residential but it was built back in the 1800s when everyone walked. Which means the houses have no garages or driveways for their cars. And the few that do they are too small for these now giant vehicles so they either park with their car hanging out into the sidewalk or on the street. And since the vehicles are also super wide the ones parked on the street are sitting halfway, and sometimes fully, on the sidewalk to allow cars to get through. So when I'm trying to walk through my neighborhood I have to either walk fully in the street or play this game of darting back and forth between the street and sidewalk because every third house has a vehicle blocking my access. Add in the fact that there's only a handful of streetlights, half of which don't work, and that it can get dark before 4pm in the winter it's dangerous just to go to the grocery store only a mile from my house. I used to be a crossing guard and even with my high vis vest, giant handheld stop sign, flashing school zone lights, and me standing literally in the middle of the crosswalk actively crossing children we still had to dodge cars going 40mph. And then those drivers would have the audacity to scream at me for helping children cross the street directly outside their school. The only time cities and town ever make changes is if the neighborhood is wealthy enough to pull some strings or enough people get killed. But we shouldn't have to "sacrifice" a certain number of children just to get some decent infrastructure. I've already been hit once and can't count the number of near misses, I'm tired.
They're driving 40 miles per hour past schools?! That's absolute madness! 😱 That's 65 km/h, faster than than you're allowed on most arterial roads in Europe. Let alone in front of schools, my country introduced a mandatory 30 km/h speed limit near all schools and kindergartens a few years ago, that's less than half as fast as they drive by your school!
@@LRM12o8 US roads are infamously terrible. European road design is so much better, especially when you're talking about raised crosswalks, brick roads and making the road narrower.
I'm so sorry you dealt with that but thank you for doing what you could to help those kids cross safely. I did not know pedestrians had right of way until years after my license. I honestly wish everyone had their own personal crossing guard. It would be hard not to recognize stop means stop. As is there's way too much ambiguity even in alot of light systems.
Giant and very powerful SUV and pick-ups, bad road design, cell phone usage, and if you want to kill someone a car is the way to do it. Basically since the laws are so driver friendly there is very little recourse. These are some of the major reasons why we have an increase in pedestrian death. I can definitely go on. Ohh and the lack of public transit is also huge.
cellphone usage is really just a subset of 'driver distraction'. And possibly not even a very big one, as accident rate increases don't line up with cellphone ownership increases. Driver distraction in general is a big contributer though, to my understanding... and many cars have electronic control systems that are Very badly designed, where the driver has to take their eyes off the road to interact with them to do Really Basic things (that in older dash designs would have been in the driver's field of view while their eyes are on the road, or could have been done by touch/muscle memory)
Not only do we need transit but we need dedicated transit infrastructure so PT can get people places faster than driving, making people less inclined to drive. Vehicle weight taxes could disincentivize driving for the vast majority of trips. A large portion of trips people take are less than 5 miles, which is easily bikable, and ebikes make that ride even easier.
@@laurencefraser Absolutely! I was just driving a 2024 Crosstrek for a loaner while mine was in for repair. The screen was huge, easily the size of a 12 inch tablet and the only things I could adjust by touch (physical controls) were the cabin temperature and the radio volume. Everything else was a soft button on the screen. Including the HVAC vent controls. Had to tap the vent icon button to get the options displayed, then touch the icon representing the direction I wanted the air to take. Not a problem while parked but more difficult while driving down the road and fog is slowly building up on my front windshield.
@@ambiarock590 Public Transit only really works in dense urban cities which just doesn't cover much of the U.S. at all. Sure, maybe you could make it work within the largest cities but up here where I live, it will never be able reach certain areas based on cost alone. But go ahead and keep thinking that everyone should be living exactly how you do and doing things the way you choose to. I personally make a two hour road trip every week. There is no PT I could take to make this trip, not because of the location but because of the times I do it.
I love riding my Harley. I was going down I-95 in Jacksonville, FL one day in the far right lane when the sadan in the middle lane suddenly cuts me off to try and jump into an exit lane. They didn't make it. Luckily, I was paying attention and was able to brake hard enough to avoid being sideswiped or run off the road. So, now I'm behind them in the right lane. I move over to the center and pull up next to the driver. It's a young girl driving with four friends. The driver has her phone in her right hand with a video playing. She's holding it up and they're all huddled around watching this video, including the driver. It was the most egregious example of being distracted by a phone that I have ever seen. And this was a few years ago before autonomous driving was a thing. I could not believe what I was seeing. They were all so distracted, it took me another exit to get their attention. Luckily, I keep a helmet cam going when I ride so when we pulled over at a gas station, I could show her what she did. She was very embarrassed so maybe she learned her lesson. She claimed to never see me. I also have dash cams in my car, including one for the cabin that records what I'm doing while driving. Also, I lock my phone in my glove box which means I have to pull over, turn the car off, take the key out of the ignition, and then unlock the glove box to get to it. The phone is just _too_ tempting. I don't care who you are, when that message alert goes off, it is instinct to just pick it up and glance at it. And that's driving distracted no matter how short the glance is. It is as bad or worse than drunk driving. I know correlation doesn't equal causation but the fact that pedestrian deaths went up the same year the first iPhone came out seems like more than coincidence.
Good on you for at least trying to make it a learning experience for that young lady and friends. I used to take my youngest son to various competitions, on the way we would play "spot the driver on their phone", we batted 1000 with transport truck drivers (that "little" wiggle of the steering wheel takes you from on one road line to crossing over the center line) and around 900 with car and truck/SUV drivers. I think that other 100 were drivers like my boss who "have to look" at the passenger they are talking to... once was enough with him, told him either I drive or don't ask me to go somewhere with him. I am bad at answering texts as it is so it is easy for me to ignore them while driving then forget about them until I pick up the phone when at where I am going for another reason. Calls, on the highway with minimal traffic I'll answer via the Bluetooth connection otherwise ignore or stop somewhere safe to call back. Cell phones - a useful nuisance 😜 - many people need to employ your method 👍
Your experience highlights another problem in America: arrogance and entitlement. I'd LIKE to think that just maybe this kid didn't get the instruction from her parents she SHOULD have gotten. My dad told us kids REPEATEDLY that you don't "swerve for an exit" on the freeway EVER! Your life is worth FAR MORE than a minute or two lost going to the NEXT exit, coming back and making the one you need. But did this driver ever get this instruction in the first place? Who knows. But she obviously wouldn't have heeded it since she thought watching a video while driving on the freeway was normal behavior. And just last week I'm in the #1 lane of two lanes behind a driver turning left. As we complete our left turn, the driver realizes they NEED to make a right at the next street 10 yards away. This arrogant driver simply slams on the brakes and expects everyone to stop so they can worm their way diagonally across the traffic lanes to make their right turn. All while clogging up about 50 drivers. Instead, this driver SHOULD have simply continued in their lane of travel, made either a left or a right at the next SAFE opportunity, and come back to the street they wanted. Nope. THIS DRIVER is too important for that! They want IMMEDIATE GRATIFICATION and will inconvenience as many people as necessary so they can make up for their poor planning and driving decisions. But your example is FAR WORSE. That kills innocents like you and even themselves. Unreal. Good on you showing her the error of her ways. Let's hope she improves her behavior and decision-making.
Yeah. Being on the road on two wheels is getting more and more dangerous as the standard of driving gets worse. Not to mention how there seems to be a trend of car drivers intentionally doing sh!t to mess with us now. Like, you pass them because they're dawdling, they feel wronged by this, so they decide to step on the gas and tailgate you as "punishment". It's happened to me a couple of times recently. Second time it happened, I turned down a paved pathway that's too narrow for a car to fit down. Guy must've been seething that he couldn't carry on following me 😂
Between auto manufactures going "yup every other driver will be just fine staring directly into the sun on our cars at every intersection" and the fact lyft/uber charges have tripled if not quadrupled in the last 5 or so years, yeah I can see why people are getting hit at night.
I think that modern car headlights are also a contributing factor. Many modern vehicles are now equipped with lights ranging from 5000K to 8500K in color temperature. At the extreme end of 8500K, that's like strapping sunlight on a completely clear day at noon onto the front of car and now its is shining sideways instead of down at the ground. It severely distorts the driver's depth perception and shadows are incredibly difficult to see with any clarity. This also pretty much mutes most colors to the point that some objects may not even stand out from the background until a driver to far too close to react. Did I mention that I'm talking about low-beam headlights? This doesn't even start to mention the Height at which these lights are mounted on modern SUVs and Trucks. I do not understand how there has not been any regulation made for modern car headlights in the US.
The USA only JUST legalized adaptive beam headlamps last year. you know those LED Matrix systems that Europe has had for like a decade that can alter the beam to not blind oncoming cars. Well that system was not legal in the USA for a long time despite being proven functional and safe the NHTSA still took a decade to approve them.
When I was in primary school here in the Netherlands we had 'traffic' lessons and the one thing I always remembered and I taught my own children (because this seems to have been dropped at schools) was that whenever there is no dedicated side walk you walk on the left side of the road. That way you can see oncoming traffic and step out of harms way. Also that as a pedestrian you are always the weakest party in any collision, even if it is with a bicycle or skateboard and will always lose. It may not prevent all pedestrian deaths but it is a beginning. Naturally the most effective way to reduce accidents is to have people (drivers and pedestrians and others) stay focussed on what they are doing.
I live in the US, I had to bike down a 6 lane stroad with a 45mph speed limit. There was maybe 6 inches of asphalt between the white line and the dirt (no sidewalk) and a semi truck doing 60mph missed me by 3 inches. 3 INCHES!!!!! That is the single closest time I came to dying in my life!
How many times of walking on the left and crossing the street to access locations on the right does it take for the danger of crossing the street to cancel the safety of walking on the left?
@@scottfw7169 You would think so, but actually the big advantage is that you see oncoming trafic and can step away from the road if needed. When crossing the road is required you (as you should always do) look left, look right and look left again as a minimum (just like they taught me and i taught my kids) before crossing. And off course only cross when you feel it is safe to do so. otherwise wait patiently until it is safe. Anyway it seems wiser to me than walking on the right (not seeing the traffic coming up behind you) and then crossing to the location on the left. When you cross you can choose when and where. When you walk on the left side you can see danger coming towards you. When you walk on the right you cannot see danger coming up behind you. And yes, anything can happen, a car can loose control and swerve across the road and hit you, but you can try to minimize the risk. Also when you walk left an occasional glance over your right shoulder gives you a better view of traffic overtaking you than when you walk on the right as then you nearly have to turn around to see what is coming.
@@zeeman1975 Point noted. Also a point to note, and I try to keep in mind myself, is that I have lived in a little farming burg for the last 16 years and this is a whole different ballgame from the suburbs or city. When I did live in the city, personal experience soon taught me to avoid crossing streets as much as possible; crossing intersecting streets while staying on the one side's sidewalk was bad enough, did not want to add crossing the main road to that.
@@scottfw7169 Yes I understand it. I also try to avoid crossing whenever possible. Luckily here in the Netherlands we have a lot of pedestrian crossings where you have the right of way as pedestrians and most drivers do observe the rules. However even there you have to look out. Anyway: nice discussing this with you. Stay safe!
Around here, I can tell you a few of the things I've noticed as a driver. In SC, Driver aggression has gone up since around 2020. People driving 10 to 20 or more miles per hour above the speed limit has gone from around a few drivers around me per drive to nearly everyone. I still drive the speed limit, but get passed by well over 90% of the drivers on every drive out and back again no matter which path I take. And the amount of hard-speeding, what I call the act of accelerating hard into 20+ miles per hour or WAY WAY more above the stated speed limit, has gone from one or two times every week you'd see them, to at the very LEAST 3 or 4 cars per drive out, and about the same coming back... if not much higher than that. Not to mention the aggressive lane switching, the lack of common sense stuff like using your blinkers to indicate a left or right turn or lane switch... Here's a road video for you Rob: Make America Blink Again, or MABA (started just for funnsies as a saying over at JoeyWhispers1776 here on TH-cam th-cam.com/users/shortsevQPcFWPvJM ). The sheer amount of stupidly aggressive moves is up by a LONG shot from around the moment that the streets cleared because of COVID, and no one has come back down to reasonable maneuvering since then. Not to mention how many times I see sheriff's deputies just letting either of these types of drivers right on by them. Why? I was told by one that "usually they are already on another call." OK, fair to some degree. So why don't we have more traffic cops, especially in areas more likely to see speeding like out in the rural areas where cops usually aren't at the moment? That I have no answer for and is a good question to ask. I'm sure there's a legit reason, but then... I've also seen the cops themselves with no lights on or anything speeding, tailgating me, then passing me to turn into a local convenience store to buy snacks and/or gas. So there's that as well... what happened to cops upholding the laws upon themselves as well as those they pull over, let alone actually doing the pulling over? COVID? To afraid to get the small timers due to that? I dunno.
Officers in low vis cop suvs are 100% in the dangerous driver group themselves. The lack of professionalism both in the choice of police cruisers and cops is astounding. Bring back crown vics and make cops go to school.
I've watched people use the right turn lane to pass a line, then turn left at the intersection, get stuck blocking set intersection when the light turned red, and not get pulled over despite doing this directly infront of a cop.... There is no enforcement on anything other than absurd speeding around Atlanta... But this stupid aggressive behavior started before I moved here in 2011 so it's not a new thing everywhere. A new highpoint was having someone tailgate me, honk, flash his high beams, swerve back and forth, because I was only going 2 MPH over the speed limit in a residential area a couple weeks back.... I try to not leave the house at this point.
Driving has become such a nightmare lately. I used to regularly drive 5-10 *under* the speed limit, and never had any problems. Now, even going 5 over the speed limit feels dangerously slow compared to the other traffic. What's absolutely insane to me is that people have even started using highway entry/exit lanes as passing lanes! I used to love driving, but the sheer amount of aggression, impatience, entitlement, and carelessness on the road for the last few years has become infuriating. Is it really that hard for people to slow down a little and be aware of their surroundings? Is putting themselves and each other through the constant stress and danger really worth it to get to their destination 2 minutes earlier? As my grandma used to say, "If they wanted to get there earlier, they should have left earlier."
@@AlphabetSoupABC the only people who drive 5-10 below the speed limit when there is not traffic limiting them are clowns that shouldn’t have a license and people with warrants.
9:39 One thing I noticed is in my country we typically don't have driveways and parking lots connecting directly to arteries. Instead, these either connect to the cross streets or service roads. This doesn't necessarily solve this problem, but it slows the cars down and potentially increases the attentiveness of the drivers before crossing the sidewalk.
I'd guess the biggest factor is increased homelsessness and drug decriminalization. Lots more people wandering around streets often in no state to safely do so...
One other new distraction is the touch screen, which on some cars must be used for adjusting heat/defrost, the radio, the GPS screen and other functions that a driver might want to access. More than once I've caught myself staring at the GPS rather than the road ahead!
I’m not fully convinced. Before a map you could talk to there were GPSs you had to interact with. Before that were street directories you had to look down at. Let’s be real, phones or not, the problem is SUVs and entitlement. Places that aren’t on the show pony sports “utility” and “light” truck train haven’t seen this increase in deaths, and it’s not for a lack of phones and HUDs.
@@Freshbott2 ehh, some new cars with touch screen interfaces instead of more traditional controls and displays have them designed and positioned so badly that they can't not contribute (they don't just offer an opportunty for distraction, they flat out enforce it), but I absolutely belive that the SUVs are a bigger issue.
People love their screens so they will defend them at any cost. It's not just the iPad glued to the dash, there is the interactive screen behind the wheel and then the phone holder clipped to the vent so you have 3 screens to look at. Then add a phone call on top of that. Take an Uber sometime.
I can't stand cars with screens. I drive a 2010 Honda CR-V which, while it is a mid-size SUV, it's certainly not huge, and I absolutely love the traditional tactile controls.
@@Mapmaker1559 bruh I put an Android Auto/Carplay head unit in and I’ve never found it so easy to navigate. I turn the key, my phone stays in my pocket. My maps and Spotify come up. I can just say where I wanna go. I’ve got music controls on the wheel. Heaven.
The lack of integrated thinking to accommodate non-drivers incents risk taking too. If you're at a "Don't Walk" signal or a quarter-mile from the crosswalk when the bus shows up, and the bus only comes once an hour you're going to run across the street in traffic to catch it because if you miss it you're screwed.
Honestly, this shows me that we need more research to link or disprove the correlation of crashes and cell phones. Subjectively, I believe that cell phones are a huge reason behind these crashes, but if RGR wasn't able to find any sources definitively linking them, then it's definitely an area I'd love to see more research on in order to confirm or debunk the hunch
@@qwaszx2 It can't just be homelessness and people walking because the increase in homelessness and walking comes after the increase in crashes. And there's definitely interaction between different factors given that non-US developed countries like those in Europe and East Asia have seen continuing declines even as the US still saw rises. And its also true that Europe and East Asia have just as ubquitous cell phone usage. My working hypothesis is it's an everything problem working together to make a perfect storm of bad results. In the US so many major streets neither cut off almost all pedestrians (like freeways) nor are pedestrian friendly (like city streets), but the big problem there is the suburbs more than rural areas simply due to population density creating more opportunities for crashes. Upsizing cars makes close in visibility worse (bigger blindspots especially right in front) even as long distance visibility improves which increases the problems of night time driving where visibility beyond your headlights is going to be bad negating the distance visibility advantage. Homelessness doesn't help which is related most strongly to housing costs in an area vs incomes and the point that homelessness spiked in 2022 (though by most accounts was quite a bit lower than normal in 2021) and is coming back down helped. But also lack of car traffic on the roads during the earlier parts of COVID meant what cars were on the road could go a lot faster. So what this means is we've got immediate problems, needing to reduce homelessness and slow down vehicles on arterial roads, medium term problems of encouraging smaller cars and fewer arterial conflict points, and long term problems, turning more arterial streets into either slower, denser business/population city streets or into fully separated highways, either policy would also tend to concentrate destinations in ways that make public transit a better option for more people and thus necessitate a greater share of funding going to transit. I do have hopes that because of the low traffic effects of COVID fading the highest spikes in deaths we've seen over the past few years will drop at least for a year or two, but that will only give us breathing room and won't help with the still way too high deaths we saw in 2019.
The data already supports the position, phones are everywhere. But deaths are growing where the cars are growing. I’m not attacking you personally, but it reeks of this typical dilemma. Americans putting yourselves through the dumbest punishment by forgetting there’s an entire world out there who already know better.
The scariest thing about the covid blip theory is that the reason ya'll don't have more accidents is that your roads used to be so clogged that people couldn't drive faster. During covid times, roads cleared up, speeds increased and as a result more crashes happened.
I'm loving how every time you have included footage of SLC, you can always catch a glimpse of Blue Stakes markings I personally painted. 3300 s between State and 1000 w is absolutely one of my least favorite stretches to walk through, specifically because of how dangerous (and mind numbingly boring) it always is.
well... if America ain't so car centric, there might be lesser accident with smart road layouts that basically traffic calm the vehicles to slow down for the peds to use it safely...
For anyone interested in digging deeper into pedestrian safety and the benefits of non-automobile transportation methods, I highly recommend you check out "Strong Towns" and "Not Just Bikes". This includes you too Road Guy Rob! I'd love to see your videos on roads include more non-car topics!
RGR is aware of NJB, and NJB is aware of RGR. There is a lot of agreement among both creators about what the problem with North American development is, where there is disagreement is how and where to fix it. But I do know that NJB is not going to collab with RGR anytime in the near future.
@@Awesome_Aasim Pretty sure RGR and NJB both agree that putting in sidewalks, multiuse paths, removing driveways on stroads, and having safer crossings are all good.
@@Awesome_Aasim As RGR said himself, he likes cars, and he likes driving. NJB doesn't, for the most part, so you've got two people who have made very different lifestyle choices and therefore are going to disagree on solutions. Plus a significant proportion of NJB's audience are very much the stereotypical car hating urbanist so probably aren't going to appreciate any collaboration.
@@Croz89 NJB doesn't hate cars; in fact he has a video on why driving in the Netherlands is so much better than most of the US. What I think they both hate are stuff like traffic congestion, overcrowding, pollution, etc. Where they disagree is whether it is worth solving North America's problems; NJB thinks it is not, RGR thinks about actionable steps to work toward safer cities immediately.
@@Awesome_Aasim I'd agree that NJB isn't as car hating as some of his fans, who really do fit the stereotype sometimes. But I don't think he *likes* them that much either, if you catch my drift. His arguments about driving in the Netherlands are at least partly predicated on the idea that people there drive a lot less on average, and many more people don't drive at all. I get the impression that he at least concedes that some people will need to drive, but he would not agree with a society where cars and driving are popular among the vast majority of the population. As an aside, I think driving in the Netherlands is reflective of the same reason the infrastructure as a whole is of high quality, there's a lot of people who are relatively wealthy living on not a lot of land. To get the same effect in the US you'd have to empty out most of the country and really concentrate the population into a few key regions, which isn't going to happen. The US has to spread its infrastructure around a lot more, so it has to look for cheaper solutions than what you might be able to do in a more densely populated environment.
Another factor not mentioned directly here is the increase in blind spots in modern cars. Get in a vehicle from the 90's or even 2000's and you'll feel like you have a full panoramic view compared to today's vehicles. This is especially apparent in sedans which already have less outward visibility than larger vehicles. Now, the A, B, and C pillars are also much larger and bulkier, among other things in the vehicle reducing visibility.
Ya, my current vehicle's left A pillar has obstructed me from seeing people and other hazards many times, and it's always frightening. Like even if I'm plenty vigilant, I literally can't see some hazards until they shift into view. This was never a problem when I drove a small Ranger pickup a decade ago.
@@LucMMailloux agreed. I drove a newer Tundra last year and nearly struck a bicyclist since he just happened to be moving at the perfect speed in the blind spot of my mirror and A-pillar on the road I was approaching. Luckily my wife saw him and alerted me. Oddly enough I had the same thing happen a few months earlier with an F350, except I was the cyclist and the only one paying attention.
something interesting about the chart on 5:19 - the spike that starts in the mid-2010s coincides with when high-pressure sodium (HPS) streetlights started to get replaced with LED lights, and when all new streetlights became LED only.
It's also when copper theft started to really skyrocket. At least in Hawaii we constantly have street lights that are out because thieves steal the copper wiring.
That bit where you tried out a light truck really reminded me of a Not Just Bikes bit. Hope you can collab soon! Your topics covered have a good overlap, ultimately urban planning and traffic safety go together hand in hand.
Smartphones were introduced around the world at the same time, yet pedestrian deaths by country only show the post 2010 spike in the US. So unless you believe that Americans are somehow unique in how they use smartphones while driving or walking, that can not be a major factor in the rise in pedestrian deaths.
Maybe it's not that Americans use phones differently, but that they magnify existing flaws in our roads, like bad intersections, excessive driveways, or lack of sidewalks.
Perfect timing! I’ve been working on collecting information and data to send to my city about the speeders on my street. Now they want to make it one way with ZERO traffic calming measures and they removed pedestrian crossing zones. They prioritized cars over people… What a shame
In the Netherlands (where I studied traffic engineering), which has one of the safest road networks in the world, they actually avoid putting marked pedestrian crossings on residential streets, because the entire street should be safe to cross as a pedestrian. This accomplished by physically forcing cars to stay below 18mph using narrow brick streets with abrupt curves and raised intersection. This actually makes no difference to travel times by car, because as per road classification, you only drive on a local street for a small distance to access your destination/origin, and reducing the speeds eliminates the need for stop signs. Nearly your entire trip should be on an arterial road or highway.
@@OntarioTrafficMan I'd love to see the US adopt those kinds of safety standard because they actually work at making places safer. I've heard the sad excuse of "We cannot have PT or safe roads like Europe does because 'We're not them.' which makes no sense from a city planning perspective or any engineering field (I think)
@@ambiarock590 Yeah it makes especially no sense in a residential context because the Dutch designs take up *less* space than American ones. So it's literally always possible to fit them
@@OntarioTrafficMan Right? Sadly most people don't actually put any thought behind their argument when they argue against going against car dependency since that's what they're used to and go to "We're just different than nations with PT" because we really aren't. That argument makes no sense in engineering.
They changed the lights from the old warm Yellow lights on our street to the new LED lights in our area. It is much harder to see under the blue tinted LEDS light's than the old yellow street lights.
I wished you just here used the "stroad" terminology here at 9:37 because these aren't really aterial roads. These are roads serving high speed traffic, with the services of a street. I think it's important to use the "stroad" terminology so we can effectively focus on what's wrong in all American cities: A bad lack of planning that sets up pedestrian threatning areas.
I wonder if urban sprawl has shifted traffic to stroads. Since stroads are the deadliest type of road, increasing the amount of traffic on stroads could contribute to the spike in fatalities. I know my own town has grown dramatically in the past 15 years as more and more people move out this way. (Many people can’t afford to live in the nearest major city, so they end up overflowing into new suburban developments.) New tract subdivisions are springing up everywhere, and the once-quiet country roads leading out of town are now congested stroads lined by strip malls, fast food restaurants, etc.
I dislike stroads immensely. They try to be roads (high speed connections between two places) and streets (complex environments where people actually go to) at the same time; and in doing so the stroad fails at being either a road and a street. You can have speed, or you can have safety; you can't have both. Pick one and design a street for it, you cannot build a road for safety and speed at the same time.
"Stroad" is not a technical engineer term. It's one author's clever term he uses in his book. If the profession adopts it officially, I'll start to use it more. Meantime, I prefer pointing out specifics wrong with the road (e.g., too many driveway accesses)
A contributing factor to vehicle selection in the US is that many manufacturers are not making or selling small cars in the US market anymore. The choices really have become so limited in terms of new vehicles you really only have a choice between a truck or an suv.
The problem with SUV's, Trucks and other big cars is they are generally built with the safety of the driver in mind. For years they have been pushed as the safest cars on the road and people generally care more about their own lives and families more than the people they hit.
There is a town called Astor in Florida. It is on HWY 40 where it crosses the St. Johns River. Every night you will find someone walking or riding a bike along the highway that has a 45 MPH limit not wearing any bright clothing or carrying a light. I don't know how many times I came close to hitting someone while on my way home from work at 10 pm. I'm tired, it's dark, and I've got people riding with bright lights going the other way blinding me. These people really do take their lives in their hands the way they walk or ride along that highway.
There's been an increase in reckless driving the past couple of years and especially the past year. Running of red lights is much more common. Seeing someone run a light that was fully red (not stretching a yellow) was extremely rare up to a few years ago. Now I see at least one a day if I'm outside for any length of time and I've seen as many as four cars go through an intersection after the light turned red, two that were a block away when it turned red.
As a road worker, who knows these dangers as well as anyone, I didn’t hear any mention of probably the biggest factor. Which is there are just more people LIVING in the streets than we’ve ever had before. So it’s no surprise.
As some others have commented, the problem is all the gadgets in cars these days. Want to change the radio station? Want to turn up the fan on the heater? It used to be you could do everything without taking your eyes off the road using "muscle memory." Not anymore. Manufacturers feel compelled to out-do each other by imitating the bridge of the Enterprise. Add to that the texting while driving and your car turns into a death machine. There's starting to be some blow-back on this trend to the point where some manufacturers are redesigning and undoing the ridiculous gadgetization and going back to manual controls.
The real problem is designing cities for the car, instead of designing it for the person. If you prioritize people, that means cars are less important in certain places, and it's safer for everyone else. When you design for the car, it's unsafe for anyone not in a car, and drivers grow accustomed to owning the places they go, which makes it even less safe.
the biggest contributor is cultural, although sheer numbers also have an effect. we are trending more towards a me-first culture, and that results in more people expecting other people to do the work of collision avoidance. we can build all the safety furniture we want, but as long as two people are both expecting the other to do the work of being safe, there will be a collision, eventually.
I agree. It seems like far too many people care about themselves in North America even when it comes to sharing the roads. Compare that to places like Japan where it seems most people care about each other and the number of road fatalities seems to be much less even though the infrastructure isn't that much different. Tokyo has practically zero bike lanes and plenty of stroads and yet it doesn't seem like there's many people killed or injured riding their bikes there because both drivers and cyclists watch out for each other and are careful around each other. Then you also see cyclists regularly riding their bikes on the sidewalk even in crowded areas and yet there's few problems between cyclists and pedestrians because again both are courteous and mindful of each other.
Streets belong to everyone, not cars. We need to repeal "jaywalking" laws everywhere and build safer streets. No more stroads! And no more lecturing about "personal responsibility" to lazily blame victims.
American modern infrastructure was built on stroads, so good luck there. Repealing jaywalking laws will create traffic jams all over the municipalities where previously there were none.
They belong to everyone BUT if you do use them then FOLLOW THE RULES of using them. There are rules for bikes and pedestrians and they need to follow the rules because the rules are there FOR SAFETY. And yes, if to choose to walk on a dark street, in a lane of traffic, at night, wearing dark clothes, you don't deserve to be hit but you WILL be hit.
In Fort Wayne, Indiana last year, a police officer (in an unmarked police truck) struck and killed a pedestrian. Security footage more than proved the officer was in the wrong. After trial, the police officer was fined $30. Records show the officer had multiple other on duty traffic violations.
I once saw a city bus wrapped with a reminder that if theres no sidewalk the saftest thing is to walk against traffic, a sad reminder that good public transit is no good without complimentary pedestrian infrastructure.
One thing that frustrates me is when emergency vehicles are out at night, their lights are so bright and pointed at traffic, so you cannot see any people that are walking around the incident. It would be nice if the lights facing drivers were not as bright, but they shined some bright light forward (direction traffic is moving) in the area beside the incident, so if someone was walking/standing there we have a better chance of seeing them.
Distracted driving is by far the biggest issue imo. Every one text and drives, looks at GPS or touch screen dashboards. Basically people do every thing but watch the road these days. Never mind speed limits are generally broken by at least 5-10 mph at all times.
These roads are all dangerous by design and put cars before people. Smaller vehicles will help, but the issue is fundamentally with design and car dependency in our culture.
I feel the same problem in The Netherlands (ironically). They think everybody only uses cars, public transportation or cycle here, except for central urban areas and more densely populated neighborhoods.
One of the hardest things to teach people (especially after theyre taught that all failings of a system are somehow the fault of the individual) is that no, looking both ways before crossing the street wont make the street any less dangerous if there isnt a sidewalk there in the first place.
Great video Road guy Rob; Where we live the drivers are getting worse by the day. If you're not driving fast enough for them they will ride inches off your bumper and some will take huge life ending risks just to pass only to end up stopped at the next red light as you roll up behind them. We are also surrounded by high speed freeways where they drive 80+ mph for hours and once they get off the freeway and drive two miles later they're at a 25 mph subdivision road and they're driving 50 mph as it seems very slow to them. It's always been dangerous on the roadways and lately it seems to be getting worse, much worse.
For me, driving at night has gotten worse and worse recently. It's mainly due to three factors: increasing numbers of harsher led lights over incandescent bulbs, vastly increasing numbers of drivers with fog lights on all the time, and LED screens in the vehicle. (All of these factors are summed up in one phrase: "Too much light pollution!") If you can turn your LED screen off, just drive out to the country side at night, then turn it off and drive back into town on the same route. You'll see far more of the surroundings. The light from the LED screens whites out the rest of your vision, so you're not able to see things that are perfectly visible if those screens are not on. Worse, even if you turn them off, it can take 30 minutes or more for your eyes to fully adapt to the dimmer lighting. Fog lights are (1) not aimed downwards, (2) more luminous per unit area than normal lights, and (3) poorly indicated, if at all, inside the vehicle. We need fog lights to be illegal to use at night unless there is fog nearby and we need enforcement of that law. We need manufactures to be required to put a dash light inside the car to indicate that fog lights are on. If fog lights are on, because of their different aiming and different luminosity, an oncoming car is subjected to more than twice as much light than if the car didn't have their fog lights on. Throw in the adaptation issue we have with going from light to dim areas and fog lights will blind a person while driving past them, and reduce their vision for a good time afterwards as well. LED headlights are harsher on the eyes. Increased strain leads to decreased vision. Many of them, at least to me, seem to be vastly brighter than incandescent bulbs. As an aside, a possible fourth category is that many, many drivers are starting to drive with their bright lights on at night, all the time. I suspect it's a reaction to all the above making it very difficult for them to see ... but they're only making the problem even worse for other drivers. It used to be the case that high-beam lights were physically separate from low-beam lights, so the police could easily tell if someone was flouting the high-beam laws, but nowadays, many manufacturers have them co-located. Add in LED glare in the officer's vehicle, possible high-beams, or LED headlights and it's nearly impossible to tell if an oncoming driver has high-beams on today, unless they're driving an older model vehicle. So, those people driving around with high-beams on are getting away with it and not learning to respect other drivers. The light atmosphere for drivers at night is horrible today and only getting worse. I can't help but wonder how many of those deaths could have been avoided if (1) uniform LED headlight luminosity laws are passed taking emission spectra into account, (2) fog lights must be off unless there is significant fog (indicators required from manufacturers), and (3) laws stating LED screens inside vehicles must be able to be switched off and must also be able to be switched on within specified luminosities (for example: the LED must be fully functional and on while emitting no more than 10 nits. The maximum it can emit is 300 nits.) Doing research, or passing legislation to eliminate light pollution from all sources (including screens, low-beams, high-beams, fog lights, and even lights along the roadside) and emission types (LED, halogen, incandescent, etc) would go a long way to decreasing night time accidents.
Since 2010 we've also seen a proliferation of bright screens in automobiles. Bathing the driver in light inside the car will absolutely make it harder to see things in the dark outside the car because their eyes are not adjusted properly. I've been in situations where the giant screen in the Tesla next to me noticeably reduces my ability to see. I cant imagine being in the car with that screen.
I did a tally for a month a few years back and found that 50% of the time I was almost hit was when people were driving out of a gas station followed by crosswalks. It only counted times when me not stopping would have resulted in being hit because they were too close to stop. Seeing the actual numbers and not being able to tell myself I was imagining it got me so mad at the drivers I'd slap the cars that would have hit me if I hadn't been watching for them. That stopped when a lady who didn't even slow down on her way from the pump onto the road look me in the eyes in her mirror then did a U-turn so she could drive in the left shoulder and yell about how I was going to pay big time once the police arrived. I gave up walking after an SUV clipped my backpack on its way out of a gas station even though I thought I had made eye contact with the driver.
AND kids are no longer being to "look both ways and only cross when clear". Kids these days are being weened on all cars stopping for them at their school bus so they get the idea that they always can just wander out and drivers are supposed to stop instantly for then....
Glad someone made a video on the GHSA report. I got into an argument with a coworker (he thought pick up trucks where inherently more dangerous). We looked up IHS and GSHA data and were shocked that pedestrian fatalities declined from 1980-2010, then just decided to flip trajectory and now we have more pedestrian fatalities than ever before. I find it more crazy that more people die at night now than in 1980. I thought lighting would be greatly improved from then.
At least in my city, if lights are even there, 70% of the time they are off and no amount of complaining to the city or state will turn them on. It's dangerous out here!
@@deltaalpha You are right, I neglected change in population. Using my same GHSA and IHS data sources but for vehicle on road count, I calculate a comparable figure of 3.6 in 1980, and 2.5 in 2022. From 1980-2020, in decade steps, I get 3.6, 2.6, 1.7, 1.4, 2.5 So we are safer than 1980, but we have still regressed to 1990 levels.
I noticed that you showed Amarillo. You are quite right---it is very pedestrian unfriendly. I like to walk for exercise. Apparently though, sidewalks are considered "optional" here. Many people here, are ripping out their sidewalks. They then scream at me for walking across their lawn (F---their lawn!). The absolute worst though, are the people who plant shrubbery out to the curb, literally forcing everyone to walk in the street. More often than not, they have vehicles parked along the curb, forcing everyone to walk in the middle of the street! I have tried to bring this to the attention of city officials. They essentially told me to F-O!
A friend of mine was hit by a car in a small city street, right after dark walking home. He died. A few months ago an 8th grader got hit right at sunrise, the car that hit him was driving directly into the sun and was blinded and did not see the red light. I wonder how many happen at dusk or dawn. The 8th grader died. He was taking advanced classes at the high school across the street.
"every hour Ford sells over 100 f-series pickup trucks" "that's one every 40 minutes" No, it's one every 36 seconds, obviously the intent was one every 40 seconds, but this should have been easily caught in editing Otherwise great video, very informative.
Canada did not see a comparable rise in pedestrian deaths since 2010, so I don't think the size of cars or cell phones are to blame since those trends were just as big in Canada as the United States.
Another factor to consider is SPEED! Many arterials are owned by the state, which sets speed limits higher than what the municipality wants, and also the municipality may have little option to change it since they don’t own the road. Distracted driving is no doubt a major contributing factor to this issue, but SPEEDING (as in, driving over the speed limit) is actually the most common cause of crashes, not distracted driving. Since 2020, people have been speeding much more, and this behavior has not returned to pre-pandemic levels. Great video as always!
About the pedestrian fatality rate. The increase in the USA isn't observed in the EU, it has been falling. So phones likely aren't the main driver of the trend.
As for the car vs truck thing. I have a Toyota Tacoma and Ford Focus. The A-pillar in the Focus is the size of a tree trunk and tilted flatter than a 45 degree angle. I CANNOT see pedestrians stepping into a crosswalk as I approach an intersection in that car. Hitting someone with the truck would probably injure them worse but I feel that the chances of hitting someone with the car are orders of magnitude higher.
I've been a truck driver for 10 years with a lot of night driving experience on rural roads. Something I've personally noticed is new LED headlights, while being much brighter, do not show a level of detail like older, more yellowish halogen headlights can show, I'll explain. My old truck (20Freightliner Coronado) had halogen headlights with a brownish / yellow tint to the light, animals and road debris/hazards were more noticeable as the colour reflecting back had more detail, and I could easily determine the oddities in the road or on the edge because the contrast was different enough. However, my new truck (2022 Western Star 49X) has very bright LED headlights, which are very white, I notice as I can see more of the road, everything has a very faded, low contrast look to it, and it is harder to really make out animals and debris, as the light reflecting back, is just as bright as the light I am putting down, and tend to blend in with the road and the tree line to the sides. I am not sure if anyone else is noticing this with new LED headlights (not to mention that it tends to blind other traffic even more too) but I thought it was something to point out and maybe look into? Thank you for another insightful video Rob!
SUV's and trucks are deadly and we have so many drugged out zombies wandering around compared to the past. Two things making the situation worse and worse.
From 6th - 11th I rode my bike all over town. Even now bc I still don’t drive, I walk most places & whenever I cross there’s always someone making a turn who almost hits me then they look more pissed off than me. I pushed the button to have the right of way. Car people are funny. They get mad to pedestrians & ppl on 2 wheels like they’re the ones who will die by impact.
What blows my mind is there are small towns all over America (like my own home town) that actively votes AGAINST putting in sidewalks between commonly walked sections of town.
One local resident even stated they "don't want poor people walking in front of my lawn all the time!"
so instead they walk on the lawn, because if a road has no shoulder than you are walking on lawns.
@@filanfyretracker Didn't say they weren't stupid
American mentality is such a dystopian mystery to me... 😐
@@LRM12o8 It's absolutely atrocious. Living in Texas is a nightmare for anyone who likes walking.
@@oakblaze433Walk on the grass if you like walking so much.
My brother was cycling one night, just grabbing some groceries, and he ended up being hit by a pickup and died on impact. Because of that, I ended up pursuing a degree in civil engineering, and am now working towards a masters in transportation engineering where I am researching cyclist safety. Not a day goes by that I don't miss him, but at the same time not a day goes by that I am not thankful to be working in a capacity where I might be able to prevent someone else from experiencing that same fate. Thank you Rob for making engaging content that works for people of all backgrounds and technical experience and that helps more people consider our built environment.
You should plan a visit to Copenhagen or The Netherlands. Cycle for a few days in these locations and your head will spin! It's truly nirvana for the two-wheeled crowd.
Although I've never taken the "bicycles shouldn't mix with traffic," approach to transportation safety, these models make for a VERY strong argument.
(I don't like the segregated safety approach because it lets drivers off the hook. Drivers are ALWAYS near people, so if you let them act like animals, they will continue to injure, maim & murder, even if you have separated bike & pedestrian paths everywhere.)
But effective transportation models exist that promote sensible means of getting around that also promote happy, healthy lives.
@@dudeonbike800 funny, I actually studied abroad in the Netherlands this past summer. Never got the chance to make it out to Copenhagen though. You make a very real point about separation though.
Hats off to you. This is incredibly admirable and we need more people like you, especially with the state of car culture in the US the way it is.
@@jjrneptune Did you cycle? I can only assume you did.
I spent 10 days in Utrecht last year on our tandem and it was incredible. I've ridden in The Netherlands and toured Europe by bicycle before, but I was still amazed.
Riding with everyone was like riding in a Pro1/2 field. Everyone holding their lines, no squirrels, no yo-yo or anything. In 10 days of cycling among thousands of cyclists, all weaving in and out and co-existing, I never saw a single crash.
Yes the Dutch can ride! But the infrastructure sure doesn't hurt either! Wow, what a place!!!
@@dudeonbike800 I only got to bike around a little, but it was a delight. Significantly nicer than my bike to school here in the states. I absolutely love how the people out there move around each other though. Everyone picks up on everyone else’s body language because everyone knows how to ride a bike so it all just works.
NGL, this was kinda hard to watch. My daughter was killed as a pedestrian in a crosswalk in 2015. She was hit by the same bus that had just dropped her off near the intersection. Unfortunately, it was night, the intersection was not lit well, and the driver didn’t see her as he made a right turn.
Hard as it was to watch, I’m glad you made this video. I hope it raises awareness and helps to bring pedestrian safety more to the forefront.
Rest in peace. I am sorry about your daughter
Unfathomable. I'm glad this is getting highlighted because so many of these deaths should be preventable but it *takes work.*
I'm so sorry to hear about your daughter.
I'm so sorry to hear about your loss. As a parent, losing one of my kids is an absolute nightmare. I can't imagine the pain you've had to go through. Lots of love from the Netherlands.
@@alex2143 love is nice frfr, but can we have some of your infrastructure too?..
I lost 2 friends and was injured because some drunk hopped the kerb, and drove down a pedestrian path along I-74 across the Mississippi River. It was a brand new bridge, absolutely beautiful. Not a single bollard or anything to prevent it. That's since changed, but just 1 of those concrete posts on the bettendorf side, and they'd still be here. They are 2 of the 2022 stats. It happened very early in the morning but the path was well lit. The driver is definitely at fault, but so is the lack of infrastructure to prevent it.
@CharlesB9496 I am very sorry for your loss. I also live in the Quad Cities & this horiffic collision could have easily been prevented if designers AND government officials would give a crap about transportation safety, especially pedestrians & cyclists. But they just do not care.
Tragically, we've normalized traffic fatalities as "just a part of life" in the United States 🇺🇸 . Every year, nearly as many people die (pedestrians, cyclists & motorists) in traffic crashes as our total combat deaths from the Vietnam War. Many more are severely maimed or injured. Yet there is no sense of public outrage.
When we advocate for policies like complete streets, Vision Zero, or the like, elected officials say we're being "impractical" or "too idealistic" and that these policies are "too expensive."
We can not ever put price on the lives of the friends you lost. However, by some estimates, on average, every individual in the US generates something like $3 to 4 million in economic output over their lifespan. You'd think *THAT* consideration certainly would motivate more priority public safety, but it doesn't.
People are also forgetting that pedestrians have the right of way. My mom got hit the other night crossing at a crosswalk by an old guy who thought he could turn left because his light was green. Thankfully, she’s just a bit bruised.
I also saw a guy almost get creamed out in New Orleans the other day by someone that decided to make a left turn because I wasn’t going. I wasn’t right turning because there was someone in the crosswalk. I really thought he was going to get hit.
Right of way or not, it takes a special kind of idiot to think they can run over people just because they (believe to) have the right of way! 🤦♂️
@@LRM12o8 7 years ago I was hit by a car on my bike because the driver made a right turn on red without paying attention.
News flash, the only people I know who shrug and use that "right of way" excuse are parents who never taught thier kids to look before crossing the street. Is that obsolete now because you can just sue the driver for heaps of money when they hit your kid? Good to know that they are worth more to parents dead than alive. They still teach defensive driving for a reason, because there will always be idiots behind the wheel, but teaching kids situational awareness has been obsolete, for more than 30 years and that "it is everyone elses responsibility to keep my kids safe" attitude is getting people killed. (I used to be a teacher, so don't tell me I don't know what I am talking about.)
@@rosameryrojas-delcerro1059 Even if you look both ways, some asshole on a smartphone might hit you because they decided that would rather pay attention to their phone instead of the road.
So? Then your family will be justified in suing the driver. If you did nothing (or did not teach your child that idiots exist and that they need to look) then you would be 50% to blame for the accident, because if you had seen the idiot, you would have stayed on the curb. Your argument is just another "it is everyone elses responsibility to keep my kids/me safe". I don't have to do shit, I/my family can just sue the hell out of them after I weep enough on the 6pm news. FISHING for reasons to sue someone is what that is. Litigious spaz.@@ballsquid4135
Could touch screen dashboards be a contributing factor? They seem like a huge step backwards in safety, requiring the driver to take their eyes off the road to do anything.
I hate these touch screens, where you can’t adjust anything by feel.
Almost certainly contribute, though the real question is how much.
Was wondering the same thing. Borrowing a car right now that has one and it's very distracting
I'd be surprised if it was more than a few percentage points. Anything distracting could contribute but I would venture to say that most of the time people aren't adjusting their car settings so the statistics would probably lead elsewhere.
They absolutely are and it's insane that lawmakers didn't crack down on this earlier.
Yeah, many manufacturers don't even give you the option to buy a smaller car anymore. It's a giant SUV or nothing! The law that incentivizes building giant vehicles needs to change. It's bad for everyone. And I heard on a city planning channel that people are distracted while they drive because they would rather not be driving at that moment, which is a great point. If they had public transit to ride where they were going, they would have been free be on their phones.
It’s not just the incentives for manufacturers. Because survival of an accident is largely a matter of relative mass, people who drive smaller vehicles are significantly at risk. Even if you don’t need or want to drive an SUV or truck, there is a temptation to upsize just to improve the survivability of accidents with other large vehicles.
@@amicaaranearum There are a few basic changes that could make SUVs less terrible (like the front Actually Slopeing Down so the blind spot is much smaller and impacts less lethal). They'd still suck, but they'd suck Less.
Or just making small vehicles with stronger frames and panneling (sure, fuel efficiency goes down, but apparently people already don't care about That!) in the relevant parts for increasing accident survivability.
To be fair, while the really small cars are disappearing, automakers do still sell moderately sized sedans, crossovers, etc. But the really gigantic trucks and SUVs should absolutely require a commercial or some other type of license to drive with more stringent safety requirements. Anything the size of a modern F150, Chevy Tahoe, or larger should not be driven by any rando with a standard license. Every day, both as a driver and as a pedestrian, I see so much dumb, risky driving behavior that I wonder how these people passed both their written and driven test!?
@@amicaaranearumI don't fully buy larger/heavier cars being safer. If an accident occurs, you will want more mass. But I'd argue an attentive driver in a light car will be able to maneuver away from potential or imminent crashes easier than a driver in a heavy car. Even if that's cope, the more people subscribe to that idea the truer it becomes, as there will be less and less big cars on the road.
@@wrong1029 yeah, it’s a self perpetuating problem. The arms race for mass and height on the road. But North Americans seem to have an acute problem in seeing how their individual choices affect other people and society at large. I see this in so many areas of life, even among friends and family I generally love/admire. It’s a really unfortunate societal character flaw.
A lot of drivers have lost respect for the fact that they’re piloting 2+ tons of fast moving metal. Even with smaller vehicles, one has to be aware that they’re throwing around a lot of kinetic energy.
Unfortunately, attitude is a far more difficult problem to address than technical knowledge. You can put everyone in classes for many hours, but if they don’t respect the forces they’re wielding, there’s little point.
It is scary to see people driving F150 -250s, gigantic SUVs like Escalades & Expeditions on the freeways at 80+mph...
A lot of pedestrians have lost respect for killer machines that are hurtling down highways. Almost lost a friend a few years back. He lived luckily, but even he agrees that if he'd been paying attention would have prevented the distracted driver from hitting him
Yeah, I have noticed an uptic in overly aggressive driving. Even in my small town, I see people blindly whipping cars around corners, going down narrow roads at speed greater than 30mph, driving the wrong way on my one way street (and usually fast) because they dont feel like going one street up to use the proper street. Its ridiculous. Kids play on these streets, elderly walk on them, people are getting in and out of their own cars to go into their homes. I shouldn't feel nervouse mowing my front lawn in a town like this, yet I do.
Humans are not evolved to travel at superhuman speeds or pilot contraptions that go more than maybe 15 mph. If you're bombing down the highway at 65 or 70 it's simply not possible for you to react quickly enough to avoid collisions. Compound this with what @Lauren_C mentioned about ignorance of laws of momentum and inertia and pedestrians are just gonna die.
Pedestrians too, have a responsibility to pay attention to traffic. The cellular phone has to be among the top contributing factors to pedestrian/vehicular accidents (by BOTH the pedestrian not paying attention to traffic and drivers texting).
I see pedestrians in my city all the time who step off the sidewalk into an uncontrolled (no traffic light) cross-walk, their faces firmly planted in their phones, without looking in either direction for traffic (waiting for traffic to stop) before they did so as if the cross-walk has some magical power to protect them. They are asking for a posthumous Darwin Award.
Even at controlled intersections, if a car is making a LH turn or RH turn opposite, I always make sure I have eye-contact with the driver before proceeding through the crosswalk.
I'm more than half-way through this video and not once did the issue of pedestrians walking on the WRONG SIDE of local/rural roads without sidewalks, even come up. I was taught as a child in the '60s that when walking on a road that has no sidewalk, to walk on the opposite side of the road, towards oncoming traffic, so that you can see and react to traffic if it ventures onto the shoulder (you do not have eyes in the back of your head, so you can't see what's approaching from behind). Nowadays, I am completely baffled by the number of stupid people (adults) I come across on local rural roads walking on the RH side of the road, on the shoulder, with their backs to oncoming traffic. They too, are vying for a posthumous Darwin Award.
My friend died from this (last year 2022). I am very anxious while driving, and take much more responsibility to pay attention, and slow down significantly around people. This topic is very relevant for me. There are a few crosswalks with bright flashing led lights, activated for 30s when someone hits a button. These should be on every major crosswalk, even signaled interchanges. Right turns are blind to pedestrians, due to stopped cars in the straight lanes. No one stops before the crosswalk to turn right. They drive way through, no looking, up to the edge of the perpendicular lane to watch for cross traffic. This is a catastrophic technical flaw, for both the drivers, for traffic design, and even for people walking.
Driving is such an anxiety inducing experience. I would choose not to every time but in so many circumstances it's literally impossible to get where you're going without a car. I hate it and hate to think about what would happen if I hit someone or got hit
It is made a lot worse by the way drivers punish other drivers for taking any sort of precaution.
One thing I've noticed as well is that is that car headlights (ESPECIALLY trucks and SUVs) are so much brighter than they were even just 5 years ago. Sometimes at night when an oncoming truck is passing me in the other lane I can hardly see in front of me at all. If a pedestrian was crossing while I was being blinded like that I'd probably hit them. I have to imagine extremely bright LED headlights have to be contributing at least a little bit to the increase in nighttime fatalities.
FUCK WHITE LED HEAD LIGHTS. THEYRE LITERALLY DANGEROUS.
YES
Believe it or not, fuel economy regulations play a big role in why cars are bigger because they’re lenient on bigger cars. The mpg requirements for small cars are so extreme that manufacturers simply discontinued them (like your Fit) and the only way to keep big suvs compliant is to make them even bigger. I actually did a video on this
I remember a few videos on this, the longer wheel base helps vehicle meet the emissions requirements. Unintended consequences
@@Flash1857 yeah they wanted to keep trucks from getting hit too hard which would drive up costs for people who drove bigger trucks, which before that it was typically people who did work stuff that drove the super duty sized trucks for a very long time. For perspective on this bloating, I drive a Chevy Colorado Z71 and its as big as a 1990s era Chevy 2500 full sized. I doubt GM will ever revive the S-10 in the US. Though if the Ford Maverick is any evidence, a Revival of the S-10 would absolutely have sales numbers
The car lobby did one hell of a job on those regulations! 😪
Facts! ...I've seen that video too.
It's almost like these well-intended regulations cause a bunch of unintended consequences, and largely need to be scaled back so people are free to make their own informed decisions. Rather than being viewed by lawmakers like a society of Sims who need constant correction which only perfect people like them could ever offer.
Seeing people at night has become a real struggle for me. All these newer cars have super bright and blinding lights, many of which trucks and SUVs at eye level, make it extra difficult to see people in the dark. Also all these newer electric trucks that weight 7000lbs and can go from 0-60 in 3 seconds are pretty terrifying to think about.
To add onto the SUV/Truck thing, a lot of people modify the suspension of their SUVs/Trucks and never adjust their headlights. This means that their headlights aren't setup properly. It's really obvious to spot yet police do absolutely nothing about it.
0-60 in 3s. 60-0 in an eternity.
As someone who drives a sedan, I’m constantly being blinded by high-sitting vehicles with ultra-bright headlights.
Buddy drives a Honda Ridgline. A truck. And says he's constantly blinded by other trucks and SUVs.
Trucks should be banned.
pedestrian infrastructure in the US is so insanely bad compared to Europe it almost feels like this is partially intentional to scare people into buying a car at all cost.
It's definitely intentional
That’s one of the downsides of the US having a car-centric culture. If everyone has a car, infrastructure will be designed around having cars.
Hanlon's Razor applies
People have already had the cops called on them for walking in the US, thinking they were suspicious-looking.
That’s how bad car-culture has gotten in the US.
Not feels like, it is intentional.
As in those are written in engineering handbook type intentional.
The rise of truckasaurus Rex is a concern, but I think a large part of the uptick at 2020 is that everyone forgot how to drive during covid lock down. We really should have practical driving tests more often than once at 16.
The real reason so many more fatal collisions occurred on roads during covid is due to the decrease in traffic. It turns out the horrendous traffic on suburban roads was also the only thing keeping them safe due to the slow speeds. Once traffic cleared out during lockdown, the speeds increased significantly leading to many more fatal accidents.
My state doesn’t give driving tests anymore at all. It’s strictly based on age. Any adult can just pass the written test and pay the fee. Teenagers still have certain restrictions, but not a driving test
A big problem is schools apparently don't include driving instruction (too expensive). Not even paper instruction. Now we pay the price in collisions.
This is a topic that I really talk about all the time. I live in a suburb residential neighbourhood with a small rural roads without sidewalks and many shopping outlets nearby and even a trail park. Yet there are no sidewalks and it makes it hard to walk to shopping outlets less than half a mile from my neighborhood, which is absurd since many people walk there near cars going about 30+ miles even up to 50 miles even though the speed limit is 30. This is really an important topic that many cities aren't taking into consideration. Thank you.
Another factor that you did not mention: the 2010 law that pushed Americans from cars to trucks also made those trucks larger and heavier. Surely the increased physical size of automobiles over the past 15 years has an impact.
He hinted at this when talking about the rising popularity of SUVs and trucks, but there is a video by Not Just Bikes that goes into this in more detail.
Sedans and hatchbacks are designed to flip pedestrians up onto the hood if struck. But with SUVs and trucks there’s nowhere for them to go except under.
Not true. Look up the GHSA statistics used in this video. There is no statistical difference between class of vehicle and fatality count. Each vehicle type is responsible for percentage of fatalities equal to their road usage.
@@shottytheshotgunThat is fascinating and terrifying. WTH is wrong with everyone?
@@TheBaldrif smartphones were the leading cause, you would expect to see a trend in increasing pedestrian deaths in many countries correlated with increased smartphone adoption. But in most European countries, pedestrian deaths went DOWN over the same period that smartphone usage was increasing. The US trend in increasing pedestrian deaths is an outlier, so we should look for factors unique to the US to explain it, such as our increased adoption of light trucks and increasing size of vehicles.
I drive a box truck for a living so let me help you out. Its driving habits. Things that people used to know to do they don't do anymore. I rarely see people stop BEFORE the crosswalk. Most people don't stop BEFORE the sidewalk when pulling out of a driveway. I see way to many people run stop signs and red lights. I see ALOT of people turn right on red without stopping. I had a lady in a van once yell at me to get out of the street while I was riding my bicycle in the BIKE LANE. I have to go through a training course to drive my truck.The problem is driver training or lack of it.
The police in Provo, UT frequently did the right turn without stopping or looking to the right when I worked there. One time I had started crossing when the pedestrian signal changed I ended up jumping back in time to only get brushed by the side mirror. They never saw me.
Yep all this is true as well. Things got infinitely worse here in 2020 and afterwards....😬
Really appreciate your discussing this issue. I wish you mentioned that this spike isn’t occurring in other countries
Because Americans feel entitled when they walk across the street and they don't bother to look either way
Copecel
@@jerseykevin27 You didn't watch the video or try to consider any systemic reasons. There are entitled people in every country, yet we seem to be getting the brunt of this problem in the first-world. Our obsession with "just make people individually responsible" is a damning indictment of our culture.
I was skeptical of this information, because some statistics only compare "apples to apples" so poorer countries aren't counted, but I just checked mine (Brazil, which isn't exactly poor, but definitely not wealthy) also dropped the number of deaths in the last decade.
Very interesting.
@@jerseykevin27typical entitled motorist response
15:15 John worked for an "unnamed" EV manufacturer! We all know who he worked for. Road Guy Rob was very clever, because he never said the word Tesla himself. Don't get any copyright strikes Rob, we need you!!
Mostly a gentle poking at Tesla's controversial nature.
@@RoadGuyRob And FSD is getting better and better every iteration.
It was also quite hilarious how he blurred "TESLA". XD
It seems almost criminal that on all these back roads they don't just pave a 4-6' wide multi-use strip off to the far edge of the right of way. They have the space and the area is already graded but they never build a small pathway when the road is paved which would be the cheapest, easiest way. If it every happens it's decades later when someone wants to have a ribbon cutting and they spend millions overbuilding a tiny segment strong enough and flat and wide enough to drive a semi-truck down it.
One of my favorite things people do is not say the name of a specific company and blur out the logo, only for it to be 100% obvious who they're talking about. Not only can you see the name TESLA through the blur because of the large black text on white background, but John Bernal just straight up says he was testing a Tesla too, that's hilarious. Keeps him out of legal trouble and everyone else is more informed about these companies.
He also said "Unnamed Fremont, California based Electric Vehicle Manufacturer". That's about as close to saying Tesla as you can get without actually saying Tesla (though Tesla did move their HQ to Austin, Texas, so that's not actually 100% true anymore).
I agree with John that self driving tech will eventually make cars safer, though I also think companies like Tesla play way too fast and loose with what truly is a really hard problem. Probably doesn't help that their CEO keeps making ridiculous and unrealizable promises about when they'll be ready and seems to have very little idea of what actually goes into doing advanced tech (of all sorts). Not to say that what Tesla has managed to do isn't quite amazing - the videos I've seen really are amazing. But self driving is a really hard problem that's going to take alot of time to get right and isn't the sort of thing you can just put a timeframe on - the tech will be ready when its ready. I think you need innovators pushing the edge, but then you also need careful people refining the tech to make it rock solid. Both are kinds of technology, just very different. Tesla doesn't seem to have enough of the second kind.
I was gently poking fun a Tesla's litigious nature (e.g., suing the show "Top Gear" over a bad review).
I saw a video (was it @RoadGuyRob? Not sure) where they explained that those "click on photos with [commonly encountered item in public]" things that they have you do online after checking the "I'm not a robot" box (would be super easy to train a robot to check that box anyway, but that's another matter) are actually helping to train self-driving cars to recognize those objects. They should obviously use those to help to train self-driving cars to recognize barriers, too - and, I would add, people dressed up in costumes, given how many times that @RoadGuyRob has broken out the chicken suit when doing pedestrian videos (and one time breaking out a gorilla suit to do a traffic light video!).
It may seem preposterous to censor it like that, but since keeping out of legal trouble is all that matters here, it makes perfect sense and 100% accomplishes the goal.
I thought they sued top gear over faked data / misrepresentation of the vehicle?
Thank you for adressing the suv/truck impulse spending causing safety problems. We really need to be offering deal to people to buy safer smaller vehicles, not just to reduce emissions but reducing fatalities as well.
Good plan.
Let's increase taxes so we can pay people to buy "the right vehicle" instead of the one that they want and/or need.
@@ghost307There’s a lot of subtle ways we could tip the scale, such as just taxing vehicles partially based on size.
@@justins8802 But we're already tipping scales by giving cash incentives to buy heavier vehicles (such as EVs).
@@ghost307 that’s why I said size and not weight. EV subsidies do need to be phased out and replaced with a carbon tax, but that’s another thread altogether.
We currently do the opposite and have tax laws that incentivize light trucks and SUVs by exempting them from emissions related taxes.
As far as the trouble at night, I'd bet that even if it's not the main culprit, light sources that compete w/ a pedestrian (well lit or not) have been on the rise. I've wondered if insanely bright headlights have anything to do with this. Headlights on your own car are good for seeing what's in front of you, but from an oncoming vehicle, modern LED/Laser headlights (I don't mean the high beams even) are bright enough that my eyes don't adjust to the actual darkness. It's made worse by the typical height of headlights on trucks/SUVs since when they're in the rear view mirror of my normal, sane car the high beams might as well be active due to the angle. Aside from this, a ton of cars also have absurdly bright infotainment screens even at night (the worst offenders having max brightness by default, white background, no automatic switching to dark mode). Digital gauge clusters, but even the analog ones thru the 2010s, got brighter and moved from often being red or orange to being white.
Not to mention a lot of people who buy those really big trucks and use them to tow trailers don't know to readjust their headlights to counter the natural tilt that the front of a truck experiences when a load is on the hitch.
As someone who drive at night for a living, I can SEE details on some of those infotainment systems, despite being in a different vehicle behind them. I couldn’t imagine driving with the sun right next to you 😬
And LED headlights have gotten considibly worse in the past 5 years, the biggest ones being the “automatic high beams”. Look, my daily driver has H6024 headlights, and my work truck H4651/H4656 combo lights. I can see more than well enough on unlit roads at night with these on Low beams, LED headlights do not need to be as dangerously brights as they are. Between your mentioned points, and the fact that I have troubles seeing the road when my mirrors are lit up like the sun, they’re more hazardous than helpful
As someone who drives a sedan, I’m constantly being blinded by high-sitting vehicles with ultra-bright headlights.
I guess it's a double-edged sword, because thanks to the IIHS, headlights are much better now which should make pedestrians and obstacles easier to see. IIHS does significantly dock points in their headlight ratings for glare, though. I guess you can't get around the fact that there is a higher chance of glare if you're in a Civic and most people nowadays are in RAMs, RAV4s, and F-150s.
Completely agree. Additionally, texting and driving is far worse at night, because you are basically shining a flashlight directly at your face, good luck trying to use your peripheral vision. It's just yet another light source that makes seeing out of the care way harder.
Years ago i was walking onthe sidewalk by a large mall. Someone pulling out of the parking lot hit me. She was in shock and said she didn't expect anyone to be there. She didn't expect anyone to be walking on the sidewalk.
Modern cars keep their instruments illuminated when the headlights are off, leading to many people driving without lights on at night because they don’t know. People will step or pull out in front of a dark car because they are expecting cars to have lights on and primarily look for the lights.
I asked Virginia DOT to put in a crosswalk across a busy stroad between two shopping centers. Their response: "Intersection too wide for pedestrian refuge so crosswalk not warranted therefore pedestrian signals not warranted. Timing of signal will be reviewed"
that's... insane. And backwards... wow.
Vdot if I remember correctly also has a ton of restrictions on what can and cannot be a bus stop because Richmond wanted to increase the amount of bus stops with benches that were a little bit more away from the road for safety and the elderly and they wouldn’t let them because there’s like a long list of items that need to be present to have that kind of a stop.
They could've just said: "Our priority is to move the most number of cars, not pedestrian safety"
Its ridiculous. Its basically "Our road is so bad we gave up fixing it"
@@AlejandroRamirez-le2vv As a Virginian, I can tell you their priority is neither of the above.
I wonder if the recent development pattern matters too. Most deaths are on those arterial roads, and the fastest growing cities (sunbelt area) are filled with arterial roads like you mentioned.
Yeah. New developments tend to be very stroad-oriented.
Absolutely. Sprawl development and auto-oriented infrastructure and development patterns are the root cause of most of the symptoms/problems around pedestrian injuries and deaths.
Concentrating development around arterial roads (or routing arterial roads through developed areas) is a recipe for fatalities, because it simply creates a lot of conflicting desire lines between pedestrians and fast moving motor traffic
An arterial road can be excellent to walk along.... IF developers and cities put effort into making it good.
Often they don't.
@@RoadGuyRob Walk along... Sure. But cross? Not so much. Because for safe and efficient motor traffic movement you need to limit the number of controlled crossings, which is contrary to the desire to walk directly from one place to another.
I agree non motorized traffic is often overlooked out on rural roads
I wanted to bike from my suburban subdivision in Everett (Seattle area) to Snohomish, WA to meet up at my swim club but I realized really quickly this wasn’t feasible
Once neighborhoods disappeared and you got out into farmland the sidewalks disappeared and your only option was to walk on a dirt shoulder next to the road with cars whizzing around corners at 50 miles per hour. There was no way to safely travel between these areas unless you were going by car or bus.
If there was a trail a few feet over from the road as you described it would have made it possible for me to bike between Everett and Snohomish without much worry
I also live in Everett and the same happened to me
Just bike along the trestle! Nice and safe!😊 /s
But yeah, too many rural roads don’t even have a 3ft shoulder to help with that. Lowell-Snohomish Rd is so dang narrow.
I agree that bikes and bike riders should be licensed and insured. The fees could go towards numerous improvements.
@@windywednesday4166 bicyclists are already licensed and insured. For their cars that they typically also own, and which are the more significant component of the extraordinary cost of modern roadways
@@onesob13 Sobbing, another nonsensical and irrational argument ...with no figures to back it up. Bla, bla, bla Keep making demands, it's coming.
I heard that since they started selling more of the larger pickup trucks, the number of fatalities has almost doubled since pedestrians tend to go over the hood when hit by shorter vehicles but are actually run over in larger trucks, etc.
Or just flattened, it’s like being hit by a wall vs a wedge. Both are gonna hurt but at least a wedge you have a chance
Nobody I know under 30 was taught by thier parents to look both ways before crossing the street. None, and I used to be a teacher. I have been told by numerous people that it is the drivers responsibility to stop, even if a kid isn't in the crosswalk. So basically thier kid is worth more to them (the lawsuit for hitting thier kid) dead or disabled than it is worth to teach them situational awareness. They still teach defensive driving for a reason, but I guess teaching pedestrians to stay safe is obsolete in parents eyes. Just last week an 11 year old was hit crossing the street here. Looking at his phone, (according to video from a business) and didn't even look. Alot of the kids are being hit in school zones here also, drivers don't care and parents don't care.
@@rosameryrojas-delcerro1059entitled stupid driver meets entitled stupid pedestrian.
I do think the shortsighted selfishness we have culturally is indeed a factor.
@@rosameryrojas-delcerro1059I am under the age of 30. Everybody I know my age knows this. My 4yr old nephew knows to look both ways.
Parents and teachers of this generation and the one prior are absolutely still teaching kids basic road safety.
If that was true, kids would not be getting hit as often as they are. @@ARockyRock
Where I live, a college town full of students without a car, it is very hostile to pedestrians. There aren't even any bike lanes. The campus is beautiful and very walkable, no cars. But outside of that it's just a typical American suburb. Before I had a car I would cycle to campus but again, there's no bike lanes, and the roads have heavy traffic, up to 45mph. There's only sidewalks. In the road I was on, the sidewalks were on only one side of the road too. I was on my way to class one day and another guy came from around the corner and we collided, our heads hit each other. It was no serious injuries luckily. But then a few months later, I was riding my little electric scooter(max speed 15mph) and I hit a big crack on the sidewalk I didn't see, and I fell and broke my arm. My forehead hit the pavement hard too, but luckily I was wearing my helmet and I didn't feel a thing. I have to be very careful not to hurt my head due to medical conditions so I was very lucky. Because of this, I am never riding my bike around town here again. It's too dangerous, especially for me in my condition. I really want to be able to walk or cycle around, but it's just not safe here.
My biggest concern is the lack of crosswalks. My town of maybe a couple thousand at most has three crosswalks. 2 street lights, one signed crosswalk. All are within a quarter mile of each other. There are sections of housing completely cut off from the rest of the town unless you run across a busy, 3 lane total, artery leading out of town. Also that section is too close to the schools for them to send a bus over, so kids can only walk to school or get a ride. Parents work mornings? good luck
Yea but all crosswalks just are paint
In my city there's a crosswalk at every light, but it seems like 90% of people instead opt to run through 6 lanes of traffic instead of using the crosswalk 50 feet away from them
Where I grew up only intersections in the downtown area had painted cross walks and every intersection of the lone short four lane street. All street intersections had implied crosswalks and you could be ticketed if you went thru the intersection with a person in the "crosswalk". Then there was Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in the early 70's where the police dropped the hammer on any person caught going thru an occupied crosswalk - it was extra embarrassing on a four lane divided road (yes, both directions had to stop) with no pull off area, you were stopped and stayed there while the officer wrote up your ticket while two lanes had to work their way around you blocking one lane.
The town I live in is like that. There's a couple of crosswalks "downtown" (downtown being a cluster of strip malls, of course) but once you get to the more residential part of town... nothing. No sidewalks either. The speed limit is 35 MPH, but this is New Jersey, so people do 50. It's pretty bad. They're slowly working on putting sidewalks in the residential areas, but people are bitching because the construction is causing traffic. You just can't win.
@@IVR02 I live on a street with a sidewalk and see an alarming number of people who jog down the road, at night, in dark clothing.
Thank you for talking about pedestrian safety more and the crime that is American city planning and policy that encourages SUVs and pickup trucks. You’ve mentioned this topic in prior videos before, but it definitely deserves its own.
I heard in a Not Just Bikes video that the 2020 spike comes from the fact that there was less traffic so people who drove could speed more often. Meaning the only thing keeping pedestrians safe on city streets was congestion that slowed cars down. We are so screwed.
not just bikes lives in a rich part of amsterdam so i would take what he says with a grain of salt. he's rather capitalist and bougie
@@NightlifeSux I agree. I don't really like him anymore after the whole "North America can't be fixed" fiasco, but his early videos about the basics of urbanism were better. Now he just bootlicks the Netherlands.
Doesn’t explain the jump from 2014, which was the same growth.
A personal anecdote: I lived in NYC during the pandemic. Did not own a car, but I did fly through the empty streets on my electric scooter.
Americans seem to wait until a problem is blindingly obvious, and then start fixing it, and mostly doing it right. We are not screwed, but at this point we have to start fighting a bit more. Around here, when streets _have_ to be dug up, afterwards they typically improve them, with amenities like sidewalks and bikelanes. But major thoroughfares still are 7 lanes for cars and sidewalks that end prematurely.
@@NightlifeSux🤮commie
RE pedestrian deaths at night: I do valet in Florida and drive cars every night that have their windows tinted illegally dark and I have to lower the windows to see out. There are people that even tint their windshield dark and you can't see sh*t out of the car...I think its a subculture and/or trend.
Sadly the kind of people that tint their windows illegally dark are the same kind of people who are leaving the club at 1 in the morning while impaired.
I was curious if tinting windows too much had a detrimental effect for drivers. This confirms it...
I was hit by a car about a decade ago, this brought back a lot of rough feelings but you made so many good points that I had to watch all the way through. I'm glad people are here to bring awareness, but one day something needs to be done about the vehicles being sold here in the USA.
My city neighborhood is mostly residential but it was built back in the 1800s when everyone walked. Which means the houses have no garages or driveways for their cars. And the few that do they are too small for these now giant vehicles so they either park with their car hanging out into the sidewalk or on the street. And since the vehicles are also super wide the ones parked on the street are sitting halfway, and sometimes fully, on the sidewalk to allow cars to get through. So when I'm trying to walk through my neighborhood I have to either walk fully in the street or play this game of darting back and forth between the street and sidewalk because every third house has a vehicle blocking my access. Add in the fact that there's only a handful of streetlights, half of which don't work, and that it can get dark before 4pm in the winter it's dangerous just to go to the grocery store only a mile from my house.
I used to be a crossing guard and even with my high vis vest, giant handheld stop sign, flashing school zone lights, and me standing literally in the middle of the crosswalk actively crossing children we still had to dodge cars going 40mph. And then those drivers would have the audacity to scream at me for helping children cross the street directly outside their school. The only time cities and town ever make changes is if the neighborhood is wealthy enough to pull some strings or enough people get killed. But we shouldn't have to "sacrifice" a certain number of children just to get some decent infrastructure. I've already been hit once and can't count the number of near misses, I'm tired.
They're driving 40 miles per hour past schools?! That's absolute madness! 😱
That's 65 km/h, faster than than you're allowed on most arterial roads in Europe. Let alone in front of schools, my country introduced a mandatory 30 km/h speed limit near all schools and kindergartens a few years ago, that's less than half as fast as they drive by your school!
@@LRM12o8 US roads are infamously terrible. European road design is so much better, especially when you're talking about raised crosswalks, brick roads and making the road narrower.
I'm so sorry you dealt with that but thank you for doing what you could to help those kids cross safely.
I did not know pedestrians had right of way until years after my license. I honestly wish everyone had their own personal crossing guard. It would be hard not to recognize stop means stop. As is there's way too much ambiguity even in alot of light systems.
Giant and very powerful SUV and pick-ups, bad road design, cell phone usage, and if you want to kill someone a car is the way to do it. Basically since the laws are so driver friendly there is very little recourse. These are some of the major reasons why we have an increase in pedestrian death. I can definitely go on. Ohh and the lack of public transit is also huge.
cellphone usage is really just a subset of 'driver distraction'. And possibly not even a very big one, as accident rate increases don't line up with cellphone ownership increases. Driver distraction in general is a big contributer though, to my understanding... and many cars have electronic control systems that are Very badly designed, where the driver has to take their eyes off the road to interact with them to do Really Basic things (that in older dash designs would have been in the driver's field of view while their eyes are on the road, or could have been done by touch/muscle memory)
Not only do we need transit but we need dedicated transit infrastructure so PT can get people places faster than driving, making people less inclined to drive. Vehicle weight taxes could disincentivize driving for the vast majority of trips. A large portion of trips people take are less than 5 miles, which is easily bikable, and ebikes make that ride even easier.
@@laurencefraser Absolutely! I was just driving a 2024 Crosstrek for a loaner while mine was in for repair. The screen was huge, easily the size of a 12 inch tablet and the only things I could adjust by touch (physical controls) were the cabin temperature and the radio volume. Everything else was a soft button on the screen. Including the HVAC vent controls. Had to tap the vent icon button to get the options displayed, then touch the icon representing the direction I wanted the air to take. Not a problem while parked but more difficult while driving down the road and fog is slowly building up on my front windshield.
@@ambiarock590 Public Transit only really works in dense urban cities which just doesn't cover much of the U.S. at all. Sure, maybe you could make it work within the largest cities but up here where I live, it will never be able reach certain areas based on cost alone. But go ahead and keep thinking that everyone should be living exactly how you do and doing things the way you choose to. I personally make a two hour road trip every week. There is no PT I could take to make this trip, not because of the location but because of the times I do it.
I love riding my Harley. I was going down I-95 in Jacksonville, FL one day in the far right lane when the sadan in the middle lane suddenly cuts me off to try and jump into an exit lane. They didn't make it. Luckily, I was paying attention and was able to brake hard enough to avoid being sideswiped or run off the road. So, now I'm behind them in the right lane. I move over to the center and pull up next to the driver. It's a young girl driving with four friends. The driver has her phone in her right hand with a video playing. She's holding it up and they're all huddled around watching this video, including the driver. It was the most egregious example of being distracted by a phone that I have ever seen. And this was a few years ago before autonomous driving was a thing. I could not believe what I was seeing. They were all so distracted, it took me another exit to get their attention. Luckily, I keep a helmet cam going when I ride so when we pulled over at a gas station, I could show her what she did. She was very embarrassed so maybe she learned her lesson. She claimed to never see me.
I also have dash cams in my car, including one for the cabin that records what I'm doing while driving. Also, I lock my phone in my glove box which means I have to pull over, turn the car off, take the key out of the ignition, and then unlock the glove box to get to it. The phone is just _too_ tempting. I don't care who you are, when that message alert goes off, it is instinct to just pick it up and glance at it. And that's driving distracted no matter how short the glance is. It is as bad or worse than drunk driving.
I know correlation doesn't equal causation but the fact that pedestrian deaths went up the same year the first iPhone came out seems like more than coincidence.
Good on you for at least trying to make it a learning experience for that young lady and friends. I used to take my youngest son to various competitions, on the way we would play "spot the driver on their phone", we batted 1000 with transport truck drivers (that "little" wiggle of the steering wheel takes you from on one road line to crossing over the center line) and around 900 with car and truck/SUV drivers. I think that other 100 were drivers like my boss who "have to look" at the passenger they are talking to... once was enough with him, told him either I drive or don't ask me to go somewhere with him.
I am bad at answering texts as it is so it is easy for me to ignore them while driving then forget about them until I pick up the phone when at where I am going for another reason. Calls, on the highway with minimal traffic I'll answer via the Bluetooth connection otherwise ignore or stop somewhere safe to call back. Cell phones - a useful nuisance 😜 - many people need to employ your method 👍
Your experience highlights another problem in America: arrogance and entitlement.
I'd LIKE to think that just maybe this kid didn't get the instruction from her parents she SHOULD have gotten. My dad told us kids REPEATEDLY that you don't "swerve for an exit" on the freeway EVER! Your life is worth FAR MORE than a minute or two lost going to the NEXT exit, coming back and making the one you need.
But did this driver ever get this instruction in the first place? Who knows. But she obviously wouldn't have heeded it since she thought watching a video while driving on the freeway was normal behavior.
And just last week I'm in the #1 lane of two lanes behind a driver turning left. As we complete our left turn, the driver realizes they NEED to make a right at the next street 10 yards away. This arrogant driver simply slams on the brakes and expects everyone to stop so they can worm their way diagonally across the traffic lanes to make their right turn. All while clogging up about 50 drivers.
Instead, this driver SHOULD have simply continued in their lane of travel, made either a left or a right at the next SAFE opportunity, and come back to the street they wanted. Nope. THIS DRIVER is too important for that! They want IMMEDIATE GRATIFICATION and will inconvenience as many people as necessary so they can make up for their poor planning and driving decisions.
But your example is FAR WORSE. That kills innocents like you and even themselves.
Unreal. Good on you showing her the error of her ways. Let's hope she improves her behavior and decision-making.
Yeah. Being on the road on two wheels is getting more and more dangerous as the standard of driving gets worse. Not to mention how there seems to be a trend of car drivers intentionally doing sh!t to mess with us now. Like, you pass them because they're dawdling, they feel wronged by this, so they decide to step on the gas and tailgate you as "punishment". It's happened to me a couple of times recently. Second time it happened, I turned down a paved pathway that's too narrow for a car to fit down. Guy must've been seething that he couldn't carry on following me 😂
Between auto manufactures going "yup every other driver will be just fine staring directly into the sun on our cars at every intersection" and the fact lyft/uber charges have tripled if not quadrupled in the last 5 or so years, yeah I can see why people are getting hit at night.
I think that modern car headlights are also a contributing factor. Many modern vehicles are now equipped with lights ranging from 5000K to 8500K in color temperature. At the extreme end of 8500K, that's like strapping sunlight on a completely clear day at noon onto the front of car and now its is shining sideways instead of down at the ground. It severely distorts the driver's depth perception and shadows are incredibly difficult to see with any clarity. This also pretty much mutes most colors to the point that some objects may not even stand out from the background until a driver to far too close to react. Did I mention that I'm talking about low-beam headlights? This doesn't even start to mention the Height at which these lights are mounted on modern SUVs and Trucks.
I do not understand how there has not been any regulation made for modern car headlights in the US.
Good point, and those bright suns also blind the pedestrian and they can't see where they're going or how far the car approaching really is
The USA only JUST legalized adaptive beam headlamps last year. you know those LED Matrix systems that Europe has had for like a decade that can alter the beam to not blind oncoming cars. Well that system was not legal in the USA for a long time despite being proven functional and safe the NHTSA still took a decade to approve them.
When I was in primary school here in the Netherlands we had 'traffic' lessons and the one thing I always remembered and I taught my own children (because this seems to have been dropped at schools) was that whenever there is no dedicated side walk you walk on the left side of the road. That way you can see oncoming traffic and step out of harms way. Also that as a pedestrian you are always the weakest party in any collision, even if it is with a bicycle or skateboard and will always lose. It may not prevent all pedestrian deaths but it is a beginning. Naturally the most effective way to reduce accidents is to have people (drivers and pedestrians and others) stay focussed on what they are doing.
I live in the US, I had to bike down a 6 lane stroad with a 45mph speed limit. There was maybe 6 inches of asphalt between the white line and the dirt (no sidewalk) and a semi truck doing 60mph missed me by 3 inches. 3 INCHES!!!!! That is the single closest time I came to dying in my life!
How many times of walking on the left and crossing the street to access locations on the right does it take for the danger of crossing the street to cancel the safety of walking on the left?
@@scottfw7169 You would think so, but actually the big advantage is that you see oncoming trafic and can step away from the road if needed. When crossing the road is required you (as you should always do) look left, look right and look left again as a minimum (just like they taught me and i taught my kids) before crossing. And off course only cross when you feel it is safe to do so. otherwise wait patiently until it is safe. Anyway it seems wiser to me than walking on the right (not seeing the traffic coming up behind you) and then crossing to the location on the left. When you cross you can choose when and where. When you walk on the left side you can see danger coming towards you. When you walk on the right you cannot see danger coming up behind you. And yes, anything can happen, a car can loose control and swerve across the road and hit you, but you can try to minimize the risk. Also when you walk left an occasional glance over your right shoulder gives you a better view of traffic overtaking you than when you walk on the right as then you nearly have to turn around to see what is coming.
@@zeeman1975 Point noted. Also a point to note, and I try to keep in mind myself, is that I have lived in a little farming burg for the last 16 years and this is a whole different ballgame from the suburbs or city. When I did live in the city, personal experience soon taught me to avoid crossing streets as much as possible; crossing intersecting streets while staying on the one side's sidewalk was bad enough, did not want to add crossing the main road to that.
@@scottfw7169 Yes I understand it. I also try to avoid crossing whenever possible. Luckily here in the Netherlands we have a lot of pedestrian crossings where you have the right of way as pedestrians and most drivers do observe the rules. However even there you have to look out. Anyway: nice discussing this with you. Stay safe!
Around here, I can tell you a few of the things I've noticed as a driver. In SC, Driver aggression has gone up since around 2020. People driving 10 to 20 or more miles per hour above the speed limit has gone from around a few drivers around me per drive to nearly everyone. I still drive the speed limit, but get passed by well over 90% of the drivers on every drive out and back again no matter which path I take. And the amount of hard-speeding, what I call the act of accelerating hard into 20+ miles per hour or WAY WAY more above the stated speed limit, has gone from one or two times every week you'd see them, to at the very LEAST 3 or 4 cars per drive out, and about the same coming back... if not much higher than that.
Not to mention the aggressive lane switching, the lack of common sense stuff like using your blinkers to indicate a left or right turn or lane switch... Here's a road video for you Rob: Make America Blink Again, or MABA (started just for funnsies as a saying over at JoeyWhispers1776 here on TH-cam th-cam.com/users/shortsevQPcFWPvJM ). The sheer amount of stupidly aggressive moves is up by a LONG shot from around the moment that the streets cleared because of COVID, and no one has come back down to reasonable maneuvering since then.
Not to mention how many times I see sheriff's deputies just letting either of these types of drivers right on by them. Why? I was told by one that "usually they are already on another call." OK, fair to some degree. So why don't we have more traffic cops, especially in areas more likely to see speeding like out in the rural areas where cops usually aren't at the moment? That I have no answer for and is a good question to ask. I'm sure there's a legit reason, but then...
I've also seen the cops themselves with no lights on or anything speeding, tailgating me, then passing me to turn into a local convenience store to buy snacks and/or gas. So there's that as well... what happened to cops upholding the laws upon themselves as well as those they pull over, let alone actually doing the pulling over? COVID? To afraid to get the small timers due to that? I dunno.
Everyone now tailgates too, seemingly with no understanding of stopping distances.
Officers in low vis cop suvs are 100% in the dangerous driver group themselves. The lack of professionalism both in the choice of police cruisers and cops is astounding. Bring back crown vics and make cops go to school.
I've watched people use the right turn lane to pass a line, then turn left at the intersection, get stuck blocking set intersection when the light turned red, and not get pulled over despite doing this directly infront of a cop....
There is no enforcement on anything other than absurd speeding around Atlanta...
But this stupid aggressive behavior started before I moved here in 2011 so it's not a new thing everywhere.
A new highpoint was having someone tailgate me, honk, flash his high beams, swerve back and forth, because I was only going 2 MPH over the speed limit in a residential area a couple weeks back....
I try to not leave the house at this point.
Driving has become such a nightmare lately. I used to regularly drive 5-10 *under* the speed limit, and never had any problems. Now, even going 5 over the speed limit feels dangerously slow compared to the other traffic. What's absolutely insane to me is that people have even started using highway entry/exit lanes as passing lanes!
I used to love driving, but the sheer amount of aggression, impatience, entitlement, and carelessness on the road for the last few years has become infuriating. Is it really that hard for people to slow down a little and be aware of their surroundings? Is putting themselves and each other through the constant stress and danger really worth it to get to their destination 2 minutes earlier? As my grandma used to say, "If they wanted to get there earlier, they should have left earlier."
@@AlphabetSoupABC the only people who drive 5-10 below the speed limit when there is not traffic limiting them are clowns that shouldn’t have a license and people with warrants.
9:21 lmao the trucker is even hugging the left side of his lane because even he knows just how BS it is that its almost unwalkable
gotta love that SUVs and light trucks are perfectly legal but popup headlights are too far in the eyes of pedestrian safety laws
9:39 One thing I noticed is in my country we typically don't have driveways and parking lots connecting directly to arteries. Instead, these either connect to the cross streets or service roads. This doesn't necessarily solve this problem, but it slows the cars down and potentially increases the attentiveness of the drivers before crossing the sidewalk.
I'd guess the biggest factor is increased homelsessness and drug decriminalization. Lots more people wandering around streets often in no state to safely do so...
That, and no one is teaching people NOT to dress in all dark clothes and walk in the street at night.
One other new distraction is the touch screen, which on some cars must be used for adjusting heat/defrost, the radio, the GPS screen and other functions that a driver might want to access. More than once I've caught myself staring at the GPS rather than the road ahead!
I’m not fully convinced. Before a map you could talk to there were GPSs you had to interact with. Before that were street directories you had to look down at. Let’s be real, phones or not, the problem is SUVs and entitlement. Places that aren’t on the show pony sports “utility” and “light” truck train haven’t seen this increase in deaths, and it’s not for a lack of phones and HUDs.
@@Freshbott2 ehh, some new cars with touch screen interfaces instead of more traditional controls and displays have them designed and positioned so badly that they can't not contribute (they don't just offer an opportunty for distraction, they flat out enforce it), but I absolutely belive that the SUVs are a bigger issue.
People love their screens so they will defend them at any cost. It's not just the iPad glued to the dash, there is the interactive screen behind the wheel and then the phone holder clipped to the vent so you have 3 screens to look at. Then add a phone call on top of that. Take an Uber sometime.
I can't stand cars with screens. I drive a 2010 Honda CR-V which, while it is a mid-size SUV, it's certainly not huge, and I absolutely love the traditional tactile controls.
@@Mapmaker1559 bruh I put an Android Auto/Carplay head unit in and I’ve never found it so easy to navigate. I turn the key, my phone stays in my pocket. My maps and Spotify come up. I can just say where I wanna go. I’ve got music controls on the wheel. Heaven.
The lack of integrated thinking to accommodate non-drivers incents risk taking too. If you're at a "Don't Walk" signal or a quarter-mile from the crosswalk when the bus shows up, and the bus only comes once an hour you're going to run across the street in traffic to catch it because if you miss it you're screwed.
Honestly, this shows me that we need more research to link or disprove the correlation of crashes and cell phones. Subjectively, I believe that cell phones are a huge reason behind these crashes, but if RGR wasn't able to find any sources definitively linking them, then it's definitely an area I'd love to see more research on in order to confirm or debunk the hunch
Maybe just reduce the amount of times pedestrians must cross in the path of an automobile?
well, cell phones are a global issue - but the massiv increase in pedestrian fatalities isn't.
What about other countries, if it was cell phones we should be able to find similar data outside of North America
@@qwaszx2 It can't just be homelessness and people walking because the increase in homelessness and walking comes after the increase in crashes. And there's definitely interaction between different factors given that non-US developed countries like those in Europe and East Asia have seen continuing declines even as the US still saw rises. And its also true that Europe and East Asia have just as ubquitous cell phone usage.
My working hypothesis is it's an everything problem working together to make a perfect storm of bad results. In the US so many major streets neither cut off almost all pedestrians (like freeways) nor are pedestrian friendly (like city streets), but the big problem there is the suburbs more than rural areas simply due to population density creating more opportunities for crashes. Upsizing cars makes close in visibility worse (bigger blindspots especially right in front) even as long distance visibility improves which increases the problems of night time driving where visibility beyond your headlights is going to be bad negating the distance visibility advantage. Homelessness doesn't help which is related most strongly to housing costs in an area vs incomes and the point that homelessness spiked in 2022 (though by most accounts was quite a bit lower than normal in 2021) and is coming back down helped. But also lack of car traffic on the roads during the earlier parts of COVID meant what cars were on the road could go a lot faster.
So what this means is we've got immediate problems, needing to reduce homelessness and slow down vehicles on arterial roads, medium term problems of encouraging smaller cars and fewer arterial conflict points, and long term problems, turning more arterial streets into either slower, denser business/population city streets or into fully separated highways, either policy would also tend to concentrate destinations in ways that make public transit a better option for more people and thus necessitate a greater share of funding going to transit.
I do have hopes that because of the low traffic effects of COVID fading the highest spikes in deaths we've seen over the past few years will drop at least for a year or two, but that will only give us breathing room and won't help with the still way too high deaths we saw in 2019.
The data already supports the position, phones are everywhere. But deaths are growing where the cars are growing. I’m not attacking you personally, but it reeks of this typical dilemma. Americans putting yourselves through the dumbest punishment by forgetting there’s an entire world out there who already know better.
The scariest thing about the covid blip theory is that the reason ya'll don't have more accidents is that your roads used to be so clogged that people couldn't drive faster. During covid times, roads cleared up, speeds increased and as a result more crashes happened.
It's not even just phones, cars themselves have been getting more distracting. I mean, just look at that massive touchscreen in the Tesla!
I'm loving how every time you have included footage of SLC, you can always catch a glimpse of Blue Stakes markings I personally painted.
3300 s between State and 1000 w is absolutely one of my least favorite stretches to walk through, specifically because of how dangerous (and mind numbingly boring) it always is.
That's a fun coincidence! 👍
well... if America ain't so car centric, there might be lesser accident with smart road layouts that basically traffic calm the vehicles to slow down for the peds to use it safely...
Lol naw we build race strips in the middle of our towns 😅🤣
Well being that America literally invented mass produced and affordable cars its not crazy to see how US became so car centric.
We need to get back to this, but with electric cars instead of fuel-guzzlers.
For anyone interested in digging deeper into pedestrian safety and the benefits of non-automobile transportation methods, I highly recommend you check out "Strong Towns" and "Not Just Bikes". This includes you too Road Guy Rob! I'd love to see your videos on roads include more non-car topics!
RGR is aware of NJB, and NJB is aware of RGR. There is a lot of agreement among both creators about what the problem with North American development is, where there is disagreement is how and where to fix it. But I do know that NJB is not going to collab with RGR anytime in the near future.
@@Awesome_Aasim Pretty sure RGR and NJB both agree that putting in sidewalks, multiuse paths, removing driveways on stroads, and having safer crossings are all good.
@@Awesome_Aasim As RGR said himself, he likes cars, and he likes driving. NJB doesn't, for the most part, so you've got two people who have made very different lifestyle choices and therefore are going to disagree on solutions. Plus a significant proportion of NJB's audience are very much the stereotypical car hating urbanist so probably aren't going to appreciate any collaboration.
@@Croz89 NJB doesn't hate cars; in fact he has a video on why driving in the Netherlands is so much better than most of the US. What I think they both hate are stuff like traffic congestion, overcrowding, pollution, etc. Where they disagree is whether it is worth solving North America's problems; NJB thinks it is not, RGR thinks about actionable steps to work toward safer cities immediately.
@@Awesome_Aasim I'd agree that NJB isn't as car hating as some of his fans, who really do fit the stereotype sometimes. But I don't think he *likes* them that much either, if you catch my drift. His arguments about driving in the Netherlands are at least partly predicated on the idea that people there drive a lot less on average, and many more people don't drive at all. I get the impression that he at least concedes that some people will need to drive, but he would not agree with a society where cars and driving are popular among the vast majority of the population.
As an aside, I think driving in the Netherlands is reflective of the same reason the infrastructure as a whole is of high quality, there's a lot of people who are relatively wealthy living on not a lot of land. To get the same effect in the US you'd have to empty out most of the country and really concentrate the population into a few key regions, which isn't going to happen. The US has to spread its infrastructure around a lot more, so it has to look for cheaper solutions than what you might be able to do in a more densely populated environment.
Another factor not mentioned directly here is the increase in blind spots in modern cars. Get in a vehicle from the 90's or even 2000's and you'll feel like you have a full panoramic view compared to today's vehicles. This is especially apparent in sedans which already have less outward visibility than larger vehicles. Now, the A, B, and C pillars are also much larger and bulkier, among other things in the vehicle reducing visibility.
Ya, my current vehicle's left A pillar has obstructed me from seeing people and other hazards many times, and it's always frightening. Like even if I'm plenty vigilant, I literally can't see some hazards until they shift into view. This was never a problem when I drove a small Ranger pickup a decade ago.
@@LucMMailloux agreed. I drove a newer Tundra last year and nearly struck a bicyclist since he just happened to be moving at the perfect speed in the blind spot of my mirror and A-pillar on the road I was approaching. Luckily my wife saw him and alerted me. Oddly enough I had the same thing happen a few months earlier with an F350, except I was the cyclist and the only one paying attention.
something interesting about the chart on 5:19 - the spike that starts in the mid-2010s coincides with when high-pressure sodium (HPS) streetlights started to get replaced with LED lights, and when all new streetlights became LED only.
It’s also when smart phones were getting popular.
It's also when copper theft started to really skyrocket. At least in Hawaii we constantly have street lights that are out because thieves steal the copper wiring.
That bit where you tried out a light truck really reminded me of a Not Just Bikes bit. Hope you can collab soon! Your topics covered have a good overlap, ultimately urban planning and traffic safety go together hand in hand.
Smartphones were introduced around the world at the same time, yet pedestrian deaths by country only show the post 2010 spike in the US. So unless you believe that Americans are somehow unique in how they use smartphones while driving or walking, that can not be a major factor in the rise in pedestrian deaths.
Maybe it's not that Americans use phones differently, but that they magnify existing flaws in our roads, like bad intersections, excessive driveways, or lack of sidewalks.
@@Br3ttM This is a good thought. The formula for these crashes may be: stroad infrastructure + distractions for both parties.
Perfect timing! I’ve been working on collecting information and data to send to my city about the speeders on my street. Now they want to make it one way with ZERO traffic calming measures and they removed pedestrian crossing zones.
They prioritized cars over people… What a shame
Cuz those care have feelings and the people living in that city don't, obviously /s
In the Netherlands (where I studied traffic engineering), which has one of the safest road networks in the world, they actually avoid putting marked pedestrian crossings on residential streets, because the entire street should be safe to cross as a pedestrian. This accomplished by physically forcing cars to stay below 18mph using narrow brick streets with abrupt curves and raised intersection.
This actually makes no difference to travel times by car, because as per road classification, you only drive on a local street for a small distance to access your destination/origin, and reducing the speeds eliminates the need for stop signs. Nearly your entire trip should be on an arterial road or highway.
@@OntarioTrafficMan I'd love to see the US adopt those kinds of safety standard because they actually work at making places safer. I've heard the sad excuse of "We cannot have PT or safe roads like Europe does because 'We're not them.' which makes no sense from a city planning perspective or any engineering field (I think)
@@ambiarock590 Yeah it makes especially no sense in a residential context because the Dutch designs take up *less* space than American ones. So it's literally always possible to fit them
@@OntarioTrafficMan Right? Sadly most people don't actually put any thought behind their argument when they argue against going against car dependency since that's what they're used to and go to "We're just different than nations with PT" because we really aren't. That argument makes no sense in engineering.
They changed the lights from the old warm Yellow lights on our street to the new LED lights in our area. It is much harder to see under the blue tinted LEDS light's than the old yellow street lights.
2:06 I think one of the reasons is because car prices went up and so more people are walking despite how "scary" and unsafe it is to do that.
Just look how awful the public spaces are designed for pedestrains and cyclists. It's just a bunch of asphalt and there you go, hope for the best.
I wished you just here used the "stroad" terminology here at 9:37 because these aren't really aterial roads. These are roads serving high speed traffic, with the services of a street.
I think it's important to use the "stroad" terminology so we can effectively focus on what's wrong in all American cities: A bad lack of planning that sets up pedestrian threatning areas.
I wonder if urban sprawl has shifted traffic to stroads. Since stroads are the deadliest type of road, increasing the amount of traffic on stroads could contribute to the spike in fatalities.
I know my own town has grown dramatically in the past 15 years as more and more people move out this way. (Many people can’t afford to live in the nearest major city, so they end up overflowing into new suburban developments.) New tract subdivisions are springing up everywhere, and the once-quiet country roads leading out of town are now congested stroads lined by strip malls, fast food restaurants, etc.
I dislike stroads immensely. They try to be roads (high speed connections between two places) and streets (complex environments where people actually go to) at the same time; and in doing so the stroad fails at being either a road and a street. You can have speed, or you can have safety; you can't have both. Pick one and design a street for it, you cannot build a road for safety and speed at the same time.
"Stroad" is not a technical engineer term. It's one author's clever term he uses in his book.
If the profession adopts it officially, I'll start to use it more. Meantime, I prefer pointing out specifics wrong with the road (e.g., too many driveway accesses)
@@RoadGuyRob I would love them to adopt it officially, and them to be scrutinized more because they are pretty dangerous for everyone.
A contributing factor to vehicle selection in the US is that many manufacturers are not making or selling small cars in the US market anymore. The choices really have become so limited in terms of new vehicles you really only have a choice between a truck or an suv.
Really?! Mini Cooper, Honda civic, Kia, Mazda...
Blame government regulation for that.
You can buy a Honda accord… which is a sedan, brand new.
The problem with SUV's, Trucks and other big cars is they are generally built with the safety of the driver in mind. For years they have been pushed as the safest cars on the road and people generally care more about their own lives and families more than the people they hit.
There is a town called Astor in Florida. It is on HWY 40 where it crosses the St. Johns River. Every night you will find someone walking or riding a bike along the highway that has a 45 MPH limit not wearing any bright clothing or carrying a light. I don't know how many times I came close to hitting someone while on my way home from work at 10 pm. I'm tired, it's dark, and I've got people riding with bright lights going the other way blinding me. These people really do take their lives in their hands the way they walk or ride along that highway.
Bigger vehicles that hit people in the skull and vital organs rather than the legs. It's the SUVs and pickups that are killing pedestrians.
That is because people just walk out into the streets when cars are coming, I have seen with my own eyes
There's been an increase in reckless driving the past couple of years and especially the past year. Running of red lights is much more common. Seeing someone run a light that was fully red (not stretching a yellow) was extremely rare up to a few years ago. Now I see at least one a day if I'm outside for any length of time and I've seen as many as four cars go through an intersection after the light turned red, two that were a block away when it turned red.
As a road worker, who knows these dangers as well as anyone, I didn’t hear any mention of probably the biggest factor. Which is there are just more people LIVING in the streets than we’ve ever had before. So it’s no surprise.
As some others have commented, the problem is all the gadgets in cars these days. Want to change the radio station? Want to turn up the fan on the heater? It used to be you could do everything without taking your eyes off the road using "muscle memory." Not anymore. Manufacturers feel compelled to out-do each other by imitating the bridge of the Enterprise. Add to that the texting while driving and your car turns into a death machine. There's starting to be some blow-back on this trend to the point where some manufacturers are redesigning and undoing the ridiculous gadgetization and going back to manual controls.
The real problem is designing cities for the car, instead of designing it for the person.
If you prioritize people, that means cars are less important in certain places, and it's safer for everyone else. When you design for the car, it's unsafe for anyone not in a car, and drivers grow accustomed to owning the places they go, which makes it even less safe.
the biggest contributor is cultural, although sheer numbers also have an effect. we are trending more towards a me-first culture, and that results in more people expecting other people to do the work of collision avoidance. we can build all the safety furniture we want, but as long as two people are both expecting the other to do the work of being safe, there will be a collision, eventually.
I agree. It seems like far too many people care about themselves in North America even when it comes to sharing the roads. Compare that to places like Japan where it seems most people care about each other and the number of road fatalities seems to be much less even though the infrastructure isn't that much different.
Tokyo has practically zero bike lanes and plenty of stroads and yet it doesn't seem like there's many people killed or injured riding their bikes there because both drivers and cyclists watch out for each other and are careful around each other. Then you also see cyclists regularly riding their bikes on the sidewalk even in crowded areas and yet there's few problems between cyclists and pedestrians because again both are courteous and mindful of each other.
@@UzumakiNaruto_ we have that in other aspects of our culture as well.
Streets belong to everyone, not cars. We need to repeal "jaywalking" laws everywhere and build safer streets. No more stroads! And no more lecturing about "personal responsibility" to lazily blame victims.
American modern infrastructure was built on stroads, so good luck there. Repealing jaywalking laws will create traffic jams all over the municipalities where previously there were none.
They belong to everyone BUT if you do use them then FOLLOW THE RULES of using them.
There are rules for bikes and pedestrians and they need to follow the rules because the rules are there FOR SAFETY. And yes, if to choose to walk on a dark street, in a lane of traffic, at night, wearing dark clothes, you don't deserve to be hit but you WILL be hit.
In Fort Wayne, Indiana last year, a police officer (in an unmarked police truck) struck and killed a pedestrian. Security footage more than proved the officer was in the wrong. After trial, the police officer was fined $30.
Records show the officer had multiple other on duty traffic violations.
I once saw a city bus wrapped with a reminder that if theres no sidewalk the saftest thing is to walk against traffic, a sad reminder that good public transit is no good without complimentary pedestrian infrastructure.
One thing that frustrates me is when emergency vehicles are out at night, their lights are so bright and pointed at traffic, so you cannot see any people that are walking around the incident. It would be nice if the lights facing drivers were not as bright, but they shined some bright light forward (direction traffic is moving) in the area beside the incident, so if someone was walking/standing there we have a better chance of seeing them.
Distracted driving is by far the biggest issue imo. Every one text and drives, looks at GPS or touch screen dashboards. Basically people do every thing but watch the road these days. Never mind speed limits are generally broken by at least 5-10 mph at all times.
These roads are all dangerous by design and put cars before people. Smaller vehicles will help, but the issue is fundamentally with design and car dependency in our culture.
I feel the same problem in The Netherlands (ironically). They think everybody only uses cars, public transportation or cycle here, except for central urban areas and more densely populated neighborhoods.
One of the hardest things to teach people (especially after theyre taught that all failings of a system are somehow the fault of the individual) is that no, looking both ways before crossing the street wont make the street any less dangerous if there isnt a sidewalk there in the first place.
Great video Road guy Rob;
Where we live the drivers are getting worse by the day. If you're not driving fast enough for them they will ride inches off your bumper and some will take huge life ending risks just to pass only to end up stopped at the next red light as you roll up behind them.
We are also surrounded by high speed freeways where they drive 80+ mph for hours and once they get off the freeway and drive two miles later they're at a 25 mph subdivision road and they're driving 50 mph as it seems very slow to them. It's always been dangerous on the roadways and lately it seems to be getting worse, much worse.
Thank you, Lisa
it’s about getting the car/driver to their destination first and foremost. everything else is barely considered.
Starting to think the only way out is the railway approach, speed activated stops, and by stops, I mean tyre spike.
Thanks much! Its incredible how accustomed we can become to tremendous loss of life, but its also incredible how we can learn from our mistakes.
For me, driving at night has gotten worse and worse recently. It's mainly due to three factors: increasing numbers of harsher led lights over incandescent bulbs, vastly increasing numbers of drivers with fog lights on all the time, and LED screens in the vehicle. (All of these factors are summed up in one phrase: "Too much light pollution!")
If you can turn your LED screen off, just drive out to the country side at night, then turn it off and drive back into town on the same route. You'll see far more of the surroundings. The light from the LED screens whites out the rest of your vision, so you're not able to see things that are perfectly visible if those screens are not on. Worse, even if you turn them off, it can take 30 minutes or more for your eyes to fully adapt to the dimmer lighting.
Fog lights are (1) not aimed downwards, (2) more luminous per unit area than normal lights, and (3) poorly indicated, if at all, inside the vehicle. We need fog lights to be illegal to use at night unless there is fog nearby and we need enforcement of that law. We need manufactures to be required to put a dash light inside the car to indicate that fog lights are on. If fog lights are on, because of their different aiming and different luminosity, an oncoming car is subjected to more than twice as much light than if the car didn't have their fog lights on. Throw in the adaptation issue we have with going from light to dim areas and fog lights will blind a person while driving past them, and reduce their vision for a good time afterwards as well.
LED headlights are harsher on the eyes. Increased strain leads to decreased vision. Many of them, at least to me, seem to be vastly brighter than incandescent bulbs.
As an aside, a possible fourth category is that many, many drivers are starting to drive with their bright lights on at night, all the time. I suspect it's a reaction to all the above making it very difficult for them to see ... but they're only making the problem even worse for other drivers. It used to be the case that high-beam lights were physically separate from low-beam lights, so the police could easily tell if someone was flouting the high-beam laws, but nowadays, many manufacturers have them co-located. Add in LED glare in the officer's vehicle, possible high-beams, or LED headlights and it's nearly impossible to tell if an oncoming driver has high-beams on today, unless they're driving an older model vehicle. So, those people driving around with high-beams on are getting away with it and not learning to respect other drivers.
The light atmosphere for drivers at night is horrible today and only getting worse. I can't help but wonder how many of those deaths could have been avoided if (1) uniform LED headlight luminosity laws are passed taking emission spectra into account, (2) fog lights must be off unless there is significant fog (indicators required from manufacturers), and (3) laws stating LED screens inside vehicles must be able to be switched off and must also be able to be switched on within specified luminosities (for example: the LED must be fully functional and on while emitting no more than 10 nits. The maximum it can emit is 300 nits.)
Doing research, or passing legislation to eliminate light pollution from all sources (including screens, low-beams, high-beams, fog lights, and even lights along the roadside) and emission types (LED, halogen, incandescent, etc) would go a long way to decreasing night time accidents.
Since 2010 we've also seen a proliferation of bright screens in automobiles. Bathing the driver in light inside the car will absolutely make it harder to see things in the dark outside the car because their eyes are not adjusted properly. I've been in situations where the giant screen in the Tesla next to me noticeably reduces my ability to see. I cant imagine being in the car with that screen.
I did a tally for a month a few years back and found that 50% of the time I was almost hit was when people were driving out of a gas station followed by crosswalks. It only counted times when me not stopping would have resulted in being hit because they were too close to stop. Seeing the actual numbers and not being able to tell myself I was imagining it got me so mad at the drivers I'd slap the cars that would have hit me if I hadn't been watching for them. That stopped when a lady who didn't even slow down on her way from the pump onto the road look me in the eyes in her mirror then did a U-turn so she could drive in the left shoulder and yell about how I was going to pay big time once the police arrived. I gave up walking after an SUV clipped my backpack on its way out of a gas station even though I thought I had made eye contact with the driver.
It's because we allow just about anyone to have a car and drive it with almost no training and/or consequences.
Driving is a privilege, not a right.
AND kids are no longer being to "look both ways and only cross when clear".
Kids these days are being weened on all cars stopping for them at their school bus so they get the idea that they always can just wander out and drivers are supposed to stop instantly for then....
Glad someone made a video on the GHSA report. I got into an argument with a coworker (he thought pick up trucks where inherently more dangerous). We looked up IHS and GSHA data and were shocked that pedestrian fatalities declined from 1980-2010, then just decided to flip trajectory and now we have more pedestrian fatalities than ever before.
I find it more crazy that more people die at night now than in 1980. I thought lighting would be greatly improved from then.
At least in my city, if lights are even there, 70% of the time they are off and no amount of complaining to the city or state will turn them on. It's dangerous out here!
Are you comparing the rates? The pedestrian fatality rate in 1980 was 3.6 per 100,000. In 2021 it was 2.2 per 100,000.
@@deltaalpha
You are right, I neglected change in population. Using my same GHSA and IHS data sources but for vehicle on road count, I calculate a comparable figure of 3.6 in 1980, and 2.5 in 2022.
From 1980-2020, in decade steps, I get 3.6, 2.6, 1.7, 1.4, 2.5
So we are safer than 1980, but we have still regressed to 1990 levels.
I noticed that you showed Amarillo. You are quite right---it is very pedestrian unfriendly. I like to walk for exercise. Apparently though, sidewalks are considered "optional" here. Many people here, are ripping out their sidewalks. They then scream at me for walking across their lawn (F---their lawn!). The absolute worst though, are the people who plant shrubbery out to the curb, literally forcing everyone to walk in the street. More often than not, they have vehicles parked along the curb, forcing everyone to walk in the middle of the street! I have tried to bring this to the attention of city officials. They essentially told me to F-O!
Definitely should f.o. and stay off people's grass
A friend of mine was hit by a car in a small city street, right after dark walking home. He died. A few months ago an 8th grader got hit right at sunrise, the car that hit him was driving directly into the sun and was blinded and did not see the red light. I wonder how many happen at dusk or dawn. The 8th grader died. He was taking advanced classes at the high school across the street.
"every hour Ford sells over 100 f-series pickup trucks"
"that's one every 40 minutes"
No, it's one every 36 seconds, obviously the intent was one every 40 seconds, but this should have been easily caught in editing
Otherwise great video, very informative.
oh yeah, i'm sure that's worse than pick-up trucks and SUVs mowing down several thousand pedestrians annually
My mistake. I only had the truck for 75 minutes and flubbed my ad-lib.
And then missed it in editing.
Canada did not see a comparable rise in pedestrian deaths since 2010, so I don't think the size of cars or cell phones are to blame since those trends were just as big in Canada as the United States.
Problem is Canada has similar suburban sprawl and car dependency as the US in many places, so it can't really be that either.
Another factor to consider is SPEED! Many arterials are owned by the state, which sets speed limits higher than what the municipality wants, and also the municipality may have little option to change it since they don’t own the road.
Distracted driving is no doubt a major contributing factor to this issue, but SPEEDING (as in, driving over the speed limit) is actually the most common cause of crashes, not distracted driving.
Since 2020, people have been speeding much more, and this behavior has not returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Great video as always!
About the pedestrian fatality rate. The increase in the USA isn't observed in the EU, it has been falling. So phones likely aren't the main driver of the trend.
I had the rather soul searing experience of passing the corpse of a pedestrian who'd been hit by a semi on a freeway. It was deeply upsetting.
As for the car vs truck thing. I have a Toyota Tacoma and Ford Focus. The A-pillar in the Focus is the size of a tree trunk and tilted flatter than a 45 degree angle. I CANNOT see pedestrians stepping into a crosswalk as I approach an intersection in that car. Hitting someone with the truck would probably injure them worse but I feel that the chances of hitting someone with the car are orders of magnitude higher.
11:42 "Every hour Ford sells 100 f-series pickup trucks. And thats one every 40 minutes." Oopsie.
im entirely sure why. its cause our streets are not designed for safety theyre only designed for vehicle speed
I've been a truck driver for 10 years with a lot of night driving experience on rural roads. Something I've personally noticed is new LED headlights, while being much brighter, do not show a level of detail like older, more yellowish halogen headlights can show, I'll explain. My old truck (20Freightliner Coronado) had halogen headlights with a brownish / yellow tint to the light, animals and road debris/hazards were more noticeable as the colour reflecting back had more detail, and I could easily determine the oddities in the road or on the edge because the contrast was different enough. However, my new truck (2022 Western Star 49X) has very bright LED headlights, which are very white, I notice as I can see more of the road, everything has a very faded, low contrast look to it, and it is harder to really make out animals and debris, as the light reflecting back, is just as bright as the light I am putting down, and tend to blend in with the road and the tree line to the sides. I am not sure if anyone else is noticing this with new LED headlights (not to mention that it tends to blind other traffic even more too) but I thought it was something to point out and maybe look into? Thank you for another insightful video Rob!
SUV's and trucks are deadly and we have so many drugged out zombies wandering around compared to the past. Two things making the situation worse and worse.
From 6th - 11th I rode my bike all over town. Even now bc I still don’t drive, I walk most places & whenever I cross there’s always someone making a turn who almost hits me then they look more pissed off than me. I pushed the button to have the right of way.
Car people are funny. They get mad to pedestrians & ppl on 2 wheels like they’re the ones who will die by impact.