The main solution here is for urban planners to create streets that force drivers to slow down and also allow pedestrians to cross easily.

We already know how to do this. We know that thinner streets cause drivers to slow down. We know that bulges at intersections shorten the distance that pedestrians have to cross, limiting interactions with cars. Cities need to rebuild their streets to be safer.

The onus is on drivers to pay attention, slow down, and not kill people. It's a reasonable expectation that a human can behave in an unexpected manner. Drivers need to behave accordingly. Good urban design can guide them into doing this naturally.

Deliberately creating obstacles to free-flowing traffic (speedbumps, chicanes, etc.) just frustrates drivers and makes them more aggressive.

Do you have a study on that? But GP wasn't suggesting actual obstacles. Just cutting excess width.

Drivers are also human beings.

Civic planners need to behave accordingly. Isolate cars and pedestrians, ideally have each in distinct tunnels (the pedestrian one can have a safety-glass roof).

Based on driving, biking, and walking around Portland on a consistent basis; I'm pretty sure people have straight away forgotten that cars can kill them.

I often hear something like, "I have the right of way!" as a common refrain. So I just assume they'll be self-satisfied getting killed and having their headstone read, "Here lies someone who was technically right."

This sounds a lot like victim blaming to me.

Yes and no. Defensive driving in Portland against pedestrians and bicyclists is required well above what I'd grown accustomed in other cities. Yes, they have a right. They pop out and around the cars in expected and very much unexpected ways.

This reminds me of a sailing lesson. Smaller vessels have right of way. Sails have right of way over engine driven. A friend of a friend was sailing and came close to allowing his 30 foot sail boat to be run into by a mega ocean fairing cargo ship. He saw it coming at him, had plenty of time to drop sail, but refused to take action because "he had right of way" completely ignoring that the cargo ship needed a mile or more to meaningfully turn out of his path. The sailor was right. Right but stupid. Stupid might mean dead, and stupid people dying is evolution at work.

I believe that the larger boat, at least in the case of "mega ocean fairing cargo ship" has right of way over a smaller 30 foot sail boat. At least that's how we did it when I was learning to sail.

https://americanboating.org/bigger_on_the_water.asp

Nope. Only if constrained by draft. We speak of a "law of tonnage" which is really to the OP's point: don't be stupid. You might be the stand-on vessel but you're going to die.

Riding at night, hands removed from the handlebars, no helmet, with no safety lights or reflective gear, wearing all black, on busy street, where the only indication of there being a person present is the faint glow of their cell phone screen and the ember of a lit cigarette. Often extremely reactionary and aggressive when they have a close call. Even more so when a fellow cyclist points out how dangerous it is.

The above is a common occurrence in inner-SE Portland after hours. Especially on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

It's fascinating from a particular perspective.

In the centre of Copenhagen, around this time (1:30), almost all drivers will be driving at not much more than running pace. The tight intersections and narrow roads force the behaviour, and inebriated pedestrians and cyclists everywhere make it necessary.

> I will do what I can to avoid or minimize damage, but if you're not lit up there is basically nothing I can do.

You can always slow down, until you can stop within the distance you can see.

But you were specifically talking about people who assert their legal right. Riding at night without lights is illegal in Oregon. Perhaps those cyclists can be blamed, but innocent pedestrians who have the right of way shouldn't be.

Okay. Pedestrians looking straight down at their phone, walking full stride at a street corner, making no attempt whatsoever to look for oncoming traffic and strutting out into said oncoming traffic without out so much as a stutter-step.

The above is embarrassingly coming in downtown and NW Portland.

Sometimes when a pedestrian gets hit by a car, it is actually the pedestrian's fault. If you are not paying attention to what is going on around you, why do you assume that everyone else is going to cover for you? They aren't paying attention either. I see people step out into traffic at random locations without looking practically every day.

This may be controversial, but I feel an alarmingly large number of people do not know how to properly cross the street on their own. They implicitly trust the crosswalk signal without both ways and once more to the left. Even more shocking is that people will not look up from their phones when crossing the street.

We should always design our transportation networks to be as safe as possible but one should take responsibility for their own life when crossing roads that two ton missiles hurtle down. You never know when someone is going to have a heart attack, stroke, be drunk, fall asleep at the wheel, etc. when approaching a crossing. Just because the light gives one the go ahead does not make it safe.

Also, too often I see pedestrians asserting their right of way to cars. Being right isn't more important than being alive.

I agree with your comment but the report also says 82% of the fatalities occurred outside of intersections, suggesting crossings aren't the main problem.

> But there's new evidence today that even walking across the street is getting more dangerous.

This is such an odd way to phrase it. Walking across the street is not more dangerous. People are acting more reckless. The amount of danger is the same as it has always been, pull your face out of your phone and look at it!

And when the texting driver runs you over?

It is worth considering, but not really worth arguing about, since we don't have the data. This NPR piece is just following the reporter's agenda and not the study. The study does not give any suggestion that pedestrians distracted by their phones are causing the increase. In fact, pedestrian deaths in the top 10 cities decreased in 2016.

As a pedestrian: Assume the approaching car won't stop.

As a driver: Assume the pedestrian at the corner will step into the road.

This is basic common sense and I don't understand why people don't get it. In the story:

"It is alarming," says GHSA executive director Jonathan Adkins, "and it's counterintuitive."

It's not counterintuitive. It's entirely predictable that people who are not paying attention to their surroundings and not exercising common-sense caution and defensive behavior are going to learn the hard way.

Clearly the solution is 50mph speed limits. Tough on crime tactics should also encourage pedestrians to pay more attention and if they do get hit darwinism solves the problem.

Though to comment more seriously. I'm sick of everyone's knee-jerk reaction of "lower speed limits". As if that makes it OK for pedestrians and cars to interact.

The correct approach to safety is better design. Ideally provide cars and pedestrians completely isolated levels and/or venues of travel. A stopgap might be the installation of 'splash guards' and covered awning style sidewalks that provide an increased physical barrier, more as a mutual reminder that crossing the line is a bad idea. Once you've done that, it should also be possible to provide some kind of barrier at crosswalk portals.

I'm actually surprised the numbers aren't a lot higher.

The bike path I ride to work goes through the local university and is split into three parts: one for walking, and two cycling (one for each direction). They're clearly marked, and it gets enough traffic that most people make sure to use the correct lane.

Almost every day, though, I ride past at least one person walking in the cycling lanes, headphones on, eyes glued to their phone, not paying any attention whatsoever to where they're going. Worse still, I've seen cyclists on their phones, riding down the walk lane, or the wrong way in one of the cycle lanes.

> I ride past at least one person walking in the cycling lanes, headphones on, eyes glued to their phone, not paying any attention whatsoever to where they're going.

Ugh. If you're walking with your phone, at least hold the screen in front of you level with your eyes so you can see ahead of yourself instead of looking at the ground.

I think Capetian America: Civil War, in the beginning of the film, featured a little safety piece about this. The "On your left" call out.

That verbal reminder is great and exactly what everyone SHOULD be doing.

I would say, "obviously,", but in reality "on your left" doesn't even help most of the time because of the headphones.

I think you're underestimating just how oblivious people can be.

THe "on your left" call-out was commonly heard on the Lake Shore Drive bike/pedestrian path in Chicago. Pedestrians, skaters, and cyclists mostly coexisted without incident. It was the pre smartphone era though when I lived there.

I do agree with you on this in theory but to be honest I personally hate this. 9 times out of 10 the person shouting "on your left" startles me and my brain goes into overdrive frantically trying to calculate which side he is on with respect to my own position and trying to get my limbs moving in the opposite direction. The twist is that I'm usually not in the way to begin with most of the time.

Now I'm not sure how to solve this conundrum but I'd rather be more inclined to believe we need better design than resorting to strangers shouting their ever-changing location.

A lot of these deaths are actually caused by drivers breaking the law. It may well be that victim distraction is increasing, but looking at that as a "cause" sounds a little bizarre.

If that's the case, these deaths will indeed decline rapidly as human (i.e., poor) drivers are replaced with self-driving vehicles.