Gods walk our streets

So Mayor Tory is all about pedestrian safety because of a rash of traffic deaths in the last week or so. Some Councillors are pushing for putting the Vision Zero on a faster track even though it's, according to some, ahead of schedule.

http://urbantoronto.ca/news/2017/01/vision-zero-city-launches-pedestrian-safety-initiative

Then go to our Fallen Rider forum and we find that the latest "Crash" was caused by a pedestrian running out in front of a bike.

http://www.gtamotorcycle.com/vbforu...-Dufferin-and-Finch-GWS&p=2527858#post2527858

For the last half century or more we have been putting our little darlings on pedestals where the world is expected to watch out for them 24/7. Why then is it unexpected that they get hurt when they step out in front of a moving vehicle?

They are raised stupid and attaching them to a cell phone halves that pittance of brain power.

While we can argue and pray that some sanity will show through with the e-bike fiasco, walking, a mode of transportation used for millennia, is becoming a lost skill. Any chance the rider will be compensated by the person causing the crash? Snowball in hell.

Legalized marijuana won't make them more alert but maybe it'll help alleviate the pain when they get run over by a bus.

Yeah ... I think red light camera for every single intersection and if you are still tempted to drive we will get with a speed limit of 5km/h in the city. Should work, no?

Why don't we just all move out somewhere up north??

Who's at fault in most of these fatalities and what's their cause? Are speeding cars running pedestrians over when they are legally crossing? Inattentive jaywalkers are meeting speeding cars?

Of the reported pedestrian deaths, however, nearly two thirds of fatalities reported involved pedestrians over the age of 65, who make up only 13% of Toronto’s population.

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Are seniors jaywalking but they are to slow to avoid in incoming cars?

These articles don't give much insight in to the problem.

Anybody seen the mess that Council has made of Royal York, Woodbine etc?

Funneling higher volumes of Proletariat traffic through narrower streets, while the Aristocracy rides to Council in their limos, shows how far away from "Vision", these people are.

The war on the car/motorcycle/bicycle is back with a vengeance! Everyone get on that packed bus.

daught said:

Who's at fault in most of these fatalities and what's their cause? Are speeding cars running pedestrians over when they are legally crossing? Inattentive jaywalkers are meeting speeding cars?



Are seniors jaywalking but they are to slow to avoid in incoming cars?

These articles don't give much insight in to the problem.

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Maybe riding their scooters into traffic, trying to cross the road, that's how my grandmother got hit twice.

On one of my recent visits downtown, a well dressed woman was crossing the street, then stopped midway through to do something on her phone. The 2 cars waiting to turn left had to wait another light cycle because of this.
People suck.

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Two 21 year olds run over at 3:30 am crossing midblock to get to a taxi. One died. No personal responsibility anymore. People are also extremely lazy and/or rushed and don't want to walk to a safe place to cross so they just go wherever they want and expect the vehicles to avoid them.

daught said:

Who's at fault in most of these fatalities and what's their cause? Are speeding cars running pedestrians over when they are legally crossing? Inattentive jaywalkers are meeting speeding cars?



Are seniors jaywalking but they are to slow to avoid in incoming cars?

These articles don't give much insight in to the problem.

Click to expand...

Years ago I saw a very old lady crossing sherbourne north of bloor. She started walking when the walk signal came on. N/S went green before she was half way across so all the cars waited for her. She cleared the road just before N/S went green again. Sadly, her mobility was such that she should never cross a street in Toronto again. It is only a matter of time before she gets hit.

Many of these seem to be midblock. The recent one on Warden south of the 401 was hundreds of meters to the closest signalized intersection. Crosswalks every 100 m are not realistic. The safest option is probably to install dividers on roads that are 4+ lanes. It prevents pedestrians crossing, unsafe u-turns and people trying to turn left out of parking lots across 2+ lanes of traffic.

daught said:

Who's at fault in most of these fatalities and what's their cause? Are speeding cars running pedestrians over when they are legally crossing? Inattentive jaywalkers are meeting speeding cars?



Are seniors jaywalking but they are to slow to avoid in incoming cars?

These articles don't give much insight in to the problem.

Click to expand...

Seniors get the quadruple whammy.

Can't briskly walk to a light or crosswalk

Can't dodge cars well

Can't see or judge distances well

Don't heal well

Toronto has a population of 2,800,000. About 50 pedestrians will get killed. 2,799,950 will not. The odds are 99.9982145% likely to not get killed so why worry?

I think the Romans had something in their decimation policy. When one in ten gets severely punished (Killed in their case) people will correct their behavior.

So we either have to bump off 280,000 people per year or the police have to start handing out tickets at a rate appropriate to the factors causing the deaths. A lot will be pedestrian tickets.

Never going to happen

Survey the problem

Study the problem

Shelve the problem

Collect paycheck and retire with pension

I curse pedestrians every single day, living at yonge and eg, they rule the area. Daily, trying to turn left from yonge, onto a side street, I finally get an opening and someone looking at their phone walks into the intersection, looking at me as I brake, like Im the one whos an idiot.

Or we get the dude walking as slow as possible thru the intersection, thinking of his next hipster record purchase looking at the sky or the likes. Cross with authority people will ya!

I also then remind myself before I get all angry, that these people simply dont own cars, and have no concept of traffic when they are crossing a street. Myself, I let cars in who are waiting to turn left, backing up traffic, or potentially gonna speed in front of an oncoming car to try and make it in. I drive, I notice these things as a pedestrian.

Point being, I dont think the majority of pedestrians in the core have any clue of their responsibility as pedestrians let alone any courtesy for a fellow motorist while being a pedestrian.

Rob Star said:

I curse pedestrians every single day, living at yonge and eg, they rule the area. Daily, trying to turn left from yonge, onto a side street, I finally get an opening and someone looking at their phone walks into the intersection, looking at me as I brake, like Im the one whos an idiot.

Or we get the dude walking as slow as possible thru the intersection, thinking of his next hipster record purchase looking at the sky or the likes. Cross with authority people will ya!

I also then remind myself before I get all angry, that these people simply dont own cars, and have no concept of traffic when they are crossing a street. Myself, I let cars in who are waiting to turn left, backing up traffic, or potentially gonna speed in front of an oncoming car to try and make it in. I drive, I notice these things as a pedestrian.

Point being, I dont think the majority of pedestrians in the core have any clue of their responsibility as pedestrians let alone any courtesy for a fellow motorist while being a pedestrian.

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Given the number of pedestrians and cars, we need to fundamentally change the way they interact. As an easy first step, pedestrians should only be able to enter an intersection for the first 5 or 10 seconds of a green light, this gets them all across as a group (safer do to higher visibility, team human shield and much higher likelihood that all will clear the intersection before traffic starts moving in the other direction) and prevents the trickle of followers that prevent a single car from making a left turn during an entire green light. Currently, you get 30 pedestrians in the first 5 seconds and 10 pedestrians over the next 60 seconds completely blocking traffic flow. All 40 could easily go as one slug if they were forced to.

There is little downside to this approach other than people raging that they are being pushed aside for cars. I can think of very few intersections where 10 seconds would not accommodate all waiting pedestrians getting onto the street. For intersections where pedestrian volumes are high enough that this doesn't work, they should probably be scrambles with separate movements of vehicles and pedestrians anyway.

Timing of pedestrian signals is supposed to already get people going across the intersection with enough time for a normal person to clear the intersection. The stop-walk signal starts flashing LONG before the green light for vehicle traffic changes to yellow - this is supposed to give pedestrians sufficient time to get across. Of course, this timing is set for normal pedestrians at normally-expected walking speed ... it is not practical to fully accommodate the lowest possible denominator (elderly person one step at a time using a walker, for example).

I think what's really needed is enforcement of both pedestrian and bicycle traffic. There are lots of complaints about errant bicyclists ... there are ample errant pedestrians, too. When's the last time you saw a cop pull over either a bicycle or a pedestrian for ANY infraction and hand them a ticket? There will be no improvement until that starts happening.

Pedestrian cross outside of a designated crosswalk? Jaywalking ticket. Pedestrian start crossing a crosswalk against a red stop-walk signal? Ticket. Bicyclist uses a sidewalk or a pedestrian crosswalk? Ticket. Bicyclist fail to stop at a red traffic signal? Ticket!

Until this starts happening, bicyclists and pedestrians will do whatever they feel like, with impunity. And they will continue to get hit by being in places where they shouldn't be.

IIRC as part of the above-mentioned Vision Zero initiative, New York City cops started ticketing pedestrians and bicyclists for such infractions ... and there was so much backlash that they stopped!

FWIW I had two near-miss incidents lately, one involving a bicyclist riding on a sidewalk in front of my house (I couldn't see them coming because my view was blocked by another vehicle in my driveway on the side that they were coming from) and another riding across an intersection crosswalk (they entered the crosswalk at the same time as me making a left turn - not a problem for a pedestrian at walking speed but the bicycle moves fast enough for this to be a potential conflict). Of course both bicyclists yelled and gave me the finger as if it were my fault for them being where they shouldn't be ...

Answers some of the questions above are here: http://www.gtamotorcycle.com/vbforu...Bad-The-Ugly&p=2515402&viewfull=1#post2515402

BTW, "pedestrians can be stupid" isn't exactly a news flash, and it's certainly not validation for anyone's antagonism against them. Bikers can be stupid. Everyone can be stupid. In fact everyone IS stupid at one time or another. The point is people are getting killed just trying to get around. Maybe we can look into doing something about it rather than using it to validate our cynicism for the fate of mankind? Because if you choose the latter, then that's your occasion for being stupid.

Brian P said:

Timing of pedestrian signals is supposed to already get people going across the intersection with enough time for a normal person to clear the intersection. The stop-walk signal starts flashing LONG before the green light for vehicle traffic changes to yellow - this is supposed to give pedestrians sufficient time to get across. Of course, this timing is set for normal pedestrians at normally-expected walking speed ... it is not practical to fully accommodate the lowest possible denominator (elderly person one step at a time using a walker, for example).

I think what's really needed is enforcement of both pedestrian and bicycle traffic. There are lots of complaints about errant bicyclists ... there are ample errant pedestrians, too. When's the last time you saw a cop pull over either a bicycle or a pedestrian for ANY infraction and hand them a ticket? There will be no improvement until that starts happening.

Pedestrian cross outside of a designated crosswalk? Jaywalking ticket. Pedestrian start crossing a crosswalk against a red stop-walk signal? Ticket. Bicyclist uses a sidewalk or a pedestrian crosswalk? Ticket. Bicyclist fail to stop at a red traffic signal? Ticket!

Until this starts happening, bicyclists and pedestrians will do whatever they feel like, with impunity. And they will continue to get hit by being in places where they shouldn't be.

IIRC as part of the above-mentioned Vision Zero initiative, New York City cops started ticketing pedestrians and bicyclists for such infractions ... and there was so much backlash that they stopped!

FWIW I had two near-miss incidents lately, one involving a bicyclist riding on a sidewalk in front of my house (I couldn't see them coming because my view was blocked by another vehicle in my driveway on the side that they were coming from) and another riding across an intersection crosswalk (they entered the crosswalk at the same time as me making a left turn - not a problem for a pedestrian at walking speed but the bicycle moves fast enough for this to be a potential conflict). Of course both bicyclists yelled and gave me the finger as if it were my fault for them being where they shouldn't be ...

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To be fair, this could have been a child on a bicycle who would have been more difficult to see and absolutely should be on the sidewalk. The opposite happens as well. At least a couple of times a week walking to the mailbox someone will pull out of their driveway without looking while I'm inches from their car.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The average IQ of the population is on a downward spiral. I have no scientific proof but I see it every day and everywhere.

It's not the IQ which is spiraling downward (we are not any smarter when born opposed to generations before us) .... it's the laziness, stupid smartphone addictions, ignorance and other characteristics unique to this era. The next generations will have a set of their own, but I doubt their IQ will be that much different on average.

mxs said:

It's not the IQ which is spiraling downward (we are not any smarter when born opposed to generations before us) .... it's the laziness, stupid smartphone addictions, ignorance and other characteristics unique to this era. The next generations will have a set of their own, but I doubt their IQ will be that much different on average.

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I suppose "technically" you may be correct but let's then say that stupidity is increasing.

Sure, but even that has causation other than date of birth. Would you say social media and smartphones make people lazier and act more stupid? ... I definitely could agree with that. Seems like many cannot act normally these days without swiping fingers across a screen. And all Zuckerberg wanted was to connect people and help ... LOL

The worst parts of the city to drive in are downtown during rush hour either in the morning or afternoon and you can go to liberty village any part of the day and they have no sense of stopping and letting a vehicle through, it's like roads don't exist and everything to them is a sidewalk. The cyclists are the worst in the city and obey no signs or signals when they are meant to.

I think I've just come up with a solution, install a portable signal jammer on your motorcycle while riding around - should get people to stop looking up at their phones until you've vacated the premises.

markopas said:

The worst parts of the city to drive in are downtown during rush hour either in the morning or afternoon and you can go to liberty village any part of the day and they have no sense of stopping and letting a vehicle through, it's like roads don't exist and everything to them is a sidewalk. The cyclists are the worst in the city and obey no signs or signals when they are meant to.

I think I've just come up with a solution, install a portable signal jammer on your motorcycle while riding around - should get people to stop looking up at their phones until you've vacated the premises.

Click to expand...

I bet that mechanism would also fry your electronics

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