7,485 pedestrians were killed by cars in the United States in 2021<\/a> \u2014 the highest number in 40 years.\u00a0 Here in our area, one of them was a county supervisor killed while out walking her dog during the daytime in an area one might think of as pedestrian friendly.<\/p>\nThe truth is, even places with a high walkability score (I live in one) are not really pedestrian friendly. Every time I walk to the store I cross an even bigger street \u2014 Broadway \u2014 where I must click on a button to get a walk signal. Sometimes the button doesn\u2019t work, which means that a green light doesn\u2019t last long enough for you to walk across four lanes of traffic (plus two parking lanes).<\/p>\n
Also, people making left turns onto Broadway don\u2019t always pay attention. One day I saw a driver almost hit someone who was using a walker. I screamed at the driver.<\/p>\n
That was a case of a driver not paying attention. The person who nearly hit me this week was worse than that \u2014 they decided they were entitled to keep moving fast because they were in a car.<\/p>\n
All pedestrians need to pay attention, not just when it gets dark early, but all the time. While this is unfair, it is necessary.<\/p>\n
A lot of drivers on the residential streets where I live don\u2019t seem to understand the meaning of a red octagonal sign with the letters \u201cSTOP\u201d painted on it. Some glide through in a rolling stop; some never even slow down.<\/p>\n
The problem is that about a hundred years ago our society decided \u2014 with a push from car manufacturers \u2014 to privilege cars over other forms of transportation. Trolleys and light rail were phased out. Jaywalking laws were put in place.<\/p>\n
And then we built more highways and more streets designed for fast traffic. Everyone knows of places where you have to walk several blocks to find a safe place to cross a large street.<\/p>\n
Even here in California, where the law is very specific about yielding to pedestrians, lots of drivers don\u2019t pay attention. If you\u2019ve ever taken the written test for a driver\u2019s license here \u2014 and I have to take it every five years because I\u2019m old \u2014 you will have several questions about pedestrian rights.<\/p>\n
But some drivers still refuse to yield.<\/p>\n
Now it happens that I also drive. In fact, I\u2019ve been driving since I was 14. I know how much fun it is to drive fast, especially some place where you\u2019re not supposed to.<\/p>\n
I also know how hard it is to pay attention to everything you need to see and hear when you\u2019re driving, and that\u2019s even when you don\u2019t have a bunch of distracting things in the car like your phone beeping or a dog deciding it needs to move around or kids squabbling.<\/p>\n
When I drive up to Telegraph Avenue from my place, I come first to a crosswalk, where I stop and look carefully, and then to a bike lane, where I also stop and look carefully. Then I edge into the bike lane so I can see the cars and figure out when I can enter the traffic pattern. It\u2019s tricky and we just have a two-way stop there, so the bikes and cars aren\u2019t planning to stop (and the pedestrians shouldn\u2019t have to).<\/p>\n
It takes a lot of attention to drive safely. Most drivers screw up fairly often.<\/p>\n
We need to change the rules. Cars should be forced to drive very slowly in most areas. The system should put pedestrian and bicyclist safety above moving cars quickly.<\/p>\n
Streets like Piedmont Avenue, where I nearly got hit, should be set aside mostly for pedestrians, with access for delivery trucks (lots of businesses there) and those with disabilities. Larger streets should have lights that let all pedestrians cross at once. Stop sign violations should be strictly enforced.<\/p>\n
Cars have only been around for a little over a century, yet in that time they have come to dominate so much of the world. Changing the rules so that they don\u2019t have preference would be a small step toward taking our society back for people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A couple of days before the solstice, I walked to the store about 5:30 in the evening. We\u2019re at 9.5-hour days here, so it was already dark. My partner had found a long string LED (probably designed for wrapping around a bicycle), so I was carrying it to be more visible. I always walk to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,17],"tags":[634],"class_list":["post-2482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-experiences","category-rants","tag-pedestrians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2483,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2482\/revisions\/2483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}