Maybe drivers of cars should just be held responsible for determining if it is safe to proceed before proceeding?
Neither crosswalks nor pedestrian walk signals are new or novel.
Most drivers only see threats to themselves rather then seeing if they are a threat to others.
Ask any motorcyclist about how it feels to be invisible when Joe/Jane Cardriver wants to change lanes.
This became standard practice about 10 years ago but it took COVID measures to reverse that when everyone suddenly said DON’T PUSH THE BUTTON!
Turning right on red seems the more dangerous consequence.
This is a good example of a safety measure not based on the natural fallacy of assuming that human brains work how they ought to work. Most are from the mindset that people should behave like A so my rules assume they will…
In this specific case if the human brain is given the rule “If A then do B unless C” once condition A triggers people will start doing B and only then process condition C. Note that this is not judgemental, it is just how we all are wired.
So if the rule is “Turn right in red unless there is other traffic” people will be turning the corner before processing the possibility of cyclists or pedestrians. If you design a traffic system where this happens blaming human nature for the accidents is like an engineer blaming gravity when his bridge collapses.
Sure, but how is it that we never see intersections where green/walk for pedestrians is the default, and green for motorized traffic appears only when a car is detected?
Indeed. To sum up: “it’s the infrastructure, stupid!”
One of the things I immediately noticed when I moved from the Midwest US to the Northwest is the horrible sight lines. Visual barriers that would never be allowed in Michigan were commonplace. There are a number of intersections where traffic enters a high-speed road essentially blind, with no traffic light. But the big thing is the need for drivers to advance into, over, and sometimes past a crosswalk in order to see the traffic they are entering. It’s freakin scary.
They do exist but admittedly even in the most pedestrian/cyclist friendly countries they are still rare.
A well-programmed reactive traffic light system should do this automatically if the pedestrian or cycling traffic streams are the biggest (ie. carry the most people.)
NJB has a good video about such systems, a bit NL-centric but similar systems exist in other countries.
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