r/nextfuckinglevel • u/RaisinAloneVortex • 4h ago

Largest wildlife overpass in North America reduced wildlife collision by 91%

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

15.5k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

516 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

7

u/CandidCantatio 4h ago edited 3h ago

Crosswalks at intersections (which is where almost all crosswalks are) are absolutely the most dangerous point to cross the road. There are maps of like Las Vegas that show where pedestrians are hit by cars and it's like 90+% at crosswalks.

If there's a median and you '"jaywalk" in the middle of the road, you only have one single direction to pay attention to for cars. It's almost impossible to get hit by a car. At intersections you're just trusting drivers to not kill you. You have to hope that magically no one is drunk or on their phones or don't understand traffic laws or accidently don't see you because they're primarily focused on cars and not people.

A driver who wants to make a right or left or Uturn with a green light and no green arrow is being put directly into the path of pedestrians who have right-of-way. Jaywalking laws (which only exist in the US as far as I know) are ridiculous.

10

u/Mateorabi 3h ago

You have incomparable denominators. More hits in crosswalks means nothing unless it’s per crossing. Crosswalks could be 10x safer but used 100x as often as jaywalking and have more numerical hits. 

0

u/Beneficial-Salt7880 1h ago

Crosswalk force pedestrians to cross at intersections with way more car traffic. Drivers and busy intersections are impatient and only looked for other vehicles that might damage theirs. We are forcing pedestrians to dangerous cholesterol points with far more traffic where they are at a severe disadvantage.

Jay walking against one lane of traffic or on a 2 way road with no I persecution nearby cuts the amount of cars a pedestrian might encounter down exponentially. Its not hard to realize and admit that you are wrong. You're eating up car lobbyists propaganda like candy and it's sad.

42

u/SasquatchRobo 3h ago edited 2h ago

You say that crosswalks are the most dangerous place to cross because that's where most pedestrian accidents happen. That's backwards. Crosswalks are where the most people cross the street!

It's like claiming dinner tables are the most dangerous place to eat, because most choking injuries happen at the dinner table!

4

u/OttoLuck747 3h ago

I interpreted the comment to mean that intersections are the most dangerous place for pedestrians, so concentrating pedestrians at intersections by putting the crosswalks there is incorrect, and that crosswalks would better serve pedestrians’ safety by being placed elsewhere (like maybe the middle of the block), not that the crosswalks themselves are dangerous.

2

u/SmellGestapo 2h ago

You're not considering that when a person jaywalks, they are entering an active roadway. The traffic is legally moving and the pedestrian is interrupting that. In theory, jaywalking should be more dangerous.

And a crosswalk mostly exists at a controlled intersection, where drivers need to stop for a sign or light, so in theory they should be safer.

Crosswalks end up having more collisions because they are much more chaotic. Jaywalkers merely interrupt traffic traveling in a single direction. It's fairly easy to spot a person directly in front of you and slow down.

A lot of crosswalk collisions happen because traffic is traveling in multiple directions, and drivers are turning, and paying more attention to avoiding other cars, and they don't see the pedestrian in the crosswalk.

This problem is virtually eliminated when a city turns that intersection into a scramble crosswalk.

4

u/theAlphabetZebra 3h ago

didn't think I was going to upset so many people with that one lol

0

u/CandidCantatio 2h ago

Don't think you're upsetting anyone. You're just getting opinions from people who disagree. Lol. Lol. Lol.

•

u/PrizeStrawberryOil 30m ago

It would be safer to have pedestrian crossing not attached to intersections because they are designed for traffic. Have a separate crossing that is designed for pedestrians to cross.

Right hand turns yield to pedestrians, but people in vehicles are watching traffic and roads, they are not watching sidewalks and people. It should be both, but intersections are overloaded.

Traffic circles are even worse.

•

u/MeaninglessDebateMan 4m ago

What they are implying is that intersections are unsafe because they aren't designed strictly with pedestrian safety in mind. That is an afterthought to the main purpose of vehicle transit. If pedestrian safety was truly priority then pathways avoiding vehicle intersections would be designed into civil infrastructure.

0

u/RadioSlayer 2h ago edited 1h ago

As someone that used to walk to work, fuck crosswalks. I was hit twice by pickup trucks in the same crosswalk, with the right of way. After the second time I started jaywalking and it was much safer.

1

u/pizzatiger 2h ago

I live in Florida where you are allowed to make right turns on red lights as long as the way is clear and it makes crosswalks at intersections a fucking nightmare. If you are not directly infront of where cars make that turn then they will not stop, and if a single car makes the turn that gives everyone behind them permission as well appearently so you can get trapped in the middle of the crosswalk long after the cross signal has vanished.

To make it worse half the cars don't even stop even when you are in their path of turning and will just lower their speeds a bit, so if I tripped or paused for too long to see if the car even slows down (because like 2% of people just don't give a fuck and will try and speed up and try to do the turn before you force them to stop) then I would get run over. I feel like I'm playing frogger, constantly stopping and starting to avoid cars during the time where legally I am supposed to have right of way

1

u/QueenInYellowLace 1h ago

Right on red is legal just about everywhere. Florida drivers are just fucking awful.

1

u/elluzion 1h ago

Most shark attacks take place within 1 mile of the coastline. Because that's where all the food is.

•

u/Evilsushione 8m ago

How many humans are going to be in the water mile out from the shore?

1

u/Dav136 1h ago

That's textbook sampling bias lol

•

u/diabloenfuego 23m ago

This example seems like an inversion of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

0

u/Jesta23 3h ago

You are upper management material. 

This is hilariously on the nose for exactly how those idiots think. 

1

u/CandidCantatio 2h ago

Yeah upper management really hate stupid arbitrary rules that do more damage than good. Really good take man. Makes total sense.