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Road Safety & Vision Zero Plan

The thing that bothers me most about people not stopping at the stop line, and instead stopping closer the the interesecting road is that those people are only looking for automobile traffic, and not pedestrians. Especially when drivers are only looking for other drivers coming from their left, ignoring pedestrians coming from their right. If you watch some drivers as they approach an intersection, you barely see them look right at all as they roll across the crosswalk. It happens all the time.

It's also really bad when bi-directional separated bikeways are involved. Bike crossing blocked, and drivers only looking to their left for other drivers. (My biggest experience with this is on Burnhamthorpe in Mississauga)

Stop at the stop bar, people. The sidewalk and bike lanes are part of the intersection you're stopping for!
 
vic said:
The thing that bothers me most about people not stopping at the stop line, and instead stopping closer the the interesecting road is that those people are only looking for automobile traffic, and not pedestrians. Especially when drivers are only looking for other drivers coming from their left, ignoring pedestrians coming from their right. If you watch some drivers as they approach an intersection, you barely see them look right at all as they roll across the crosswalk. It happens all the time.

It's also really bad when bi-directional separated bikeways are involved. Bike crossing blocked, and drivers only looking to their left for other drivers. (My biggest experience with this is on Burnhamthorpe in Mississauga)

Stop at the stop bar, people. The sidewalk and bike lanes are part of the intersection you're stopping for!
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I wished we used raised crossings and intersections, but most importantly; is that the enginers actually care about sightlines and making sure road users always interact at a 90 degree angle so drivers can have less of a chance of running people down because they can actually see them in their peripheral vision as seen here, and in practice it does not slow down cyclists like if that was such a bad thing.
 
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BhadPetrov said:
I wished we used raised crossings and intersections, but most importantly; is that the enginers actually care about sightlines and making sure road users always interact at a 90 degree angle so drivers can have less of a chance of running people down because they can actually see them in their peripheral vision as seen here, and in practice it does not slow down cyclists like if that was such a bad thing.
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This is a raised intersection:
Raised%2520Intersection%2520-%2520Brick.jpg

From link. With raised intersections, using the YIELD sign makes better use, since the drivers will have to slow down anyways.

Should include raised crosswalks:

Raising a bicycle lane may also nudge the motorists away from the bicycle lane.
1Raised-Bike-Lane_20120205_1293-1024x552.jpg

2-Raised-Bike-Lane_20120205_1284-1024x483.jpg

From link. (That's a parking lane to the left.)
 
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WARNING! More collisions occur during school days. Parents are driving their own kids to and from school, instead of walking them. This results in road rage, especially around the schools.

Also know to increase obesity in children, being driven to and from school.
 
W. K. Lis said:
WARNING! More collisions occur during school days. Parents are driving their own kids to and from school, instead of walking them. This results in road rage, especially around the schools.

Also know to increase obesity in children, being driven to and from school.
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And some parents seem to think they are exempt to parking regulations. It even worse in the winter, parents can't properly dress their kids for cold weather so they cram their behemoth SUV's in the NO parking zones in front of the the school, causing all kinds of traffic chaos.
 
gabe said:
And some parents seem to think they are exempt to parking regulations. It even worse in the winter, parents can't properly dress their kids for cold weather so they cram their behemoth SUV's in the NO parking zones in front of the the school, causing all kinds of traffic chaos.
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there's parking bike lanes in front of my school, when I used to bike to school people always parked in them and cops would drive by without a care of the ticking jackpot just sitting on the side of the road
 
BhadPetrov said:
there's parking bike lanes in front of my school, when I used to bike to school people always parked in them and cops would drive by without a care of the ticking jackpot just sitting on the side of the road
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Unless you're being actively murdered or have a gun out, the TPS don't GAF. At Parliament and Carlton cars constantly park illegally on Carlton across from the TD bank. I watched one driver stop his car and then look at the TPS officer walking by, and the TPS officer said, "I'm not Parking, I don't care where you park".

TPS never enforce the laws on parking or public nussisance laws such as blocking sidewalks, sleeping in parks, graffiti, etc. The city's going to hell.
 
Meanwhile...

Car-Free Zones Eyed in SF, Elsewhere
After a spate of pedestrian deaths, San Francisco leaders are considering restricting cars from some residential neighborhoods.

From link.

Won't happen in Toronto because of the suburban anti-pedestrian councillors.

A string of pedestrian injuries and deaths in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district has spurred city leaders to demand a ban on cars in some densely populated neighborhoods — the latest in a nascent and long-overdue move by activists nationwide to get reckless drivers off at least a tiny handful of city streets.

San Francisco Supervisor Matt Haney, who represents the neighborhood, proposed banning vehicles from some streets and adding more pedestrian plazas to give residents spaces to walk without the fear of being run over — a strategy that has helped bring road fatality rates down dramatically in Europe.

“We have a dense population of kids and seniors. The streets should be for people where there are public plazas where you don’t have to dodge cars,” Haney told ABC7.

There have been 15 people killed in traffic crashes in San Francisco since August, four in the Tenderloin alone, prompting Haney call for a state of emergency for traffic safety and meet with transportation officials to discuss strategies.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency sends its Rapid Response team to evaluate intersections after crashes and plan safety improvements, such as paint and temporary posts, protected bike lanes, pedestrian scrambles, and updating traffic signals. And city officials are finalizing their $600-million Better Market Street plan that would restrict private cars from accessing the thoroughfare with construction set to begin next year.

But when a drunk driver made an illegal right turn on Golden Gate and Leavenworth and seriously injured a 12-year-old boy last Tuesday afternoon in the same intersection a speeding car killed Janice Higashi while she was crossing the street in March, advocates shamed the city for not going far enough to change traffic patterns.

“The SFMTA has been proposing improvements, promising us more quick builds, promising more capital projects that will take time,” Tenderloin Community Benefit District Director Simon Bertrang told Streetsblog SF. “They’re doing things faster than in the past, but it’s not enough. It’s not enough.”

Transit activists barred traffic from several local streets in protest on Saturday and called for car-free zones throughout the city, turning one-way avenues into two-way streets, and adding more red light cameras.

Breed told ABC7 she is “open-minded” when it comes to traffic calming measures, but didn’t exactly give it a ringing endorsement, adding she is “in favor of anything to make our streets safer, but I want to make sure it’s the right thing.”

Pedestrian fatalities had been declining nationwide after 1990, but began ticking upward in 2009 and were estimated to reach 6,227 last year, according to Governors Highway Safety Association figures — up 50 percent in 10 years to roughly one pedestrian dying every 90 minutes according to an LA Times analysis. The popularity of SUVs and distracted driving, is a contributing factor in the rise of pedestrian deaths, GHSA reports. The smartphone became ubiquitous in the period just before the pedestrian death spike.
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But outside the United States fatality rates are dropping. The European Union mandated that automakers pass pedestrian safety tests in order to sell vehicles to the public and pedestrian fatalities declined 36 percent between 2006 and 2017.

European leaders have also led the way creating car-free zones in London, Oslo, Madrid, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Paris. In perhaps the most dramatic measure, Barcelona in 2016 launched its superblock initiative, which were tic-tac-toe-shaped groups of streets that bar traffic and given back to residents for play areas. Six currently exist Barcelona officials want to create 503 superblocks throughout the city, reclaiming 60 percent of its roads for pedestrians and cyclists and potentially saving 667 premature deaths a year.

That’s prompted civic leaders in the U.S. to look at ways to slow down vehicles and remove them when possible in dense urban areas.

Earlier this year, a Lower Manhattan group called for barring cars from several roadways between City Hall Park and Bowling Green and lowering speed limits to 5 miles per hour on others.

And in September, Seattle Council Member Teresa Mosqueda proposed routing traffic around a six-block area of Capitol Hill from Pine and Union between 12th and Broadway into a Barcelona-style superblock. She hopes to continue advocating for her plan after the election.
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