Max Sterling
New Member
The easiest way is to address this is to remove the expectation of pedestrian predictability and make it nearly always driver responsibility for pedestrian collisions. If you saw a child or maybe dog at the side of the road, you would slow down, and wait to see what it did, you have no expectation that the kid or dog won't walk into traffic. So, allow pedestrians to cross the road anywhere and make car drivers absolutely liable. That removes the "pedestrians are idiots" excuse. You'd have to drive like you might be criminally responsible for a vehicular death at any moment.
I disagree. Why take away pedestrian responsibility when we should be asking them to take MORE responsibilty for their own safety especially when its so damn easy to do? I would bet that probably 90%+ pedestrian/vehicle accidents wouldn't happen if pedestrians simply paid more attention when they were crossing a road. I mean if people would just look to their left and right and keep doing so while crossing a street, they should be able to judge if they have enough time and space to cross and therefore almost always avoid being hit. It really is that simple and I don't know why its so controversial to ask pedestrians to do their part in keeping themselves safe.
If you ever go to the Toronto subreddit where everytime there's a post about a pedestrian being injured or killed by a vehicle, the majority of people will always blame the driver and/or road design. The thing that I can never understand is that if people know that there are a ton of bad drivers on the road and that road design isn't always ideal for pedestrians, then why aren't people taking MORE precautions when crossing the road? I'll never get why people acknowledge that for various reasons there are many bad drivers in Toronto and yet they cross a street like it was the exact opposite and that most drivers were courteous, attentive and always mindful of pedestrians and cyclists.
The bottom line is pedestrians need to take responsibility for their own safety because you can't be crazy enough to acknowledge that there are many bad drivers on the roads and then turn around and trust your life these same drivers and hope they don't injure or even kill you. We can always keep demanding that things get better to protect pedestrians from dying, but at the same time people need to adapt to the reality that they're living in right now and do as much as they can to keep themselves from harm.