Road Safety & Vision Zero Plan

[afransen]

Where did the sidewalk go on the right side?

Laughed at this. The idea of the raised crossing is great--utter fail when it leads to a shrub.

 

[W. K. Lis]

What If (Motor Vehicle) Drivers Had to Follow Scooter Laws?​

From link.

It seems like there’s a news story every other day about an exciting new traffic law aimed at curbing the most dangerous behaviors on U.S. roads. The only problem? They’re almost exclusively aimed at the riders of electric push scooters — not automobile drivers, who are actually responsible for virtually all of the national traffic violence death toll.

Since shared e-scooters first proliferated across America in 2017, cities and states have scrambled to write hundreds of policies to minimize the downside risks of the micromobility revolution, like scofflaw riders who strike pedestrians at intersections and scooter-cluttered sidewalks rendered impassable to people who use assistive devices. The industry itself has welcomed many of these laws — at least those that didn’t ban the mode, or make it functionally impossible to ride — sometimes offering their own voluntary safety controls designed to keep drunk, reckless, and inconsiderate riders in line.

But what’s often missing from the conversation about how to make micromobility safer for everyone is the simple reality check that 80 percent of fatal scooter crashes are caused by drivers — and often, neither those drivers nor their cars are subject to some of the most stringent laws governing lightweight modes.

Here are five safety guardrails that are currently in place for 40-pound e-scooters that aren’t typically applied to 4,000-pound pick-up trucks — but maybe they should be.

Maximum speed caps​

By far the most common state-wide scooter laws on the books are speed-limiting laws, which require providers to cap the maximum velocity of their fleets to as little as 10 miles per hour.

There hasn’t been a lot of research into the role scooter speed plays in a pedestrian’s chances of surviving a crash with a rider — at least compared to the mountains of research that prove that the faster a driver is traveling, the more likely they’ll kill a pedestrian they strike. Still, scooter companies are often happy to comply with cautious speed caps, in sharp contrast to U.S. automakers, who actively brag about their vehicles’ ability to break even the most lenient speeding laws.

Most cars on the market in America do technically have a top speed….of more than 112 miles an hour, depending on the safety rating of their tires. The top legal speed limit on any road in the entire country, meanwhile is just 85 miles per hour.

So why does any car need to go 86?

With more and more speed-capping laws on the books for scooters every year, maybe it’s time to reopen the conversation about whether cars ever really need to be able to go so much faster than local limits — much less hit triple-digits.

Geofencing​

Of course, limiting possible speeds isn’t as good as automatically slowing down vehicles to a safe speed for actual, dynamic road conditions — and that’s where geofencing comes in. Most scooter companies have embraced the simple technology, which allows a vehicle to automatically sense and respond to critical information about a specific location it’s entering that’s been marked by an invisible, virtual perimeter — information like the local speed limit, or the presence of a sidewalk where a scooter shouldn’t be riding, or the proximity of a pedestrian-rich area where a rider should really slow down.

Virtually every scooter company has invested in some version of geofencing technology, which many of them use to automatically keep their riders from parking in places they shouldn’t, to slow them to 8 miles per hour or less in front of walker-rich destinations like hospitals and schools, to stop them from plowing into dense pedestrian plazas, and more.

Geofencing is available on cars, too – but most drivers don’t want it.

Following the news that the European Union would require all new car models to come equipped with geofence-equipped speed governors that would force drivers to (mostly) obey local limits, some street safety advocates wondered whether the U.S. should do the same thing — though only 14 percent of U.S. drivers agreed, despite the fact that at least one-third of U.S. auto deaths involve speeding.

Here’s a thought: maybe driver preference shouldn’t carry so much weight when 36,000 per year are dying?

 

[W. K. Lis]

Strong max height and weight laws​

In the name of safety, a whole lot of U.S. communities put strict limits on the maximum weight, height, and other design features of e-scooters.

States like Ohio, Maine and Tennessee even go so far as to explicitly define the word ‘scooter’ as a vehicle weighing under 100 pounds with wheel heights no greater than 12 inches, mostly in recognition that heavier vehicles with larger dimensions may pose additional risks to walkers than smaller-format mobility options. After a scooter exceeds those limits, riders typically need a drivers license to operate them, and are otherwise subject to the stricter laws imposed on moped and motorcycle riders, which studies have found have some of the the highest rates of fatal pedestrian crashes per mile among all transport modes.

Light trucks and SUVs also have some of the highest fatal crash rates with walkers in the U.S., in large part because heavy cars with high front body designs, like SUVs and trucks, are are about three times more likely to kill a pedestrian in the event of a crash. But drivers don’t need special licenses to operate those.

In most states, a non-commercial driver can legally operate a vehicle up to 10,000 pounds with no special training, and restrictions on vehicle height are mostly aimed at minimizing damage to overpasses and tunnels rather than minimizing damage to human bodies. Indeed, many set virtually no limits on how high a pick-up driver can legally “lift” their truck’s body off its wheels, or limit only the distance between a car’s headlights and the ground, rather than how much it towers over the average American child (or the average American adult, for that matter.)

The massive infrastructure bill currently under consideration in Congress does direct NHTSA to explore new rulemaking that could limit deadly vehicle designs like these, but the agency doesn’t have to actually do it by a specific deadline — which advocates fear means it’ll never happen at all.

In some states, drivers need a special license to operate a vehicle like the one on the left, but …but not the one on the right. Images, sadly, are not to scale.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Helmet laws​

There’s no doubt that helmets save lives when a scooter rider (or cyclist, or any other vulnerable road user) who’s wearing one is struck by a driver — at least up to the point where a driver is behaving so dangerously that no helmet will protect anyone. That’s part of why every U.S. scooter provider requires its riders to wear one, and some even provide them for free.

Helmet laws, on the other hand, can carry dangers of their own, like providing a pretext for police to harass people of color and the unhoused, as well as reducing overall scooter and bike ridership (which, thanks to the safety in numbers effect, can micromobility more dangerous than if helmet laws weren’t on the books).

We don’t know if the same thing is true for drivers, because no U.S. community has never enforced a mandatory car-helmet law, even though car crashes are the second most common cause of traumatic brain injuries every year. (Our colleagues at Streetsblog NYC once asked then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo about it, but he didn’t seriously consider it.)

Some advocates think we should give a a try — or at least ask ourselves about why we’re so happy to leave vulnerable road user safety up to individual solutions with the potential for inequitable enforcement like helmets, when a universe of systemic solutions could save lives on all modes.

Because if drivers were forced to navigate roads that were anywhere near as dangerous for them as U.S. roads are for scooter riders, they’d realize quickly just how much work there is to be done.

An actual motoring helmet, via Carlton Reid, CC

 

[lenaitch]

So, mandating helmets in enclosed vehicles in an effort of social empathy (or, to be less kind, 'because we have to'), rather than based on research. I can't dispute the link to an injury law firm, not that it is beyond reproach, I simply don't have the data or desire to source it but, anecdotally, I was involved in a violent collision about a year and a half ago. Between the seat belts and airbags, I was in a cocoon.

 

[DirectionNorth]

So, mandating helmets in enclosed vehicles in an effort of social empathy (or, to be less kind, 'because we have to'), rather than based on research. I can't dispute the link to an injury law firm, not that it is beyond reproach, I simply don't have the data or desire to source it but, anecdotally, I was involved in a violent collision about a year and a half ago. Between the seat belts and airbags, I was in a cocoon.

Nobody's advocating for mandatory helmets in enclosed vehicles, it's pointing out that only active transport have those requirements.

 

[Northern Light]

Nobody's advocating for mandatory helmets in enclosed vehicles, it's pointing out that only active transport have those requirements.

I'm very pro-cycling; I also have something of a Libertarian inkling notwithstanding my progressive leanings in terms of letting people assess risk for themselves...............

That said, the comparison here is not well thought out.

Injuries to pedal cyclists on New Zealand roads, 1988-2007 - BMC Public Health

Background The risk of injury is one of the major barriers to engaging in cycling. We investigated exposure-based rates and profiles of traffic injuries sustained by pedal cyclists that resulted in death or hospital inpatient treatment in New Zealand, one of the most car dependent countries...

bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com

****

Cars, obviously, can travel at far greater speeds than can cyclists; that said, over all risk of injury per hours travelled is 15x lower than cycling.
That's because the car itself is a form of helmet.

In addition, car drivers/passengers have seat belt laws to comply with which don't apply to cyclists, and typically have airbags as an additional defense against severe injury.

IF we were going to seriously suggest that all laws or safety precautions from one mode must apply to another.............then cyclists need seatbelts, air bags, sideview cameras, turn signals, and amended bicycle design to withstand greater impact.

Cyclists would also have to be licensed.

That, of course, is too much nonsense.

The argument against mandatory helmets for cyclists is a mix of respect for personal freedom, along with a fair assessment of the practicality of such a law and its adverse effect on ridership levels.

 

[DirectionNorth]

I'm very pro-cycling; I also have something of a Libertarian inkling notwithstanding my progressive leanings in terms of letting people assess risk for themselves...............

That said, the comparison here is not well thought out.

View attachment 345652

Injuries to pedal cyclists on New Zealand roads, 1988-2007 - BMC Public Health

Background The risk of injury is one of the major barriers to engaging in cycling. We investigated exposure-based rates and profiles of traffic injuries sustained by pedal cyclists that resulted in death or hospital inpatient treatment in New Zealand, one of the most car dependent countries...

bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com

****

Cars, obviously, can travel at far greater speeds than can cyclists; that said, over all risk of injury per hours travelled is 15x lower than cycling.
That's because the car itself is a form of helmet.

In addition, car drivers/passengers have seat belt laws to comply with which don't apply to cyclists, and typically have airbags as an additional defense against severe injury.

IF we were going to seriously suggest that all laws or safety precautions from one mode must apply to another.............then cyclists need seatbelts, air bags, sideview cameras, turn signals, and amended bicycle design to withstand greater impact.

Cyclists would also have to be licensed.

That, of course, is too much nonsense.

The argument against mandatory helmets for cyclists is a mix of respect for personal freedom, along with a fair assessment of the practicality of such a law and its adverse effect on ridership levels.

And much of it, no doubt, is because we prioritize cyclists over cars. In, say, the Netherlands, in 2019 there were 200 cycling deaths compared to driving deaths. Helmets are quite rate there.

 

[afransen]

So, mandating helmets in enclosed vehicles in an effort of social empathy (or, to be less kind, 'because we have to'), rather than based on research. I can't dispute the link to an injury law firm, not that it is beyond reproach, I simply don't have the data or desire to source it but, anecdotally, I was involved in a violent collision about a year and a half ago. Between the seat belts and airbags, I was in a cocoon.

Mandating helmets for active transportation, especially cycling, is punitive to cyclists and is essentially victim blaming. It should not be an excuse to fail to provide proper cycling infrastructure. Countries where cycling is a significant transportation mode don't wear helmets. Forcing cyclists to wear helmets presents a barrier to cycling adoption.

 

[afransen]

Why are Dutch cyclists more likely to be injured if they wear helmets?

The Netherlands is the safest country in which to cycling and very few people wear helmets. But 13% of cyclists admitted to hospital are helmeted. Why?

www.cyclehelmets.org

We also should differentiate between types of cycling. Mountain biking and race biking are much riskier and it is highly advisable to wear a helmet. Urban commuting cycling should be made safe through infrastructure design, not papered over with helmet mandate.

NL, I would caution the interpretation of those stats. How many of those cycling injuries were sustained during more 'sport' cycling? Probably quite a few, given how few people cycle in general.

 

[W. K. Lis]

I remember in the 1960's, the city of Toronto started replacing sewer grates with the herringbone design. That increased the safety of cyclists.

However, they can still provide a problem for cyclists...

from link.

More so, riding near the curb can still present problems with the potholes that form around the sewer grates. Not to mention the litter that can accumulate near the curb.

From link.

From the cyclist's point-of-view, fixing the path that cyclists ride on would be better, even if I am wearing a helmet. Having a cycle lane next to a curb is dangerous because of the potholes.

 

[crs1026]

Mandating helmets for active transportation, especially cycling, is punitive to cyclists and is essentially victim blaming. It should not be an excuse to fail to provide proper cycling infrastructure. Countries where cycling is a significant transportation mode don't wear helmets. Forcing cyclists to wear helmets presents a barrier to cycling adoption.

Fair enough, but we are far enough from having enough of that safer infrastrucutre to be happy about people deciding to dispense with helmets just yet.

My family members all habitually wear helmets while cycling, and while I may not be able to “mandate” them to do so, you can be sure I would harass, wheedle, nag, cajole, and generally make myself unpopular if I saw that trend. On a broader basis, I might well extend my emphatic advice to friends, colleagues, neighbours, and even fellow UT posters (who might in turn block me in frustration).

I don’t see this as “blaming” anybody…..it’s admitting a reality and encouraging people to stay safe in what can be a very harsh city.

Maybe in a few years….

- Paul

 

[afransen]

Helmets can give people false confidence. It might help in most single vehicle crashes. If you get hit by a car at speed, the helmet won't matter. Or get run over by a concrete truck.

 

[lenaitch]

Nobody's advocating for mandatory helmets in enclosed vehicles, it's pointing out that only active transport have those requirements.

That's it, then. I'm ditching my motorcycle helmet.

 

[DirectionNorth]

That's it, then. I'm ditching my motorcycle helmet.

Safe biking infra is more important.

In the Netherlands, in 2019 there were 200 cycling deaths compared to driving deaths. Helmets are quite rate there.