Over the past 40 years, these things have changed:
- SUVs
- Phones
- Floridian development
They’re blaming road design? That’s the American way, take no responsibility, blame the object for killing the person or the weather or something else. It’s because people are asshole jerks, they get high and get behind the wheel of a car, and they don’t give a damn about the value of human life anymore. For example, in Utah this past week alone, they report hundreds of people mowed down by cars even though those people were in crosswalks.
In Utah, people actually believe that it’s OK to kill someone with your car, if that person is not in a designated crosswalk or if you have “right of way.” I don’t know where they get that idea from - the first page of the driver’s handbook says “Pedestrian traffic always has right of way over oncoming cars, even if the person isn’t in a designated crosswalk.”
But people choose to believe misinformation and actually think they won’t go to jail for running someone down. As if killing someone with a car isn’t actually cold blooded murder (and it is). So, if you’re in Utah, don’t use a crosswalk OR ever walk in the street, you’re signing your death warrant and tempting drivers to “try out” what happens if they run you over.
Of course people go to jail for manslaughter here all the time because of this belief. In my neighborhood alone - kids get killed by cars all the time in school crosswalks here, it’s a game to the drivers.
You can always count on people to be irresponsible, selfish, and reckless. So yeah its bad road design to count on people to be safe, when they just aren’t.
It’s true, people are irresponsible and reckless. Cars do have safety features, and actually they’re designed to be easy to drive and brake as needed. The problem isn’t the cars or the roads, it’s the people behind the wheel. Driving requires attentiveness and courtesy, two things that apparently no longer exist in human beings.
Driving requires courtesy and attention, but overreliance on cars make people the opposite.
People get frustrated driving in traffic, causing them to be rude and agressive.
Meanwhile if driving is the only way to get around, even for easily distracted people or busy or whatever, they are not going to pay proper attention. Safety features like blind spot detection and automatic crash avoidance just make people pay even less attention.
You say the problem isn’t cars, but it is because in america cars are the only way to get around for most trips.
If you make other options more conpelling or faster, than these problems are less severe for those left on the road.
So why do road deaths happen at dramatically different rates in different countries that have very different transportation design?
Is it a better explanation that the Netherlands has road designs that better promote safety, or more conscientious drivers?
They have less drivers and more pedestrians. Pedestrians aren’t the issue, it’s the drivers.
Their infrastructure, in cities especially, discourages driving and encourages walking/cycling/public transport. Other places make their infrastructure car first. Too much traffic widen the roads, add car parks and remove walkways. These make more driver that are less empathetic to pedestrians as they have less experience as a pedestrian. They also encourage bigger and higher vehicles that are more deadly on impact.
More pedestrians means more people about for drivers to kill, though. The Netherlands still has a lot of people driving.
It’s less about driver empathy, and more about traffic calming. Bollards, chicanes, speed humps at intersections, etc. Streets that don’t feel safe to speed excessively on. Not making everything a shitty stroad, but having better differentiation between streets and roads.
Not just bikes has a pretty good YouTube video about stroads vs Dutch streets and roads
The study does not only blame road design, which is a big problem, but they also discuss the American culture of in car smartphone use, particularly because American cars are far more likely to have automatic transmissions than their peer counterparts, such as Europe, where manual transmissions are far more likely (74%). As a result, Americans have a free hand available while driving to use their smart phones, where those in countries with prevalent manual transmissions do not.
Contributing factors include the American surge in homelessness, as those types of people tend to hang around the most dangerous roads at night and in numbers. 
But honestly if you live in Utah, you learn not to use crosswalks or try to cross the street at all. It’s almost always 100% a recipe for getting killed. Even police have to look for other ways to pull cars over, because if both cars pull to the side of the street or highway, they will get hit by oncoming traffic because people in Utah do NOT look at the road when they are driving. This is a very dangerous state, the worst statistically for auto accidents anywhere in the world.
Because the responsibility of self awareness is 100% on the driver not the pedestrian…not to say drivers shouldn’t be aware but the amount of folks blindly walking into traffic headphones on looking at their phone is insane.
It’s both parties responsibility to make sure they’re safe…also don’t ever drive and text…then it is your fault.
It’s not excusable to run someone over because they weren’t looking.
Drivers are incased in a tonne of steel, they should always be aware of the danger they pose to pedestrians. It’s criminal how light drivers are treated when they crash, even when they are fully at fault.
Cmon, think about it. There’s a reason why cars stop for trains.
Both of which are being controlled by people who should be cognisant of their surroundings as they’re metal death machines if improperly operated. One is just bigger than the other.
A pedestrian on the other hand has no such obligation to be constantly aware of their surroundings. Pedestrians can be children with lower awareness of their surroundings, drunk people, stoned people, someone momentarily distracted by their phone, whatever. The onus is on those wielding the vehicle to be in control and slow down if a hazard is present, not the pedestrian. There’s a reason many countries do hazard perception tests as part of the theoretical part of getting a driving lesson. Because if a kid runs out onto the road and gets smooshed, it’s on the driver, regardless of whether that kid was being dumb or not.
Victim blaming is widely considered a shit take.
