We write lots about pedestrian security right here, and it’s not as a result of we hate vehicles. It’s as a result of we usually imagine that killing individuals is dangerous, and it doesn’t by some means turn into much less dangerous if you happen to kill somebody along with your automobile as an alternative of a gun. Additionally, we need to reside in a world the place you’ll be able to cross the road with out having to fret that you simply’re going to die.

Sadly, we reside within the U.S., a rustic that doesn’t care how many individuals drivers kill yearly, and any time somebody will get hit, the blame is inevitably shifted away from the motive force as a result of how dare somebody be outdoors of a automobile in a spot the place a driver may have the ability to hit them. Add in our love of massive vehicles and SUVs, and it’s no marvel that highway deaths on this nation proceed to worsen yearly.

And sure, the kind of automobiles on the highway completely issues. It’s going to harm if you happen to get hit by a Corvette doing 35 mph, but it surely’s going to harm a complete lot extra if you happen to get hit by a Ram TRX going the identical pace. Moreover, there’s little or no likelihood that you simply’ll be thrown below the Corvette when it hits you, whereas, with the TRX, there’s a very good likelihood you’ll get thrown to the grown and run over.

However how can we realistically begin turning issues round? It will be nice to have the ability to magically rework each U.S. city and metropolis right into a extremely walkable space with nice bike infrastructure and no must drive, however very similar to the second-generation Tesla Roadster, magic isn’t actual. Are we simply caught with increasingly more individuals dying within the streets yearly? Not essentially.

Just lately, Ars Technica revealed an article by Kevin J. Krizek, a professor of sustainable planning and concrete design on the College of Colorado, targeted on answering precisely that query. One essential level is that pedestrian-friendly, well-designed cities corresponding to Amsterdam and Copenhagen haven’t all the time been that approach simply because they’re previous. They responded to grassroots actions that pressured metropolis officers to make modifications for the higher. Right now, many areas of these cities look nothing like they did within the Nineteen Seventies.

Massive-scale change is tough and takes time, however there are additionally a lot of issues that native governments can do to discourage using huge automobiles and promote pedestrian security:

• Creating prioritized parking areas nearer to shops for all types of mobility which are slender or lower than 8 toes (2.5 meters) lengthy.
• Utilizing posts or bollards, which could be detachable, to restrict automobile entry to business areas and neighborhoods the place pedestrians, bikes, and smaller vehicles get precedence.
• Radically narrowing journey lanes on streets to pressure site visitors to decelerate and liberate area for wider sidewalks and bike lanes.
• Limiting or ending automobile entry to streets close to faculties and economically vibrant business districts, both completely or at high-use instances of day.

Would such modifications make issues much less handy for drivers? Positive. However you already know what’s much more inconvenient? Getting hit by a automobile simply since you dared to cross the road to get to a restaurant.

There’s much more to the article, and we extremely advocate you try the remainder of it right here.