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San Francisco Still Among Most Dangerous For Pedestrians
dkatana writes: The city of San Francisco averages 200 injuries per year and 30 deaths. This is almost double the number of Barcelona, Catalonia, which has about the same population. The city started a Vision Zero program, aimed at reducing and ultimately eliminate pedestrian deaths by 2024. But after a year-long Vision Zero education push called Safe Streets SF, whose key message is that pedestrians always have the right of way, the results have been modest. Now a series of banners on light poles in the South of Market neighborhood with the message: 'Slow down! We live here!' are trying to convince drivers to respect people on foot.
...the way pedestrians act in Boston and New York: total chaos. People wander across the street randomly, and drivers are very aware that this is going to happen, so they slow down. It made for a much more pedestrian-friendly environment there than on the west coast, where cars travel far too fast and pedestrians are timid and restrained.
Nearly got knocked over when crossing - legally - at a pedestrian crossing in Berkeley, and a driver refused to stop and I had to jump out of the way.
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A propaganda effort to change how safe drivers are can help a little bit, but what makes cities safer is physical world changes that make it easier to drive safely and harder to hit someone. In Seattle, for example, they redesigned 75th street after an accident and saw a major reduction in the number of collisions. (Things like removing parking, adding bike lanes, etc...)
http://www.seattle.gov/transpo...
Bike lanes are actually useful in that even if not used by bikes, they ensure you can nudge out into a road slightly for better visibility when turning into it if you need to. You also are less likely to intuitively drive as close to the center line as if you are avoiding parked cars.
Not everywhere. Maybe virtually everywhere in this US? Come to London: we don't have this nanny state concept of "jaywalking", just personal responsibility. Pedestrians do cross the roads wherever they like and whenever they think they can. It's up to the drivers to be aware of this and drive appropriately for the conditions. Trust me, as a cyclist in this city some parts of the West End are pretty scary: not because of the vehicles but because of nob-ends with their noses in mobile phones or just crowd mentality of one person's crossing so we all will.