- Cars have killed more people in the US than all our wars combined
- Auto accidents are the leading cause of death until age 50 and older
- ‘Safety First’ is a lie
- It is always the drivers’ fault and never the engineers’
- Most “standards” are actually “guides” that engineers are supposed to override with good judgement
- The statement was patented 90 years before they were required
- Standards don’t have safety in mind, they focus on efficieny
- Focusing on education shifts blame while seeming to be doing something
- Driver’s Education courses is not very effective and is mostly a money grab
- We remove crosswalks that are not safe instead of changing the roads around them
- Federal rules hold cities liable for pedestrian strikes within the crosswalk
- (This is why Wailuku removed the crosswalk outside the bar)
- Why do we let cars drive so fast?
- (Change the road design to make it more difficult!)
- “Better safety is fine as long as it does not mean fewer cars”
- “Road safety” is always “comparative” against similar intersections
- Metrics usually start with “drive time” or “miles traveled” rarely “capacity” and never “trips avoided (through proximity or alternate transit)”
- We assume accident severities happen in escalations (for so many fender-benders there will be a severe accident, for so many severe accidents there are so many fatalities) so if you reduce fender-benders then you reduce everything worse
- “Exposure” is important; If no one is walking on the street, there will be no pedestrian fatalities
- Retro-reflectivity does not notably safety outcomes
- The goal is to “increase roadway visibility”, not improve safety, so we repaint the lines anyway
- “If it’s predictable, its preventable.”
- We tell people it is safe to walk at the same time we tell cars they can turn
- Active (drivers being dumb) vs latent (the system lets the driver be dumb) errors
- Technology morphs our potential safety issues: human expect to be able to stop paying attention
- Hands are faster and more precise than feet… so why are there not hand brakes?
- 20-year traffic projections attempt to build for the future
- Hindsight is not foresight
- (This!)
- There is a theory that “speed spread” (the differences between different vehicles) matters, not the actual speeds
- (The good ole’ “driving slower than everyone else is a road hazard”… even if everyone else is going double the speed limit)
- Speed studies inevitably push speeds up
- It always comes back to capacity
- Highways were weaponized to literally help “clear slums”
- Many politicians use highways to shape their cities
- GIS is a spatial relationship analysis tool
- Fear of liability is not a very valid concern
- The media frames situations without mentioning the driver
- “A car hit a pedestrian” (no driver mentioned)
- “Man hits store clerk” (assailant mentioned)
- Maintaining a certain “level of service” (aka “capacity over time”) becomes the major choke point
- We accommodate kids instead of planning for them
- Transit is safer but we always tout it as being more efficient instead
- Transportation should be about connecting people goods and services efficiently
- Reducing transportation should be the goal
- Changing our thinking is more important than throwing more money at the problem
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