Why it’s hard to punish drivers who kill pedestrians
By Henry Grabar, Salon
What makes it hard to walk in your city?
Is it the quality of sidewalks, buckled by tree roots and submerged in puddles, appearing and vanishing like a disused deer trail? The foreboding urban-renewal landscapes? How about the zoning requirements that set storefronts behind tremendous fields of permanently vacant parking spaces, or ban shops and cafes from residential areas? Is crossing the street a prohibitive inconvenience, a near-death experience? Or is it simply illegal?
Such is the legacy of a century of planning for automobiles. Enshrined in laws and codes, American urban design has made driving easy. As a consequence, it made walking hard.
But design is only half the problem. Less obvious, but no less consequential, was the legal shift through which society absorbed and dismissed the hazards of urban driving, exonerating individual drivers for crashes, even when they killed pedestrians. (In New York City, for example, 95 percent of traffic fatalities do not lead to arrests.)d riding a bicycle) legally vulnerable.
Why not just pass a law requiring every person walking to wear a helmet? That way they’d be safe in an accident.
Probably ought to just make everybody stay home. That way everybody will be safe and nobody will ever die. Right?
Just when you thought the sofa was safe a tree crashed through the house.
Dawg didn’t you recently criticize people who make things up at attribute them to a group (or something similar to what you are doing here)?
See, Dog. Humor. It’s fun! :)
If you don’t have the brain power to walk on dirt stay home.
Kind of a mismatch between a 200 pound human and a 3,500 pound car. Never fails to amaze me the lack of awareness of pedestrians as they cross at the “Y” and other intersections in town.
If I had 5 bucks for every pedestrian or bicyclist I have seen taking a 45 degree cut across a four lane highway in the dark wearing dark clothing, I could pay off my mortgage.
Very few pedestrians get hit on sidewalks…they get hit on roads and streets, under the premise, I guess, that by law “pedestrians have the right of way”
ONLY IF YOU ARE SEEN, MORONS.
Assuming right of way has no future.