Comment 60797

By Pxtl (registered) - website | Posted March 08, 2011 at 13:03:42

Just today on my way to work, I was at Main and Dalewood and traffic was backed up for a bunch of vehicles in the right lane.

1) An ambulance

2) A pulled-over SUV with the drive walking around looking nervous

and

3) A smallish bicycle lying on the sidewalk.

I'm guessing that right-on-red and cycling on the sidewalk claimed another casualty.

edit: @nobrainer - yeah, that looks like the story. Good to know the kid's okay.

As for the article, this is something industry has known for a long time - exhorting your employees to just work harder and be more careful is a recipe for failure. You have to change processes, change signs, change structures to make things stick.

And once again, coming back to something I keep pointing out: all the horrible pedestrian/driver accidents happening on King and Main streets happen away from the traffic lights. The last three accidents I've heard about have happened at uncontrolled intersections with pedestrians (and one e-biker) darting across all the lanes of traffic. If there were a light at Ferguson Ave, would that man have felt the need to dart through traffic or would he have waited for a green? People seem to respect a red light and a don't-walk sign far than the frustration of waiting for a nebulous gap in traffic.

If the city wants to run a highway through downtown, then they have to be willing to handle the expenses of making that highway safe, such as more frequent traffic lights. That's not even getting into protecting the pedestrians on the sidewalk through barriers or distance - traffic on the mountain is often just as fast as the crazy downtown streets, but those mountain streets often have wide grassy boulevards between the sidewalks and traffic.

Comment edited by Pxtl on 2011-03-08 13:07:55

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