tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37712842.post8874363867784953630..comments2024-03-12T15:49:33.657-04:00Comments on Vision Zero NJ: Trash Talk: Press of AC editor blames peds / State for increase in deathsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37712842.post-64691052091826929992009-12-18T23:41:00.895-05:002009-12-18T23:41:00.895-05:00All of a sudden, streets were full of pedestrians ...<i>All of a sudden, streets were full of pedestrians stepping into crosswalks — and into traffic. Why not? The cars have to stop to let you cross. The law says so. The signs say so. Except they don’t. Not always, or even often. Sometimes a car headed in one direction stops. But the car headed in another doesn’t. And any car that does stop to let a pedestrian cross runs the risk of getting rear-ended.</i><br />Sometimes people ignore stop signs, so you could get hit if you depend on people obeying them; and stop signs necessarily increase your chance of getting rear-ended, so we should get rid of them, too, right?<br /><br />I lived in Hoboken for several years, and was nearly run over many times. Pedestrians do not wander blindly into the street. From a driver's POV, pedestrians appear "out of nowhere" because cars parked (or double parked) right up to the crosswalk make it impossible to see a pedestrian until the driver is on top of him. <br /><br />If you wanted to solve the problem, you'd increase the no-parking zone around a crosswalk so that a car travelling the speed limit can reasonably see a pedestrian at the curb and stop before reaching the corsswalk. and then you'd enforce those parking regs with towing. But you'll never hear that from the AC Press.clever-titlenoreply@blogger.com