As a frequent pedestrian, I have always been wary of right-on-red drivers. At least some of the times I’ve come closest to being hit have been related to a vehicle turning, the driver watching to...
As a frequent pedestrian, I have always been wary of right-on-red drivers. At least some of the times I’ve come closest to being hit have been related to a vehicle turning, the driver watching to their left for a traffic opening instead of looking to their right toward the crosswalk.
ROR has been mostly disallowed in New York City — the first “big city” I ever went to — as long as I can remember, but permitted almost everywhere else.
Perhaps it is time to revisit this policy.
Last year, at least 7,508 people were killed while walking, according to a report by the non-profit Governors Highway Safety Association, which also found a 77% increase in fatalities between 2010 and 2021.
There are many possible reasons for this, including the popularity of SUVs, more people walking in suburbs built for cars, and reckless driving that worsened during Covid. Banning right turns on red lights certainly wouldn’t eliminate all pedestrian deaths – but it could help, advocates say.
Turning right on red was only legal in a few states until the 1970s, when the federal government, facing an oil crisis, told states to allow it – or lose their energy funding. The idea was that cars would use less fuel if they avoided sitting at red lights. That law remains in place, despite research from 1984 showing that at intersections allowing right-on-red, crashes jump 23%, pedestrian crashes increase by 60%, and cyclist crashes double.
If I had to decide between potential small fuel savings from allowing ROR, or avoiding traffic deaths caused by ROR… I think I would choose fewer traffic deaths. Especially as the automobile fleet is beginning to electrify, this kind of emission may become less important moving forward; and as EVs are heavier (and therefore more dangerous to pedestrians), this kind of safety may become more important.
Traffic planners and towns have an unhealthy love affair with intersections and lights. The usage of lights create traffic surges and drivers racing to the next light. Get rid of the damn lights,...
Traffic planners and towns have an unhealthy love affair with intersections and lights. The usage of lights create traffic surges and drivers racing to the next light. Get rid of the damn lights, put in circles, take lanes away and give space to separate bike and pedestrian lanes. Put level crossings before the circles for pedestrians so drivers don't have a high cognitive load.
This gets rid of the surges, slows down vehicles but they are overall faster from a to b since they don't waste time at lights.
Traffic lights are also ridiculously expensive, both in capital expenditure and ongoing operation/maintenance. It could be $200–500k+ to add lights to an intersection… or apparently $2 million?!?...
Traffic lights are also ridiculously expensive, both in capital expenditure and ongoing operation/maintenance. It could be $200–500k+ to add lights to an intersection… or apparently $2 million?!? Plus several thousand annually. Compare that to like $15k for a retrofitted traffic circle… yeah. (But if a traffic circle requires resurfacing and drainage changes then it can be more expensive than that. Probably still cheaper than traffic lights at many intersections, especially large ones.)
I think drivers in the US have this perception that because you slow down a little in a traffic circle, they’re worse than 4-way intersections. But while instantaneous speed may decrease in a roundabout, average speed on a journey is higher because, like you said, you’re not getting all bunched up at red lights. So it’s safer near pedestrians and more efficient in general, in many cases.
I think you have to be careful with roundabouts though because they can be hostile to pedestrians if they’re too big. Probably still better than a traffic light most of the time. (And if you decrease the number of lanes then it becomes more walkable.)
I can't help but think there's a monster markup going on here.
It could be $500k+ to add lights to an intersection… or apparently $2 million?!? Plus several thousand annually. Compare that to like $15k for a retrofitted traffic circle…
I can't help but think there's a monster markup going on here.
Yeah I’m kind of in awe at that number. I know traffic lights are awfully complicated—they’re big, and they have all sorts of operational redundancy systems in the electronics—but to some extent...
Yeah I’m kind of in awe at that number. I know traffic lights are awfully complicated—they’re big, and they have all sorts of operational redundancy systems in the electronics—but to some extent that $2 million figure sounds like a case of “American urban planners spending money poorly,” i.e. relying on a lot of external consulting or generally not using best practices during construction.
I think that article is focusing on a particularly expensive intersection. My impression is that most light systems end up being less—but still not cheap.
The Pennsylvania DOT has some figures on estimating costs for this. The equipment itself is in the tens of thousands of dollars per unit. That’s not considering planning and construction.
It's not just the cost of the lights themselves, but the necessary traffic studies, system reprogramming for coordination of timing with other lights, turn lights, pedestrian signals, and lane...
It's not just the cost of the lights themselves, but the necessary traffic studies, system reprogramming for coordination of timing with other lights, turn lights, pedestrian signals, and lane marking. Newer streets may have cameras and other gear for automated timing changes depending on traffic volume.
And all that complexity probably still doesn't adequately account for pedestrian or cyclist safety.
On top of that running the electricity to the light also means digging up the road and likely adding things like ADA infrastructure like ramps to the existing sidewalk. When Public Works is going...
On top of that running the electricity to the light also means digging up the road and likely adding things like ADA infrastructure like ramps to the existing sidewalk. When Public Works is going to tear up a part of the road they often want to do as many upgrades as possible at once to as a cost savings measure.
I find it extremely hard to believe that you can just plop a round about where a light was and get similar throughout without expanding the space taken.
I find it extremely hard to believe that you can just plop a round about where a light was and get similar throughout without expanding the space taken.
It depends completely on the intersection. Counter-intuitively, some roads actually have increased throughput with fewer lanes; so with a fairly wide road you can conceivably cut out a lane of...
It depends completely on the intersection. Counter-intuitively, some roads actually have increased throughput with fewer lanes; so with a fairly wide road you can conceivably cut out a lane of travel in each direction, insert a roundabout in the middle, and reconfigure the remaining lane. In this case, there is enough space.
A significant number of roads in the US are too wide and have too many lanes for their actual use levels, so this particular retrofit has reasonable practicality.
If the goal is to add a roundabout to an intersection without decreasing the number of travel lanes, the intersection may need to be widened somewhat. Depending on the frontage of the surrounding area this may or may not be feasible.
You are comparing an intersection that would have been just two roads that are one lane each way in a residential area with an enormous intersection. I would like more roundabouts but that...
You are comparing an intersection that would have been just two roads that are one lane each way in a residential area with an enormous intersection. I would like more roundabouts but that comparison is just bad.
Yes, of course, it is an absurd example. In a standard four-way intersection, installing a traffic signal generally costs no less than perhaps $250k when considering planning/design, procurement,...
Exemplary
Yes, of course, it is an absurd example.
In a standard four-way intersection, installing a traffic signal generally costs no less than perhaps $250k when considering planning/design, procurement, proper computerized and/or smart system integration, and construction/installation. It is not uncommon to see higher figures ($500k+). Depending on the choice of equipment, you might have to relocate some power lines or utilities either for visibility or to create space for the signal pole or control box, which adds a significant cost (anywhere from $10k–100k+). And the annual maintenance even for a small signalized intersection is a recurring $5–10k at least—typically more with more complex systems. (It can be more like $15–20k depending on how often signal timing upgrades occur, and various repair expenses.)
Depending on the intersection it can be feasible to inexpensively construct a small roundabout with minimal adjacent impact. They do not have to be extremely large features, though they can be. I have seen plenty of successful roundabouts only a few feet across. The sharper curve in a smaller centerpiece means speeds have to be lower, but this suits many streets anyway. A typical four-way intersection with one travel lane in each direction probably doesn’t have enough room for a large roundabout with a 50-foot centerpiece. In an area where building frontage is right next to the street, it’s not realistic to push the sidewalk back. But in many (most?) American municipalities it’s typical to have a significant amount of setback from the roadway for aesthetic reasons. It is often technically feasible to use a small portion of this for the roundabout. Depending on the road, utility relocation may be necessary, adding cost, but this really depends. And there are no additional utilities like control boxes necessary for a roundabout.
In situations where a road diet, parking removal, or lane narrowing can “create” enough space for the centerpiece without negatively affecting throughput (at all or by a significant amount), you’re left with a low-tech, low-cost piece of infrastructure—certainly it can be as little as a few thousand dollars. The installation of a small curb (it really doesn’t have to be a lot) in the center of an intersection is cheap. Paint is cheap.
A typical 4-way intersection would see costs close to $50–150k to install a roundabout with a fairly substantial centerpiece. And it requires comparatively little maintenance—no electrical systems, no signal timing, etc.
There are situations where it doesn’t make sense to use a traffic circle, financially or otherwise. They’re sometimes annoying for pedestrians. Arterials might have too much traffic for a single lane, requiring a far larger and more complex multi-lane roundabout. I’ve seen some tricky drainage situations that would require expensive storm water runoff drain relocations. Nearby fixed grade-separated corridors may make a roundabout unrealistic. Sometimes utilities get in the way, and sometimes building frontage is too close, which would require demolition (unpopular). A multi-lane roundabout could be double or more the cost of a single-lane one; but then a comparable traffic light system would be considerably more expensive too. Regardless, in most cases I think local area impact—including changes to frontage and traffic patterns—play a bigger role than cost.
Depending on the number of signalized intersections present in the municipality, the deciding factor could be the cost of maintenance, not construction. A city with 100 such intersections maintaining them at a cost of, say, $10k/yr each might find the $1 million/yr in maintenance better spent elsewhere. Various small towns in the US have removed most/all of their signalized intersections in favor of roundabouts primarily for this reason—Carmel, IN is the famous one. You can get state and federal grants for capital projects, but the local government is likely to be the one to eat the day-to-day maintenance costs of a complex signalized traffic solution.
Personally I am not sure the roundabout is my favorite solution for dense urban areas, at least not every intersection. I feel like they usually impede walking times, so pedestrians may be tempted to cross at an undesignated location, which might defeat the purpose of having it to begin with. But I think they are very suitable for an enormous number of suburban roads. In general, I am interested in “low-tech” traffic calming/management solutions for reasons of operational simplicity, cost, and function in the event of a power/system failure.
Yeah roundabouts are best where you want traffic flow to stay smoothly moving. Inside dense cities you generally need people to stop and look carefully. If it's a big arterial road that...
Yeah roundabouts are best where you want traffic flow to stay smoothly moving. Inside dense cities you generally need people to stop and look carefully. If it's a big arterial road that pedestrians generally only cross at specific intersections anyway because it's busy and noisy, then it makes sense. But most side streets it does not, it probably encourages people to go faster and more thoughtlessly if anything.
If you have streets with real amounts of regular pedestrian traffic then you really just need to make cars second-class citizens. If they have to wait they have to wait. For cars to move quickly we need to adopt the planning posture we generally adopt with bikelanes. Instead of all streets being designed for their most optimal use, the streets should funnel them into specific tracks to get around without much pedestrian crossing the way cyclists sometimes have separate cycletracks for going long distances without needing to contend with stop-signs and lights and pedestrians.
When you're within the residential areas though, you gotta settle for toughing it out and going slowly and deliberately. Having been car free for about a decade before finally caving and buying a car, I've found I actually care a lot less about going fast than I used to. When your brain is normed to think of "walking speed" as the normal pace then even just cruising along at >30 or >45 mph still feels blazingly fast to get from place to place. It's really the expectations you get when everything is spread apart and you can go down even residential streets at 40+ mph that I think people's brains rewire to where they start getting frustrated at every minor pause or stop. I really only get annoyed now if I'm forced to lane-change because a separate Doordash or Uber driver is blocking the lane every block.
The little roundabouts that are appropriate for putting at small intersections are shaped and sized such that there's no way for someone to navigate one at speed in anything as wide as a car. It...
The little roundabouts that are appropriate for putting at small intersections are shaped and sized such that there's no way for someone to navigate one at speed in anything as wide as a car. It means that it doesn't matter whether someone respected the four way stop that it replaced or not, there's no physical way for them to maintain speed through the intersection. Maybe they'll gun it for the few hundred feet before the next intersection, but they really can't get up to any significant speed before they need to start braking again for the next one. In my area side streets that used to get a lot of traffic overflow from the main streets have these small roundabouts in them, and they've really slowed down traffic that would have previously tried to gun it along those side streets.
I'm strongly in the "get rid of right on red" camp. As a cyclist, a big chunk of my close calls have been at intersections where someone is doing exactly as you describe - looking in a direction...
I'm strongly in the "get rid of right on red" camp. As a cyclist, a big chunk of my close calls have been at intersections where someone is doing exactly as you describe - looking in a direction different from the way their car is about to be moving.
The fuel savings is mostly irrelevant at this point - again, like you said, EV's are gaining in popularity, and that's a trend that isn't going to reverse. Additionally, we have better ways to make intersections more efficient these days (see Google's Green Light project).
Please don’t read this as blaming the victim, and I completely agree with you, so don’t interpret this as a defense of ROR, but as a fellow cyclist you comment makes me think you might not be...
Please don’t read this as blaming the victim, and I completely agree with you, so don’t interpret this as a defense of ROR, but as a fellow cyclist you comment makes me think you might not be taking the lane when you should. ROR hooks are only possible if the cyclist is passing on the right. When traffic slows down I move to the center of the lane, accelerate through the intersection with traffic and only move to the right once I’m through and can no longer keep pace with other vehicles. This prevents this very common and deadly type of accident. There’s a great free ebook called street smarts that talks a lot about the importance of lane positioning. I’d link it for you, but I’m in mobile.
Yes, a bike that is properly following traffic laws should not have close calls as described. If you are on a bike and nearly getting hit by a driver who is turning right because the driver was...
Yes, a bike that is properly following traffic laws should not have close calls as described. If you are on a bike and nearly getting hit by a driver who is turning right because the driver was only looking to their left, that is your fault. You are running a red light. The driver should check for pedestrians, but it's silly to expect every driver to also check for bicyclists illegally overtaking them in the gutter. If you were on the sidewalk and not just blasting through the intersection, a driver not looking for pedestrians is 100% "at fault," but it is also certainly your fault (not legally) for being negligent in not making sure the driver wasn't about to kill you before crossing. That's not to say we shouldn't try to protect you anyway or that ROR shouldn't be banned, just that you could have prevented the collision by not stepping out in front of a 4000 lb machine whose actions you could have predicted.
Right, like when you're in the designated bike lane that always sits to the right of traffic. I've had a number of close calls in the bike lane as well, the majority of which are when the light is...
ROR hooks are only possible if the cyclist is passing on the right.
Right, like when you're in the designated bike lane that always sits to the right of traffic. I've had a number of close calls in the bike lane as well, the majority of which are when the light is green and folks are either turning right or they are turning right into a parking lot. In either event I'm in my designated lane, biking in a legal manner and then driver just isn't looking.
This is why these shoulder-turned-bike-lanes scare the bejesus out of me when I'm driving a car. They seem almost purposely designed to funnel cyclists in the blind spots of turning cars. Now...
This is why these shoulder-turned-bike-lanes scare the bejesus out of me when I'm driving a car. They seem almost purposely designed to funnel cyclists in the blind spots of turning cars. Now drivers must simultaneously look into two diametrically opposite directions — one of which has extremely poor visibility because the road was not originally designed to have non-turning lane there (even if you are actively looking, odds are way too high that you won't see a cyclist there).
It seems like that would be a plainly misdesigned bike lane to me. If a bike is sequestered in the rightmost ~3' of the road, and the car is to their left, the curb for the road they're turning...
It seems like that would be a plainly misdesigned bike lane to me. If a bike is sequestered in the rightmost ~3' of the road, and the car is to their left, the curb for the road they're turning left onto should be far enough ahead both parties that it's impossible to clip the cyclist.
I'm not a fan of bike lanes either, certainly at intersections, where bikes being treated identically to motorcycles makes most sense, but I don't think I've seen a bike lane like that that didn't seem like the painters just screwed up and marked it into the intersection.
That's so interesting. Can I ask what part of the world you're in? I'm curious what bike lane look like where you are. Contextually I spent a year cycling from between Berkeley/Oakland, then San...
That's so interesting. Can I ask what part of the world you're in? I'm curious what bike lane look like where you are.
Contextually I spent a year cycling from between Berkeley/Oakland, then San Francisco/Oakland (with a bart connection), inter Madrid (La Latina/San Blas), inter Amsterdam, and then in the Monterey area. While each had a different flavor of close calls, outside Amsterdam where the close calls were cause by selfie driven pedestrians, the bike lanes all still drew close calls from drivers.
the curb for the road they're turning left onto should be far enough ahead both parties that it's impossible to clip the cyclist.
I'm not sure we talking about the same thing. I thinking of a 4 way intersection where the car in the right lane turns right and nearly misses the bike that is in that lane. The cyclist isn't doing anything wrong and then driver will need to pass through that lane to make the turn, often they just aren't looking for bikes or cars. Honestly the worst instances I had weren't at a red light but on green where they would just continue driving and miss me when they looked. I actually ended up flipping up onto a hood when I lived in Berkeley.
I'm not a fan of bike lanes either, certainly at intersections, where bikes being treated identically to motorcycles makes most sense.
I'm not sure I agree. In the US folks get pretty testy around cyclists in the roadway and in areas where I need to cycle in the road I'm often yelled at, even though I try to stay as far to the right of the lane as possible to allow passing. I think it's a cultural thing that wont change, even with changes in regulation. At some point it's a 4000lb ram vs me.
I'm in the US! New Mexico. I've definitely heard of cars swerving into bike lanes in general, and experienced some of the crazy things car drivers do to cyclists. It's specifically the phenomenon...
I'm in the US! New Mexico. I've definitely heard of cars swerving into bike lanes in general, and experienced some of the crazy things car drivers do to cyclists. It's specifically the phenomenon of a bike waiting in their lane at a red, and someone clipping them with a right, that I've not seen or known outside of random stories online. Road hazards here are more along the lines of someone randomly shooting you for a perceived slight, or a drunk weaving.
Yeah, those are the lanes we've got around here, but all traffic lanes end far enough from the actual intersection that I don't think it's a problem. I've definitely been in San Francisco and didn't notice the lanes extending further. The more I think on this, it might be a matter of newer road design? Much of NM is either rural or has only been urbanized in the last fifty years or so, so our roads might just be wide enough that this particular incident is avoided. I'll take a walk and snap a couple pictures later if I can remember to.
Glad to hear NM is bike friendly! My partner is from Albuquerque and we're keep talking about a trip out. Sounds like we'll have to plan some biking! I had never thought of time of development as...
Glad to hear NM is bike friendly! My partner is from Albuquerque and we're keep talking about a trip out. Sounds like we'll have to plan some biking!
I had never thought of time of development as a potential source of the issue, that's a great point. I think for most of our roads here, the lane ends right at the corner, or potentially 3-4 feet back of the intersection. I'd love to see the pictures if you end up taking them.
Oh, especially for recreational biking, Albuquerque is great. We have a path that stretches almost the entire north-south length right down the middle of the city, on each side of the river, and...
Oh, especially for recreational biking, Albuquerque is great. We have a path that stretches almost the entire north-south length right down the middle of the city, on each side of the river, and there are a few surface streets in each quadrant that taper down to bike paths before joining with the main artery. Unfortunately, outside of that backbone, it's just too big of a city to realistically bike everywhere, and thieves are too numerously bold to leave it outside of most businesses anyway. For sightseeing and exercise, though! Unfortunately, the drivers are remarkably hostile around here, but evasive maneuvers are usually sufficient to survive.
In case I don't get those pictures, typically our lanes end about a foot before the pedestrian crossing, which is just about 5' wide, and the curb is usually a...6+' radius. Something like those ratios. A semi truck turning right on a surface street will barely break the middle line sometimes. It all adds up, and I'm not sure the safety is worth the huge amount of space dedicated to roads on top of the usual.
We have some dedicated bike lanes that run along a main roadway - the bike lanes cross at some intersections using the standard white line walkways that the pedestrians also use - it's mostly at...
We have some dedicated bike lanes that run along a main roadway - the bike lanes cross at some intersections using the standard white line walkways that the pedestrians also use - it's mostly at these that I run into issues (my apologies for my crappy description). These crossings are not great execution for bike lanes, but if I'm having issues at them on a bike, the people using them for walking are also having the same issues.
When I'm sharing the road with cars, I do the same as you - when appropriate, I take the whole lane - it pisses some people off, but I prefer that over getting hit by someone trying to squeeze by. I'll look for that ebook though - never hurts to try and be safer around those damn giant hunks of metal ruining my enjoyable rides :-)
Hah. Force of habit. Believe it or not I actually don’t (always) wax poetic about traffic safety at dinner parties—but when it does come up, I often have to preface my remarks with this fact or...
Hah. Force of habit. Believe it or not I actually don’t (always) wax poetic about traffic safety at dinner parties—but when it does come up, I often have to preface my remarks with this fact or else my exclusively car-driving acquaintances zone out. It feels too academic to them. When I remind them that I’m at constant risk of death when crossing a suburban arterial, sometimes car-centrism becomes more of a “real” problem to them.
It's interesting to think if you get rid of ROR you might reduce fatalities but you're adding commute time to everyone else. Is there balance to safety vs convenience? Ban all cars and we'll be at...
It's interesting to think if you get rid of ROR you might reduce fatalities but you're adding commute time to everyone else. Is there balance to safety vs convenience? Ban all cars and we'll be at zero, but that's not realistic.
Put speed cameras with automatic fines on every street and a super low speed limit you'd probably save a ton of lives
My question is, say you save 5 lives per month at the expense of adding 10 lifetimes of commute time distributed across all drivers, is it worth the change? What if it's 20 lifetimes?
There's a line and I think it's different for everyone, and if I knew a victim it would move my line
It’s a difficult question. I am sure many actuaries have considered this for the purpose of insurance and regulation, but maybe not with a Vision Zero goal in mind. There are some medium-sized...
It’s a difficult question. I am sure many actuaries have considered this for the purpose of insurance and regulation, but maybe not with a Vision Zero goal in mind.
There are some medium-sized cities in New Jersey which have seen zero (literally zero) pedestrian deaths in the last several years, even as fatalities have risen nationwide in that time. Like, Hoboken, NJ has a population of about 60k but is not what I would call low-traffic or rural. It’s literally right next to New York City.
The work done by these cities makes me think that we can aim for Vision Zero by adopting safer infrastructure and policy practices, things like narrowing crosswalk distances, increasing visibility at intersections, and, potentially, banning ROR turns. I’m sure some of these changes are slightly annoying to drivers, but they haven’t necessitated the complete removal of all cars from cities like Hoboken.
I think there’s place for car-free spaces. There should probably be a lot more of them. But like you said, banning cars altogether is a difficult solution. I hope that more research can be done about this sort of thing.
Practical Engineering went into this tradeoff the other day (15 minute YouTube video) - the TL;DR: is that for engineering projects you often need a conversion factor of human lives to dollar...
Practical Engineering went into this tradeoff the other day (15 minute YouTube video) - the TL;DR: is that for engineering projects you often need a conversion factor of human lives to dollar value. We can infer from other fields of study how highly people value risks and lives. Currently, that figure sits at ~$15M in the US. So if faced with a choice of a safer or a cheaper project, the expected fatalities times $15M is the cost of the risks of that second project. If that's cheaper than the safer project, saving those lives simply isn't worth it.
Before anyone goes crying that human lives are subjectively worth an infinite dollar value, consider that that effectively prohibits you from ever risking your life by e.g. participating in traffic. Infinite value of your life would oblige you to always pick the safest option, no matter the cost. Consider also wagers of the form "with 99.9999% chance, you win 10 million dollars. With 0.0001% chance, you die." - every human has a point where risks to their lives are acceptable, if the price is right.
As for how to price added commute times, I know I'd rather be dead than only commuting for a lifetime, so in my mind there's even an argument that saving 6 lives isn't worth it if it adds 5 lifetimes of commute. But that's probably both subjective, and different if you move away from the absolutist view of "either dead or forever commuting" and instead look at "3 minutes more commute every day or a slight increase in mortality". But I'm sure people have looked at the price of commute times with a more statistical view: For example, how much more money do I have to pay employees for them to accept a 10 minute longer commute? Convert that money into human lives and presto, there's the price of both options.
I think it would change if you were a cyclist. It's a big ask, but if your'e up for it I'd love to have you cycle some of the busier roads by you. Pick a utility destination (like a grocery store)...
I think it would change if you were a cyclist. It's a big ask, but if your'e up for it I'd love to have you cycle some of the busier roads by you. Pick a utility destination (like a grocery store) and ride out during rush hour. See how it feels to be a cyclist during commuting hours and beyond the deaths, just feel how unpleasant it is to engage with those junction points.
I think something that gets missed in these debates is how often we forsake everyone else - pedestrians, cyclists, disabled folks - to optimize the convenience of cars.
I am a cyclist. Right on red has never felt like a notable hazard. Plenty of other traffic patterns, but not right on red. Maybe it's just the specific driving culture I'm in, everybody here is...
I am a cyclist. Right on red has never felt like a notable hazard. Plenty of other traffic patterns, but not right on red. Maybe it's just the specific driving culture I'm in, everybody here is very conscientious of the possibility of a right turn, and most cyclists either join the car lane or stay back about a quarter length just in case. I was in a cycling club for a few years, and none of the car-related accidents I heard of had anything to do with it.
Ah, sorry for assuming. The issues I've had with right on red either tended to be cars that tried to squeek into an area they were too large for (i.e. a delivery van push me off the road with the...
Ah, sorry for assuming. The issues I've had with right on red either tended to be cars that tried to squeek into an area they were too large for (i.e. a delivery van push me off the road with the broadside of the van because it was larger than the driver thoughts) or much more commonly, when pedestrians get an extra few seconds to go (i.e. the walk sign turns on before the green light) and the driver looking left sees that there is now a gap and hasn't noticed that the walk sign is on and pedestrians and cyclists are now in the start of the crosswalk - also known as the "splat zone". In the earlier case the driver has always been apologetic and it's been a great interaction minus the bump. In the latter case the driver is normally aggressive with a "you shouldn't have been going yet!" approach. Also the damage is often much worse in the second example because it's a front hit vs a side.
I think the driving culture tends to reflect the population density and infrastructure. I had the worst time of it in Oakland where folks were often trying to beat rush hour on their commute home, high density and high stress. In Monterey, the danger much more often originates from tourists who are distracted by the ocean views and local drivers tend to be more cognizant. In either case they still feel scary to be around.
Sorry, I'm not the person you were responding to, so no assumptions were made, and no apology is necessary. Just a being a coversational pest. Yeah, I can imagine that scenario, and I've seen...
Sorry, I'm not the person you were responding to, so no assumptions were made, and no apology is necessary. Just a being a coversational pest.
Yeah, I can imagine that scenario, and I've seen pedestrians get hooded. It might be a special case of defensive driving in the cyclists I know, because that's a risk none of them would take, being late be damned.
I'm not sure that I agree that comparing time saved commuting to lost lives is an argument I can sign on to. But I also wonder if these ROR incidents are the wrong place to look. Definitely poor...
I'm not sure that I agree that comparing time saved commuting to lost lives is an argument I can sign on to. But I also wonder if these ROR incidents are the wrong place to look. Definitely poor infrastructure and aggressive drivers create a great deal of risk to cyclists but signalled intersections have often felt the most predictable situations to cycle through.
I live in a bike friendly area and I know people who have had (multiple) accidents. I've also cycled quite a lot around the US. It's very easy to ride defensively at intersections.
If you are in the right most lane going through the intersection, position yourself to the left side of the lane as far forward as you can safely be. Cars can pull past you slowly and complete their right turn. You are also visible to everyone.
If you are very uncomfortable (as my partner is) use the pedestrian cross walk. I often do this if the road I'm on is not busy so I can hit the crossing button.
At stop signs or uncontrolled intersection, assume you have not been seen. I do not trust a driver sees me unless I look through their eyes into the depths of their soul.
"My question is, say you save 5 lives per month at the expense of adding 10 lifetimes of commute time distributed across all drivers, is it worth the change? What if it's 20 lifetimes?" Life is...
"My question is, say you save 5 lives per month at the expense of adding 10 lifetimes of commute time distributed across all drivers, is it worth the change? What if it's 20 lifetimes?"
Life is infinitely worth more than people's time (convenience). I'm sorry but what a terrible thing to even consider. People need to learn to be patient and be inconvenienced to save lives and the environment.
I think it's fine if you want to take that moral standpoint, but I just want to give the context that this isn't one of those internet moments where someone accidentally suggests something...
I'm sorry but what a terrible thing to even consider.
I think it's fine if you want to take that moral standpoint, but I just want to give the context that this isn't one of those internet moments where someone accidentally suggests something outlandish. There's actually a lot of areas in government policy where you make a direct tradeoff between lives and money, and in practice if you set 1 life = infinite money, it doesn't work out well.
Per the US Department of Transportation, a life is worth $9.6m. In Sweden, 22m SEK. In Australia, 5.1m AUD. In Singapore, S$1.87m. And so on - practically every government, from the Americas, to Europe, to Asia, has a monetary standard they use as the "statistical value of a human life" in order to balance equations, basically, on how much risk to put their citizens under for how much money.
So back onto the original hypothetical, according to the US DoT, 5 lives = $48 million. So you need to save enough commute time over all drivers to be greater than $48m in productivity for it to be worth letting 5 people die or vice versa.
if it was that easy, public transportation would be soaring right now. less accidents when there's less drivers and more bus drivers who need more experience than the average road rager. But...
People need to learn to be patient and be inconvenienced to save lives and the environment.
if it was that easy, public transportation would be soaring right now. less accidents when there's less drivers and more bus drivers who need more experience than the average road rager.
But that's an uphill battle still slowly being fought to this day
That’s not all that’s changed though. There are also just more pedestrians, more cyclists, and more people using micromobility tools than there were 10-20 years ago. Plus the roads themselves have...
That’s not all that’s changed though. There are also just more pedestrians, more cyclists, and more people using micromobility tools than there were 10-20 years ago.
Plus the roads themselves have changed, as have drivers and general approaches to traffic enforcement.
But if we're shifting in that direction - increasing pedestrian/bike/scooter usage - then it is time to consider safety regulation changes anyway. We can and have to address multiple issues at...
But if we're shifting in that direction - increasing pedestrian/bike/scooter usage - then it is time to consider safety regulation changes anyway. We can and have to address multiple issues at once and I think truck/suv bumper height is a valid regulation to tackle.
If you look at the study, the reported increase in accidents was only for right-turning vehicle accidents, which would unsurprisingly go up if they went from illegal to legal. RTOR accidents still...
If you look at the study, the reported increase in accidents was only for right-turning vehicle accidents, which would unsurprisingly go up if they went from illegal to legal. RTOR accidents still only made up "between 1% and 3% of all pedestrian and bicycle accidents in the locations that were studied". If you look at the aggregate statistic here, pedestrian deaths had only gone down since 1980 up until 2010. Since 2010, pedestrian deaths have gone up 70%.
Exactly. Right on Red is a constant. The variable is a linear progression of larger vehicles with higher, flatter fronts that are starting to be more numerous than sedans. Fifteen years ago, we...
Exactly. Right on Red is a constant. The variable is a linear progression of larger vehicles with higher, flatter fronts that are starting to be more numerous than sedans.
Fifteen years ago, we all thought the Escalade or the Hummer was a ridiculous joke. Now they're not too far off from the norm. The median vehicle is certainly closer to a CR-V than a Fit (which is the size the Civic used to be 20 years ago). Which is pretty ridiculous when you consider the average vehicle on the road has 1.5 occupants.
Even considering RoR as a cause for "soaring" pedestrian deaths is deeply illogical.
There is not really any part of traffic planning which is a "constant" insofar as the design of, in this case, intersections and crossing mechanisms is dynamic and has changed over time. Research...
There is not really any part of traffic planning which is a "constant" insofar as the design of, in this case, intersections and crossing mechanisms is dynamic and has changed over time.
Research provided in the article (and corroborated many times) indicates that pedestrian and cyclist fatalities increase dramatically in ROR intersections (anywhere from 60–107%). Whether or not it contributes exclusively to the rise in pedestrian deaths (the article absolutely does not claim this, specifically pointing out the opposite), it still leads to a meaningful number of avoidable fatalities.
As I've remarked a lot recently: "and, not or." It is possible to make policy changes that address more than one thing. Our cultural tendency to search for the one single boogeyman doesn't really make sense. In addition to levying high taxes on heavy vehicles, others traffic calming measurers like eliminating ROR turns could save lives.
The way you can think about this is that these factors amplify each other in some sense. Speaking politically, what is more tenable: banning SUVs? Or restricting ROR turns? One of these is a lifestyle decision that's hard to extricate and the other is relatively mundane (the proliferation of one-way streets in urban areas suggests that procedural modifications to traffic flow are accepted by the public). We should pursue any reasonable policy that saves lives, but in practical terms you can't always rely on getting the mathematically "ideal" policy win, at least not immediately.
I'll repeat my previous comment. The Guardian's representation of the 1981 DOT study is misleading/wrong. If you look at the study, the reported increase in accidents was only for right-turning...
I'll repeat my previous comment. The Guardian's representation of the 1981 DOT study is misleading/wrong.
If you look at the study, the reported increase in accidents was only for right-turning vehicle accidents, which would unsurprisingly go up if they went from illegal to legal. (The same applies to the 1984 and 2002 study you mentioned in another comment.) RTOR accidents in the DOT study still only made up "between 1% and 3% of all pedestrian and bicycle accidents in the locations that were studied". If you look at the aggregate statistic here, pedestrian deaths had only gone down since 1980 up until 2010 (in fact, at least since the earliest collected data point of 1975). Since 2010, pedestrian deaths have gone up 70%.
Can you please clarify this statement? We are indeed discussing the effects of right-turning vehicles on pedestrians/cyclists. Right turns were never illegal; indeed right turns on red previously...
Exemplary
If you look at the study, the reported increase in accidents was only for right-turning vehicle accidents, which would unsurprisingly go up if they went from illegal to legal.
Can you please clarify this statement? We are indeed discussing the effects of right-turning vehicles on pedestrians/cyclists. Right turns were never illegal; indeed right turns on red previously were. Indeed one might intuitively anticipate that absolute figures for pedestrian fatalities may increase if a specific, maybe dangerous maneuver (previously illegal) is suddenly made legal in a place where pedestrians may be present. More motorists will make the maneuver, so there is more capacity for it to cause harm to pedestrians. Surely this increase in fatalities suggests that the maneuver... is dangerous and causes pedestrian deaths.
If the independent variable measured is whether RTOR is legal or illegal, and the resultant data shows higher fatalities when it is legal... then its legality is contributing to fatalities. It follows that making it illegal may contribute to saving lives. This is a discussion about policy, so if your claim relates to intentional violations of "no-RTOR" signs (this does not seem to be what you said), that is perhaps a different discussion.
If you want a statistical analysis of a safety countermeasure like no-right-turn-on-red in a localized real-world scenario, Shangguan et al. 2023 analyze both RTOR and NRTOR intersections and show a statistically significant departure from the RTOR control group in traffic conflicts in a NRTOR intersection (raw data: 30,075 traffic conflicts in NRTOR vs. 39,697 in the RTOR control, or a 24% decrease). The study evaluates several other safety countermeasures which are beyond the scope of this discussion. Processing the data to account for speed and other factors relevant to a RTOR vs. NRTOR comparison evaluating risk suggests the following:
Furthermore, the results of high-risk interaction frequency modeling showed that only the NRTOR group significantly reduced the frequency of high-risk interactions between vehicles and VRUs [vulnerable road users], and the high-risk interaction frequency of the NRTOR group decreased by 83.4% compared with the control group.
Based on both PET-based or conflict-speed-based conflict severity analyses, the frequency of the highest risk interactions between vehicles and VRUs at intersections with the three traffic countermeasures (i.e., LPI, NRTOR, and BL) was consistently lower than those at the intersections without these safety countermeasures.
The mixed-effects negative binomial regression model worked well in quantifying the impact of the traffic safety countermeasures on intersection safety. Compared with the control group, the frequency of high-risk interactions at intersections with NRTOR countermeasures decreased by 83.4%.
Evidently pedestrian risk is higher when RTOR is permitted according to the conditions studied.
I'm not disputing that the majority of the increase in pedestrian fatalities since 2010 is due to factors other than RTOR. However, a statistically significant 1–3% of fatal accidents is still a lot of people dying, in absolute terms, for what is ultimately not an essential element of traffic flow. Remember that this is merely one factor out of many in the design of an intersection: there are hundreds of variables one might manipulate to affect pedestrian safety. One small factor independently causing 1–3% of fatal accidents is not trivial. Considering that restricting RTOR would cost almost nothing to implement at most intersections (signage is a relatively unremarkable expense) and has significance across all vehicle classes, it is not to be so easily dismissed. Whether or not people continue to drive large vehicles, for example, this particular policy change retains utility.
If you look at the aggregate statistic here, pedestrian deaths had only gone down since 1980 up until 2010
RTOR definitely does not contribute to decreasing pedestrian fatalities, if that is what you're implying.
What the figure you link to omits is data on proportions of modal use in that time period. From 1970 until ~2004, the automobile's share of transportation continued to grow at an astonishing rate; the pedestrian's share correspondingly shrunk to very low levels. The mass development of unwalkable urban and suburban landscapes, as well as pedestrian-hostile infrastructure—including design patterns that favored automobile throughput at the expensive of pedestrian access (think: 7+ minute wait times for arterial crossings), the proliferation of parking lots in urban areas, and a cultural attachment of prestige to driving—encouraged an overwhelming preference against walking specifically. Per-capita vehicle-miles traveled by automobile and time spent driving were dramatically higher than VMT by foot (..."pedestrian miles traveled"?) and time spent on foot. It follows that, representing a small and shrinking percentage of road users, pedestrian fatalities in absolute terms would correspondingly diminish. But as modal use shifted in the mid-2000s and more people walked or cycled than before, more pedestrians began to die. Pedestrians are inherently at risk during traffic collisions—this is why they are referred to as "Vulnerable Road Users" (VRUs) in safety analysis research papers—so it follows that their presence in traffic situations that put them at risk (including, evidently, RTOR intersections) are more likely to lead to their death than if they were not present.
They're not. But they are increasingly becoming the most common thing on the road.. Not just that, what most people buy who would have normally bought a compact car these days are the small SUVs....
They're not. But they are increasingly becoming the most common thing on the road.. Not just that, what most people buy who would have normally bought a compact car these days are the small SUVs. Cars are becoming a minority. Small SUVs are becoming common. Medium to large SUVs are common too. And more people are buying trucks just for commuting so they can be "Cool" vs. people who actually need a truck.
That being said, this trend at least was starting when I was in college pre 2000. But today it's gotten so bad some american car companies don't even make autos cause there is more money in SUVs (and to be fair, they kinda created the problem when they wanted to get around emission standards so tried to market more large trucks as being cooler). And the SUVs back then were the size of the mini suvs you see today (and the same SUV then is much larger now... take the 4runner for example).
I don't know if its just the area I'm in, but I drive for a living. I drive in some cities outside of Boston. It just seems like in the more recent years people just stopped caring about red...
I don't know if its just the area I'm in, but I drive for a living. I drive in some cities outside of Boston. It just seems like in the more recent years people just stopped caring about red lights. I see cars fly through red lights a good 3-5 seconds after it turns red, or people who don't think ahead (or don't care) and straight up block intersections because there is no room for them, then their light turns red and they are stuck there blocking the other lane of traffic from moving until they can move.
Indeed to, a general lack of awareness when it comes to making a right on red. Not looking where they are going, or not even a hint of stopping before making their turn. People just seem more careless these days. Maybe a lack of consequence and getting away with it all the time, maybe they are distracted by a cell phone. Who knows, but it sure is frustrating to drive for a living.
You just described driving in LA, so I don't think it's just your area. About half the time I go to take my first left on my morning commute I have to wait till the next light because people are...
You just described driving in LA, so I don't think it's just your area. About half the time I go to take my first left on my morning commute I have to wait till the next light because people are blocking the intersection. That, and every time turn left as the light turns red, I see two or three other cars behind me.
I'm not sure why this comment has an "Exemplary" tag as your question is answered in the article. The fourth paragraph speculates that the trend may in part be caused by, in addition to ROR...
I'm not sure why this comment has an "Exemplary" tag as your question is answered in the article. The fourth paragraph speculates that the trend may in part be caused by, in addition to ROR intersections, increased adoptions of SUVs (which are large and heavy, factors that directly correlate to pedestrian deaths) and apparently more aggressive driving in general since the COVID-19 pandemic. Importantly, there are probably additional factors at play as well, like there being more pedestrians now than there were in the 1970s, and other complications in the data.
It's hard to take absolute pedestrian fatalities from that time period at face value. Declining pedestrian activity in the late 20th century (and relatively more pedestrian and cyclist activity in the past 10–20 years) probably contributes to a skewed dataset. Perceived safety in the past is possibly an effect of pedestrian omission as a mode that people actually took. By contrast, cities today better adopt urbanist and multi-modal policies and infrastructure and therefore more people walk and cycle. In other words, when everyone drives and no one walks (a model typical in the late 20th century), there are no pedestrians to maim. This does not mean that infrastructure and policies are actually safe for pedestrians.
It's also worth noting that "pedestrian" data is not necessarily... well-classified to begin with? There is a great deal of state variation on reporting, and the definitions used can make it difficult for traffic planners to identify specific solutions to problems. This data can potentially lead planners to make non-optimal decisions because they either perceive a higher or lower level of safety in a particular design or location. Per Noland et al. 2017:
Roughly one fifth of the 157 pedestrian deaths reported in New Jersey in 2012 should not be classified as a pedestrian, based on reporting definitions required by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), as well as based on common definitions of pedestrians by policy-makers and planners. This is further compounded by some records in NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) that are not included in the state database. NHTSA's definition of a pedestrian is also sorely lacking for conducting analyses of safety issues.
Regardless, research from around the time ROR was legalized suggests that ROR intersections meaningfully increase collisions of all types (motor vehicle, pedestrian, and bicycle). Zador 1984:
Alternative analyses of data previously published by Zador et al. confirm that adoption of right-turn-on-red laws increased by about 18% the frequency of all right-turning crashes at all signalized intersections in the jurisdictions that adopted such laws. From a review of the available literature it is estimated that at the approximately 80% of all signalized intersections where motorists are allowed to turn right on red all right-turning crashes increase by about 23%, pedestrian crashes by about 60%, and bicyclist crashes by about 100%.
The results showed significant increases in pedestrian and bicyclist accidents involving right-turning vehicles at signalized locations following the introduction of Western RTOR. These increases were: 40 % for pedestrians and 82 % for bicycles in New York State; 107 % for pedestrians and 72 % for bicycles in Wisconsin; 57 % for pedestrians and 80 % for bicycles in Ohio; and 82 % for pedestrians in New Orleans. Analysis of police accident reports suggested that drivers stopped for a red light are looking left for a gap in traffic and do not see pedestrians and bicyclists coming from their right. Countermeasure research and development was recommended to deal with this well defined problem which involves between 1 % and 3 % of all pedestrian and bicycle accidents.
Predictably, driver behavior patterns range from "OK" to "extremely dangerous" at different intersections. Cooper et al. 2012:
At some locations, fewer than 3% of nonmotorized road users violated red lights, whereas approximately 70% did at other sites. The percentage of motorists turning right on red without stopping ranged from zero to more than 70%.
Considering ROR was originally enacted as a way to reduce localized pollution from engine idling—an issue minimized by modern gas engines and eliminated by electric engines—it is perhaps no longer worth keeping considering the people whose deaths statistically result from the policy.
I would not want this applied in a blanket, all-or-nothing fashion. We have to apply some common sense here. In areas with dense traffic: sure. In (suburban) areas with 50 cars going through an...
I would not want this applied in a blanket, all-or-nothing fashion. We have to apply some common sense here. In areas with dense traffic: sure. In (suburban) areas with 50 cars going through an intersection per 1 pedestrian: it's not very sensible (in my opinion). Waiting to turn right when literally nobody is there (whether vehicle or pedestrian) would be very irritating.
I don't want cyclists to get hit, and of course I don't want people to be struck by vehicles; but we can't overreact here.
We built all the intersections in an area with cyclists and pedestrians as a lazy afterthought. Why does no one want to walk or bike here?
In (suburban) areas with 50 cars going through an intersection per 1 pedestrian: it's not very sensible (in my opinion). Waiting to turn right when literally nobody is there (whether vehicle or pedestrian) would be very irritating.
We built all the intersections in an area with cyclists and pedestrians as a lazy afterthought. Why does no one want to walk or bike here?
I think banning right turns is a band-aid or incomplete solution to a design problem of intersections. Intersections should be designed that right turns are wide forcing drivers to slow and gives...
I think banning right turns is a band-aid or incomplete solution to a design problem of intersections. Intersections should be designed that right turns are wide forcing drivers to slow and gives way more time for a driver to see pedestrians and cyclists, while further protecting cyclists with a separate meridian.
Not bad. Where I live so many drivers overshoot the stop line and stop in cross walks. I honestly think the only way things get better is more strict enforcement. It sounds lame but how else? I...
Not bad. Where I live so many drivers overshoot the stop line and stop in cross walks. I honestly think the only way things get better is more strict enforcement. It sounds lame but how else? I see people blow reds & stops in a multitude of settings. On top of all the other terrible things. People just are not held accountable for what becomes years of bad habits and wreckless driving. Hell, even when people get caught with DUIs or no license, they still just drive.
This is an important and useful statement. Slip lanes (formally, "right turn channelizations") are a strong example of pedestrian-hostile infrastructure that only exists to increase traffic...
This is an important and useful statement. Slip lanes (formally, "right turn channelizations") are a strong example of pedestrian-hostile infrastructure that only exists to increase traffic throughput. Jiang et al. 2019:
Results indicate that the design of channelized right-turn lane increases pedestrian risks at signalized intersections from different dimensions of safety. [...] Consequently, cities should be cautious to install channelized intersections as a safety countermeasure. Treatments are needed to improve pedestrian safety if channelized right turns are implemented.
Slip lanes are a form of "right on red" turns. They are particularly egregious because drivers do not have an incentive to slow down before the pedestrian crossing, only after it (to merge into traffic). This is true for all ROR turns to some extent, but exacerbated with slip lanes.
I'm convinced that its a result of poor policy at all levels resulting in elevated chronic stress pushed to its breaking point. Have you ever been burnt out? Not simply tired or stressed from a...
I'm convinced that its a result of poor policy at all levels resulting in elevated chronic stress pushed to its breaking point. Have you ever been burnt out? Not simply tired or stressed from a deadline, but really truly burnt out?
More than any other symptom of burnout the #1 that makes it stand out to me is that it makes you kinda stupid. I don't doubt long covid is part of it, I just think it's way too prevalent and constant and everywhere for it to just be that.
Somewhere between half and 2/3 of this country lives paycheck to paycheck. A majority can't handle a random $500 expense. These weren't much better 4 years ago but with cumulative inflation since 2020 around 20% is it any wonder that people keep acting insane?
It's catabolic capitalism. Energy return on energy investment has been declining for years. All the easy oil is gone. To get access to new oil now, we have to resort to incredibly expensive and...
Exemplary
It's catabolic capitalism. Energy return on energy investment has been declining for years. All the easy oil is gone. To get access to new oil now, we have to resort to incredibly expensive and complex processes, such as fracking, to get at it. Renewables, while they have fewer long term caps on their growth than fossil fuels, also require a great deal of investment than the simpler energy sources of the past.
I mention energy because energy is what drives everything in our economies. A single barrel of oil, by one measurement, is really worth about $250,000. That's about what it would cost if you wanted to get the same amount of energy by paying people to generate that much energy with their own muscle power. We live in a society fundamentally built from the ground up on cheap energy. New technology has helped, but cheap energy is really why we enjoy such a greater standard of living than our ancestors. Most of the modern technologies we can think of that improve our lives, such as air travel or the internet, are only possible because we live in a world with cheap energy.
And it goes further. We're hitting ecological walls on everything. We've scoured the planet looking for all the easy sources of energy and minerals. We've dammed almost every river capable of supporting dams. We've fished the seas to their limits. We've exhausted the soils and have to rely on energy-intensive industrial farming to stave off mass global famine. And this is before we consider climate change and the finite carbon budget we really should be limiting ourselves to.
And beyond ecological limits, we've already picked a lot of the low-hanging fruit in terms of economic growth. China is a great example. Up until the last few decades, China was operating well, well below its economic potential. China is one of the oldest, grandest civilizations in human history. For most of written history, it was at the forefront of technology, industry, art, literature, mathematics, often far surpassing anything available in the West. For most of history, the West was a primitive backwater. But the lightning bolt of the Industrial Revolution happened to strike first in Western Europe, and that led to a few centuries of colonialism and the subjugation and impoverishment of what were previously the greatest centers of human civilization, China, India, the Middle East, etc. Colonialism impoverished these regions, stripped them of their dignity and potential, and forced them to operate well below where they could.
But in the modern era, these areas have been allowed to develop. And again, these aren't areas where complex urban societies were unheard of prior to modern times. Industrializing China did not require building an entire new nation out of some wasteland somewhere, it merely required restoring China to a level of relative development more in line with historical norms. With China and India industrializing, we haven't so much witnessed an unprecedented economic revolution as we've seen these nations simply returning to their normal levels of power, wealth, and influence. They each have over a billion people living in them; they SHOULD be global economic juggernauts. It was only a historical fluke that they for a period weren't.
Developing countries that had great development potential, but were simply held back by colonialism, represented very low-hanging fruit in terms of economic development. Making China wealthy was always going to be a hell of a lot easier than making the Democratic Republic of the Congo wealthy.
And I mention these because the growth of these nations did not just help them. Western companies benefited greatly from the growth of previously impoverished nations, and Western consumers benefited from decades of cheap consumer goods. The people whose jobs were outsourced lost out, but the industrialization of China was a great boon for the average American.
But this has only lasted so long. There's still plenty of areas developing, especially in Subsaharan Africa. But Africa has a total population of 1.4 billion, China has as many people as all of Africa put together. And while African history is hardly some savage wasteland where complex societies never existed, the historical pre-colonial levels of development between Subsaharan Africa and China are not remotely comparable. If nothing else, China already had most of its ethnic conflict and process of national formation centuries ago. Most African countries have borders that were simply drawn by European colonizers with zero regard for the existing cultures, religions, and ethnicities. So while global GDP can continue growing by developing the few unindustrialized areas, the few areas that haven't been heavily developed have remained undeveloped for a reason. They're typically areas with either low population densities, regions wracked with ethnic conflict, or simply geographies that make development a nightmarishly expensive process.
Or, in short, we have already picked the low-hanging fruit of national development. All the areas that could easily have developed, but were just being held back by colonial overseers, have now been able to develop.
So, what does all this mean? It means real economic growth is getting ever more difficult. We're hard up against ecological limits. Energy is more expensive than ever. And all the easy to develop areas have been developed. Each of these can be addressed, at a cost. We can move from open-ocean fishing to fish farming. We can move from fossil fuels to renewables. We can develop even the hard to develop areas. But each of these future alternatives requires more investment and work to produce the same level of economic growth compared to prior options. We area fundamentally entering a world where the global economy simply won't be able to grow as fast as it did in the past. And, considering the ecological catastrophes on the horizon, we'll often struggle just to maintain what we already have, let alone grow. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to prevent mass global famine, but it will be at the cost of raising the real cost of food. Other areas of our lifestyles will have to shrink to accommodate.
And yet, companies are still expected to make a profit. And they are expected to deliver ever-higher levels of profit. As long as the global economy is growing, corporate profits can grow without lowering the quality of life of workers and consumers. Ideally, a rising tide can at times lift all boats. Nobody needs a bigger portion of the pie if the entire pie can grow. But what if the pie is fixed, or even shrinking? Then things become a zero sum game. The only way to increase corporate profits is to squeeze the workers, the consumers, or both. And thus, we see declining wages, soaring prices, ever more precarious working conditions, etc. If the economy cannot grow in real terms, than the only way corporate profits can increase is by decreasing the quality of life of the populace.
This is the core ideal of catabolic capitalism. It's named after catabolism, the process by which the body of a starving organism begins to digest itself.
Or, from another perspective, do a little thought exercise. Imagine what it would be like to live in a society undergoing a very slow, drawn out ecological and energy collapse. Not anything as dramatic as a zombie-apocalypse style collapse. Just a slow decline stretched out over many generations. What would it be like, to the people on the ground, living in such a society? Wouldn't it look exactly like what we are currently experiencing? Soaring cost of food and shelter? Increasingly reactionary and radical politics and demonization of foreigners? Declining birth rates, lowering life expectancies, soaring rates of mental illness, and an ever-growing sense of hopelessness and doom?
Everything I see in our society today is entirely compatible with a civilization that has run head first into an immovable wall of energy and ecological limits. We're not fundamentally here because of some failure in our politics. Better politics could certainly soften the blow and make the process less painful. But the simple truth is, one way or another, we're probably in for a century of slowly declining standards of living, barring some miraculous new technologies.
Now, this of course is not a reason to give up hope and jump off a bridge tomorrow. We're not likely to undergo some dramatic complete collapse into chaos and anarchy. Yes, barring some miracle new technologies, we're going to undergo a slow, generations-long decline in standards of living. But that doesn't mean we'll collapse back to hunter-gatherer levels. Such a decline might converge to something similar to standards of living circa 1900. Maybe we have to abandon the suburbs and go back to living in dense cities, primarily getting around by foot and train. Maybe we have to go back to multigenerational housing as the norm. Maybe we have to move away from regions where AC is a necessity and water can only be obtained at great energy expense. Maybe we have to go back to eating seasonal, primarily plant-based diets, based on local produce availability.
That's not something we want to do, but it's not the end of the world. We can let the desert take Las Vegas and leave Florida to the alligators and the rising seas. Our current hyper energy-wasteful society will be seen as a historical blip, a brief, epic, multigeneration party, a golden age to put all other golden ages to shame. But even after such a decline, life will go on. And people will still find plenty of joy and happiness in their lives. And hopefully, it will be a slow enough process that the decline in living standards across a single lifetime, while noticeable, will be manageable and not psychologically breaking. But the Sun will still rise in the morning. People will still sing, dance, and tell each other stories of joy, heroism, and heartbreak. Teenagers will still get butterflies in their stomach at the thought of their first kiss. Parents will still watch their children walk their first steps. Elders will still pass being able to look on their lives with a sense of gratitude and accomplishment. Things will be different, but life will go on.
This was an interesting deep dive, but I'm not quite sure how it connected to the primary question being responded to: I don't think it's mutually exclusive to say, have the same standards of...
This was an interesting deep dive, but I'm not quite sure how it connected to the primary question being responded to:
Somewhere between half and 2/3 of this country lives paycheck to paycheck. A majority can't handle a random $500 expense. These weren't much better 4 years ago but with cumulative inflation since 2020 around 20% is it any wonder that people keep acting insane?
I don't think it's mutually exclusive to say, have the same standards of living as the 90's while not living paycheck to paycheck. Whatever energy crisis happened in the past 3 decades certainly doesn't seem to justify housing becoming 3x more expensive.
I think the ambivalent part here is this assumption that the economy has to keep growing at the same rate in order to keep standards of living constant. But this assumes that standards of living aren't already on the decline to begin with. It assumes the economy is growing equally, instead of more and more of the money going towards the elite, to the point where the idea of "minimum wage" being a "living wage" is a pipe dream.
I wouldn't mind moving back to a dense city, but the current housing market seems to run antithesis to that. I'm out in the suburbs because it's some 5-700 dollars cheaper on average to live. an energy crunch should be making the suburbs unsustainable and forcing people who cant "get away" from the city to go urban. But that's never really been how land worked in terms of value.
Is this reflected in statistics? Anecdotally I don't really see any difference in driver behavior pre and post covid. Not to say everyone is a good driver, but the amount of shitty drivers is...
Is this reflected in statistics? Anecdotally I don't really see any difference in driver behavior pre and post covid. Not to say everyone is a good driver, but the amount of shitty drivers is about the same.
There has been some limited research suggesting that driver agression has increased since the pandemic. I expect the particulars look quite different in different parts of the world. I don’t know...
There has been some limited research suggesting that driver agression has increased since the pandemic. I expect the particulars look quite different in different parts of the world.
I don’t know what one can do about that. It seems a vague problem to me, the confluence of numerous factors ranging from stress to ego to infrastructure design to technology/distraction to fatigue to who knows.
The statistics are tricky. They say crime is down, but the underlying point is that unreported crimes have skyrocketed over the pandemic. Lack of trust in the police + the police simply not...
The statistics are tricky. They say crime is down, but the underlying point is that unreported crimes have skyrocketed over the pandemic. Lack of trust in the police + the police simply not bothering to even write down some reported petty crimes (partially due to less staff; partially due to many other factors with law enforcement) means that you will feel a lot less safe in a neighborhood all while the mayor will proudly proclaim "being hard on crime worked! rates are plummeting". Regardless of your stance on "hard on crime" I think it's pretty bipartisan that doing nothing about a reported crime fails in this regard.
in general, it's a hard thing to purely rely on official reports on. For car drivers specifically: not entirely sure. L.A. feels the same but L.A. traffic and road rage at any given time is a very low bar to begin with.
As a frequent pedestrian, I have always been wary of right-on-red drivers. At least some of the times I’ve come closest to being hit have been related to a vehicle turning, the driver watching to their left for a traffic opening instead of looking to their right toward the crosswalk.
ROR has been mostly disallowed in New York City — the first “big city” I ever went to — as long as I can remember, but permitted almost everywhere else.
Perhaps it is time to revisit this policy.
If I had to decide between potential small fuel savings from allowing ROR, or avoiding traffic deaths caused by ROR… I think I would choose fewer traffic deaths. Especially as the automobile fleet is beginning to electrify, this kind of emission may become less important moving forward; and as EVs are heavier (and therefore more dangerous to pedestrians), this kind of safety may become more important.
What do you think?
Traffic planners and towns have an unhealthy love affair with intersections and lights. The usage of lights create traffic surges and drivers racing to the next light. Get rid of the damn lights, put in circles, take lanes away and give space to separate bike and pedestrian lanes. Put level crossings before the circles for pedestrians so drivers don't have a high cognitive load.
This gets rid of the surges, slows down vehicles but they are overall faster from a to b since they don't waste time at lights.
Traffic lights are also ridiculously expensive, both in capital expenditure and ongoing operation/maintenance. It could be $200–500k+ to add lights to an intersection… or apparently $2 million?!? Plus several thousand annually. Compare that to like $15k for a retrofitted traffic circle… yeah. (But if a traffic circle requires resurfacing and drainage changes then it can be more expensive than that. Probably still cheaper than traffic lights at many intersections, especially large ones.)
I think drivers in the US have this perception that because you slow down a little in a traffic circle, they’re worse than 4-way intersections. But while instantaneous speed may decrease in a roundabout, average speed on a journey is higher because, like you said, you’re not getting all bunched up at red lights. So it’s safer near pedestrians and more efficient in general, in many cases.
I think you have to be careful with roundabouts though because they can be hostile to pedestrians if they’re too big. Probably still better than a traffic light most of the time. (And if you decrease the number of lanes then it becomes more walkable.)
I can't help but think there's a monster markup going on here.
Yeah I’m kind of in awe at that number. I know traffic lights are awfully complicated—they’re big, and they have all sorts of operational redundancy systems in the electronics—but to some extent that $2 million figure sounds like a case of “American urban planners spending money poorly,” i.e. relying on a lot of external consulting or generally not using best practices during construction.
I think that article is focusing on a particularly expensive intersection. My impression is that most light systems end up being less—but still not cheap.
The Pennsylvania DOT has some figures on estimating costs for this. The equipment itself is in the tens of thousands of dollars per unit. That’s not considering planning and construction.
It's not just the cost of the lights themselves, but the necessary traffic studies, system reprogramming for coordination of timing with other lights, turn lights, pedestrian signals, and lane marking. Newer streets may have cameras and other gear for automated timing changes depending on traffic volume.
And all that complexity probably still doesn't adequately account for pedestrian or cyclist safety.
On top of that running the electricity to the light also means digging up the road and likely adding things like ADA infrastructure like ramps to the existing sidewalk. When Public Works is going to tear up a part of the road they often want to do as many upgrades as possible at once to as a cost savings measure.
I find it extremely hard to believe that you can just plop a round about where a light was and get similar throughout without expanding the space taken.
It depends completely on the intersection. Counter-intuitively, some roads actually have increased throughput with fewer lanes; so with a fairly wide road you can conceivably cut out a lane of travel in each direction, insert a roundabout in the middle, and reconfigure the remaining lane. In this case, there is enough space.
A significant number of roads in the US are too wide and have too many lanes for their actual use levels, so this particular retrofit has reasonable practicality.
If the goal is to add a roundabout to an intersection without decreasing the number of travel lanes, the intersection may need to be widened somewhat. Depending on the frontage of the surrounding area this may or may not be feasible.
You are comparing an intersection that would have been just two roads that are one lane each way in a residential area with an enormous intersection. I would like more roundabouts but that comparison is just bad.
Yes, of course, it is an absurd example.
In a standard four-way intersection, installing a traffic signal generally costs no less than perhaps $250k when considering planning/design, procurement, proper computerized and/or smart system integration, and construction/installation. It is not uncommon to see higher figures ($500k+). Depending on the choice of equipment, you might have to relocate some power lines or utilities either for visibility or to create space for the signal pole or control box, which adds a significant cost (anywhere from $10k–100k+). And the annual maintenance even for a small signalized intersection is a recurring $5–10k at least—typically more with more complex systems. (It can be more like $15–20k depending on how often signal timing upgrades occur, and various repair expenses.)
Depending on the intersection it can be feasible to inexpensively construct a small roundabout with minimal adjacent impact. They do not have to be extremely large features, though they can be. I have seen plenty of successful roundabouts only a few feet across. The sharper curve in a smaller centerpiece means speeds have to be lower, but this suits many streets anyway. A typical four-way intersection with one travel lane in each direction probably doesn’t have enough room for a large roundabout with a 50-foot centerpiece. In an area where building frontage is right next to the street, it’s not realistic to push the sidewalk back. But in many (most?) American municipalities it’s typical to have a significant amount of setback from the roadway for aesthetic reasons. It is often technically feasible to use a small portion of this for the roundabout. Depending on the road, utility relocation may be necessary, adding cost, but this really depends. And there are no additional utilities like control boxes necessary for a roundabout.
In situations where a road diet, parking removal, or lane narrowing can “create” enough space for the centerpiece without negatively affecting throughput (at all or by a significant amount), you’re left with a low-tech, low-cost piece of infrastructure—certainly it can be as little as a few thousand dollars. The installation of a small curb (it really doesn’t have to be a lot) in the center of an intersection is cheap. Paint is cheap.
A typical 4-way intersection would see costs close to $50–150k to install a roundabout with a fairly substantial centerpiece. And it requires comparatively little maintenance—no electrical systems, no signal timing, etc.
There are situations where it doesn’t make sense to use a traffic circle, financially or otherwise. They’re sometimes annoying for pedestrians. Arterials might have too much traffic for a single lane, requiring a far larger and more complex multi-lane roundabout. I’ve seen some tricky drainage situations that would require expensive storm water runoff drain relocations. Nearby fixed grade-separated corridors may make a roundabout unrealistic. Sometimes utilities get in the way, and sometimes building frontage is too close, which would require demolition (unpopular). A multi-lane roundabout could be double or more the cost of a single-lane one; but then a comparable traffic light system would be considerably more expensive too. Regardless, in most cases I think local area impact—including changes to frontage and traffic patterns—play a bigger role than cost.
Depending on the number of signalized intersections present in the municipality, the deciding factor could be the cost of maintenance, not construction. A city with 100 such intersections maintaining them at a cost of, say, $10k/yr each might find the $1 million/yr in maintenance better spent elsewhere. Various small towns in the US have removed most/all of their signalized intersections in favor of roundabouts primarily for this reason—Carmel, IN is the famous one. You can get state and federal grants for capital projects, but the local government is likely to be the one to eat the day-to-day maintenance costs of a complex signalized traffic solution.
Personally I am not sure the roundabout is my favorite solution for dense urban areas, at least not every intersection. I feel like they usually impede walking times, so pedestrians may be tempted to cross at an undesignated location, which might defeat the purpose of having it to begin with. But I think they are very suitable for an enormous number of suburban roads. In general, I am interested in “low-tech” traffic calming/management solutions for reasons of operational simplicity, cost, and function in the event of a power/system failure.
Yeah roundabouts are best where you want traffic flow to stay smoothly moving. Inside dense cities you generally need people to stop and look carefully. If it's a big arterial road that pedestrians generally only cross at specific intersections anyway because it's busy and noisy, then it makes sense. But most side streets it does not, it probably encourages people to go faster and more thoughtlessly if anything.
If you have streets with real amounts of regular pedestrian traffic then you really just need to make cars second-class citizens. If they have to wait they have to wait. For cars to move quickly we need to adopt the planning posture we generally adopt with bikelanes. Instead of all streets being designed for their most optimal use, the streets should funnel them into specific tracks to get around without much pedestrian crossing the way cyclists sometimes have separate cycletracks for going long distances without needing to contend with stop-signs and lights and pedestrians.
When you're within the residential areas though, you gotta settle for toughing it out and going slowly and deliberately. Having been car free for about a decade before finally caving and buying a car, I've found I actually care a lot less about going fast than I used to. When your brain is normed to think of "walking speed" as the normal pace then even just cruising along at >30 or >45 mph still feels blazingly fast to get from place to place. It's really the expectations you get when everything is spread apart and you can go down even residential streets at 40+ mph that I think people's brains rewire to where they start getting frustrated at every minor pause or stop. I really only get annoyed now if I'm forced to lane-change because a separate Doordash or Uber driver is blocking the lane every block.
The little roundabouts that are appropriate for putting at small intersections are shaped and sized such that there's no way for someone to navigate one at speed in anything as wide as a car. It means that it doesn't matter whether someone respected the four way stop that it replaced or not, there's no physical way for them to maintain speed through the intersection. Maybe they'll gun it for the few hundred feet before the next intersection, but they really can't get up to any significant speed before they need to start braking again for the next one. In my area side streets that used to get a lot of traffic overflow from the main streets have these small roundabouts in them, and they've really slowed down traffic that would have previously tried to gun it along those side streets.
I'm strongly in the "get rid of right on red" camp. As a cyclist, a big chunk of my close calls have been at intersections where someone is doing exactly as you describe - looking in a direction different from the way their car is about to be moving.
The fuel savings is mostly irrelevant at this point - again, like you said, EV's are gaining in popularity, and that's a trend that isn't going to reverse. Additionally, we have better ways to make intersections more efficient these days (see Google's Green Light project).
Please don’t read this as blaming the victim, and I completely agree with you, so don’t interpret this as a defense of ROR, but as a fellow cyclist you comment makes me think you might not be taking the lane when you should. ROR hooks are only possible if the cyclist is passing on the right. When traffic slows down I move to the center of the lane, accelerate through the intersection with traffic and only move to the right once I’m through and can no longer keep pace with other vehicles. This prevents this very common and deadly type of accident. There’s a great free ebook called street smarts that talks a lot about the importance of lane positioning. I’d link it for you, but I’m in mobile.
Yes, a bike that is properly following traffic laws should not have close calls as described. If you are on a bike and nearly getting hit by a driver who is turning right because the driver was only looking to their left, that is your fault. You are running a red light. The driver should check for pedestrians, but it's silly to expect every driver to also check for bicyclists illegally overtaking them in the gutter. If you were on the sidewalk and not just blasting through the intersection, a driver not looking for pedestrians is 100% "at fault," but it is also certainly your fault (not legally) for being negligent in not making sure the driver wasn't about to kill you before crossing. That's not to say we shouldn't try to protect you anyway or that ROR shouldn't be banned, just that you could have prevented the collision by not stepping out in front of a 4000 lb machine whose actions you could have predicted.
Right, like when you're in the designated bike lane that always sits to the right of traffic. I've had a number of close calls in the bike lane as well, the majority of which are when the light is green and folks are either turning right or they are turning right into a parking lot. In either event I'm in my designated lane, biking in a legal manner and then driver just isn't looking.
This is why these shoulder-turned-bike-lanes scare the bejesus out of me when I'm driving a car. They seem almost purposely designed to funnel cyclists in the blind spots of turning cars. Now drivers must simultaneously look into two diametrically opposite directions — one of which has extremely poor visibility because the road was not originally designed to have non-turning lane there (even if you are actively looking, odds are way too high that you won't see a cyclist there).
It seems like that would be a plainly misdesigned bike lane to me. If a bike is sequestered in the rightmost ~3' of the road, and the car is to their left, the curb for the road they're turning left onto should be far enough ahead both parties that it's impossible to clip the cyclist.
I'm not a fan of bike lanes either, certainly at intersections, where bikes being treated identically to motorcycles makes most sense, but I don't think I've seen a bike lane like that that didn't seem like the painters just screwed up and marked it into the intersection.
That's so interesting. Can I ask what part of the world you're in? I'm curious what bike lane look like where you are.
Contextually I spent a year cycling from between Berkeley/Oakland, then San Francisco/Oakland (with a bart connection), inter Madrid (La Latina/San Blas), inter Amsterdam, and then in the Monterey area. While each had a different flavor of close calls, outside Amsterdam where the close calls were cause by selfie driven pedestrians, the bike lanes all still drew close calls from drivers.
I'm not sure we talking about the same thing. I thinking of a 4 way intersection where the car in the right lane turns right and nearly misses the bike that is in that lane. The cyclist isn't doing anything wrong and then driver will need to pass through that lane to make the turn, often they just aren't looking for bikes or cars. Honestly the worst instances I had weren't at a red light but on green where they would just continue driving and miss me when they looked. I actually ended up flipping up onto a hood when I lived in Berkeley.
I'm not sure I agree. In the US folks get pretty testy around cyclists in the roadway and in areas where I need to cycle in the road I'm often yelled at, even though I try to stay as far to the right of the lane as possible to allow passing. I think it's a cultural thing that wont change, even with changes in regulation. At some point it's a 4000lb ram vs me.
I'm in the US! New Mexico. I've definitely heard of cars swerving into bike lanes in general, and experienced some of the crazy things car drivers do to cyclists. It's specifically the phenomenon of a bike waiting in their lane at a red, and someone clipping them with a right, that I've not seen or known outside of random stories online. Road hazards here are more along the lines of someone randomly shooting you for a perceived slight, or a drunk weaving.
Yeah, those are the lanes we've got around here, but all traffic lanes end far enough from the actual intersection that I don't think it's a problem. I've definitely been in San Francisco and didn't notice the lanes extending further. The more I think on this, it might be a matter of newer road design? Much of NM is either rural or has only been urbanized in the last fifty years or so, so our roads might just be wide enough that this particular incident is avoided. I'll take a walk and snap a couple pictures later if I can remember to.
Glad to hear NM is bike friendly! My partner is from Albuquerque and we're keep talking about a trip out. Sounds like we'll have to plan some biking!
I had never thought of time of development as a potential source of the issue, that's a great point. I think for most of our roads here, the lane ends right at the corner, or potentially 3-4 feet back of the intersection. I'd love to see the pictures if you end up taking them.
Oh, especially for recreational biking, Albuquerque is great. We have a path that stretches almost the entire north-south length right down the middle of the city, on each side of the river, and there are a few surface streets in each quadrant that taper down to bike paths before joining with the main artery. Unfortunately, outside of that backbone, it's just too big of a city to realistically bike everywhere, and thieves are too numerously bold to leave it outside of most businesses anyway. For sightseeing and exercise, though! Unfortunately, the drivers are remarkably hostile around here, but evasive maneuvers are usually sufficient to survive.
In case I don't get those pictures, typically our lanes end about a foot before the pedestrian crossing, which is just about 5' wide, and the curb is usually a...6+' radius. Something like those ratios. A semi truck turning right on a surface street will barely break the middle line sometimes. It all adds up, and I'm not sure the safety is worth the huge amount of space dedicated to roads on top of the usual.
We have some dedicated bike lanes that run along a main roadway - the bike lanes cross at some intersections using the standard white line walkways that the pedestrians also use - it's mostly at these that I run into issues (my apologies for my crappy description). These crossings are not great execution for bike lanes, but if I'm having issues at them on a bike, the people using them for walking are also having the same issues.
When I'm sharing the road with cars, I do the same as you - when appropriate, I take the whole lane - it pisses some people off, but I prefer that over getting hit by someone trying to squeeze by. I'll look for that ebook though - never hurts to try and be safer around those damn giant hunks of metal ruining my enjoyable rides :-)
In case you didn't find it, I'm at a computer now and can provide a link:
https://www.bikexprt.com/streetsmarts/
Thank you! I'll have a look later tonight.
And to add- many (most?) new ICE cars today include an anti-idle feature where the engine automatically stops when the vehicle isn’t moving.
Feeling that you need to specify that you walk regularly is a good way to tell me you're in the US :P
Hah. Force of habit. Believe it or not I actually don’t (always) wax poetic about traffic safety at dinner parties—but when it does come up, I often have to preface my remarks with this fact or else my exclusively car-driving acquaintances zone out. It feels too academic to them. When I remind them that I’m at constant risk of death when crossing a suburban arterial, sometimes car-centrism becomes more of a “real” problem to them.
It's interesting to think if you get rid of ROR you might reduce fatalities but you're adding commute time to everyone else. Is there balance to safety vs convenience? Ban all cars and we'll be at zero, but that's not realistic.
Put speed cameras with automatic fines on every street and a super low speed limit you'd probably save a ton of lives
My question is, say you save 5 lives per month at the expense of adding 10 lifetimes of commute time distributed across all drivers, is it worth the change? What if it's 20 lifetimes?
There's a line and I think it's different for everyone, and if I knew a victim it would move my line
It’s a difficult question. I am sure many actuaries have considered this for the purpose of insurance and regulation, but maybe not with a Vision Zero goal in mind.
There are some medium-sized cities in New Jersey which have seen zero (literally zero) pedestrian deaths in the last several years, even as fatalities have risen nationwide in that time. Like, Hoboken, NJ has a population of about 60k but is not what I would call low-traffic or rural. It’s literally right next to New York City.
The work done by these cities makes me think that we can aim for Vision Zero by adopting safer infrastructure and policy practices, things like narrowing crosswalk distances, increasing visibility at intersections, and, potentially, banning ROR turns. I’m sure some of these changes are slightly annoying to drivers, but they haven’t necessitated the complete removal of all cars from cities like Hoboken.
I think there’s place for car-free spaces. There should probably be a lot more of them. But like you said, banning cars altogether is a difficult solution. I hope that more research can be done about this sort of thing.
Practical Engineering went into this tradeoff the other day (15 minute YouTube video) - the TL;DR: is that for engineering projects you often need a conversion factor of human lives to dollar value. We can infer from other fields of study how highly people value risks and lives. Currently, that figure sits at ~$15M in the US. So if faced with a choice of a safer or a cheaper project, the expected fatalities times $15M is the cost of the risks of that second project. If that's cheaper than the safer project, saving those lives simply isn't worth it.
Before anyone goes crying that human lives are subjectively worth an infinite dollar value, consider that that effectively prohibits you from ever risking your life by e.g. participating in traffic. Infinite value of your life would oblige you to always pick the safest option, no matter the cost. Consider also wagers of the form "with 99.9999% chance, you win 10 million dollars. With 0.0001% chance, you die." - every human has a point where risks to their lives are acceptable, if the price is right.
As for how to price added commute times, I know I'd rather be dead than only commuting for a lifetime, so in my mind there's even an argument that saving 6 lives isn't worth it if it adds 5 lifetimes of commute. But that's probably both subjective, and different if you move away from the absolutist view of "either dead or forever commuting" and instead look at "3 minutes more commute every day or a slight increase in mortality". But I'm sure people have looked at the price of commute times with a more statistical view: For example, how much more money do I have to pay employees for them to accept a 10 minute longer commute? Convert that money into human lives and presto, there's the price of both options.
I think it would change if you were a cyclist. It's a big ask, but if your'e up for it I'd love to have you cycle some of the busier roads by you. Pick a utility destination (like a grocery store) and ride out during rush hour. See how it feels to be a cyclist during commuting hours and beyond the deaths, just feel how unpleasant it is to engage with those junction points.
I think something that gets missed in these debates is how often we forsake everyone else - pedestrians, cyclists, disabled folks - to optimize the convenience of cars.
I am a cyclist. Right on red has never felt like a notable hazard. Plenty of other traffic patterns, but not right on red. Maybe it's just the specific driving culture I'm in, everybody here is very conscientious of the possibility of a right turn, and most cyclists either join the car lane or stay back about a quarter length just in case. I was in a cycling club for a few years, and none of the car-related accidents I heard of had anything to do with it.
Ah, sorry for assuming. The issues I've had with right on red either tended to be cars that tried to squeek into an area they were too large for (i.e. a delivery van push me off the road with the broadside of the van because it was larger than the driver thoughts) or much more commonly, when pedestrians get an extra few seconds to go (i.e. the walk sign turns on before the green light) and the driver looking left sees that there is now a gap and hasn't noticed that the walk sign is on and pedestrians and cyclists are now in the start of the crosswalk - also known as the "splat zone". In the earlier case the driver has always been apologetic and it's been a great interaction minus the bump. In the latter case the driver is normally aggressive with a "you shouldn't have been going yet!" approach. Also the damage is often much worse in the second example because it's a front hit vs a side.
I think the driving culture tends to reflect the population density and infrastructure. I had the worst time of it in Oakland where folks were often trying to beat rush hour on their commute home, high density and high stress. In Monterey, the danger much more often originates from tourists who are distracted by the ocean views and local drivers tend to be more cognizant. In either case they still feel scary to be around.
Sorry, I'm not the person you were responding to, so no assumptions were made, and no apology is necessary. Just a being a coversational pest.
Yeah, I can imagine that scenario, and I've seen pedestrians get hooded. It might be a special case of defensive driving in the cyclists I know, because that's a risk none of them would take, being late be damned.
No worries, always fun to chat bike infrastructure! And yeah, not a proud moment ending up on the hood.
I'm not sure that I agree that comparing time saved commuting to lost lives is an argument I can sign on to. But I also wonder if these ROR incidents are the wrong place to look. Definitely poor infrastructure and aggressive drivers create a great deal of risk to cyclists but signalled intersections have often felt the most predictable situations to cycle through.
I live in a bike friendly area and I know people who have had (multiple) accidents. I've also cycled quite a lot around the US. It's very easy to ride defensively at intersections.
"My question is, say you save 5 lives per month at the expense of adding 10 lifetimes of commute time distributed across all drivers, is it worth the change? What if it's 20 lifetimes?"
Life is infinitely worth more than people's time (convenience). I'm sorry but what a terrible thing to even consider. People need to learn to be patient and be inconvenienced to save lives and the environment.
I think it's fine if you want to take that moral standpoint, but I just want to give the context that this isn't one of those internet moments where someone accidentally suggests something outlandish. There's actually a lot of areas in government policy where you make a direct tradeoff between lives and money, and in practice if you set 1 life = infinite money, it doesn't work out well.
Per the US Department of Transportation, a life is worth $9.6m. In Sweden, 22m SEK. In Australia, 5.1m AUD. In Singapore, S$1.87m. And so on - practically every government, from the Americas, to Europe, to Asia, has a monetary standard they use as the "statistical value of a human life" in order to balance equations, basically, on how much risk to put their citizens under for how much money.
So back onto the original hypothetical, according to the US DoT, 5 lives = $48 million. So you need to save enough commute time over all drivers to be greater than $48m in productivity for it to be worth letting 5 people die or vice versa.
So then we should just ban all cars? Or is there a point where society needs to accept risk in order to enable modern advances that prolong lives?
if it was that easy, public transportation would be soaring right now. less accidents when there's less drivers and more bus drivers who need more experience than the average road rager.
But that's an uphill battle still slowly being fought to this day
If pedestrian deaths are increasing, we should fix the thing that's changed, not what's been constant for decades. Regulate the trucks and SUVs.
That’s not all that’s changed though. There are also just more pedestrians, more cyclists, and more people using micromobility tools than there were 10-20 years ago.
Plus the roads themselves have changed, as have drivers and general approaches to traffic enforcement.
But if we're shifting in that direction - increasing pedestrian/bike/scooter usage - then it is time to consider safety regulation changes anyway. We can and have to address multiple issues at once and I think truck/suv bumper height is a valid regulation to tackle.
If you look at the study, the reported increase in accidents was only for right-turning vehicle accidents, which would unsurprisingly go up if they went from illegal to legal. RTOR accidents still only made up "between 1% and 3% of all pedestrian and bicycle accidents in the locations that were studied". If you look at the aggregate statistic here, pedestrian deaths had only gone down since 1980 up until 2010. Since 2010, pedestrian deaths have gone up 70%.
Exactly. Right on Red is a constant. The variable is a linear progression of larger vehicles with higher, flatter fronts that are starting to be more numerous than sedans.
Fifteen years ago, we all thought the Escalade or the Hummer was a ridiculous joke. Now they're not too far off from the norm. The median vehicle is certainly closer to a CR-V than a Fit (which is the size the Civic used to be 20 years ago). Which is pretty ridiculous when you consider the average vehicle on the road has 1.5 occupants.
Even considering RoR as a cause for "soaring" pedestrian deaths is deeply illogical.
There is not really any part of traffic planning which is a "constant" insofar as the design of, in this case, intersections and crossing mechanisms is dynamic and has changed over time.
Research provided in the article (and corroborated many times) indicates that pedestrian and cyclist fatalities increase dramatically in ROR intersections (anywhere from 60–107%). Whether or not it contributes exclusively to the rise in pedestrian deaths (the article absolutely does not claim this, specifically pointing out the opposite), it still leads to a meaningful number of avoidable fatalities.
As I've remarked a lot recently: "and, not or." It is possible to make policy changes that address more than one thing. Our cultural tendency to search for the one single boogeyman doesn't really make sense. In addition to levying high taxes on heavy vehicles, others traffic calming measurers like eliminating ROR turns could save lives.
The way you can think about this is that these factors amplify each other in some sense. Speaking politically, what is more tenable: banning SUVs? Or restricting ROR turns? One of these is a lifestyle decision that's hard to extricate and the other is relatively mundane (the proliferation of one-way streets in urban areas suggests that procedural modifications to traffic flow are accepted by the public). We should pursue any reasonable policy that saves lives, but in practical terms you can't always rely on getting the mathematically "ideal" policy win, at least not immediately.
I'll repeat my previous comment. The Guardian's representation of the 1981 DOT study is misleading/wrong.
If you look at the study, the reported increase in accidents was only for right-turning vehicle accidents, which would unsurprisingly go up if they went from illegal to legal. (The same applies to the 1984 and 2002 study you mentioned in another comment.) RTOR accidents in the DOT study still only made up "between 1% and 3% of all pedestrian and bicycle accidents in the locations that were studied". If you look at the aggregate statistic here, pedestrian deaths had only gone down since 1980 up until 2010 (in fact, at least since the earliest collected data point of 1975). Since 2010, pedestrian deaths have gone up 70%.
Can you please clarify this statement? We are indeed discussing the effects of right-turning vehicles on pedestrians/cyclists. Right turns were never illegal; indeed right turns on red previously were. Indeed one might intuitively anticipate that absolute figures for pedestrian fatalities may increase if a specific, maybe dangerous maneuver (previously illegal) is suddenly made legal in a place where pedestrians may be present. More motorists will make the maneuver, so there is more capacity for it to cause harm to pedestrians. Surely this increase in fatalities suggests that the maneuver... is dangerous and causes pedestrian deaths.
If the independent variable measured is whether RTOR is legal or illegal, and the resultant data shows higher fatalities when it is legal... then its legality is contributing to fatalities. It follows that making it illegal may contribute to saving lives. This is a discussion about policy, so if your claim relates to intentional violations of "no-RTOR" signs (this does not seem to be what you said), that is perhaps a different discussion.
If you want a statistical analysis of a safety countermeasure like no-right-turn-on-red in a localized real-world scenario, Shangguan et al. 2023 analyze both RTOR and NRTOR intersections and show a statistically significant departure from the RTOR control group in traffic conflicts in a NRTOR intersection (raw data: 30,075 traffic conflicts in NRTOR vs. 39,697 in the RTOR control, or a 24% decrease). The study evaluates several other safety countermeasures which are beyond the scope of this discussion. Processing the data to account for speed and other factors relevant to a RTOR vs. NRTOR comparison evaluating risk suggests the following:
Evidently pedestrian risk is higher when RTOR is permitted according to the conditions studied.
I'm not disputing that the majority of the increase in pedestrian fatalities since 2010 is due to factors other than RTOR. However, a statistically significant 1–3% of fatal accidents is still a lot of people dying, in absolute terms, for what is ultimately not an essential element of traffic flow. Remember that this is merely one factor out of many in the design of an intersection: there are hundreds of variables one might manipulate to affect pedestrian safety. One small factor independently causing 1–3% of fatal accidents is not trivial. Considering that restricting RTOR would cost almost nothing to implement at most intersections (signage is a relatively unremarkable expense) and has significance across all vehicle classes, it is not to be so easily dismissed. Whether or not people continue to drive large vehicles, for example, this particular policy change retains utility.
RTOR definitely does not contribute to decreasing pedestrian fatalities, if that is what you're implying.
What the figure you link to omits is data on proportions of modal use in that time period. From 1970 until ~2004, the automobile's share of transportation continued to grow at an astonishing rate; the pedestrian's share correspondingly shrunk to very low levels. The mass development of unwalkable urban and suburban landscapes, as well as pedestrian-hostile infrastructure—including design patterns that favored automobile throughput at the expensive of pedestrian access (think: 7+ minute wait times for arterial crossings), the proliferation of parking lots in urban areas, and a cultural attachment of prestige to driving—encouraged an overwhelming preference against walking specifically. Per-capita vehicle-miles traveled by automobile and time spent driving were dramatically higher than VMT by foot (..."pedestrian miles traveled"?) and time spent on foot. It follows that, representing a small and shrinking percentage of road users, pedestrian fatalities in absolute terms would correspondingly diminish. But as modal use shifted in the mid-2000s and more people walked or cycled than before, more pedestrians began to die. Pedestrians are inherently at risk during traffic collisions—this is why they are referred to as "Vulnerable Road Users" (VRUs) in safety analysis research papers—so it follows that their presence in traffic situations that put them at risk (including, evidently, RTOR intersections) are more likely to lead to their death than if they were not present.
Didn't know trucks and SUVs were a new thing.
They're not. But they are increasingly becoming the most common thing on the road.. Not just that, what most people buy who would have normally bought a compact car these days are the small SUVs. Cars are becoming a minority. Small SUVs are becoming common. Medium to large SUVs are common too. And more people are buying trucks just for commuting so they can be "Cool" vs. people who actually need a truck.
That being said, this trend at least was starting when I was in college pre 2000. But today it's gotten so bad some american car companies don't even make autos cause there is more money in SUVs (and to be fair, they kinda created the problem when they wanted to get around emission standards so tried to market more large trucks as being cooler). And the SUVs back then were the size of the mini suvs you see today (and the same SUV then is much larger now... take the 4runner for example).
I don't know if its just the area I'm in, but I drive for a living. I drive in some cities outside of Boston. It just seems like in the more recent years people just stopped caring about red lights. I see cars fly through red lights a good 3-5 seconds after it turns red, or people who don't think ahead (or don't care) and straight up block intersections because there is no room for them, then their light turns red and they are stuck there blocking the other lane of traffic from moving until they can move.
Indeed to, a general lack of awareness when it comes to making a right on red. Not looking where they are going, or not even a hint of stopping before making their turn. People just seem more careless these days. Maybe a lack of consequence and getting away with it all the time, maybe they are distracted by a cell phone. Who knows, but it sure is frustrating to drive for a living.
You just described driving in LA, so I don't think it's just your area. About half the time I go to take my first left on my morning commute I have to wait till the next light because people are blocking the intersection. That, and every time turn left as the light turns red, I see two or three other cars behind me.
I see the exact same thing in the Bay Area, CA where we have fewer cars and roadways than LA, but the same nonsense. :(
"Right turn on red" has been a thing for a long time. Maybe we should ask what changed recently to cause pedestrian accidents to go up?
I'm not sure why this comment has an "Exemplary" tag as your question is answered in the article. The fourth paragraph speculates that the trend may in part be caused by, in addition to ROR intersections, increased adoptions of SUVs (which are large and heavy, factors that directly correlate to pedestrian deaths) and apparently more aggressive driving in general since the COVID-19 pandemic. Importantly, there are probably additional factors at play as well, like there being more pedestrians now than there were in the 1970s, and other complications in the data.
It's hard to take absolute pedestrian fatalities from that time period at face value. Declining pedestrian activity in the late 20th century (and relatively more pedestrian and cyclist activity in the past 10–20 years) probably contributes to a skewed dataset. Perceived safety in the past is possibly an effect of pedestrian omission as a mode that people actually took. By contrast, cities today better adopt urbanist and multi-modal policies and infrastructure and therefore more people walk and cycle. In other words, when everyone drives and no one walks (a model typical in the late 20th century), there are no pedestrians to maim. This does not mean that infrastructure and policies are actually safe for pedestrians.
It's also worth noting that "pedestrian" data is not necessarily... well-classified to begin with? There is a great deal of state variation on reporting, and the definitions used can make it difficult for traffic planners to identify specific solutions to problems. This data can potentially lead planners to make non-optimal decisions because they either perceive a higher or lower level of safety in a particular design or location. Per Noland et al. 2017:
Regardless, research from around the time ROR was legalized suggests that ROR intersections meaningfully increase collisions of all types (motor vehicle, pedestrian, and bicycle). Zador 1984:
More recent research corroborates the data. Preusser et al. 2002:
Predictably, driver behavior patterns range from "OK" to "extremely dangerous" at different intersections. Cooper et al. 2012:
Considering ROR was originally enacted as a way to reduce localized pollution from engine idling—an issue minimized by modern gas engines and eliminated by electric engines—it is perhaps no longer worth keeping considering the people whose deaths statistically result from the policy.
I would not want this applied in a blanket, all-or-nothing fashion. We have to apply some common sense here. In areas with dense traffic: sure. In (suburban) areas with 50 cars going through an intersection per 1 pedestrian: it's not very sensible (in my opinion). Waiting to turn right when literally nobody is there (whether vehicle or pedestrian) would be very irritating.
I don't want cyclists to get hit, and of course I don't want people to be struck by vehicles; but we can't overreact here.
We built all the intersections in an area with cyclists and pedestrians as a lazy afterthought. Why does no one want to walk or bike here?
I think banning right turns is a band-aid or incomplete solution to a design problem of intersections. Intersections should be designed that right turns are wide forcing drivers to slow and gives way more time for a driver to see pedestrians and cyclists, while further protecting cyclists with a separate meridian.
Something like these: https://i.imgur.com/autDjvC.png
Not bad. Where I live so many drivers overshoot the stop line and stop in cross walks. I honestly think the only way things get better is more strict enforcement. It sounds lame but how else? I see people blow reds & stops in a multitude of settings. On top of all the other terrible things. People just are not held accountable for what becomes years of bad habits and wreckless driving. Hell, even when people get caught with DUIs or no license, they still just drive.
This is an important and useful statement. Slip lanes (formally, "right turn channelizations") are a strong example of pedestrian-hostile infrastructure that only exists to increase traffic throughput. Jiang et al. 2019:
Slip lanes are a form of "right on red" turns. They are particularly egregious because drivers do not have an incentive to slow down before the pedestrian crossing, only after it (to merge into traffic). This is true for all ROR turns to some extent, but exacerbated with slip lanes.
I'm convinced that its a result of poor policy at all levels resulting in elevated chronic stress pushed to its breaking point. Have you ever been burnt out? Not simply tired or stressed from a deadline, but really truly burnt out?
More than any other symptom of burnout the #1 that makes it stand out to me is that it makes you kinda stupid. I don't doubt long covid is part of it, I just think it's way too prevalent and constant and everywhere for it to just be that.
Somewhere between half and 2/3 of this country lives paycheck to paycheck. A majority can't handle a random $500 expense. These weren't much better 4 years ago but with cumulative inflation since 2020 around 20% is it any wonder that people keep acting insane?
It's catabolic capitalism. Energy return on energy investment has been declining for years. All the easy oil is gone. To get access to new oil now, we have to resort to incredibly expensive and complex processes, such as fracking, to get at it. Renewables, while they have fewer long term caps on their growth than fossil fuels, also require a great deal of investment than the simpler energy sources of the past.
I mention energy because energy is what drives everything in our economies. A single barrel of oil, by one measurement, is really worth about $250,000. That's about what it would cost if you wanted to get the same amount of energy by paying people to generate that much energy with their own muscle power. We live in a society fundamentally built from the ground up on cheap energy. New technology has helped, but cheap energy is really why we enjoy such a greater standard of living than our ancestors. Most of the modern technologies we can think of that improve our lives, such as air travel or the internet, are only possible because we live in a world with cheap energy.
And it goes further. We're hitting ecological walls on everything. We've scoured the planet looking for all the easy sources of energy and minerals. We've dammed almost every river capable of supporting dams. We've fished the seas to their limits. We've exhausted the soils and have to rely on energy-intensive industrial farming to stave off mass global famine. And this is before we consider climate change and the finite carbon budget we really should be limiting ourselves to.
And beyond ecological limits, we've already picked a lot of the low-hanging fruit in terms of economic growth. China is a great example. Up until the last few decades, China was operating well, well below its economic potential. China is one of the oldest, grandest civilizations in human history. For most of written history, it was at the forefront of technology, industry, art, literature, mathematics, often far surpassing anything available in the West. For most of history, the West was a primitive backwater. But the lightning bolt of the Industrial Revolution happened to strike first in Western Europe, and that led to a few centuries of colonialism and the subjugation and impoverishment of what were previously the greatest centers of human civilization, China, India, the Middle East, etc. Colonialism impoverished these regions, stripped them of their dignity and potential, and forced them to operate well below where they could.
But in the modern era, these areas have been allowed to develop. And again, these aren't areas where complex urban societies were unheard of prior to modern times. Industrializing China did not require building an entire new nation out of some wasteland somewhere, it merely required restoring China to a level of relative development more in line with historical norms. With China and India industrializing, we haven't so much witnessed an unprecedented economic revolution as we've seen these nations simply returning to their normal levels of power, wealth, and influence. They each have over a billion people living in them; they SHOULD be global economic juggernauts. It was only a historical fluke that they for a period weren't.
Developing countries that had great development potential, but were simply held back by colonialism, represented very low-hanging fruit in terms of economic development. Making China wealthy was always going to be a hell of a lot easier than making the Democratic Republic of the Congo wealthy.
And I mention these because the growth of these nations did not just help them. Western companies benefited greatly from the growth of previously impoverished nations, and Western consumers benefited from decades of cheap consumer goods. The people whose jobs were outsourced lost out, but the industrialization of China was a great boon for the average American.
But this has only lasted so long. There's still plenty of areas developing, especially in Subsaharan Africa. But Africa has a total population of 1.4 billion, China has as many people as all of Africa put together. And while African history is hardly some savage wasteland where complex societies never existed, the historical pre-colonial levels of development between Subsaharan Africa and China are not remotely comparable. If nothing else, China already had most of its ethnic conflict and process of national formation centuries ago. Most African countries have borders that were simply drawn by European colonizers with zero regard for the existing cultures, religions, and ethnicities. So while global GDP can continue growing by developing the few unindustrialized areas, the few areas that haven't been heavily developed have remained undeveloped for a reason. They're typically areas with either low population densities, regions wracked with ethnic conflict, or simply geographies that make development a nightmarishly expensive process.
Or, in short, we have already picked the low-hanging fruit of national development. All the areas that could easily have developed, but were just being held back by colonial overseers, have now been able to develop.
So, what does all this mean? It means real economic growth is getting ever more difficult. We're hard up against ecological limits. Energy is more expensive than ever. And all the easy to develop areas have been developed. Each of these can be addressed, at a cost. We can move from open-ocean fishing to fish farming. We can move from fossil fuels to renewables. We can develop even the hard to develop areas. But each of these future alternatives requires more investment and work to produce the same level of economic growth compared to prior options. We area fundamentally entering a world where the global economy simply won't be able to grow as fast as it did in the past. And, considering the ecological catastrophes on the horizon, we'll often struggle just to maintain what we already have, let alone grow. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to prevent mass global famine, but it will be at the cost of raising the real cost of food. Other areas of our lifestyles will have to shrink to accommodate.
And yet, companies are still expected to make a profit. And they are expected to deliver ever-higher levels of profit. As long as the global economy is growing, corporate profits can grow without lowering the quality of life of workers and consumers. Ideally, a rising tide can at times lift all boats. Nobody needs a bigger portion of the pie if the entire pie can grow. But what if the pie is fixed, or even shrinking? Then things become a zero sum game. The only way to increase corporate profits is to squeeze the workers, the consumers, or both. And thus, we see declining wages, soaring prices, ever more precarious working conditions, etc. If the economy cannot grow in real terms, than the only way corporate profits can increase is by decreasing the quality of life of the populace.
This is the core ideal of catabolic capitalism. It's named after catabolism, the process by which the body of a starving organism begins to digest itself.
Or, from another perspective, do a little thought exercise. Imagine what it would be like to live in a society undergoing a very slow, drawn out ecological and energy collapse. Not anything as dramatic as a zombie-apocalypse style collapse. Just a slow decline stretched out over many generations. What would it be like, to the people on the ground, living in such a society? Wouldn't it look exactly like what we are currently experiencing? Soaring cost of food and shelter? Increasingly reactionary and radical politics and demonization of foreigners? Declining birth rates, lowering life expectancies, soaring rates of mental illness, and an ever-growing sense of hopelessness and doom?
Everything I see in our society today is entirely compatible with a civilization that has run head first into an immovable wall of energy and ecological limits. We're not fundamentally here because of some failure in our politics. Better politics could certainly soften the blow and make the process less painful. But the simple truth is, one way or another, we're probably in for a century of slowly declining standards of living, barring some miraculous new technologies.
Now, this of course is not a reason to give up hope and jump off a bridge tomorrow. We're not likely to undergo some dramatic complete collapse into chaos and anarchy. Yes, barring some miracle new technologies, we're going to undergo a slow, generations-long decline in standards of living. But that doesn't mean we'll collapse back to hunter-gatherer levels. Such a decline might converge to something similar to standards of living circa 1900. Maybe we have to abandon the suburbs and go back to living in dense cities, primarily getting around by foot and train. Maybe we have to go back to multigenerational housing as the norm. Maybe we have to move away from regions where AC is a necessity and water can only be obtained at great energy expense. Maybe we have to go back to eating seasonal, primarily plant-based diets, based on local produce availability.
That's not something we want to do, but it's not the end of the world. We can let the desert take Las Vegas and leave Florida to the alligators and the rising seas. Our current hyper energy-wasteful society will be seen as a historical blip, a brief, epic, multigeneration party, a golden age to put all other golden ages to shame. But even after such a decline, life will go on. And people will still find plenty of joy and happiness in their lives. And hopefully, it will be a slow enough process that the decline in living standards across a single lifetime, while noticeable, will be manageable and not psychologically breaking. But the Sun will still rise in the morning. People will still sing, dance, and tell each other stories of joy, heroism, and heartbreak. Teenagers will still get butterflies in their stomach at the thought of their first kiss. Parents will still watch their children walk their first steps. Elders will still pass being able to look on their lives with a sense of gratitude and accomplishment. Things will be different, but life will go on.
This was an interesting deep dive, but I'm not quite sure how it connected to the primary question being responded to:
I don't think it's mutually exclusive to say, have the same standards of living as the 90's while not living paycheck to paycheck. Whatever energy crisis happened in the past 3 decades certainly doesn't seem to justify housing becoming 3x more expensive.
I think the ambivalent part here is this assumption that the economy has to keep growing at the same rate in order to keep standards of living constant. But this assumes that standards of living aren't already on the decline to begin with. It assumes the economy is growing equally, instead of more and more of the money going towards the elite, to the point where the idea of "minimum wage" being a "living wage" is a pipe dream.
I wouldn't mind moving back to a dense city, but the current housing market seems to run antithesis to that. I'm out in the suburbs because it's some 5-700 dollars cheaper on average to live. an energy crunch should be making the suburbs unsustainable and forcing people who cant "get away" from the city to go urban. But that's never really been how land worked in terms of value.
Is this reflected in statistics? Anecdotally I don't really see any difference in driver behavior pre and post covid. Not to say everyone is a good driver, but the amount of shitty drivers is about the same.
There has been some limited research suggesting that driver agression has increased since the pandemic. I expect the particulars look quite different in different parts of the world.
I don’t know what one can do about that. It seems a vague problem to me, the confluence of numerous factors ranging from stress to ego to infrastructure design to technology/distraction to fatigue to who knows.
The statistics are tricky. They say crime is down, but the underlying point is that unreported crimes have skyrocketed over the pandemic. Lack of trust in the police + the police simply not bothering to even write down some reported petty crimes (partially due to less staff; partially due to many other factors with law enforcement) means that you will feel a lot less safe in a neighborhood all while the mayor will proudly proclaim "being hard on crime worked! rates are plummeting". Regardless of your stance on "hard on crime" I think it's pretty bipartisan that doing nothing about a reported crime fails in this regard.
in general, it's a hard thing to purely rely on official reports on. For car drivers specifically: not entirely sure. L.A. feels the same but L.A. traffic and road rage at any given time is a very low bar to begin with.