- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Drivers Tend To Kill Pedestrians At Night. Thermal Imaging May Help.::Pedestrian automatic emergency braking (AEB), which may become mandatory on U.S. cars in the future, tends to not perform well in the dark.
I know I am part of the problem, but the number of people walking around in dark colors and dark jackets at night baffles me. Bonus points if they are jaywalking because they have the right of way.
Combine that with spending any time after sunset either partially blind from super bright LEDs or fully blind from high beams and yeah. Constantly having to drive defensively and try to spot potential hazards a mile ahead in the brief window of just being partially blinded.
So I am all for some thermals I can glance at
My genuine favorite is a motorcyclist who lives out near my ex. Lights off more often than not and he has jet black leathers and helmet and bike
If you cannot drive safely around pedestrians in normal street clothes, you should not be driving. You are the one bringing a lethal machine into the equation, they’re just out living.
Sure but people can be a little more sensible to think not to dress as a fucking ninja at night and expect to be seen?
Then please enlighten me as to how you manipulate the laws of physics to increase the reflectivity of clothing while your night vision is impaired by all the headlights at face level angles too far to the left?
Defensive driving is acknowledging problems and trying to mitigate them. Stupidity is pretending there isn’t one
The law says, regardless of the speed limit, you need to be driving slow enough to react to someone suddenly stepping on the road. If you can’t do that while driving at the speed limit, you’ll just have to drive slower.
Taken literally, that means that since you won’t be able to stop if someone steps just in front of your vehicle, you should never drive faster than ~10kmph. Which can be a valid interpretation, but I doubt it’s going to be a widely accepted one. For example at least where I live, if someone steps in front a vehicle within breaking distance driving at the speed of the road’s legal limit, both pedestrian and driver will share responsibility (the exact ratios being determined by the exact situation).
If you actually think about it, it’s absolutely makes sense. The Autobahn has additional stopping lanes for broken down cars and several meters of grass to each side, which means you can safely drive hundreds of kilometers an hour while still being able to see obstructions early enough to brake in time.
Slower motorways have smaller setbacks, but still enough to keep their speeds.
City streets where you can’t see people entering the road in time to brake usually have relatively low speed limits to reduce the braking distance as well as the damage caused by a collision.
But if the visibility or braking distance are affected due to weather or broken streetlamps, it’s up to you to slow down accordingly. But even for situations like that traffic planners usually add additional signs, it’s common to see roads with signs that say
/❄️\ (60)to warn people to drive slower when the road is freezing or signs that say
/🦌\ (50) [400m]to warn of crossing animals in the next 400m and set a lower speed limit.
The same obviously applies when it’s not crossing deer but crossing pedestrians.
Not how that shit works. At all.
First, throwing out generic legal advice is dumb. It’s not consistent in any way. Second, in most states and countries you’d have to prove negligence. You absolutely will not and should not be held responsible if some idiot runs out between two cars and gets hit while you are following the law.
Actually, in EU countries the law explicitly says you have to drive slow enough to react to unexpected changes on the road. If you as a driver hit something or someone, you are automatically at fault because you violated that law. There is an incredibly high burden of proof required to not be at fault as a driver.
But that’s usually not an issue, because road planners are only allowed to set speed limits that are low enough that drivers can actually react to unexpected changes. Which is why e.g. the Autobahn has a separate lane for broken down vehicles and significant setbacks and green areas to both sides of the road so you can see from a long distance away if something is in the road.
👌👍
Ah. So you don’t have a magic secret but will still smugly pretend you do.
That seems safe
Slow. Down. That’s all there is to it.
I guess people angrily speeding past and honking means they would hit the ninjas, so… kudos.
Unless they just get angry and blast high beams into my rear mirrors even more.
Don’t disrupt the flow of traffic
The speed limit isn’t a suggested speed, it’s an absolute maximum (excluding motorways with a minimum of 60km/h). If the road is frozen over you can’t drive the speed limit either, the same applies when it’s slippery due to rain or leaves or when the lights are off.
You always need to be able to react to sudden movement, no matter if it’s a pedestrian crossing the street, a motorist leaving their own driveway or even a trash can rolling into the road. It should be in your own best interest to avoid accidents.
The entitled attitude you ascribe to the overtaking drivers but also display yourself is just going to cause problems for everyone. Trying to shave a few seconds off of your commute by speeding in dark areas isn’t going to get you home any faster, all you’re doing is increasing your own stress level and risking someone’s life.
A little bit of respect on the road would go a long way to improve everyone’s experience on the road.
Ignoring the massive disruption that going below the speed limit causes and the increased aggression it instills in other drivers who understand how to follow the rules of the road:
A sedan is, on average, 1302 kg according to a random quora page. 45 miles per hour is approximately 20.116 meters per second. So about 26.191 newton seconds. People aren’t surviving that.
So unless you are battling entitlement by going thirty miles under the speed limit (which will probably still squish a person but I am too lazy to math it), all you are doing is antagonizing everyone around you while filling yourself with a false sense of security.
Seriously, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, take a defensive driving course. Defensive driving is about learning to anticipate the drivers around you and how to minimize the chance of a collision. Which is not the law you learned in driver’s Ed. It makes you a much safer driver and will probably lower your insurance premium.
That means driving in a way that doesn’t anger everyone around you and knowing when you actually need to slow down and when doing so won’t help
Drive slower, or walk yourself if you can’t see well enough to drive.
You clearly have never driven at night.
Edit: Also, the idiot wearing dark clothes walking into a road at night will still be just as dead whether the driver is considered culpable or not.
As a motorcyclist of 30+ years, this is a rule you either learn early or pay the price.
Removed by mod
“Jaywalking” is propaganda, not a legitimate thing.
Just because its origin was from propaganda doesn’t make it not real. There are actual laws against Jay Walking, you can be charged and fined for it.
With good reason - predictability.
It’s pretty real where I live. Pedestrians can get fined if they are being actively dangerous with it (eg stepping out from behind obstruction without making sure it’s safe to do so), and the fault can be actually theirs if they cross outside a “safe” location.
AFAIK the law here in Ontario is that pedestrians can cross mid-block on a non-controlled-access-highway (ie a regular road not expressway) as long as any oncoming vehicles have plentiful space to safely come to a complete stop. You only lose the right-of-way as a pedestrian if you’re doing something that forces drivers to make emergency manoeuvres.
I nearly killed a group of people one night.
Full on slamming of brakes and trying to not have another sort of accident.
Roughly 3am, a major major highway, and a group of people decides to dash across.
Dark clothing. Crossed between where any lights were.
Everyone involved was very lucky in that moment.
I wanted to bring this up, I’m glad others also see it. (Or rather don’t? :p)
I don’t know where you live, but over my way that is a dangerous, and factually wrong, assumption.
Anyone reading that, make absolutely sure it applies in your area; it doesn’t everywhere.
I understand I tend to forget people have different life experiences.
The legality doesn’t matter in the slightest. The cash settlement for suing the driver who paralyzed you isn’t really that large.
Look both ways for fuck’s sake
Legality is exactly what applies when you sue. For example, in California, USA, the law is written pedestrians do not have right of way in your scenario. No, it does not mean drivers can mow them down, but pedestrians assume the risk of their actions.
I’ve had a lot of puahback talking about this with local people in my city who have a “pedestrians are always right” mentality, and I understand the desire to wish that’s true, but it just isn’t the case. There are very clear places right of way is, and is not, protecting pedestrians.