Pedestrians, it should be our right to be distracted. It should be our right to walk and listen to music / look at the sky / cute dogs / snowflakes and not worry about getting killed. Nothing about that is dangerous except for CARS. Don't let them make you believe you are the problem.
If you are interested in some context for how we got to this terrible place as a society, please read 'The forgotten history of how automakers invented the crime of "jaywalking"'
@mbonsma Plus if drivers aren't watching out for "distracted" pedestrians then they aren't watching out for people with disabilities. People with hearing/vision impairments are also pedestrians.
@mariellequinton@mbonsma That's one way of looking at it, and yet if you want to experience an environment where most of the pedestrians are incapacitated, try driving near the Oktoberfest in the evening. It's not ideal & it doesn't make it easier to take care of the ppl who need me as a driver to react differently. >
@mariellequinton@mbonsma Public streets have never been a great place for wandering around in a complete fucking oblivious daze, and I don't think they ever will be. <>
@twobiscuits
That isn't true. Before the 20th century it was as safe on a street as off it for people to wander around „in a […] oblivious daze“.
If someone died by a horse or cart it was a genuine accident and/or the rider/driver was accountable for it at least partly.
If any other machinery is considered as dangerous as a car is then it is restricted to a secured and controlled area and to operate it you need a license way more restricted than drivers license. @mariellequinton@mbonsma
@mariellequinton@mbonsma the form of distraction that has grown massively in recent years is ppl believing they can be deep in their online world while out on the street, and it is a plague that affects both drivers and pedestrians. of course drivers have more responsibility, but suggesting that anyone has carte blanche to be competely oblivious to their surroundings while out and about isn't going to end well.
@twobiscuits@mbonsma Somehow no one ever suggests drivers should open their windows, turn off their stereos, slow down, and look around. Modern cars are so soundproof many drivers can't hear sirens from emergency vehicles. But it's pedestrians that aren't paying enough attention? It's drivers not paying attention and going too fast.
@mariellequinton@mbonsma I absolutely do suggest that and typically drive with windows open whenever I can. It's a very different point from saying to pedestrians "you have a right to be distracted" in the middle of an epidemic of distraction. Everyone has the obligation to use the senses they have to the best of their ability.
@twobiscuits@mariellequinton@mbonsma Well, i'd say it is way more assymetrical. If you've the potential to kill a person, your obligation is way higher. That's what is in discussion here imo.
When pedestrians are far more likely to be injured or worse, it may mean we'd expect greater care to be taken with their own safety?
Any noise canceling headphones will alter your experience of your surroundings & I believe should be used when you are in a position to do so without risk - consider cycling, skiing, driving - these are not times to block or mask your hearing in my opinion.
@elizabethveldon@meganisalanis@efialto@mariellequinton@mbonsma The only thing ppl should do is whatever they reasonably can, and that is obviously a whole patchwork of different abilities. How I understand "distracted" is "being less alert to your surroundings than you can reasonably be expected to." That doesn't sound like what you would be doing.
@twobiscuits@mariellequinton@mbonsma the idea that we need to be on guard at all times in public is unhealthy and a bad idea on a lot of levels. My right to go for a walk should not be limited by someone else's desire to go faster. We're not safe in buildings either - at least 3 cars have run into buildings in my city in the last week or so. Should we avoid being distracted while sitting in restaurants or on the couch?
@thesquirrelfish@mariellequinton@mbonsma I think we have some very different environments in mind. I’m in the centre of a historic European city. The modal split of walking and cycling here are both > 20% for the whole city, and higher here in the middle. The first thing that’s gonna happen to you if you are walking along in a daze is walking slap into another pedestrian, and it won't take long. Being out and about is cool here, but if you want to have a daydream you better choose your spot.
@twobiscuits@mariellequinton@mbonsma it’s not “of course” though. At least in #America we have a serious case of car brain, which means we consider motor vehicles part of one’s body until they ram into somebody, maiming or killing them, when all of a sudden there was no driver present—to describe one symptom. It’s really wild when you start to see this for the sickness it is. #transportation
@mariellequinton@twobiscuits@mbonsma close, but IMO the actual solution is to not Engineer traffic near Oktoberfest. If you can't Engineer traffic safely, you shouldn't be Engineering traffic.
@MaierAmsden@kboyd@nuncio@mariellequinton@twobiscuits@mbonsma The very existence of the word "jaywalker" is a symptom of car-centric thinking. It literally didn't exist before cars. Car drivers and car manufacturers decided they should have priority and started criminalising crossing the road in unapproved places.
@MaierAmsden sure - at about the same level of awareness as avoiding walking into a lamp pole. And the cars should be moving approximately as fast - except when it's not possible for them to interact with pedestrians in such a way.
@kboyd@MaierAmsden@nuncio@mariellequinton@twobiscuits@mbonsma Is it? I thought the first rule was don’t slow down other drivers by doing silly things like yielding to pedestrians, obeying the speed limit, or slowing down for inclement weather conditions.
Wait, you think accidentally killing people only results in a $500 ticket? You're gonna need to cite a source on that one, because we clearly don't live in the same world.
In my state, vehicular manslaughter is a second-degree felony.
That said, I have personally known at least one person who has unintentionally killed someone with their car, and I don't think they even got a ticket.
@LouisIngenthron I do have a bunch of links to news articles of "no charges filed in fatal accident", though I suspect that many of them are (to some degree) the correct call for the situation. But they serve to illustrate that "vehicular manslaughter" is not the panacea you suggest. Cars are still the chosen priority.
@nuncio@mariellequinton@twobiscuits@mbonsma
Exactly. Any one part of a system can be the "problem" if you're not following the system. It's not about right vs wrong or cars vs peds, we ALL have responsibilities . "Our right to be distracted" is just dumb.
As for someone crossing on red, etc., as a driver I still have to do my best for them. Our (Austrian) rules of the road begins with (only a light paraphrase) "if you see anybody doing something obviously nutty on the street, slow the fuck down and stop, if you have to, to keep them safe".
@nuncio
While I agree cars are far and away the biggest danger, I find people in busy public spaces who are not paying attention to their surroundings a huge annoyance. If I had more significant disabilities / sensory impairments than I currently do, I suspect I would consider them an active danger.
Additionally cyclists, scooters, mobility scooters etc are also probably best not collided with, and often behave much less predictably than cars. @mariellequinton@twobiscuits@mbonsma
@twobiscuits Would you prefer those people to be driving home from Oktoberfest? You can’t plan a society around expecting critical masses of people to always behave perfectly - especially if you expect less perfect behavior from those with more power (such as those operating heavy machinery). Never mind that a pedestrian wearing headphones, reading a text, or slightly tipsy is hardly in a “fucking oblivious daze”.
@PedestrianError Tbbh I'd prefer there to be no Oktoberfest, and I've lived in Munich. It's a horrible amalgam of excessive drinking, bad beer (bc only one decent brewery is eligible, ie within the city) and overtourism. But I wasn't commenting on that. I was just saying it wouldn't be very practical if all the pedestrians everywhere were always like that.
@twobiscuits Well it wouldn’t (although I’d prefer Oktoberfest everywhere to the cars everywhere we currently have), but that’s far from the reality that’s killing rapidly growing numbers of pedestrians on US streets with many of them being seniors or children and only a few being drunk out of their minds.
@PedestrianError The toot is fine if we take it as a howl of anger. Less so if we take it strictly. In my urban utopia, being outside is so much fun that one wants to take it all in, not slouch around with one's nose in the internet.
@twobiscuits@mariellequinton@mbonsma the only dangerous part about the situation you describe is your car. Public streets are supposed to be for people.
@twobiscuits@mariellequinton@mbonsma Actually they were in the past before cars … whilst crazy wagon drivers did exist (and did kill people, and were criticised for it), they were v. rare in residential streets.
There are no absolutes here. I once had a friend I had to pull back from blithely stepping out into an uncontrolled crosswalk front of a big truck. He said "but I have right of way" which was 1) wrong (you step out if it is safe to proceed) and 2) he would have been no less dead. Are you in a pedestrian space? (Anywhere but a roadway). Then yes, you should not have to pay attention. Are you about to use a shared space? (Crosswalk, mixed use space). Then you have some responsibility.
@mbonsma I guess it's like hunters: yeah, they may be stalking around the forest in camo, cradling their big high-powered rifles, and doing special hand signals to each other, who knows?
But it's actually up to the trampers and walkers and birdwatchers and, like, local kids playing in the woods to take responsibly for not getting shot because this is the world we live in or something
@mbonsma I can't fully agree. Cars - and distracted, unsafe driving - are far more dangerous to pedestrians than anything else, and that's not the responsibility of pedestrians. But cars are not the one and only danger pedestrians face, especially if they're not paying attention to where they're going. Distracted people walk into trees or signs or buildings, fall off piers, trip on tree roots or uneven sidewalks or each other, fall into ravines and rivers.
At a certain point, one's safety is one's own responsibility, and that includes situational awareness. Or put another way: don't trust your safety to other people doing the right thing.
@mbonsma damn white-collar pedestrians really hate that I have to drive in traffic to do my job. Really ruins their vibes during their lunch break walks, huh
@mbonsma@Gargron I’m sorry, but that’s wrong thinking, even dangerous. Cars can break while driving without driver’s fault and lose their controllability, driver can pass out and so on…
EACH traffic participant should be focused. No matter if he’s driver, biker or pedestrian.
@mbonsma
Absolutely! Cars are inventions motivated by greed that have discretely enslaved humanity and will forever prevent our species to ascend to higher levels of civilization.
Our cities, our lives, our planet has been shaped around cars and the roads that they require. 😠
No matter how much we try to warn and educate drivers, the law of large numbers demand that there will always be irresponsible drivers to cause fatalities. We can not change human nature, but we can make it so that not everyone gets access to a polluting, space-consuming, energy-inefficient and high-maintenance killing machine.
Support Public Transportation!!! 😤
@mbonsma Pedestrians could be wearing a helmet and padded high-vis clothing in a raised crosswalk, and car culture would still find a way to blame them.
@mbonsma We design our cities to live in. Why have we designed them to be so dangerous? Many roads are just not designed for pedestrains at all. There can be kilometres between pedestrian crossings. And our kids need to be safe.
What about pedestrians who walk through don't walk signals with ear buds on, screaming into their phone, completely oblivious to to oncoming traffic, including bicyclists (happens to me, a bicyclist, almost every day)? Should that REALLY by a right?
I'm as opposed to car culture as y'all are. Arguing that pedestrians shouldn't have to pay attention to what's going on around them isn't going to advance the agenda.
@dangoodin@chu in the hierarchy of road users pedestrians are higher than bikes, sorry
(also making this a pedestrian vs bike thing is gross so please don't)
Sorry, but making the argument that people don't need to exercise common sense when walking in public spaces is also gross. More importantly, it's counterproductive to the cause you and I (someone who walks a good 15 or 20 miles per week in a major US city) both believe in.
@dangoodin@mbonsma@chu I feel like I can miss pedestrians all day long, and I bike across Harvard Science Plaza and Cambridge Common 10 times each week. What's so hard about looking out for other people?
Are we really having a serious discussion about whether pedestrians should walk through don't walk signs with no awareness of anyone or anything else around them, during rush hour in particular?
@dangoodin@mbonsma@chu Have you got better support for your opinion than "I can't believe!!!". In practice most pedestrians are paying attention, I don't want to hit any of them, and if I take the POV that it's my problem to solve, I can. If I expect cooperation, I might not get it, then what? Being mad at the ped doesn't solve the problem.
@mbonsma post-Covid (2020) I am seeing cars and trucks running red lights nearly every traffic light change - it seems to be the new rule. Every day I can see a car or truck run a red light so late, they have sped over a green pedestrian crossing light. Every day you can witness a car drive past trams that have opened their doors to let passengers out. Maybe it is my post-covid addled brain, but I don’t recall seeing this level of danger occurring all the time like it does today.
@mbonsma@aral
Whilst I totally agree with this sentiment and feeling, at the same time, don't walk into the road in the same frame of mind, distraction: that's just begging for trouble!
@mbonsma Sorry, no. As peds, it is our responsibility to LOOK OUT FOR OURSELVES and be safe. Yes, car drivers need to look out for peds, but to be oblivious while walking is just as entitled as drivers not looking for peds/bicyclists. No one lives in a vacuum and can be self absorbed while travelling/interacting with others.
@mbonsma lol no. This isn't a car thing, if you have no idea where you're going or what's going on around you, what the hell are you even doing? Where's the dog in the middle of the street? And you do understand that using your peripheral vision you can be aware of your surroundings while observing the scenery, right? If you cab do these things you can be aware of cars. Sorry not sorry but i don't support your right to shut your brain off and make yourself a problem to everyone around you.
@mbonsma Actually this is inaccurate. Particularly in countries where there's a lot ot cyclists, pedestrian-cyclist collisions (and associated fatalities) are fairly common.
In addition to that there's a fair amount of fatalities due to unattentive pedestrians tripping and falling, etc.
Using this kind of misinformation to further your political goals at a risk to others is... Unfortunate to say the least.
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