I've driven on Mill Rd. plenty of times, and it actually is hard to see pedestrians who have a bad habit of walking around wearing all black at night because they don't want to use the crosswalks that may be 1/2 mile away. The glare from all the lights makes it hard to see for normal humans, too.
Part of the problem is that their safety driver was watching something on their phone and not actually watching out like they were supposed to. If they had actually been paying attention, that would've been avoidable.
Still, the automatic cars have a much better record with me than the human drivers do. For all that these few accidents were stupid and avoidable, I've seen normal humans doing things far dumber.
She was also crossing at a weird point: just beyond where Mill Ave crosses under the 202, and then starts and uphill climb on its way to the Washington intersection. Despite all this, the safety driver almost certainly would have noticed her if they cared to be doing their job instead of watching TV on their phone, as you say, because at least the area is well-lit.
The reason we average nearly 1 pedestrian death a day here is because of what you cite: unwillingness to walk further to cross at a crosswalk, people weirdly wearing all black, at night, and specifically on the arterial roads, the suicide lane meaning that you're being blinded by oncoming traffic with a person as far away from the streetlights as possible. It's crazy. (The spot where she was hit on Mill Ave, ironically, isn't any of those things; it's the end of the bridge connectors, so it's one-way there, but still.)
I didn't realize that many people died per day, but it makes sense given how many people are doing the all black at night thing and playing Frogger with traffic.
I do think people underestimate how well the lights can blind you to pedestrians, even though I also think the safety driver should've seen the victim in this case if they were paying any attention at all.
>it actually is hard to see pedestrians who have a bad habit of walking around wearing all black at night because they don't want to use the crosswalks that may be 1/2 mile away.
It's not on pedestrians to wear reflective clothing just for you. Nor is it reasonable to expect someone to make a 1/2 mile detour just to cross the road. That could add 10-15 minutes to their journey.
You are the one operating a heavy, fast-moving piece of machinery. If it's dark and there are people around, drive slowly and carefully.
> You are the one operating a heavy, fast-moving piece of machinery. If it's dark and there are people around, drive slowly and carefully.
These are 5-lane, 40 MPH roads, and no pedestrians are supposed to be there at all. We're not talking about University Dr. here, which has lots of pedestrians, but also lots of crosswalks and a couple of pedestrian bridges.
Now, I have never hit anyone, despite having encountered many people doing illegal and dangerous things, but my own caution will not change that what they are doing is inherently risky. If they roll the dice enough times, eventually they will encounter a driver who is less careful than I have been.
It does not help that some of these folks have been obviously impaired, and shouldn't have been on the streets at all.
The right type of camera at night will outperform human eyes by a lot. My aftermarket birds eye camera kit makes the road quite easily visible when I can't see it at all.
This is the sort of thing which HDR image capture should be spectacular at.
I understood that to be an unusual configuration that was unintentional, but the Swiss cheese model of failure says that accidents always happen when too many bad things align.
That doesn't apply to cars because US traffic engineers design driving to be as dangerous as possible, instead of as safe as possible, so there isn't any built-in safety margin like with airplanes.
Like, their manual sometimes doesn't allow installing a crosswalk until /multiple/ people are killed trying to cross it.
The site has lots of recommendations, but doesn't seem to give much engineering behind the recommendations or mention any testing, just a handful of random stats. They don't seem to acknowledge the tradeoffs in some goals, either, e.g. between making roadways slower and climate goals, never mind that idling cars are quite wasteful and that people need to travel.
I can believe that we can do better, and it seems to me there should be crosswalks wherever there's significant pedestrian traffic without requiring anyone to die, but a lot of their other recommendations appear about as dubious as Brazil's choice to do things like putting unmarked speed bumps in the absolute middle of nowhere.
Especially the part that's anti driverless cars. For one, most things that would help that would also help human drivers (ambiguous road markings are nobody's friends), and two, the actual vehicles, which I encounter regularly, are much better than the human drivers. In theory, someday they could enable people to get rides on demand when they need from robotic taxis and get rid of the need for massive areas devoted to parking by helping the same number of people with fewer cars. This would also be good for the climate.
The fact that they're advocating against that which undercuts their stated goals calls their reasoning into question for me.
I didn't link to it for any of those, just to show the problem existed.
> between making roadways slower and climate goals
No tradeoff there for two reasons.
1. cars use more fuel when they go faster, whereas idling cars can be optimized by turning the engine off.
2. making driving worse and more expensive is an important part of shifting travel to other modes like ebikes/mass transit. Although people don't like when you put it that way.
It's hard to turn off your car in a traffic jam, efficiency is getting cars off the road. And those transit options are often horrible for the disabled. The fight against self-driving cars is especially shortsighted.
But yeah, wanting to make things worse for everyone tends to get a lot of push-back.
> Part of the problem is that their safety driver was watching something on their phone and not actually watching out like they were supposed to. If they had actually been paying attention, that would've been avoidable
Safety drivers are a poor solution, it's too easily boring (try watching driving videos for more than 10 min straight), so it's completely Cruise fault.
You are confusing Cruise with Uber in your response. Uber had a safety driver issue. Cruise had an issue with a driverless vehicle dragging a pedestrian.
Part of the problem is that their safety driver was watching something on their phone and not actually watching out like they were supposed to. If they had actually been paying attention, that would've been avoidable.
Still, the automatic cars have a much better record with me than the human drivers do. For all that these few accidents were stupid and avoidable, I've seen normal humans doing things far dumber.