Daylighting, which involves removing parked cars from around crosswalks in order to improve visibility and just wiped out about 14,000 street parking spaces, has proved especially controversial.
“If someone doesn’t die because of it, we will never know, while the living have to suffer,” Nina Geneson Otis wrote in an email to The Standard. The real estate broker said daylighting is the kind of policy that makes Democrats lose elections.
Others say the city’s actions remove responsibility from pedestrians to look out for their own safety. “A pedestrian can do anything, and be irresponsible, and no harm will come to them?” Brandi said, describing the policies as “idiot-proof.”
Well, an argument that would fly over their heads is that this “daylighting” rule is in place in more than half of the world.
So maybe there’s a good reason ?
It’s such a common-sense rule that it’d never occurred to me that such a developped country wouldn’t have it.
The most braindead article ever…
“People die from leopards attacks, leopards say people should be more careful”
I mean, there are plenty of warnings and advice on how to do things like hike through bear or cougar country. Someone who gets mauled trying to pet a bear cub isn’t going to get much sympathy.
The beating heart of American progressiveism: San Fransisco where the residents would rather kill the poor than inconvenience everyone else. If only you could patch a caved in skull with a pussy hat…
This article is because san francisco is actually trying to address pedestrian fatalities instead of just writing them off as the cost of modernity. Most of the article is from reactionaries, who may not even live here, mad about progressive, at least by American standards, policies that the city is implementing like daylighting.
You could live in a socialist utopia and you could still find people to quote saying they liked it back when the poor knew there place.
San francisco isn’t perfect but it’s still miles ahead of almost every city in America. That may be a low bar but it’s something.
I hear you, but the article is full of dissenting opinions and quotes from people that disagree with what should be a very common sense policy. Like, why even give a platform to someone who says stuff like “If someone doesn’t die because of it, we will never know, while the living have to suffer"? Why disingenuously portray the issue of pedestrian deaths as some back and forth battle between two equal parties, instead of the incredibly one sided bullying it really is?
Onion?
It sounds like satire, but it might just be 2024.
This is funny because in the bay area as nowhere else I’ve ever lived, pedestrians actually take the right of way as they should. In Berkeley they don’t even glance over their shoulder, it is completely up to the driver. Doesn’t work where the driver can’t see them, though, so I think peds and (most) drivers are more conscious of that as a bad situation. I don’t believe real estate agents speak for residents.
I found it much more annoying as a driver elsewhere where people wait two feet from the curb and wave at you to come to a complete stop before they start crossing. Or while walking, after I’ve stepped off the curb drivers half a block away assume I must not have seen them so they honk at me. A lot of theatre and emotion for what is really just a normal part of driving (don’t run into people even if it means you have to slow down).
Drivers don’t stop. I’m not stupid enough to step off the curb until it’s clear you’ve seen me and are stopping
I’m not suggesting you go blindly, but it’s common practice to step off the curb – they don’t have to pay any attention to you at all until you do. My practice is to avoid eye contact until I’m really in front of them, but obviously if they aren’t stopping you don’t keep walking.
More bad driving practices in the US, that became worse as people forgot how to drive over pandemic ….
- we allow “right turn on red”, but everyone seems to have forgotten “after coming to a complete stop”. So many times they don’t even slow down, and yes I’ve almost gotten hit like that several times
- many drivers stop across the crosswalk or ahead of the stop line. Even if people stop, they could have already run over a pedestrian. So many times I’ve had to choose whether to walk out into the intersection, or behind the car blocking my right of way.
- then there’s the ”suicide lane”, where even though a car sees you and stops, that doesn’t mean the next lane will. What happens when you’re partway across and no one else stops?
- and the ever more popular running a red light. Just yesterday, I slowed to an easy stop at an already red light and two cars behind me pulled around to go through.
I agree drivers got crazy after the pandemic. I haven’t been in the bay area since then and maybe my remembered experience just doesn’t exist anymore.
