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.
As much as I like the anti-car think, this really shouldn’t be blamed completely on cars. Especially in the US, pedestrian infrastructure in general is lacking. This includes thinks like sidewalks, but also proper lighting at places where people could be (See the sample image of a petrol station in the article, why are there no lights there?).
Additionaly, a lot of people dress dark with no reflection surfaces whatsoever (And some ciclelysts are insane enough to go without light at night). Try wearing stuff with some build-in reflectors at night. It does not need to be an ugly big yellow patch for that. I own a backpack with nicely worked in reflectory surfaces which makes me highly visible at night.
Ofc there is also a component to the Cars and drivers here, but if thermal cameras are the first solution someone can come up with, maybe the start needs to be somewhere else.
Overall: If I can see someone jaywalking on the autobahn about 800m in front of me while going 180kph and can react to that, the cities and villages in the US should probably have something similar in lighting and overall road elsetup.
Especially in the US, pedestrian infrastructure in general is lacking.
“Pedestrian infrastructure” is really car infrastructure, because it’s designed for the benefit of cars to get pedestrians out of the way.
By all rights, the entire street has been “pedestrian infrastructure” for thousands of years.
The part that is shared with cars is, yes. Still doesn’t mean that it should be shit. This problem is there because it does suck. The US is a stand out in regards to non-car safety in a bad way. Trying to blame it on cars only is stupid. Demand better infrastructure, not even more bloat on cars.
How is someone using the road to get to work, school or the grocery store automatically an asshole just because they use a bicycle instead of an SUV or a horse-drawn carriage? Don’t they have the same right to use a lane of the road as you do?
(Not talking about lycra-wearing racing-bike cyclists using the road as gym here)
