There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
The walk signal puts it on drivers IMO, as a driver that is sick of driving. It’s the same idea as how it is not recommended to wave people on and just follow the road rules as closely as possible so you don’t wave them into danger by giving them an erroneous sense of safety, only the walk signal is doing it. I walk, bike, and drive so I am pretty aware of what could unexpectedly be dangerous, and it’s everything and a lot of it. The entirety of north America needs infrastructure overhaul and reform. This just isn’t working.
Disclaimer to this rant, I also drive a car around, i’m not in 100% ‘fuck cars’ camp, but i’m getting there. I’ve almost been hit by a car as a pedestrian 3 times, legally crossing the road, at an intersection with a crosswalk, with a walk light telling me to walk, and the reason? People making lefts onto the street I’m trying to cross, while cutting in front of oncoming traffic. They’re either paying attention to the cars coming at them, and what speed they’re traveling and trying to cut in front of them, or blowing through a yellow to red turning signal, or they can’t see me because I’m in the path of the support beam in their car. Either way, I’ve mostly stopped crossing legally. I cross when there’s a safe break in traffic and I cross when i believe its safe.
Isn’t that part of the job of the lights in the first place, to give everyone their own “timeslot” they can cross safely with?
I’m from the UK, we don’t have anything like this, I’m not 100% sure I know exactly how it works, but it seems pretty dangerous to me.
I can imagine a busy 6 lane intersection with filled lanes and crossing Peds going in all directions, you’re just asking for an accident
It’s not that difficult, but bad drivers make it difficult for everyone else. Coming to a complete stop should be instinct, it’s a red light after all. But some still treat it like a green because of right on red. They’ll turn up to 24 kph so long as they don’t see obstacles at a glance. This is the danger for pedestrians and oncoming traffic, everything is secondary to the bad driver’s intention. Add the popularity of bigger vehicles which increase the likelihood of fatal crashes and reduce curb visibility, it can be pretty dicey.
Ideally I’d like to see stronger enforcement for full stop on red. But if we can’t get bad drivers to change I’ll take sitting at the red over an accident any day.