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.
Drivers Tend To Kill Pedestrians At Night. Thermal Imaging May Help.
Yes, I need more incentives to kill pedestrians.
What if we reduced the size of cars, reduced speed limits and created cities and towns that are safer to walk in
Limit the speed of private vehicles mechanically, the same way they do with ebikes.
Funfact! Can’t be bothered to look it up but I remember reading that lower speed limits actually make people more prone to speed. In most cases, if speed limit is low, people will try their best to hit it and even slightly go over it. In higher speed limits people tend to actually drive slower than speed limit dictates.
This does, however, only apply to express ways and similiar, not city’s limits…I mean, people are still gonna try to max their speed but I really don’t think we can put it high enough for this to not apply and be safe anyway.
Also, how the hell do americans have this problem when their cities spend 2/3 of the day being locked in slow moving traffic? .-.
Adjusting a speed limit is not enough, road engineers need to implement actual traffic calming measures to slow people down…
Fun fact, US pedestrian deaths went up during covid because there were fewer drivers and people could speed more easily.
In my country speeding cams work kinda well. People cry af about them but it’s almost funny seeing traffic suddenly slow down in certain points.
It will help with pedestrian accidents but it will also be terrible for driving since you cannot reduce the distance between cities/commute length
I mean until recently more people used to die in car accidents than by gunfire. It was the leading cause for kids. I am not advocating for lack of concern. But making cars less useful it’s not a solution since people still have to commute long distances in some countries. You have to weigh the benefits against the costs. If you believe that pedestrians should always be prioritized then you should be advocating for a complete ban on cars
Good.
Maybe we’ll start designing our cities and lives for shorter commutes, benefiting ourselves and our environment? Might just be me tho.
Absolutely. ignoring the issue is not going to help. not sure how we can pressure “city designers” (no clue how it actually works) to effect the change.
In IIHS’ latest tests of car headlight systems, fewer than half (43%) earned a good rating. […] “Vehicles that earn a good rating for visibility in our tests have 23% fewer nighttime pedestrian crashes than those that rate poor.”
That’s a lot of room for improvement without new technology.
It’s the kind of thing you assume would have been empirically tested and have minimum safety regulations, instead of the wild variability we see from dimly lit up close to blinding pulsar from alpha centauri.
There is a minimum and regulations, in the US IIRC the legal range is between 500 and 3000 lumens. And it results in exactly what you describe.
Europe actually has incredible adaptive headlight technology that AFAIK was illegal in the US up until very recently. It’ll be great to see this rolled out here as it’s better for everyone.
I’m curious what their “good” rating entails. Hopefully not just brighter lights, that just makes oncoming traffic blind. That could end up being more dangerous overall, even if it’s not the car with “good” headlights doing the killing. Realistically, if you’re going to walk at night somewhere there are cars, wear a light, high vis vest, reflectors, SOMETHING.
hmm thermal imaging in cars… or just more public transit and street lighting… give me the expensive capitalist hellcreating thing
That only works in more urban areas.
Its impossible to covered every road in lights and it can get very dark when you are far away from a city. Same with public transit. I am all for it, but it’s only reasonable in more densely populated areas. There just won’t be enough people using it in th middle of nowhere to just something like that much less staff it.
Meanwhile helping cars see people even in those less common and more difficult situations is a good thing. Why would you NOT want your car to be safer for others around you?
Awww shit bois the huge country with plenty of money cannot afford to do it
IMO, I don’t think it matters whether we can or can’t. I don’t think we should even if we could. Light pollution from cities is bad enough. Adding that many more lights would make it so much worse.
Where do you think people lived during westward expansion when every town was connected by rail? There weren’t too many urban places out there.
It’s a myth that it only works for urban areas. Switzerland has their trains travel to basically every town on time and frequently, and those towns in the alps are sure as hell a lot harder to reach than whatever rural place you’re thinking of. Admittedly, getting from the station to your destination will be harder without a car until things are built or changed to replace car dependence, but car dependence was manufactured, not intrinsic.
People could also wear something other than black clothes when they go outside at night.
It is your responsibility as the operator of a car to see pedestrians even if they are wearing black
Then we should make safer roads for everyone with better designs and lower speeds
No, it’s not. I’m the most responsible driver there is and even I draw the line here. When driving next to park cars I pay extra attention because someone may want to cross the road and walk out from behind a car even in places where it’s illegal but if someone hides behinds a bush and jumps out right in front of my car it’s not my fault. At night it’s my responsibility to drive below the speed limit and pay attention to the road but if some black ninja hides on the curb there’s not much I can do about it.
Uh, no, pretty sure it is legally your responsibility to be safe to everyone around you when driving. If you can’t do that, don’t drive a car.
yeah I just murder people based on the color of their clothes. if they didn’t want to be murdered they wouldn’t have dressed like that
Fuck you, that is obviously not what I said. You people should really learn how to read, instead of just making shit up and then believing I actually said it.
I read it just fine, that’s your implication.The pedestrian is responsible for protecting themselves against the tyranny of the SUV. I guess if that’s the world you want then vroom vroom mf
