so instead they walk on the lawn, because if a road has no shoulder than you are walking on lawns.

@@filanfyretracker Didn't say they weren't stupid

American mentality is such a dystopian mystery to me... 😐

​@@LRM12o8 It's absolutely atrocious. Living in Texas is a nightmare for anyone who likes walking.

​@@oakblaze433Walk on the grass if you like walking so much.

You should plan a visit to Copenhagen or The Netherlands. Cycle for a few days in these locations and your head will spin! It's truly nirvana for the two-wheeled crowd. Although I've never taken the "bicycles shouldn't mix with traffic," approach to transportation safety, these models make for a VERY strong argument. (I don't like the segregated safety approach because it lets drivers off the hook. Drivers are ALWAYS near people, so if you let them act like animals, they will continue to injure, maim & murder, even if you have separated bike & pedestrian paths everywhere.) But effective transportation models exist that promote sensible means of getting around that also promote happy, healthy lives.

@@dudeonbike800 funny, I actually studied abroad in the Netherlands this past summer. Never got the chance to make it out to Copenhagen though. You make a very real point about separation though.

Hats off to you. This is incredibly admirable and we need more people like you, especially with the state of car culture in the US the way it is.

@@jjrneptune Did you cycle? I can only assume you did. I spent 10 days in Utrecht last year on our tandem and it was incredible. I've ridden in The Netherlands and toured Europe by bicycle before, but I was still amazed. Riding with everyone was like riding in a Pro1/2 field. Everyone holding their lines, no squirrels, no yo-yo or anything. In 10 days of cycling among thousands of cyclists, all weaving in and out and co-existing, I never saw a single crash. Yes the Dutch can ride! But the infrastructure sure doesn't hurt either! Wow, what a place!!!

@@dudeonbike800 I only got to bike around a little, but it was a delight. Significantly nicer than my bike to school here in the states. I absolutely love how the people out there move around each other though. Everyone picks up on everyone else’s body language because everyone knows how to ride a bike so it all just works.

Rest in peace. I am sorry about your daughter

Unfathomable. I'm glad this is getting highlighted because so many of these deaths should be preventable but it *takes work.*

I'm so sorry to hear about your daughter.

I'm so sorry to hear about your loss. As a parent, losing one of my kids is an absolute nightmare. I can't imagine the pain you've had to go through. Lots of love from the Netherlands.

​@@alex2143 love is nice frfr, but can we have some of your infrastructure too?..

I remember a few videos on this, the longer wheel base helps vehicle meet the emissions requirements. Unintended consequences

@@Flash1857 yeah they wanted to keep trucks from getting hit too hard which would drive up costs for people who drove bigger trucks, which before that it was typically people who did work stuff that drove the super duty sized trucks for a very long time. For perspective on this bloating, I drive a Chevy Colorado Z71 and its as big as a 1990s era Chevy 2500 full sized. I doubt GM will ever revive the S-10 in the US. Though if the Ford Maverick is any evidence, a Revival of the S-10 would absolutely have sales numbers

The car lobby did one hell of a job on those regulations! 😪

Facts! ...I've seen that video too.

It's almost like these well-intended regulations cause a bunch of unintended consequences, and largely need to be scaled back so people are free to make their own informed decisions. Rather than being viewed by lawmakers like a society of Sims who need constant correction which only perfect people like them could ever offer.

It's definitely intentional

That’s one of the downsides of the US having a car-centric culture. If everyone has a car, infrastructure will be designed around having cars.

Hanlon's Razor applies

People have already had the cops called on them for walking in the US, thinking they were suspicious-looking. That’s how bad car-culture has gotten in the US.

Not feels like, it is intentional. As in those are written in engineering handbook type intentional.

I hate these touch screens, where you can’t adjust anything by feel.

Almost certainly contribute, though the real question is how much.

Was wondering the same thing. Borrowing a car right now that has one and it's very distracting

I'd be surprised if it was more than a few percentage points. Anything distracting could contribute but I would venture to say that most of the time people aren't adjusting their car settings so the statistics would probably lead elsewhere.

They absolutely are and it's insane that lawmakers didn't crack down on this earlier.

@CharlesB9496 I am very sorry for your loss. I also live in the Quad Cities & this horiffic collision could have easily been prevented if designers AND government officials would give a crap about transportation safety, especially pedestrians & cyclists. But they just do not care. Tragically, we've normalized traffic fatalities as "just a part of life" in the United States 🇺🇸 . Every year, nearly as many people die (pedestrians, cyclists & motorists) in traffic crashes as our total combat deaths from the Vietnam War. Many more are severely maimed or injured. Yet there is no sense of public outrage. When we advocate for policies like complete streets, Vision Zero, or the like, elected officials say we're being "impractical" or "too idealistic" and that these policies are "too expensive." We can not ever put price on the lives of the friends you lost. However, by some estimates, on average, every individual in the US generates something like $3 to 4 million in economic output over their lifespan. You'd think *THAT* consideration certainly would motivate more priority public safety, but it doesn't.

I'm so sorry for your loss. Hate to have what should've been a happy and peaceful moment be ruined by other people's stupidity.

Right of way or not, it takes a special kind of idiot to think they can run over people just because they (believe to) have the right of way! 🤦‍♂️

@@LRM12o8 7 years ago I was hit by a car on my bike because the driver made a right turn on red without paying attention.

News flash, the only people I know who shrug and use that "right of way" excuse are parents who never taught thier kids to look before crossing the street. Is that obsolete now because you can just sue the driver for heaps of money when they hit your kid? Good to know that they are worth more to parents dead than alive. They still teach defensive driving for a reason, because there will always be idiots behind the wheel, but teaching kids situational awareness has been obsolete, for more than 30 years and that "it is everyone elses responsibility to keep my kids safe" attitude is getting people killed. (I used to be a teacher, so don't tell me I don't know what I am talking about.)

@@rosameryrojas-delcerro1059 Even if you look both ways, some asshole on a smartphone might hit you because they decided that would rather pay attention to their phone instead of the road.

So? Then your family will be justified in suing the driver. If you did nothing (or did not teach your child that idiots exist and that they need to look) then you would be 50% to blame for the accident, because if you had seen the idiot, you would have stayed on the curb. Your argument is just another "it is everyone elses responsibility to keep my kids/me safe". I don't have to do shit, I/my family can just sue the hell out of them after I weep enough on the 6pm news. FISHING for reasons to sue someone is what that is. Litigious spaz.@@ballsquid4135

It’s not just the incentives for manufacturers. Because survival of an accident is largely a matter of relative mass, people who drive smaller vehicles are significantly at risk. Even if you don’t need or want to drive an SUV or truck, there is a temptation to upsize just to improve the survivability of accidents with other large vehicles.

@@amicaaranearum There are a few basic changes that could make SUVs less terrible (like the front Actually Slopeing Down so the blind spot is much smaller and impacts less lethal). They'd still suck, but they'd suck Less. Or just making small vehicles with stronger frames and panneling (sure, fuel efficiency goes down, but apparently people already don't care about That!) in the relevant parts for increasing accident survivability.

To be fair, while the really small cars are disappearing, automakers do still sell moderately sized sedans, crossovers, etc. But the really gigantic trucks and SUVs should absolutely require a commercial or some other type of license to drive with more stringent safety requirements. Anything the size of a modern F150, Chevy Tahoe, or larger should not be driven by any rando with a standard license. Every day, both as a driver and as a pedestrian, I see so much dumb, risky driving behavior that I wonder how these people passed both their written and driven test!?

​@@amicaaranearumI don't fully buy larger/heavier cars being safer. If an accident occurs, you will want more mass. But I'd argue an attentive driver in a light car will be able to maneuver away from potential or imminent crashes easier than a driver in a heavy car. Even if that's cope, the more people subscribe to that idea the truer it becomes, as there will be less and less big cars on the road.

@@wrong1029 yeah, it’s a self perpetuating problem. The arms race for mass and height on the road. But North Americans seem to have an acute problem in seeing how their individual choices affect other people and society at large. I see this in so many areas of life, even among friends and family I generally love/admire. It’s a really unfortunate societal character flaw.

It is scary to see people driving F150 -250s, gigantic SUVs like Escalades & Expeditions on the freeways at 80+mph...

A lot of pedestrians have lost respect for killer machines that are hurtling down highways. Almost lost a friend a few years back. He lived luckily, but even he agrees that if he'd been paying attention would have prevented the distracted driver from hitting him

Yeah, I have noticed an uptic in overly aggressive driving. Even in my small town, I see people blindly whipping cars around corners, going down narrow roads at speed greater than 30mph, driving the wrong way on my one way street (and usually fast) because they dont feel like going one street up to use the proper street. Its ridiculous. Kids play on these streets, elderly walk on them, people are getting in and out of their own cars to go into their homes. I shouldn't feel nervouse mowing my front lawn in a town like this, yet I do.

Humans are not evolved to travel at superhuman speeds or pilot contraptions that go more than maybe 15 mph. If you're bombing down the highway at 65 or 70 it's simply not possible for you to react quickly enough to avoid collisions. Compound this with what @Lauren_C mentioned about ignorance of laws of momentum and inertia and pedestrians are just gonna die.

Pedestrians too, have a responsibility to pay attention to traffic. The cellular phone has to be among the top contributing factors to pedestrian/vehicular accidents (by BOTH the pedestrian not paying attention to traffic and drivers texting). I see pedestrians in my city all the time who step off the sidewalk into an uncontrolled (no traffic light) cross-walk, their faces firmly planted in their phones, without looking in either direction for traffic (waiting for traffic to stop) before they did so as if the cross-walk has some magical power to protect them. They are asking for a posthumous Darwin Award. Even at controlled intersections, if a car is making a LH turn or RH turn opposite, I always make sure I have eye-contact with the driver before proceeding through the crosswalk. I'm more than half-way through this video and not once did the issue of pedestrians walking on the WRONG SIDE of local/rural roads without sidewalks, even come up. I was taught as a child in the '60s that when walking on a road that has no sidewalk, to walk on the opposite side of the road, towards oncoming traffic, so that you can see and react to traffic if it ventures onto the shoulder (you do not have eyes in the back of your head, so you can't see what's approaching from behind). Nowadays, I am completely baffled by the number of stupid people (adults) I come across on local rural roads walking on the RH side of the road, on the shoulder, with their backs to oncoming traffic. They too, are vying for a posthumous Darwin Award.

Driving is such an anxiety inducing experience. I would choose not to every time but in so many circumstances it's literally impossible to get where you're going without a car. I hate it and hate to think about what would happen if I hit someone or got hit

It is made a lot worse by the way drivers punish other drivers for taking any sort of precaution.

FUCK WHITE LED HEAD LIGHTS. THEYRE LITERALLY DANGEROUS.

YES

To add onto the SUV/Truck thing, a lot of people modify the suspension of their SUVs/Trucks and never adjust their headlights. This means that their headlights aren't setup properly. It's really obvious to spot yet police do absolutely nothing about it.

0-60 in 3s. 60-0 in an eternity.

As someone who drives a sedan, I’m constantly being blinded by high-sitting vehicles with ultra-bright headlights.

Buddy drives a Honda Ridgline. A truck. And says he's constantly blinded by other trucks and SUVs.

Trucks should be banned.

Because Americans feel entitled when they walk across the street and they don't bother to look either way

Copecel

@@jerseykevin27 You didn't watch the video or try to consider any systemic reasons. There are entitled people in every country, yet we seem to be getting the brunt of this problem in the first-world. Our obsession with "just make people individually responsible" is a damning indictment of our culture.

I was skeptical of this information, because some statistics only compare "apples to apples" so poorer countries aren't counted, but I just checked mine (Brazil, which isn't exactly poor, but definitely not wealthy) also dropped the number of deaths in the last decade. Very interesting.

​@@jerseykevin27typical entitled motorist response

The real reason so many more fatal collisions occurred on roads during covid is due to the decrease in traffic. It turns out the horrendous traffic on suburban roads was also the only thing keeping them safe due to the slow speeds. Once traffic cleared out during lockdown, the speeds increased significantly leading to many more fatal accidents.

My state doesn’t give driving tests anymore at all. It’s strictly based on age. Any adult can just pass the written test and pay the fee. Teenagers still have certain restrictions, but not a driving test

A big problem is schools apparently don't include driving instruction (too expensive). Not even paper instruction. Now we pay the price in collisions.

Mostly a gentle poking at Tesla's controversial nature.

@@RoadGuyRob And FSD is getting better and better every iteration.

It was also quite hilarious how he blurred "TESLA". XD

He also said "Unnamed Fremont, California based Electric Vehicle Manufacturer". That's about as close to saying Tesla as you can get without actually saying Tesla (though Tesla did move their HQ to Austin, Texas, so that's not actually 100% true anymore). I agree with John that self driving tech will eventually make cars safer, though I also think companies like Tesla play way too fast and loose with what truly is a really hard problem. Probably doesn't help that their CEO keeps making ridiculous and unrealizable promises about when they'll be ready and seems to have very little idea of what actually goes into doing advanced tech (of all sorts). Not to say that what Tesla has managed to do isn't quite amazing - the videos I've seen really are amazing. But self driving is a really hard problem that's going to take alot of time to get right and isn't the sort of thing you can just put a timeframe on - the tech will be ready when its ready. I think you need innovators pushing the edge, but then you also need careful people refining the tech to make it rock solid. Both are kinds of technology, just very different. Tesla doesn't seem to have enough of the second kind.

I was gently poking fun a Tesla's litigious nature (e.g., suing the show "Top Gear" over a bad review).

I saw a video (was it @RoadGuyRob? Not sure) where they explained that those "click on photos with [commonly encountered item in public]" things that they have you do online after checking the "I'm not a robot" box (would be super easy to train a robot to check that box anyway, but that's another matter) are actually helping to train self-driving cars to recognize those objects. They should obviously use those to help to train self-driving cars to recognize barriers, too - and, I would add, people dressed up in costumes, given how many times that @RoadGuyRob has broken out the chicken suit when doing pedestrian videos (and one time breaking out a gorilla suit to do a traffic light video!).

It may seem preposterous to censor it like that, but since keeping out of legal trouble is all that matters here, it makes perfect sense and 100% accomplishes the goal.

I thought they sued top gear over faked data / misrepresentation of the vehicle?

Good plan. Let's increase taxes so we can pay people to buy "the right vehicle" instead of the one that they want and/or need.

@@ghost307There’s a lot of subtle ways we could tip the scale, such as just taxing vehicles partially based on size.

@@justins8802 But we're already tipping scales by giving cash incentives to buy heavier vehicles (such as EVs).

@@ghost307 that’s why I said size and not weight. EV subsidies do need to be phased out and replaced with a carbon tax, but that’s another thread altogether.

We currently do the opposite and have tax laws that incentivize light trucks and SUVs by exempting them from emissions related taxes.

Or just flattened, it’s like being hit by a wall vs a wedge. Both are gonna hurt but at least a wedge you have a chance

Nobody I know under 30 was taught by thier parents to look both ways before crossing the street. None, and I used to be a teacher. I have been told by numerous people that it is the drivers responsibility to stop, even if a kid isn't in the crosswalk. So basically thier kid is worth more to them (the lawsuit for hitting thier kid) dead or disabled than it is worth to teach them situational awareness. They still teach defensive driving for a reason, but I guess teaching pedestrians to stay safe is obsolete in parents eyes. Just last week an 11 year old was hit crossing the street here. Looking at his phone, (according to video from a business) and didn't even look. Alot of the kids are being hit in school zones here also, drivers don't care and parents don't care.

​@@rosameryrojas-delcerro1059entitled stupid driver meets entitled stupid pedestrian. I do think the shortsighted selfishness we have culturally is indeed a factor.

​@@rosameryrojas-delcerro1059I am under the age of 30. Everybody I know my age knows this. My 4yr old nephew knows to look both ways. Parents and teachers of this generation and the one prior are absolutely still teaching kids basic road safety.

If that was true, kids would not be getting hit as often as they are. @@ARockyRock

He hinted at this when talking about the rising popularity of SUVs and trucks, but there is a video by Not Just Bikes that goes into this in more detail.

Sedans and hatchbacks are designed to flip pedestrians up onto the hood if struck. But with SUVs and trucks there’s nowhere for them to go except under.

Not true. Look up the GHSA statistics used in this video. There is no statistical difference between class of vehicle and fatality count. Each vehicle type is responsible for percentage of fatalities equal to their road usage.

@@shottytheshotgunThat is fascinating and terrifying. WTH is wrong with everyone?

@@TheBaldrif smartphones were the leading cause, you would expect to see a trend in increasing pedestrian deaths in many countries correlated with increased smartphone adoption. But in most European countries, pedestrian deaths went DOWN over the same period that smartphone usage was increasing. The US trend in increasing pedestrian deaths is an outlier, so we should look for factors unique to the US to explain it, such as our increased adoption of light trucks and increasing size of vehicles.

The police in Provo, UT frequently did the right turn without stopping or looking to the right when I worked there. One time I had started crossing when the pedestrian signal changed I ended up jumping back in time to only get brushed by the side mirror. They never saw me.

Yep all this is true as well. Things got infinitely worse here in 2020 and afterwards....😬

Not to mention a lot of people who buy those really big trucks and use them to tow trailers don't know to readjust their headlights to counter the natural tilt that the front of a truck experiences when a load is on the hitch.

As someone who drive at night for a living, I can SEE details on some of those infotainment systems, despite being in a different vehicle behind them. I couldn’t imagine driving with the sun right next to you 😬 And LED headlights have gotten considibly worse in the past 5 years, the biggest ones being the “automatic high beams”. Look, my daily driver has H6024 headlights, and my work truck H4651/H4656 combo lights. I can see more than well enough on unlit roads at night with these on Low beams, LED headlights do not need to be as dangerously brights as they are. Between your mentioned points, and the fact that I have troubles seeing the road when my mirrors are lit up like the sun, they’re more hazardous than helpful

As someone who drives a sedan, I’m constantly being blinded by high-sitting vehicles with ultra-bright headlights.

I guess it's a double-edged sword, because thanks to the IIHS, headlights are much better now which should make pedestrians and obstacles easier to see. IIHS does significantly dock points in their headlight ratings for glare, though. I guess you can't get around the fact that there is a higher chance of glare if you're in a Civic and most people nowadays are in RAMs, RAV4s, and F-150s.

Completely agree. Additionally, texting and driving is far worse at night, because you are basically shining a flashlight directly at your face, good luck trying to use your peripheral vision. It's just yet another light source that makes seeing out of the care way harder.

that's... insane. And backwards... wow.

Vdot if I remember correctly also has a ton of restrictions on what can and cannot be a bus stop because Richmond wanted to increase the amount of bus stops with benches that were a little bit more away from the road for safety and the elderly and they wouldn’t let them because there’s like a long list of items that need to be present to have that kind of a stop.

They could've just said: "Our priority is to move the most number of cars, not pedestrian safety"

Its ridiculous. Its basically "Our road is so bad we gave up fixing it"

@@AlejandroRamirez-le2vv As a Virginian, I can tell you their priority is neither of the above.

They're driving 40 miles per hour past schools?! That's absolute madness! 😱 That's 65 km/h, faster than than you're allowed on most arterial roads in Europe. Let alone in front of schools, my country introduced a mandatory 30 km/h speed limit near all schools and kindergartens a few years ago, that's less than half as fast as they drive by your school!

@@LRM12o8 US roads are infamously terrible. European road design is so much better, especially when you're talking about raised crosswalks, brick roads and making the road narrower.

I'm so sorry you dealt with that but thank you for doing what you could to help those kids cross safely. I did not know pedestrians had right of way until years after my license. I honestly wish everyone had their own personal crossing guard. It would be hard not to recognize stop means stop. As is there's way too much ambiguity even in alot of light systems.

Yeah. New developments tend to be very stroad-oriented.

Absolutely. Sprawl development and auto-oriented infrastructure and development patterns are the root cause of most of the symptoms/problems around pedestrian injuries and deaths.

Concentrating development around arterial roads (or routing arterial roads through developed areas) is a recipe for fatalities, because it simply creates a lot of conflicting desire lines between pedestrians and fast moving motor traffic

An arterial road can be excellent to walk along.... IF developers and cities put effort into making it good. Often they don't.

@@RoadGuyRob Walk along... Sure. But cross? Not so much. Because for safe and efficient motor traffic movement you need to limit the number of controlled crossings, which is contrary to the desire to walk directly from one place to another.

I also live in Everett and the same happened to me

Just bike along the trestle! Nice and safe!😊 /s But yeah, too many rural roads don’t even have a 3ft shoulder to help with that. Lowell-Snohomish Rd is so dang narrow.

I agree that bikes and bike riders should be licensed and insured. The fees could go towards numerous improvements.

​@@windywednesday4166 bicyclists are already licensed and insured. For their cars that they typically also own, and which are the more significant component of the extraordinary cost of modern roadways

@@onesob13 Sobbing, another nonsensical and irrational argument ...with no figures to back it up. Bla, bla, bla Keep making demands, it's coming.

not just bikes lives in a rich part of amsterdam so i would take what he says with a grain of salt. he's rather capitalist and bougie

@@NightlifeSux I agree. I don't really like him anymore after the whole "North America can't be fixed" fiasco, but his early videos about the basics of urbanism were better. Now he just bootlicks the Netherlands.

Doesn’t explain the jump from 2014, which was the same growth. A personal anecdote: I lived in NYC during the pandemic. Did not own a car, but I did fly through the empty streets on my electric scooter.

Americans seem to wait until a problem is blindingly obvious, and then start fixing it, and mostly doing it right. We are not screwed, but at this point we have to start fighting a bit more. Around here, when streets _have_ to be dug up, afterwards they typically improve them, with amenities like sidewalks and bikelanes. But major thoroughfares still are 7 lanes for cars and sidewalks that end prematurely.

​@@NightlifeSux🤮commie

Yea but all crosswalks just are paint

In my city there's a crosswalk at every light, but it seems like 90% of people instead opt to run through 6 lanes of traffic instead of using the crosswalk 50 feet away from them

Where I grew up only intersections in the downtown area had painted cross walks and every intersection of the lone short four lane street. All street intersections had implied crosswalks and you could be ticketed if you went thru the intersection with a person in the "crosswalk". Then there was Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in the early 70's where the police dropped the hammer on any person caught going thru an occupied crosswalk - it was extra embarrassing on a four lane divided road (yes, both directions had to stop) with no pull off area, you were stopped and stayed there while the officer wrote up your ticket while two lanes had to work their way around you blocking one lane.

The town I live in is like that. There's a couple of crosswalks "downtown" (downtown being a cluster of strip malls, of course) but once you get to the more residential part of town... nothing. No sidewalks either. The speed limit is 35 MPH, but this is New Jersey, so people do 50. It's pretty bad. They're slowly working on putting sidewalks in the residential areas, but people are bitching because the construction is causing traffic. You just can't win.

@@IVR02 I live on a street with a sidewalk and see an alarming number of people who jog down the road, at night, in dark clothing.

I live in the US, I had to bike down a 6 lane stroad with a 45mph speed limit. There was maybe 6 inches of asphalt between the white line and the dirt (no sidewalk) and a semi truck doing 60mph missed me by 3 inches. 3 INCHES!!!!! That is the single closest time I came to dying in my life!

How many times of walking on the left and crossing the street to access locations on the right does it take for the danger of crossing the street to cancel the safety of walking on the left?

@@scottfw7169 You would think so, but actually the big advantage is that you see oncoming trafic and can step away from the road if needed. When crossing the road is required you (as you should always do) look left, look right and look left again as a minimum (just like they taught me and i taught my kids) before crossing. And off course only cross when you feel it is safe to do so. otherwise wait patiently until it is safe. Anyway it seems wiser to me than walking on the right (not seeing the traffic coming up behind you) and then crossing to the location on the left. When you cross you can choose when and where. When you walk on the left side you can see danger coming towards you. When you walk on the right you cannot see danger coming up behind you. And yes, anything can happen, a car can loose control and swerve across the road and hit you, but you can try to minimize the risk. Also when you walk left an occasional glance over your right shoulder gives you a better view of traffic overtaking you than when you walk on the right as then you nearly have to turn around to see what is coming.

@@zeeman1975 Point noted. Also a point to note, and I try to keep in mind myself, is that I have lived in a little farming burg for the last 16 years and this is a whole different ballgame from the suburbs or city. When I did live in the city, personal experience soon taught me to avoid crossing streets as much as possible; crossing intersecting streets while staying on the one side's sidewalk was bad enough, did not want to add crossing the main road to that.

@@scottfw7169 Yes I understand it. I also try to avoid crossing whenever possible. Luckily here in the Netherlands we have a lot of pedestrian crossings where you have the right of way as pedestrians and most drivers do observe the rules. However even there you have to look out. Anyway: nice discussing this with you. Stay safe!

Good on you for at least trying to make it a learning experience for that young lady and friends. I used to take my youngest son to various competitions, on the way we would play "spot the driver on their phone", we batted 1000 with transport truck drivers (that "little" wiggle of the steering wheel takes you from on one road line to crossing over the center line) and around 900 with car and truck/SUV drivers. I think that other 100 were drivers like my boss who "have to look" at the passenger they are talking to... once was enough with him, told him either I drive or don't ask me to go somewhere with him. I am bad at answering texts as it is so it is easy for me to ignore them while driving then forget about them until I pick up the phone when at where I am going for another reason. Calls, on the highway with minimal traffic I'll answer via the Bluetooth connection otherwise ignore or stop somewhere safe to call back. Cell phones - a useful nuisance 😜 - many people need to employ your method 👍

Your experience highlights another problem in America: arrogance and entitlement. I'd LIKE to think that just maybe this kid didn't get the instruction from her parents she SHOULD have gotten. My dad told us kids REPEATEDLY that you don't "swerve for an exit" on the freeway EVER! Your life is worth FAR MORE than a minute or two lost going to the NEXT exit, coming back and making the one you need. But did this driver ever get this instruction in the first place? Who knows. But she obviously wouldn't have heeded it since she thought watching a video while driving on the freeway was normal behavior. And just last week I'm in the #1 lane of two lanes behind a driver turning left. As we complete our left turn, the driver realizes they NEED to make a right at the next street 10 yards away. This arrogant driver simply slams on the brakes and expects everyone to stop so they can worm their way diagonally across the traffic lanes to make their right turn. All while clogging up about 50 drivers. Instead, this driver SHOULD have simply continued in their lane of travel, made either a left or a right at the next SAFE opportunity, and come back to the street they wanted. Nope. THIS DRIVER is too important for that! They want IMMEDIATE GRATIFICATION and will inconvenience as many people as necessary so they can make up for their poor planning and driving decisions. But your example is FAR WORSE. That kills innocents like you and even themselves. Unreal. Good on you showing her the error of her ways. Let's hope she improves her behavior and decision-making.

Yeah. Being on the road on two wheels is getting more and more dangerous as the standard of driving gets worse. Not to mention how there seems to be a trend of car drivers intentionally doing sh!t to mess with us now. Like, you pass them because they're dawdling, they feel wronged by this, so they decide to step on the gas and tailgate you as "punishment". It's happened to me a couple of times recently. Second time it happened, I turned down a paved pathway that's too narrow for a car to fit down. Guy must've been seething that he couldn't carry on following me 😂

I was curious if tinting windows too much had a detrimental effect for drivers. This confirms it...

Good point, and those bright suns also blind the pedestrian and they can't see where they're going or how far the car approaching really is

The USA only JUST legalized adaptive beam headlamps last year. you know those LED Matrix systems that Europe has had for like a decade that can alter the beam to not blind oncoming cars. Well that system was not legal in the USA for a long time despite being proven functional and safe the NHTSA still took a decade to approve them.

It’s also when smart phones were getting popular.

It's also when copper theft started to really skyrocket. At least in Hawaii we constantly have street lights that are out because thieves steal the copper wiring.

I’m not fully convinced. Before a map you could talk to there were GPSs you had to interact with. Before that were street directories you had to look down at. Let’s be real, phones or not, the problem is SUVs and entitlement. Places that aren’t on the show pony sports “utility” and “light” truck train haven’t seen this increase in deaths, and it’s not for a lack of phones and HUDs.

@@Freshbott2 ehh, some new cars with touch screen interfaces instead of more traditional controls and displays have them designed and positioned so badly that they can't not contribute (they don't just offer an opportunty for distraction, they flat out enforce it), but I absolutely belive that the SUVs are a bigger issue.

People love their screens so they will defend them at any cost. It's not just the iPad glued to the dash, there is the interactive screen behind the wheel and then the phone holder clipped to the vent so you have 3 screens to look at. Then add a phone call on top of that. Take an Uber sometime.

I can't stand cars with screens. I drive a 2010 Honda CR-V which, while it is a mid-size SUV, it's certainly not huge, and I absolutely love the traditional tactile controls.

@@Mapmaker1559 bruh I put an Android Auto/Carplay head unit in and I’ve never found it so easy to navigate. I turn the key, my phone stays in my pocket. My maps and Spotify come up. I can just say where I wanna go. I’ve got music controls on the wheel. Heaven.

At least in my city, if lights are even there, 70% of the time they are off and no amount of complaining to the city or state will turn them on. It's dangerous out here!

Are you comparing the rates? The pedestrian fatality rate in 1980 was 3.6 per 100,000. In 2021 it was 2.2 per 100,000.

@@deltaalpha You are right, I neglected change in population. Using my same GHSA and IHS data sources but for vehicle on road count, I calculate a comparable figure of 3.6 in 1980, and 2.5 in 2022. From 1980-2020, in decade steps, I get 3.6, 2.6, 1.7, 1.4, 2.5 So we are safer than 1980, but we have still regressed to 1990 levels.

Ya, my current vehicle's left A pillar has obstructed me from seeing people and other hazards many times, and it's always frightening. Like even if I'm plenty vigilant, I literally can't see some hazards until they shift into view. This was never a problem when I drove a small Ranger pickup a decade ago.

@@LucMMailloux agreed. I drove a newer Tundra last year and nearly struck a bicyclist since he just happened to be moving at the perfect speed in the blind spot of my mirror and A-pillar on the road I was approaching. Luckily my wife saw him and alerted me. Oddly enough I had the same thing happen a few months earlier with an F350, except I was the cyclist and the only one paying attention.

cellphone usage is really just a subset of 'driver distraction'. And possibly not even a very big one, as accident rate increases don't line up with cellphone ownership increases. Driver distraction in general is a big contributer though, to my understanding... and many cars have electronic control systems that are Very badly designed, where the driver has to take their eyes off the road to interact with them to do Really Basic things (that in older dash designs would have been in the driver's field of view while their eyes are on the road, or could have been done by touch/muscle memory)

Not only do we need transit but we need dedicated transit infrastructure so PT can get people places faster than driving, making people less inclined to drive. Vehicle weight taxes could disincentivize driving for the vast majority of trips. A large portion of trips people take are less than 5 miles, which is easily bikable, and ebikes make that ride even easier.

@@laurencefraser Absolutely! I was just driving a 2024 Crosstrek for a loaner while mine was in for repair. The screen was huge, easily the size of a 12 inch tablet and the only things I could adjust by touch (physical controls) were the cabin temperature and the radio volume. Everything else was a soft button on the screen. Including the HVAC vent controls. Had to tap the vent icon button to get the options displayed, then touch the icon representing the direction I wanted the air to take. Not a problem while parked but more difficult while driving down the road and fog is slowly building up on my front windshield.

@@ambiarock590 Public Transit only really works in dense urban cities which just doesn't cover much of the U.S. at all. Sure, maybe you could make it work within the largest cities but up here where I live, it will never be able reach certain areas based on cost alone. But go ahead and keep thinking that everyone should be living exactly how you do and doing things the way you choose to. I personally make a two hour road trip every week. There is no PT I could take to make this trip, not because of the location but because of the times I do it.

Everyone now tailgates too, seemingly with no understanding of stopping distances.

Officers in low vis cop suvs are 100% in the dangerous driver group themselves. The lack of professionalism both in the choice of police cruisers and cops is astounding. Bring back crown vics and make cops go to school.

I've watched people use the right turn lane to pass a line, then turn left at the intersection, get stuck blocking set intersection when the light turned red, and not get pulled over despite doing this directly infront of a cop.... There is no enforcement on anything other than absurd speeding around Atlanta... But this stupid aggressive behavior started before I moved here in 2011 so it's not a new thing everywhere. A new highpoint was having someone tailgate me, honk, flash his high beams, swerve back and forth, because I was only going 2 MPH over the speed limit in a residential area a couple weeks back.... I try to not leave the house at this point.

Driving has become such a nightmare lately. I used to regularly drive 5-10 *under* the speed limit, and never had any problems. Now, even going 5 over the speed limit feels dangerously slow compared to the other traffic. What's absolutely insane to me is that people have even started using highway entry/exit lanes as passing lanes! I used to love driving, but the sheer amount of aggression, impatience, entitlement, and carelessness on the road for the last few years has become infuriating. Is it really that hard for people to slow down a little and be aware of their surroundings? Is putting themselves and each other through the constant stress and danger really worth it to get to their destination 2 minutes earlier? As my grandma used to say, "If they wanted to get there earlier, they should have left earlier."

@@AlphabetSoupABC the only people who drive 5-10 below the speed limit when there is not traffic limiting them are clowns that shouldn’t have a license and people with warrants.

Thank you, Lisa

it’s about getting the car/driver to their destination first and foremost. everything else is barely considered.

Starting to think the only way out is the railway approach, speed activated stops, and by stops, I mean tyre spike.

Thought you guys just used an orange disk? In the UK they have to blink, which is an expensive pain when you have to dig up the road to put in a simple zebra crossing.

RGR is aware of NJB, and NJB is aware of RGR. There is a lot of agreement among both creators about what the problem with North American development is, where there is disagreement is how and where to fix it. But I do know that NJB is not going to collab with RGR anytime in the near future.

@@Awesome_Aasim Pretty sure RGR and NJB both agree that putting in sidewalks, multiuse paths, removing driveways on stroads, and having safer crossings are all good.

@@Awesome_Aasim As RGR said himself, he likes cars, and he likes driving. NJB doesn't, for the most part, so you've got two people who have made very different lifestyle choices and therefore are going to disagree on solutions. Plus a significant proportion of NJB's audience are very much the stereotypical car hating urbanist so probably aren't going to appreciate any collaboration.

​@@Croz89 NJB doesn't hate cars; in fact he has a video on why driving in the Netherlands is so much better than most of the US. What I think they both hate are stuff like traffic congestion, overcrowding, pollution, etc. Where they disagree is whether it is worth solving North America's problems; NJB thinks it is not, RGR thinks about actionable steps to work toward safer cities immediately.

@@Awesome_Aasim I'd agree that NJB isn't as car hating as some of his fans, who really do fit the stereotype sometimes. But I don't think he *likes* them that much either, if you catch my drift. His arguments about driving in the Netherlands are at least partly predicated on the idea that people there drive a lot less on average, and many more people don't drive at all. I get the impression that he at least concedes that some people will need to drive, but he would not agree with a society where cars and driving are popular among the vast majority of the population. As an aside, I think driving in the Netherlands is reflective of the same reason the infrastructure as a whole is of high quality, there's a lot of people who are relatively wealthy living on not a lot of land. To get the same effect in the US you'd have to empty out most of the country and really concentrate the population into a few key regions, which isn't going to happen. The US has to spread its infrastructure around a lot more, so it has to look for cheaper solutions than what you might be able to do in a more densely populated environment.

Too bad a lot of traffic control measures are based on people going 6-7mph faster then the speed limit already. It can be more hazardous to drive the speed limit when everyone else is speeding. Rob had a previous video about this. We do not want speed cameras. Were quite a few example of cities where speed cameras were being exploited for profit. Plus when chigago did it, it was actually unfair to charge some people for speeding, while others are speeding all around the city. Some cities also have parking ticket traps.

The City of Chicago has acknowledged that they use the speed cameras to fill their budget holes. They're for revenue, not safety. Of course, one of the best ways to get drivers to calm down and follow a speed limit is to time the signals so one can get through several of them at the limit. This isn't done in Chicago. The signals are intentionally set up to frustrate drivers. Then they wonder why drivers speed between them and run the reds.

Another big part of relative pedestrian safety in NYC are the narrower lanes, busyness, and amount of traffic (auto, pedestrian, and cyclists). It means collisions happen, but at a much slower, less lethal speed than in non-urban areas since most drivers naturally slow down in these conditions. What a lot of people in the US miss about Vision Zero initiatives is that it is less about zero collisions and more about making the collisions less lethal when they do happen. The key to survivability is speed and the vehicle's pedestrian safety at the point of contact. While not the only way, road design/engineering is the primary way to reduce the speed of the majority of drivers en masse.

NYC’s relative safety has less to do with no right turn on reds and more to do with slow speed. Hardly anyone dies in a right-on-red strike, and therefore won’t be reflected in fatalities, which is all this video shows stats for.

Right on red isn't "blindy accepted". It is 100% legal unless you're on a one-way street or there are signs posted against it. And yes, it causes many vehicle accidents every day.

Lol naw we build race strips in the middle of our towns 😅🤣

Well being that America literally invented mass produced and affordable cars its not crazy to see how US became so car centric.

That's a fun coincidence! 👍

Cuz those care have feelings and the people living in that city don't, obviously /s

In the Netherlands (where I studied traffic engineering), which has one of the safest road networks in the world, they actually avoid putting marked pedestrian crossings on residential streets, because the entire street should be safe to cross as a pedestrian. This accomplished by physically forcing cars to stay below 18mph using narrow brick streets with abrupt curves and raised intersection. This actually makes no difference to travel times by car, because as per road classification, you only drive on a local street for a small distance to access your destination/origin, and reducing the speeds eliminates the need for stop signs. Nearly your entire trip should be on an arterial road or highway.

@@OntarioTrafficMan I'd love to see the US adopt those kinds of safety standard because they actually work at making places safer. I've heard the sad excuse of "We cannot have PT or safe roads like Europe does because 'We're not them.' which makes no sense from a city planning perspective or any engineering field (I think)

@@ambiarock590 Yeah it makes especially no sense in a residential context because the Dutch designs take up *less* space than American ones. So it's literally always possible to fit them

@@OntarioTrafficMan Right? Sadly most people don't actually put any thought behind their argument when they argue against going against car dependency since that's what they're used to and go to "We're just different than nations with PT" because we really aren't. That argument makes no sense in engineering.

Maybe it's not that Americans use phones differently, but that they magnify existing flaws in our roads, like bad intersections, excessive driveways, or lack of sidewalks.

@@Br3ttM This is a good thought. The formula for these crashes may be: stroad infrastructure + distractions for both parties.

Maybe just reduce the amount of times pedestrians must cross in the path of an automobile?

well, cell phones are a global issue - but the massiv increase in pedestrian fatalities isn't.

What about other countries, if it was cell phones we should be able to find similar data outside of North America

@@afdkj It can't just be homelessness and people walking because the increase in homelessness and walking comes after the increase in crashes. And there's definitely interaction between different factors given that non-US developed countries like those in Europe and East Asia have seen continuing declines even as the US still saw rises. And its also true that Europe and East Asia have just as ubquitous cell phone usage. My working hypothesis is it's an everything problem working together to make a perfect storm of bad results. In the US so many major streets neither cut off almost all pedestrians (like freeways) nor are pedestrian friendly (like city streets), but the big problem there is the suburbs more than rural areas simply due to population density creating more opportunities for crashes. Upsizing cars makes close in visibility worse (bigger blindspots especially right in front) even as long distance visibility improves which increases the problems of night time driving where visibility beyond your headlights is going to be bad negating the distance visibility advantage. Homelessness doesn't help which is related most strongly to housing costs in an area vs incomes and the point that homelessness spiked in 2022 (though by most accounts was quite a bit lower than normal in 2021) and is coming back down helped. But also lack of car traffic on the roads during the earlier parts of COVID meant what cars were on the road could go a lot faster. So what this means is we've got immediate problems, needing to reduce homelessness and slow down vehicles on arterial roads, medium term problems of encouraging smaller cars and fewer arterial conflict points, and long term problems, turning more arterial streets into either slower, denser business/population city streets or into fully separated highways, either policy would also tend to concentrate destinations in ways that make public transit a better option for more people and thus necessitate a greater share of funding going to transit. I do have hopes that because of the low traffic effects of COVID fading the highest spikes in deaths we've seen over the past few years will drop at least for a year or two, but that will only give us breathing room and won't help with the still way too high deaths we saw in 2019.

The data already supports the position, phones are everywhere. But deaths are growing where the cars are growing. I’m not attacking you personally, but it reeks of this typical dilemma. Americans putting yourselves through the dumbest punishment by forgetting there’s an entire world out there who already know better.

Really?! Mini Cooper, Honda civic, Kia, Mazda...

Blame government regulation for that.

You can buy a Honda accord… which is a sedan, brand new.

I wonder if urban sprawl has shifted traffic to stroads. Since stroads are the deadliest type of road, increasing the amount of traffic on stroads could contribute to the spike in fatalities. I know my own town has grown dramatically in the past 15 years as more and more people move out this way. (Many people can’t afford to live in the nearest major city, so they end up overflowing into new suburban developments.) New tract subdivisions are springing up everywhere, and the once-quiet country roads leading out of town are now congested stroads lined by strip malls, fast food restaurants, etc.

I dislike stroads immensely. They try to be roads (high speed connections between two places) and streets (complex environments where people actually go to) at the same time; and in doing so the stroad fails at being either a road and a street. You can have speed, or you can have safety; you can't have both. Pick one and design a street for it, you cannot build a road for safety and speed at the same time.

"Stroad" is not a technical engineer term. It's one author's clever term he uses in his book. If the profession adopts it officially, I'll start to use it more. Meantime, I prefer pointing out specifics wrong with the road (e.g., too many driveway accesses)

@@RoadGuyRob I would love them to adopt it officially, and them to be scrutinized more because they are pretty dangerous for everyone.

There's a huge incentive for automakers to class a vehicle as a "light truck" and a very loose legal definition. The only reason why Honda didn't certify Rob's Fit as one is that they don't make any thirsty full-size pickups they needed to offset.

My minivan is classified as a truck. I assume it's to help increase the average miles per gallon for that category. The dealer said it's because it has the same frame structure as a regular truck.

@@kweejee Unless you have an Astro (not-quite S-10 chassis) or Aerostar (not-quite Ranger chassis), your dealer is dead wrong. Minivans were classified as trucks because of cargo volume, OEM lobbying, CAFE chicanery, and DMV dartboards. Case in point: both my '10 T&C & '76 K5 were considered "station wagons" by MI despite the latter being a shortbed half-ton pickup with rear seats bolted to the bed and a non-removable top.

@@ChrisCaramia huh interesting, somehow I always figured the Astro was on the C/K 1500. I know minivans were built on a Sedan platform, the biggest evidence is they all tended to be front drive. I should note the S-10 was honestly the perfect size for a personal pickup.

oh yeah, i'm sure that's worse than pick-up trucks and SUVs mowing down several thousand pedestrians annually

My mistake. I only had the truck for 75 minutes and flubbed my ad-lib. And then missed it in editing.

It's not because of EPA rules, it's because of EPA rules avoidance. Specifically, the exceptions for commercial vehicles. And the obvious solution is more regulation, restricting the loophole to commercial licenses and /or commercial ownership by businesses with a reasonable use case .

It absolutely is the EPA rules. If a car manufacturer gets fined for making a small truck but can avoid the fine AND make more money with a larger truck, they'll produce a larger truck. Gas powered sedans will most likely be phased out in the next 5 years as you can only make the engine so small before it's too small to even pull a compact car. These are the unintended consequences of central government overreach.

It has nothing to do with commercial vehicles, it's CAFE standards, that have fuel efficiency requirements based on wheelbase, and for shorter vehicles, the requirements are unrealistic.@@diametheuslambda

@@Br3ttM The wheelbase standards are there as proxies for work vehicles, that was the intent. They wanted an objective, per car model metric to avoid having a bureaucratic, per car process. They obviously didn't anticipate the ludicrous industry response, and I don't blame them. CAFE standards are decent, useful and there's cars out there that fit them. So now, you have the option to regulate use directly; you also have the option to (threaten to) deregulate car imports and introduce compliant cars, that also happen to be more affordable to buy, fuel and maintain. And as a bonus, some of those foreign cars will also meet pedestrian collision standards.

I agree. It seems like far too many people care about themselves in North America even when it comes to sharing the roads. Compare that to places like Japan where it seems most people care about each other and the number of road fatalities seems to be much less even though the infrastructure isn't that much different. Tokyo has practically zero bike lanes and plenty of stroads and yet it doesn't seem like there's many people killed or injured riding their bikes there because both drivers and cyclists watch out for each other and are careful around each other. Then you also see cyclists regularly riding their bikes on the sidewalk even in crowded areas and yet there's few problems between cyclists and pedestrians because again both are courteous and mindful of each other.

@@UzumakiNaruto_ we have that in other aspects of our culture as well.

And I dislike the idea of slapping tech solutions onto all of our problems. "Just put a camera system to detect distracted drivers. Just make a sensor system that detects pedestrians", those fail to fix the root of the issue is to why our roads are so dangerous in the first place. Those tech solutions try to make our roads safer, but no one is asking the question "Why are our roads so dangerous in the first place?"

Read the GHSA report that this video is based on. There is no statistical difference between the type of vehicle and its share of pedestrian fatalities.