Another person has been killed while walking on a Portland road.
Details from the Portland Police Bureau are sparse. They say a man was trying to cross NE Sandy Boulevard near 122nd at around 9:12 pm last night when he was hit by someone driving a Subaru wagon that was going westbound.
According to our tally that’s the fourth person killed while walking in Portland this year and the seventh fatal collision overall. One person hit while walking across SE Powell (at 124th) with a friend on March 18th remains at the hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Of the six non-freeway fatalities, five of them happened east of I-205.
Here are the names of victims and locations of the crashes so far:
02/01/18 – Yelena V. Loukas, 53 – SE 148th & Stark (walking)
02/06/18 – Jeremy J. Sowa, 43 – SE Powell & 141st (motorcycling)
02/11/18 – Perwin S. Moni, 34 – SE 122nd & Stark (driving)
03/09/18 – Wes Hatton, 65 – SE 30th & Belmont (walking)
03/11/18 – Fuk K Chan, 74 – SE Division & 115th (walking)
03/21/18 – Unknown – NE 122nd & Sandy (walking)
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Another pedestrian death in East Portland, rate so rapid I can hardly keep up. Kudos on lowering speed limits on side streets @PBOTinfo, but we REALLY need your help on arterials, where Portlanders are DYING #20isPlentyforEveryone https://t.co/mteliAvtUT
— sarah iannarone (@sarahforpdx) March 22, 2018
This steady trickle of tragedy — much of it from the high-speed arterials of outer east Portland where people bear an unfair burden of unfsafe infrastructure — leaves many people feeling a mix of horror, frustration, and outrage that more isn’t being done to combat it.
As we reported last month, Portland is already grappling with a spike in traffic deaths in 2017. City officials say they’ve built a strong “foundation” for safer outcomes in the future but it doesn’t seem like nearly enough.
As long as the threat we face grows at a faster rate than our efforts to mitigate it, I’m afraid we can expect these tragedies to continue.
Our leaders must step up and do more.
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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At first I thought I had traveled to an old page, like, “this can’t be a new story, can it?” Sad.
“Foundation” my ass.
It makes me sad to think that this will probably only get worse. As time goes on fewer and fewer people will be able to afford the automobile lifestyle and will end up on foot while those still clinging to their petro buggies will become more desperate and frenzied to do whatever it takes to hold on to motoring privilege, racing about town at all hours chasing that last buck. At the same time our civic authorities seem petrified with inaction, unable to improve enforcement or infrastructure for a host of reasons. It will probably only get better as happy motoring slides down the slope of depletion and entropy to a well deserved end.
“They’ve built a strong “foundation” for safer outcomes in the future”
a foundation built of words and insufficient funding is an insult.
Basically, “Apart from the deaths, we’re doing a good job”.
Reminds me of:
“Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.”
–Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry
This is very sad news. I’m disheartened to agree that significant improvements to road safety will be a long time coming, as there truly is no political will to curb driving.
The concept of “proactively reducing automobile use” is the primary solution, because, well, the problem is “too much automobile use”. Kinda logical. I appreciate that this concept of creating deterrents to driving is getting more air time with Jonathan, Aaron, and others advocating for safer streets.
It seems helpful to target policies that affect the moment when a citizen decides what mode they will make their next trip with – we really need to move that decision needle toward transit, biking and walking.
Portland’s version of Vision Zero targets 2025 [?] for “0” traffic deaths. Does anyone at the City of Portland really see a trajectory that comes even close to this publicly-stated policy-guiding goal?! I just can’t even imagine how we get to “0” in 7 years without big, game-changing proposals NOW.
Agreed, but we need more than proposals. We need implementation, yesterday.
There was almost another death on Division as well: http://katu.com/news/local/driver-strikes-injures-gresham-teen-on-southeast-division-street
“Police say the boy is considered at fault for the crash, but the driver was cited for driving with a suspended license and for not having insurance.”
“Police remind the public to look before crossing roadways, always use crosswalks, and always wear reflective clothing when walking in the dark.”
“Police say the teen was crossing the street to the northeast and was not in a crosswalk. They say he was not wearing reflective clothing.”
Too bad the police didn’t remind the public not to drive with a suspended license and no insurance, or that people driving 22-year-old cars without modern safety equipment should maintain them. And stated, “Putting aside the fact the driver shouldn’t have been on the road at all, we’re putting the blame on the victim”.
If you’re driving without permission, you should be 100% responsible for what happens.
Not according to the police in this case, unfortunately. And they didn’t mention WHY his license was suspended. DUIs? Too many tickets for driving through occupied crosswalks?
What a gulf between expectations. You and Dan A (and I) think there’s no reason why driving with a suspended license and no insurance WOULD be acceptable. The police may be thinking there may be no reason why it WOULDN’T be.
Car Head.
And I take no pleasure in saying so.
this was actually 178th according to the photos… there’s a flash beacon crossing before the bus stop where he crossed, but if he just got off the bus that would require going out of the way to get to it… I assume many people cross illegally here when traffic is light…
this kid had just walked across 4 lanes of traffic… the driver didn’t notice them in all that time? ORS 811.005 Duty to exercise due care for not seeing somebody walking across the road into your path?
what about the driver’s speed? were they going below the speed limit due to dark conditions? were they going even slower due to the additional low visibility condition of rain?
what were they even paying attention to if they were driving slow and cautious as they should be and a person walks across 4 lanes in front of them and they didn’t see it? my guess: tunnel vision… drivers are trained to only pay attention to hazards that make themselves known, they don’t care about things in the road that won’t hurt them…
the kid was breaking a law made by drivers for drivers… in an ideal world peds would always have the right of way (constitutional freedom of movement) and everybody else would have to wait patiently to go around them…
I’m with you but what is wrong with a 22 year old car (I looked at the photo and saw no lights out)? What new safety equipment would have helped to prevent this?
There’s nothing wrong with older cars. I mentioned it because the police and the article both made a point to say the victim wasn’t wearing reflective clothing, which of course isn’t a legal requirement. So in fairness, they should also mention things about the car and driver that are not legally required, but may have prevented this–such as having a car that’s missing the last two decades of technology, which might include better brakes, lights, handling, headlights, etc. Also, after two decades, any lack of maintenance could mean horrible performance by brakes, tires, etc.
But the police and press rarely mention any shortcomings of a vehicle unless they’re horribly drastic, even though things like a dirty windshield, burned-out lights, or bald tires (or even the car being black or dark) are just as easy–or easier–to spot as lack of reflective clothing, and could be just as likely to contribute to a crash.
24 year old car. Only damage so far was from a hit and run while parked in Portland at end of Lief Erickson.
In general, who is the victim if the car is driving safely and someone runs out in front of them? Victim blaming seems more of a cover phrase then it does for what actually could’ve happened? Who’s responsible if they don’t look both ways and run out into the street? Also, we clearly are aware of the mental health component of some Portlanders, I work as a social worker. We never hear the components that exist when an accident happens besides someone gets ran over. Whether or not we like it, it does play a role.
It does happen. I once saw an accident where someone ran out into the path of a car, in 1989.
I see people step on front of cars all the time. This behavior is common in certain areas — near PSU, Moda, and the White Stag leap immediately to mind. I also see cyclists doing suicidal things regularly, again this is more common in some areas than others.
I had to ride home late last night, and the only cyclist (dark clothing, no headlamp, weak taillight) I saw in the entire 7 miles blew through a red light right in front of me from a cross street on Interstate. I was brightly lit, dressed in hi viz, and traveling with a green light. I missed him by about 10 feet which I consider close given the empty roads and the speeds both of us were moving at. Would it be my fault had we collided, and if not, how about if I had been driving?
Failure to take very basic safety precautions inherent to environments does not make it the fault of others who were not able to protect you from yourself.
Well stated…and it will not land well with many of the people here who espouse personal responsibility for others but not themselves. We are all actors in a system and all have the onus to be responsible users.
Not a level playing field, MOtRG. My responsibility as a pedestrian is to look and generally be perspicacious. But remember that if my attention as a pedestrian flags I’m extreeeemely unlikley to maim or kill anyone.
My responsibility as a pilot of an automobile is to expect people to behave in a thousand nonstandard ways, and to further recognize that such entirely anticipatable behaviors won’t mesh well with my own driving/inattention/the nature of the threat my automobile presents. As such it is incumbent upon me as a driver to take considerably more responsibility for avoiding these outcomes than it is for those not in cars. Laws in other countries with which I’m familiar reflect this asymmetry. Here in the US not so much.
Cars veering onto crowded sidewalks or plowing through crosswalks happen regularly. Are you going to berate those killed in these circumstances too?
That’s one way of looking at it.
Another way is that if you have the knowledge of knowing you are the most vulnerable actor in a system, then it is reasonable to exhibit a higher level of awareness knowing you could get hurt more easily. I believe this is referred to as ‘common sense’.
Your last sentence is an extreme example, but let’s play with that. If a person is lying in the road at night, dressed in black, and car hits them are they at least partially at fault?
Also, are you sure you want to use the term “regularly”? That suggests a predictable and consistent occurrence.
“If a person is lying in the road at night, dressed in black, and car hits them are they at least partially at fault?”
We’ve explored this a bit here in the comments in the past. Although this may strike us as odd, in Austria and Germany the laws are quite different than ours here. Fault in situations like this (drunk pedestrian staggers out from between parked cars at night) is typically distributed. We could find the conversation in the archives with links to legal proceedings that clarify this.
“Another way is that if you have the knowledge of knowing you are the most vulnerable actor in a system, then it is reasonable to exhibit a higher level of awareness knowing you could get hurt more easily. I believe this is referred to as ‘common sense’.”
This is a common error; or at least it seems like an error to me, encountering this view here in comments to bikeportland stories.
We all have a responsibility to ourselves. Something we might call self-preservation: To not do stupid things that could lead to bad outcomes. People who are not walking can also be expected to exhibit some of this, but in the case of those in cars, this is often going to amount to little more than the propensity to avoid getting their car’s paint scratched, something El Biciclero has repeatedly drawn to our attention.
But traffic is a collective and—as I’ve tried to suggest—highly asymmetric affair. Self preservation (your ‘common sense’) is not a useful guide to how responsibility at this level should be distributed. The risks each mode poses to self and others is vastly different. Another way to look at this is that a pedestrian’s greater vulnerability is not ‘her fault’ but emergent. Why, we might ask, is she the more vulnerable participant? Well, that is not difficult to ascertain. It is a result of the risks that automobiles introduce to our streets. But your appeal to what you call common sense obscures this emergent asymmetry that is the cause and source of the problem.
If we took your ‘common sense’ view and applied it to what we now (some of us perhaps belatedly?) recognize to be the dangers of workplace power distribution and men behaving badly, you would presumably exhort women to don chastity belts since, you know, they are the more vulnerable class of office workers.
No, the problem arises from one mode, and one mode alone, and as such the overwhelming share of responsibility to avoid trouble rests with those who are piloting those vehicles.
“If a person is lying in the road at night, dressed in black, and car hits them are they at least partially at fault?”
Instead of a fantasy scenario, why not use a real one? If a pedestrian is walking along the roadway, and the driver sees them, then looks away from them, and then hits and kills them, are they at least partially at fault? The police didn’t think so in this case:
http://www.kptv.com/story/36972134/police-identify-woman-killed-in-crash-outside-a-beaverton-high-school
“There is no evidence that the driver did anything that directly contributed to this tragedy,” police said.
Oh, I mean, outside of the fact that the driver knew she was in the road and then ran her over because he wasn’t watching where he was driving, there was no evidence whatsoever.
People mention that now and then–that there are “people here who espouse personal responsibility for others but not themselves”. But I can’t ever remember seeing any comment that actually showed that stance.
I have never seen this happen. I do hear about it an awful lot, but that doesn’t mean it’s a common occurrence.
A coworker yesterday told me he saw that Tempe Uber video, and that the pedestrian “came out of nowhere!”, which to me is a strange way of describing a person walking a bike across a 3-lane road, and who had been in the road for probably 10 seconds before she was hit.
is a car being driven safely if there’s a chance that somebody can run out in front of it?
I was taught that if there are pedestrians on the sidewalk then they’ll likely walk into the road and we should be ready for that… what happened to that mentality?
if we all took those precautions then we’d be driving adequately slow in any urban area where there are likely to be people… right now the city is trying to tame everything they can to 20 mph, but that doesn’t help these huge streets that don’t qualify…
if we all drive like we’re taught then we would have hardly any deaths at all…
but after that initial driving lesson we’re then taught that cars are king and that all else better get out of our way or risk their very being… we’re told that maintaining speed is our best option for optimal motoring… and drivers pass laws and drive aggressively to keep themselves at the top of the food chain…
I say if you don’t see somebody that just walked across 4 lanes of traffic and you’re not already going 20-25 in that 35 due to it being dark and rainy then you’re completely at fault… but the laws aren’t on the side of the people…
Enforcement, enforcement, enforcement. All drivers must be put in a climate of fear of the law–what is wrong with the city, the state? Either that, or complete legalization of auto theft and vandalism much as ranchers deal with livestock predators.
or we could do what has actually worked — design and rebuild our roads to discourage dangerous behavior by people in automobiles.
There’s only a bit over 4 million miles of roads in the US (about 5K of those in Portland). Design and rebuilding would inevitably affect a lot of property.
Sounds very practical on a number of levels.
The only two options for Mr. Banerjee: 0% or 100%.
Hardly.
We improve things bit by bit. Until everything is fixed, not stepping in the path of easily detectable large objects is important. Small kids are good at this, PDX teens and older, not so much.
Yes, let’s all cower in fear of the almighty auto. That sounds like a great all-around strategy. I wonder why Vision Zero (where it has been effectively pursued) doesn’t recommend anything like this?
Why is it only drivers? Why not everyone? Vision zero isn’t just about drivers, it’s about everyone understanding the rules and following them so that everyone is safer. Don’t jay walk, don’t cross rail tracks without looking, don’t drive at night without lights. Keep pushing your responsibility as a pedestrian off on drivers, and it won’t make vision zero happen any faster.
It’s easy to hide behind “follow the rules”, but all too often the rules don’t work very well for pedestrians: sidewalks come and go or only exist on one side of a street, beg-buttons must be pressed to cross the street (often costing pedestrians an extra stoplight cycle relative to cars), beg-buttons often don’t work, crosswalks can be minutes of walking away from each other on busy streets, drivers often don’t follow the rules and stop for unmarked crosswalks, drivers often don’t stop for marked crosswalks, cops don’t enforce crosswalk laws.
Really. Try doing a fair amount of your transportation on foot, as I do, and you’ll feel like the transportation system has abandoned you. In many ways, pedestrians are much more marginalized than cyclists by the system. It isn’t working for them, so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that so many pedestrians find themselves outside the letter of the law in trying to simply get where they’re going.
Let me also address this specific intersection, because I used to work near there and know it well, and because it is terrible.
122nd drops below Sandy via an underpass, so there are freeway-style ramps connecting the roads. The list of problems with this intersection is long, as is the circuitous path pedestrians must follow to navigate it.
Let me start with 122nd, and what it would take to walk along it, crossing Sandy. There are narrow sidewalks in the viaduct under Sandy. Well, sort of. The one on the east side abruptly ends halfway. Imagine walking halfway across this mega-intersection and finding the sidewalk has run out:
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5571496,-122.5376424,3a,75y,167.57h,73.42t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ss-YboripLos7AoL-Xx3LdQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
On the west side of 122nd there is a sidewalk, but you have to cross one of these cloverleaf-style ramps to connect between the viaduct and the area further north, towards Burgerville.
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.55598,-122.5375346,3a,75y,207.23h,76.94t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1seWeRXAyAqfC6D9WYH_Eefw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Oh wait, that sidewalk ends too! You can choose to cross right here and continue on the desire-path adjacent to 122nd, or use the diagonal desire path that crosses in the middle of this ramp, probably much less visible to drivers. I love how the above image actually shows a pedestrian doing this!.
OK, next. What if you’re walking along Sandy and want to cross 122nd (without getting on it). Surely that can’t be as bad, right? Well, first of all there no sidewalk (nor any room to walk) on the north side of Sandy. At least there’s one on the south side, right?
Wrong again! While there is a signalized pedestrian signal to allow people to cross the “offramp” from 122nd to Sandy on the east side of this intersection, the crosswalk dead-ends once you’ve crossed into the center of the hurricane:
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5570037,-122.5364615,3a,75y,267.51h,71.63t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sCey2KATpTpP8SLsADASM9g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
There is a desire-path that continues beyond here, so you can get through. At least if you’re on foot, and don’t use a cane, or a walker, or a wheelchair.
Finally, what if you’re walking on Sandy and need to get to 122nd, or vice versa? At least you don’t have to traverse any bridges or viaducts! Easy-peasy, right?
Well, here’s the situation – again – on the east side of this intersection. The ramp between 122nd and Sandy here doesn’t have a sidewalk along it, so pedestrians here must walk across the KMart parking lot to get anywhere.
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5569419,-122.5362481,3a,75y,163.45h,86.39t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sjq2S25KG4_pc3ChjAkkvoQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Here’s a view of this abomination from the other direction:
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5555232,-122.5372597,3a,75y,29.41h,65.45t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sQuvbx1FDACzfvi3XEjs-_A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
So how practical does it look to get around this area by “following the rules”? I’m saddened by the loss of life here, but the only surprise is that it didn’t happen sooner.
I’m not familiar with the sidewalk situation in Portland, but in Hillsboro they love putting up “Crosswalk Closed” signs on every intersection, forcing peds and cyclists to use only one side of the intersection. I don’t know why they can’t build crosswalks on both sides. They even placed these signs at the intersection by the dog park on Century. Apparently it would be too much trouble to allow pesky peds to cross there and interrupt car traffic, they must walk over a block in either direction to the next intersection and cross there.
If you have never jaywalked, I have to conclude that you don’t walk much.
As anyone who walks knows, it is often safer to jaywalk than to cross at a signalized intersection, which is why many jurisdictions are now preferring mid-block pedestrian island improvements. In general, most drivers are looking for other motor vehicles, not pedestrians (and rarely cyclists.) At signalized intersections, especially ones that allow right turns on red, drivers look for oncoming car traffic, barely recognizing any other sort of user, while pedestrians (and cyclists) have to have “blind faith” that drivers are watching out for them. At least at the mid-block, no one has any such faith – it’s a free-for-all – so pedestrians are naturally more cautious, assuming that drivers will act selfishly and predictably. It’s when drivers suddenly become unselfish and/or unpredictable (drunk) that it becomes so dangerous.
This is right about where Hans Monderman might come in… His approach, implemented in some locations, was to deliberately remove those guides, cues, signage that could lull participants in traffic into thinking someone else/the system was taking care of them, with the idea that if everyone is required to expect anything they’ll be more cautious, more attentive, more perspicacious. And thus be less likely to run into or over someone else.
Yes. Almost all my close calls (or they would be, if I wasn’t watching out for them) as a pedestrian happen when I’m crossing with the signal in crosswalks, and drivers either 1) make right turns into me (or where I’d be if I wasn’t anticipating their turning without looking), or 2) oncoming drivers make left turns into me (or where I’d be), or 3) as soon as the light turns green for me to cross, drivers in the front who were thinking the light was going to change for them instead of for me take off directly into my path, then stop suddenly in mid-crosswalk when they realize the light didn’t change for them.
The other dangerous situation for me is crossing at an unsignaled, unmarked crossing, when some drivers may stop, and others zip around them into my path.
I never have close calls when jaywalking, because I don’t have to rely on drivers obeying laws and giving me the right-of-way.
On the subject of danger in crosswalks, here’s an example I’ve posted before of Swiss crosswalks: https://bikeportland.org/2014/06/20/pbot-ad-campaign-drivers-slow-107630#comment-5092741
Drivers can do the most damage, that’s why. Those who can do the most harm should have the law fall most heavily upon them.
It sucks out here. Powell, for example, has no sidewalks from 122nd out to around 181st-ish (haven’t paid much attention after). Really, aside from a couple of random blocks there isn’t a sidewalk starting at I205. Along with that many of the main streets, and side streets for that matter, are poorly lit. Most will only have street lights on one side. That’s a big deal for visibility on the main streets. You can also forget about ADA accessible sidewalks. I can’t imagine being in a wheel chair or some other disability. Try “walking” west on Holgate from 122nd; you’ll find sidewalks that suddenly disappear, no easy way to cross the street unless you are able to run and/or be willing to play chicken, and again forget trying to get off a sidewalk w/wheelchair. You can imagine what biking is like… Try biking north-south without being on one of the big streets. It’s a zigzag that includes scary crossings at most of the arterials.. I can go on and on and on.. East of 205 has been ignored for far too long and we are seeing the consequences.
What would be better? A mount hood highway? A sidewalk? Or a multi use bike path? I think the last option is probably the best one which is what already exists.
We only get one? Bike path or sidewalk, but not both?
Multimodal is a theme that gets tossed around all the time at PBOT. I mean, east portland could’ve gotten more if they would’ve built a freeway. Imagine a tri- met fork serving Se Portland running alongside of it…. but that was voted down by a “hero.” Now instead we are left with the current, unimproved road.
Were you offering to have the mt hood freeway built through the middle of your neighborhood? Perhaps I’ve missed some history here.
I would wholeheartedly give my house up for a Mt Hood Expressway. Especially in the current Portland climate, who really does have roots? Houses getting demolished, 550 people moving in every week…roads getting edited. We are and have been aggressively changing whatever culture Portland thought it had for the culture of others. See the article about the Californian Fixed Gear trick fellows. So yes, I’d take a “protected” freeway to avoid any absurd future PBOT projects. I’d also the be a bit more agreeable when it comes to protected bike and bus lanes.
“Especially in the current Portland climate, who really does have roots.”
I would be careful extrapolating from your experience.
I actually had my house proposed for condemnation for a transportation project, and it’s not something to be casual or flippant about.
I guess they could have gotten more, but it would have meant tearing down thousands of houses, destroying hundreds of neighborhoods, and relocating thousands of people to get it and we STILL would have an options-desert. Your solution is no solution at all– I have to assume you don’t live out in that area, or you moved in sometime in the last decade, and you drive or get driven everywhere you need to go out there.
I cycle daily. Lived here long enough to see both sides. I travel when needed and when I do it usually involves Powell or Foster.
9 and Q, thanks for the heads up.
I lived in inner Portland for 9 years (Goose Hollow & Sullivan’s Gulch) with sidewalks and bike lanes everywhere, then East Portland for 8 years (Hazelwood) with sidewalks and bike lanes here and there but missing where you really need them. I now live in an East Coast city that is essentially worse off than even East Portland, but it is everywhere, all neighborhoods citywide, so the inequity is purely equitable – we all of us live in an unwalkable unbikable city, so there is none of the “us” versus “them” mentality that Portland has. Black areas are just as badly or well off as white areas, wealth versus poverty, they all suck. And for that equity of inequity, I like it here better than I ever did in Portland – people here are quite frankly a lot nicer to each other.
it’s worse than “ignoring”, this city is intentionally neglecting outer east portland. the city of portland has been sitting on fully funded north-south neighborhood greenways with improved crossings at arterials for many years. for example the 130s neighborhood greenway was approved by council in 2013, was delayed in 2014-2015, was supposed to be built in 2017, was pushed back to 2018, and have now been pushed back to 2019.
will it ever be built? who knows?
and there 3 other funded greenways, not including the 4M neighborhood greenway which was cancelled by hales and steve novick the darling of active transportation advocates).
You are fundamentally correct, except the 130s was approved by PBOT as early as 2010 and funded in 2012, delayed ever since with various flimsy excuses. The 4M is much older – it was a signed county route from the 80s, but never upgraded by the city. The 100s and 150s are funded and designed, but also delayed. T-HOP is still “in design” I believe. Hales I would describe as a fearless cyclist who like many inner Portland riders saw East Portland as a hurdle to be passed through (I’ve ridden with him, he’s really quite fast and fearless.) Novick was more sympathetic, more of an ally for East Portland; as long as we supported SW Portland projects, and we did, he supported ours in East Portland.
Sad!
I believe this is an ODOT stroad. Where could they find a few extra million to fix this death trap? I wonder.
It could be fixed overnight with less than $100,000 with lots of cones, hay, and paint
Now five.
http://portlandtribune.com/pt/9-news/390446-281947-pedestrian-killed-in-swan-island-crash
A 4 am accident, in an industrial area – kind of odd.
not that odd when you realize there are places down there that work 24 hr shifts.
Ah, you’re right.
Actually in my reading of how Vision Zero has been set up, it pretty much does boil down to drivers. Sure there is something for everyone to do, but the only reason anyone thought to dream up this strategy is because of what drivers have bequeathed us. The Vision Zero language I’m familiar with wastes nary on word on berating pedestrians to pay more attention, or for cyclists to take more responsibility. If you can find copy that does this I’d be curious to see it.
You live in nice liberal Oregon. Try conservative North Carolina’s Vision Zero FAQ page:
https://ncvisionzero.org/faq/
First cars, then bicycles, then cars, cars, cars, cars, then motorcycles, then peds, then cars (crossing railroad tracks), cars, cars, school buses, cars, and finally, cars. Yeah, it’s mostly cars, but please note that there’s nothing about using public transit, passenger rail, electric bikes, AV, freight, etc. And they have the same hokey messages about using helmets and high-vis clothing, even though they admit it isn’t legally required.
Hm. That’s pretty weird. It looks to me like they took whatever website they had and renamed it ncvisionzero without any content change. I didn’t see much there that reads like vision zero.
You’ve pretty much summed up most NC transportation legislation – rehashing old laws with new pretty names.
Maybe there’s a reason it’s called Carolina and not Bikolina or Walkolina.
To stereotype–is it a Southern thing? Does Jim Crow transfer to every application?
Fun facts about vision zero never assigning blame to pedestrians:
https://bikeportland.org/2014/06/20/pbot-ad-campaign-drivers-slow-107630#comment-5094892
Once again lay the blame on the driver, because a pedestrian is never at fault for running into traffic without looking, or walking across a rail line with out looking. Then throw out vision zero because you don’t want to take responsibility for your actions. You want to foist it all on drivers.
Infrastructure is great, but only if it inconveniences drivers. Well, you did the road diets and now you have to put up more and more diverters because you inconvenienced drivers into using side streets. More and more infrastructure is going to go into place and it’s going to inconvenience driver’s, cyclists and pedestrians, because we are trying to fix infrastructure that was never designed with vision zero in mind. But you don’t want that inconvenience so the heck with the rules.
Are you responding to anyone in particular here?
“…we are trying to fix infrastructure that was never designed with vision zero in mind.”
Isn’t that the whole point? If the infrastructure was designed that way in the first place, it wouldn’t need fixing now.
The article doesn’t say a thing about blaming the driver.
I’ve never seen a comment within an article or in the comments here that has ever claimed that pedestrians are never at fault.
I see lots of support here for separate paths for biking and walking that don’t inconvenience drivers, and in fact drivers support them as well.
I’ve never seen a comment here where someone doesn’t want to take responsibility for their actions and instead wants to foist their responsibilities on drivers.
And it makes no sense for you to claim anyone is simultaneously putting all the blame on drivers while they’re also saying we need better infrastructure. If they’re putting all the blame on drivers, they wouldn’t be even mentioning infrastructure.
I spend a lot of time in the “numbers” and I see vast amounts of unsafe driving, it’s startling…