Today’s Headlines

  • Proposal Urging Free Muni for Youth Moves Through Supes Committee (City Insider)
  • Man Struck By Driver In Chinatown Sunday Has Died From the Injuries (SF Appeal)
  • CPUC Bans Rail Transit Operators From Using All Portable Wireless Devices (Mercury News)
  • Minivan Driver Crashes Into Cable Car (SF Examiner)
  • Driver Who Rear-Ended Car Near USF On Life-Support (BCN via SF Examiner)
  • “Beginnings of a Transformation in Mid-Market” (Bay Citizen)
  • Scaffolding Finally Removed From Sidewalk at Lyon/Golden Gate After 3 Years (Bike NoPa)
  • CHSRA Hires First Liaison to Work With State Legislature (SF Examiner)
  • Can High-Speed Rail Be Saved? (Infrastructurist)
More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill
  • Anonymous

    Yet another pedestrian/cyclist death at the hands of a car ….

    Here’s my problem with all this. Sure, pedestrians shouldn’t jaywalk, but there is no reason we need to have designed our cities (which, by the way, should be for *people* first and cars last) so that when, as a pedestrian, cyclists, or other vulvnerable road-user, you screw-up, your punishment is effing death. That is a ridiculous and unlivable environment. In a pedestrian/cyclist vs. auto collision, regardless of who’s at fault, the pedestrian/cyclists always pays the price, and therein is the problem with our urban design. If some idiot jaywalks without looking and walks in front of car, they shouldn’t have to be seriously injured or even die from it. That’s just terrible urban design. Who wants to live in such a rigid, non-flexible society where the price you pay for a mistake is serious injure or death? Good god do we need to change this and take our cities back from cars. Why does a decision as basic as deciding where to cross a street (again, which should be primarily for moving people and their goods, not cars) have to be literally a life-or-death decision?

  • mikesonn

    It’s a car’s world, we are just toiling in it.

  • Davistrain

    But remember, if there aren’t people driving them, cars just sit there.  And, except for homicidal maniacs, drivers don’t get in their cars with the intent of mowing down hapless pedestrians.  They’re trying to get somewhere, hopefully without any mishaps.

  • mikesonn

    “cars just sit there”

    Yeah, wasting huge amounts of valuable space. And yes, most drivers don’t want to hurt anyone, but it happens with alarming regularity.

  • Anonymous

    I understand very well that motorists aren’t trying to hurt anyone. You
    are missing my point, which is: we have designed ourselves into a
    system that is unforgiving and unsafe (and unsustainable, but that’s
    another issue), and by someone making a mistake, the pedestrian and
    cyclist pay the price. *Nobody* should have to pay with serious injury
    or death just trying to move down the streets, even if they make a
    mistake. If you are walking amongst pedestrians and you screw up and
    say, walk backwards without looking and bump into somebody, you don’t
    have to worry about serious injury or death like you do with cars. We
    shouldn’t have created such a system where 4,000 lb vehicles whose
    drivers senses are dulled and who are distracted are negotiating the
    same space as pedestrians and cyclists. I’m not blaming the motorists
    directly, but the whole system that has allowed it to come to this. We
    have completely forgotten that cities are about *people*, not cars.

  • SeventhLaguna

    In dense urban areas with lots of foot traffic, there shouldn’t be such a concept as jay-walking. People should be able to cross as they please. Remember: the crosswalk is a relatively new phenomenon which isn’t for the benefit of “pedestrians” – it’s to keep them out of the way of people driving.