I feel like many people commenting are not familiar with walkable streets. They have however been very common for most of the time in history. Using the sidewalk is not really a good substitute for that. I used to live in a neighborhood where there were so many people on the streets on weekends, that u wouldn’t want to drive there even if it was technically a street. The quality of life there was amazing especially in the evening and on weekends.
Posts like this are part of the reason why the rest of us don’t take you people seriously.
I do that all the time here in Europe and nobody gets mad. It’s such an immense space and I don’t want to be relegated to 30cm of sidewalk. People hang out in the streets and car drivers are chill
I think it still very much depends where in Europe you do that
Looks like a small neighborhood.
I like it.
Cars shouldn’t get priority.
Exactly.
Personally, I make an effort to walk in the street whenever possible, even when there’s a sidewalk. Not when there are lots of cars around, and not right in the middle. Just enough to claim the space.
Walking on them is literally the entire purpose of sidewalks. I mean its right there in the name. This picture is exactly why - so they’re safe from cars and don’t obstruct drivers. Your opinion of cars is completely immaterial when determining who is being reasonable in this context.
I couldnt disagree more with you. If there are pedestrians nearby you drive slow and keep your distance regardless of where you drive.
The same goes for pedestrians, though. Don’t walk where it’s not safe, for everyones safety. Like the interstate. It’s a shared responsibility.
This, however, is in the middle of a neighborhood where a ball and a kid could come flying at moments notice…
I don’t disagree with you on a rational level, but on a human level, it just sometimes feels nice to walk a different route, to not be forced to walk in exactly a straight line, especially with a ridiculously narrow sidewalk like that.
And that’s then where the opinion of cars comes in. I’m not supposed to do what I feel like, because some guy with a car decides to head on through. If I think cars are vital to humanity, I’ll gladly do the rational thing. If I think cars are killing humanity, then sincerely fuck that noise.
Holy Entitlement.
“Yeah, there’s this whole path for pedestrians, and that whole path for cars, but sometimes I just want to be on the car one for no reason, so cars should be inconvenienced for that.”
TBH I think that the demeanor of „why can’t I have 80% public city land for me“ sounds way more like entitlement for me. That is for me the reason why I found the original post so interesting.
Do you have any idea how often pedestrians are inconvenienced by cars? We have to beg to cross streets and only where it is designated, busniesses are farther away and hidden behind vast parking lots, we are subject to their exhaust noise and fumes just about everywhere, and in many places we neglect nearly every form of travel that isnt a car.
It isn’t like the car can’t still get down the road, they just have to do it at a safe speed and be aware of the pedestrians. This is a neighbourhood not a highway.
I mean, say what you will about cars but the sidewalk is a dedicated lane for pedestrians. Walk on the street, fuck around and find out.
Fuck around and find out is a pretty shitty attitude towards people sharing a street. Is that the excuse you will give a parent after injuring a kid that chased a ball onto the street? It isn’t like this is a highway, people have homes on the street. The street is not exclussively for cars, cars just tend to get the most space and priority.
Plus if you’re walking in the road walk against the flow of cars not with. That way if a drunk driver (or just general asshole) comes swerving down the road you can see it and react.
I’d like to know why this was downvoted. Walking against the flow of traffic so you can see what’s coming is sensible advice.
Walking maybe, but bicycles that do this are morons. It’s been proven over and over that it’s unsafe yet they continue doing it — is no one curious about “hey I don’t know if that’s safe, I should check online?”
Nobody mentioned bicycles.
my dad always said: walk facing toward traffic, and make eye contact with drivers, so they can be haunted by your face for the rest of their lives if they run you over.
Or you could just use the sidewalk?
A lot of the places I lived growing up didn’t have sidewalks.
Rural roads man.
Maybe they do it to slow down traffic. It’s clearly a residential area. It could be that speeding is a problem.
It’s been tried and tested. Human bodies barely slow a car down. It’s much better to place something solid, like a concrete block
Part of the problems is humans won’t damage the paint on the cars. You want drivers to slow down, make them worry about their paint tends to be more effective than making them worry about hitting a pedestrian.
People from Bakersfield walk on the street, all over. Once you get used to it though it’s really not that difficult to live with. I imagine if people still used roads for walking like before cars, we could figure it out.
There are so many worse things about Bakersfield, this doesn’t even rank.
