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.
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.
Uh, I did? I’m not allowed to mention things now? This community is intolerable
It may not have been your intention, but if you re-read the thread, you’ll see that you’re seemingly arguing for downvoting the advice of walking against the flow of traffic by bringing up bikes for no reason.
Bringing up bikes changes the point as bikes and pedestrians have different road use rules
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.
90% of the streets in my neighborhood don’t have sidewalks and I live in a major city. Exactly half of one side of my block has a sidewalk
Unfortunately, you probably live in a formerly red lined area. This is a vestige of the past institutional racism from your city. But setting that aside, I was referring to the actual sidewalk present in the photo
One example: 47°42’58.8"N 122°18’21.3"W
no, it’s not redlining, these are the neighborhoods redlining was keeping black people out of.
cute attempt at whatever that was tho.
Nope
I’m aware, but in this exact picture, there is a sidewalk.
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.
Don’t share the street is what I’m getting at. I can’t and won’t share the sidewalk with my car, why should I share the street with pedestrians? The picture in the OP is not a kid running into the street for a sec to get a runaway ball. It’s people walking down the street with a sidewalk mere feet away from them. This isn’t the 1800s where there is no sidewalk and you had to contend with horses. Now there are multiple thousand pound death machines. Have a little regard for your own safety and use the dedicated lanes for people.
Drivers are expected to share the street with cyclists, in many places it is the law to provide a minimum distance for a cyclist. On a residential street like this, i don’t see how some pedeatrians are a real problem or risk unless the driver is already driving unsafely. The street is not exclusively yours because you bought a car.
That’s because bikes are more car like in operation than pedestrian. Else the sidewalk would be more appropriate for a bike.
Really, bikes should have their own dedicated lanes too (which some cities do have). Or laws should be changed to allow cyclists to share the sidewalk with pedestrians, but that’s a controversial opinion. I know in my city, cyclists are a whole other issue - they flout all the laws by riding the wrong way down the street, switching from the road to the sidewalk without getting off their bikes, they run red lights and stop signs, and yet when they get hit by a vehicle somehow it’s the vehicle driver’s fault. But that’s an entirely different conversation.
It’s still a multi thousand pound machine with a fallible human operator. Better to be in a space not designated for it.
Edit to be clear the fault would generally rest with the driver, but pedestrian driver interactions should be limited at all costs
It’s not a good idea to share the street when there’s a sidewalk. In that equation a car always wins
Walk on the street, fuck around and find out.
Maybe we need to bring back blóðhefnd . If a driver murders someone with their reckless driving, maybe they should live the rest of their life in fear that the surviving kin will do the same to them or their lived ones.
If you are walking on the street when there’s a sidewalk you as the pedestrian are being reckless.
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.
You can fit like 3-4 cars on there. Why not half that space and extend the sidewalk then? You could not walk next to each other on those or pass others, let alone someone in a wheelchair or with a stroller. Or better, have all the cars park outside of the residential areas and use the space for parks, playgrounds, and other leisure stuff.
Sounds great but not really applicable to the photo, where a driver and pedestrians are trying to use the space, “today”
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.
But for the current day driver trying to drive safely, the die is already cast.
It’s shitty no matter who is doing it.
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.
These people aren’t crossing the road, they’re walking along it.
So they are road users? Pedestrians are not excluded from residential streets.
Not legally, no. At least not in my state.
But they should be. This is ridiculous.
It is ridiculous that people are using the street in their own neighbourhood? Did you never get to play street hockey as kid? Maybe wheels chairs can’t handle the cracks on the sidewalk? Do you really want to ban people from their own streets?
How about we ban cars from pedestrian areas instead?
deleted by creator
So maybe we need bigger sidewalks. Fair enough, that’s a reasonable discussion. Taking over the entire road is not.
deleted by creator
From a safety perspective, pedestrians in a road is already a huge issue.
Like, the area should be changed. I totally agree with the idea of vastly increasing DESIGNATED pedestrian space.
But for this driver on this day, they are using the infrastructure as designated. The street pedestrians are not, and are putting themselves at risk in the current system. A driver not wanting a high risk pass with a pedestrian, while a sidewalk exists in the current system is not entitled.
It’s the same as if someone was uphill hiking on a designated downhill mountain bike ONLY trail. It isn’t wrong for the cyclist in that equation to be mad if they come across a hiker on a non shared trail.
This is how a neighbourhood street should look like. Note the sign saying “auto te gast”, meaning “cars only as guests”, basically meaning, you can drive here, but rolling footballs and kids skipping around, and people just walking have right of way, you can’t disturb people living their lives.
I get that’s not how it’s set up on the OP, but hell, why is this not the case?
I’m excited for the day I’m coming home from work at night, coming over a hill I can’t see over, and then BOOM a human is in the middle of the road and I run someone over, because they “deserve to use the road as a pedestrian”
Cool. I’ll tell that to my therapist for the rest of my life while I try and cope with the fact that I’ve ended a life.
It’s one thing for someone to walk down the street and put themselves at risk.
It’s an entirely different deal to force an unsuspecting person into a dangerous situation. That’s fucking selfish.
deleted by creator
MLK argued that change requires agitation. Since cars should be mostly banned from pedestrian areas I fully support any effort to retake space and to inconvience cars. Any effort to make driving more painful for others chips away at car dependency
The road is not a pedestrian area.
The infrastructure should be changed, but the driver is not in a pedestrian area.
Further, risking your safety and potentially setting an innocent person up for an accident is a dick move.
Advocate for change. I’m into that. Smart towns and cities are making progress and I’m all for it. Don’t put people at risk.
What a gross ideology.
Y’know what? You’re right! Sometimes it’s nice to drive a different route too, I think I’ll drive on the sidewalk all the way to the store today, thanks for the encouragement!
Always glad to be of help.
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…
Posts like this are part of the reason why the rest of us don’t take you people seriously.
Closely related to, “I abuse animals because a vegan was mean to me once.”
Comments like this are part of the reason why the rest of us call your delusional state of mind “car brain”.
I kinda understand him. If I have a sidewalk, I use it, simply because I don’t want to fucking get run over by a car. However, the comments are also quite disgusting.
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
Italy, to be exact. Maybe doing the same in Germany would make me end up with a fine
Yeah, in Germany you would maybe get in trouble, however this really, depends on where you’re walking. But usually our sidewalks are big enough(as long as it isn’t completely blocked by parking cars) so that you can walk there safely.
This is more a case of Germany’s excessively law-abiding culture, IMO. It’s the same in East Asia: people waiting like zombies at a red pedestrian light even tho there’s not a car in sight.
That’s also true
Definitely not true in residential areas of Germany.
I don’t know where you live, but for my village I can say, that our sidewalks are big enough to comfortably walk there.
Unfortunately that is very likely.
I do the same in Japan. Most residential streets don’t have sidewalks so we share them with cars, pedestrians and bicycles. Some of the bigger streets have quite wide sidewalks (one car lane’s width or more) so I would use those.
But in this photo, the sidewalks are minuscule. I especially understand the dog walker choosing the road instead.
I’m happy that my town has started to widen sidewalks and reduce the width of roads to promote more foot traffic in the downtown area.
I lived in Morocco for three years and there it’s more common to walk in the street than on the sidewalk. Compared to the other places I’ve lived (Northern Europe), it’s strange, and the driving is more reckless, but no drivers got mad. Walking in the street is just what people do.
Removed by mod
The neighborhood should be rebuilt with much wider sidewalks, for safety.
Cue the chasing goose: safety from what? Finish the sentence, safety from what?
Review my comments in this post. No one is arguing that the safety from what is CARS. that’s not the point.
The point is about the system as it currently stands, today.
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.
We need a “fuck pedestrians” instance for this one guys
But there is a sidewalk. I’m also wondering why these people are walking on the street
If they’re gonna walk in the street, I guess I’ll drive on the sidewalk. 🤷🏻♂️
All for reducing or eliminating cars; but I’m not going to act like this ain’t fucking stupid.
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.
Hay man, one of the lowest costs of living and average income ratios in the county. Also people get all ‘‘oh no’’ about crime rates, but it’s really not significant for people who go to bed at 9pm to 10pm and aren’t actively entrepreneurs of the night in any capacity. A lot of crime is criminal on criminal.
We don’t have sidewalks in my community. Kids play in the streets and people are out walking on them all the time. Pushing strollers, walking their dogs, etc. The real difference is everyone is respectful. Cars drive slow and slow down more to go by giving extra space. Folks on the road move over and let the car go by. Kids collect up and move out of the way. A lot of the folks walking their dogs will step into the grass and wait. Everyone waves at each other. It’s like having a nice little community of friends that I never have to actually talk to. After living here for almost two years I strongly believe that I could stop and ask for help from any of them and I’d do the same. Kind of crazy reflecting on being that I’ve only ever talked to a few people, one of which only because she does crossing guard duties for the school crosswalk I take my son to in the golf cart.
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.
Not enough context is given to know if weather or not that is true here or not. Such roads are rare, while I like them, this does not look like one of those situations froma glance. Therefore cars kill, gtfo the road.
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.
Just fill your pockets with balloons full of brake fluid. That way when someone hits you their car gets covered in brake fluid, ruining the paint job.
I was assuming a rational driver who would slow down to avoid hitting people.
And the accidental driver? A life is lost.
Using a human body as traffic calming is psycho mode zoning use change
I’m wondering if this is sheer desperation on the part of the locals. Maybe speeding is a problem, but the town refuses to install speed humps, so people do this to make the neighborhood safer for children. I don’t know.
I recommend tires and rebar impregnated concrete rubble. Not human lives.
You don’t deserve more space just because you bought F150.
If there were a bunch of cars in the driveways blocking the sidewalk I would agree, or if they had strollers or something with wheels that could get bumpy on the cracks, but since neither of those are true I’m with OOP on this one.
