How Do We Protect Pedestrians?


Lynn Lindgren-Schreuder is executive director of the Willamette Pedestrian Coalition

Do we need better infrastructure for pedestrians? Should new infrastructure spending be primarily on roads? What do we tell the young girl whose mother died on January 7th while walking along Columbia Boulevard in an area that is dark, with no sidewalks or crosswalks?

Where is the public outrage when a pedestrian is killed? The driver was not impaired and was not charged with a crime. Pedestrians in the roadway have no legal footing. The least we can do is insure there is a safe place to walk. And make sure that infrastructure investments improve safety for everyone.


30 responses to “How Do We Protect Pedestrians?”

  1. “Where is the public outrage when a pedestrian is killed?”

    Drivers21,64722,83123,23723,15823,35223,62522,91422,91422,97122,65422,73022,57222,37021,596
    Passengers8,6579,1879,75010,04210,17110,37010,22710,45110,32510,32710,76510,86010,57610,294
    Unknown9710183761041101028696107114102118108
    Sub Total130,40132,11933,07033,27633,62734,10533,24333,45133,39233,08833,60933,53433,06431,998
    Motorcyclists5,1544,8374,5764,0283,7143,2703,1972,8972,4832,2942,1162,1612,2272,320
    Nonmotorist
    Pedestrians4,6544,7954,8924,6754,7744,8514,9014,7634,9395,2285,3215,4495,5845,489
    Pedalcyclists698772786727629665732693754760814765833802
    Other/Unknown152185186130140114123141149131153154109107
    Sub Total25,5045,7525,8645,5325,5435,6305,7565,5975,8426,1196,2886,3686,5266,398
    Total*41,05942,70843,51042,83642,88443,00542,19641,94541,71741,50142,01342,06541,81740,716

    If you can make out that chart what you see is that the number of pedestrian deaths is about 1/4 the number of motorist deaths.

    Where should the outrage be targeted?

  2. If you can make out that chart what you see is that the number of pedestrian deaths is about 1/4 the number of motorist deaths. Where should the outrage be targeted?

    I think there’s plenty of outrage to go around about preventable deaths…

    However, we are often reminded on this blog to take deaths-per-passenger-mile into consideration, or in this case, deaths-per-walking mile.

    Percentage-wise, pedestrians have a much higher likelihood of being killed in an automobile-related incident per mile travelled.

  3. “Percentage-wise, pedestrians have a much higher likelihood of being killed in an automobile-related incident per mile travelled.”

    Hahahaha…

    Leave it to BOB R,

    master moderator,

    to come up with some way to show my logic is WRONG!

    Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

    Well Mr Moderator,

    I put forth the argument that it is not miles,

    but, PEOPLE, that count!

  4. Autos not only kill by hitting people, they also kill us slowly with air toxins…see current issue of PSU’s Metroscape for article “Spatial Patterns of Air Toxins in the Region” by Vivek Shandas and Linda George.
    Fewer motor vehicles, slower motor vehicles and yes, cleaner motor vehicles all make for healthier, friendlier, safer communities.
    Then there are the toxins in the Rivers…see today’s Oregonian. A high percentage of the pollutants captured by the CSO project in Portland…paid for by rate payers…comes from oil, gas and rubber debris left by motor vehicles. Time to quit pissing in our rivers.

  5. There was a study done in LA that said more people die from air pollution caused by cars than by cars “accidents.” Of course, most of the people that die are the poor that can’t afford things like asthma medication, so in addition to needing to clean up our air, pollution taxes would be a very good way to fund nationalized health care…

    As for the question of, where is the outrage: Will there be a march or a demonstration or something? Every time a bicyclist is killed, the cycling community gets together and goes on a bicycle ride, (or several,) and puts up a white bicycle and other things. In some of the recent cases, they got the site where the person was killed dedicated as a memorial, and another one of the cases spurred hundreds of thousands of dollars in bicycle safety improvements around town. And it gets pasted all of the media because the bicycle community knows how to get media attention. Where is the pedestrian community on this? If I was a better person I’d offer to organize that march, but I’m not… However, if someone else organizes it, I will show up.

  6. “If you can make out that chart what you see is that the number of pedestrian deaths is about 1/4 the number of motorist deaths.

    Where should the outrage be targeted?” -al m

    You’re comparing two different things.

    Pedestrian deaths are completely avoidable. One cannot operate an automobile without some consequence such as injury or death – it comes with the territory. People are operating death-mobiles, afterall (anytime you’re behind a vessel that is moving, there is some level of danger – airplanes, trains, cars, etc.).

    Pedestrian deaths invoke more outrage because it is a benign mode of transportation and is usually at the hand of poorly designed streets and automobiles (that’s not to say pedestrians aren’t to blame in some cases).

    When you see pedestrian on pedestrian collisions that result in death, we’ll agree with you and be “outraged” along with cars deaths.

  7. we’ll agree with you and be “outraged” along with cars deaths.

    RIGHT!

    It’s one outrage, not multiple outrages.

    Dead is dead, and it is all do the automobile!

    9/11 kills 3000 and we go to war.

    The automobile kills 50,000 and nobody raises an eyebrow.

    That my friends, is the power of the

    M-E-D-I-A!

  8. Matthew: I don’t understand why you put accidents in quotes, with the exception of drivers who are impaired in one way or another, I’m sure that the vast majority of drivers don’t have any intention of hitting another car, a bicyclist, a person on foot, etc.

    Just the other day I was riding my bike home on the section of the Springwater that runs next to the Willamette, there was someone walking on the path up ahead, in a straight line, so I moved to the left to pass them. Just as I got close to her she took a 90 degree turn and went right in front of me. Fortunately I had enough time to break, but there was only a foot between her and I, and had I been a second or so faster I would have really put a hurt on her.

    Should I have rung my bell when I got close to her? Probably so, but she was walking in a straight line and I didn’t see any reason for her to cross the path (there’s just a chain link fence on that side, and it was dark). I could have put her in the hospital, but that doesn’t make it any less of an accident.

    The same thing can happen with a car, and of course the stakes generally are higher. A family friend lost their daughter because she ran out into the street to retrieve a ball without looking out for traffic. There was no time for the driver of the car to react… do you put sarcastic quote marks around “accident” there?

    It may be that some large percentage of accidents are not accidents at all, but that doesn’t mean they’re all due to negligence, malice, intoxication, etc. Even something as simple as putting sarcastic quotation marks around accident can poison a discussion, turning it into an “us vs. them” sort of thing. What good can come out of turning motorists into the enemy? For that matter, the last 8 years should hopefully have taught us that not much good comes out of demonizing the other side.

    I feel like the main lesson we should learn from this particular tragedy is that EVERY road–major and minor–should have a sidewalk for pedestrians. Suggesting that car accidents are not accidents at all really does nothing in the long term to prevent something like this from happening again.

  9. Traffic fatalities are very preventable, not just in theory, but in practice. The US has a very high fatality rate per mile compared to the rest of the developed world. Sweden has a goal of zero traffic fatalities, and while they haven’t met it, they are trying, and making a lot of progress, where as in the US, our fatality rate per mile traveled has been pretty stagnant for 20 years or so. Therefore, the fact that we don’t prevent traffic fatalities doesn’t make them accidents, it technically makes them negligent manslaughter. And the fact that we treat it as acceptable, going as far as to design into our roads a certain level of risk doesn’t make it any more appropriate. If our highways were factories, OHSA would have arrested the owners and shut them down a long time ago.

    However, apparently there is more outrage directed at me and my use of quotes than people that are killing each other? That is sad.

    But I’m glad you brought up your examples. There is no, “probably should have rung a bell,” about it. Legally, you have to use a bell (or give an audible warning) when you pass someone on a bicycle. You may not like to do it all the time, especially at rush hour when there are a lot of people, (I don’t like it either,) but that it the law, and it is there for a reason, as you noticed.

    And I’m sorry for your friend’s loss. The city is trying to lobby the state for the right to lower the speed limit on residential streets to prevent deaths like that in the future. The fact that the city can’t even do this without the state’s permission shows you how bad this problem is.

    As for sidewalks, that is good, but we’ve got a lot of streets without sidewalks and we could easily go bankrupt before we got them all built. The solution that they use in Sweden is that streets without sidewalks have a speed limit of 30 kpm, (or a little less than 20 mph.)

  10. Matthew:

    European cities have much stricter regulations for their age limits on driving (18 in most places). This is one of the reasons that they have lower death rates, but not the only. Doing so in America would cut a lot of deaths.

    It would be difficult for many parents to have their kids drive at 18 in America. Much of our country is built for the automobile. Increasing the age limit would a)socially deprive children b) make parents be chaperons for 18+ years

    You can get away with this in tight-knit European cities, where the automobile is a good transportation option, but does not limit you entirely if you do not own one.

    A simple sign stating “20 mph” does not slow anyone down. We need to build roads where it would feel uncomfortable to drive 25 mph for that sign to even be effective.

    We over design way too many of our roads here. They’re way too wide.

  11. “A simple sign stating “20 mph” does not slow anyone down.”

    It would with some enforcement. Europeans recognize that speeding is dangerous, and so when you get caught speeding in Europe, it can be a lot of money, for instance, a guy got a 170,000 euro ticket for doing double the speed limit in Finland:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3477285.stm

    Where is the US on this? I’ll give one example: the state told the city of Coburg a couple of years ago, that even though they only wanted to ticket the people on I-5 doing 80 mph and above, that the freeway was the state police’s jurisdiction, and that the city couldn’t give tickets on it. And because of budget cuts there are only about 3 state police officers in the state anyways, so you can drive through Coburg at 80 mph now, and not get a ticket. Keep in mind that if you hit a pothole, pop a tire, and lose control of your car at 80 mph, the chance that you’ll die is fairly high. (And if you haven’t noticed I-5 recently, well, there are potholes.)

  12. Regadless of whether or not a lower speed limit would have led to a chance that the child would have survived (and I recognize that that’s the case), that doesn’t change the fact that the car hitting the child was indeed an accident. The purpose of that story was to illustrate that not every case of a car hitting a pedestrian is due to negligence, malice, intoxication, etc. Sometimes, I’d even say often, an accident is just an accident. Using language that universally lays the blame at the feet of motorists does nothing more than make your arguments easy to dismiss.

  13. There is no, “probably should have rung a bell,” about it. Legally, you have to use a bell (or give an audible warning) when you pass someone on a bicycle.

    I am going to play lawyer for a moment.

    ORS actually specifies only that this is a requirement on a “sidewalk”. On a “bike path” or “multi-use path” this gets trickier. I would say there is no 100% cut and dried answer. I did find a good description from Oregon Cycling magazine:

    Multi-use paths
    Pedestrian rights on multi-use paths are a little confusing because the term “multi-use path” is a traffic engineering term that is not defined in the Oregon Vehicle Code. However, the Oregon Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan (ODOT, 2d ed., 1995) defines “multi-use path” as “a path physically separate from motor vehicle traffic by an open space or barrier and either within a highway right of way or within an independent right of way used by bicyclist, pedestrians, joggers, skaters and other non-motorized travelers.”

    It seems pretty clear that the laws of sidewalks apply to pedestrians on multi-use paths. However, legal confusion begins when a multi-use path is also a “bicycle path”. The Oregon Vehicle Code defines “bicycle path” as “a public way, not part of a highway, that is designated by officials signs or marking for use by persons riding bicycles, except as otherwise specifically provided by law.” ORS 801.160.

    Since many “bicycle paths” are also “multi-use paths”, and the Oregon Vehicle Code has never been updated to include the concept of multi-use paths, many of Oregon’s waterway promenades, linear trials, and trail corridors are probably “sidewalks”, “multi-use paths” and “bicycle paths” all at the same time, depending upon location relative to a roadway.
    Shoulders, multi-use paths, bike lanes & sidewalks

    Anyway, basically you should always provide some sort of a warning. But just as in most legal issues, there are a lot of variables and no absolutes. That is why we have the judicial system.

    Also, this one could be very hard to “prove”. Someone could give a warning that someone else does not hear. Someone could say they gave a warning when they did not. Someone could hear a warning but claim there was none. What constitutes an audible warning? How far does your legal requirement to overcome background noise go (like on the Esplanaude under the Morrison Bridge)?

    Lots and Lots and Lots of gray area.

    Of course, the original intent of the comments along this line were that “accidents” whether in quotes or not – do happen, often despite the best intentions. Anyone could be a victim and anyone could be the cause. Try and be safe when transporting. :)

  14. ws Says:
    “So you’re suggesting we give out tickets larger than a person’s annual income in order to enforce speed limits?”

    You said that people wouldn’t drive 20 mph just cause a sign says that, and I’m pointing out that, yes there are ways to make people follow a sign, and in fact civilized countries, (we are talking Finland, not North Korea,) have done it. But what would you suggest, taking away licenses? That seems fair. They are clearly unfit to drive if they can’t follow a very simple sign…

  15. There really is no such thing as an accident. “Accidents” are either avoidable or they are acts of God.

    True, collisions are not always the fault of drivers, cyclists or pedestrians. Sometimes they’re caused by poorly maintained or designed right of way or manufacturing defects in vehicles or even footwear. But in these cases they still could have been prevented.

    Most road collisions aren’t thoroughly investigated. Law enforcement agencies don’t begin to get enough money for that. On the other hand almost all aviation accidents are very thoroughly scrutinized with investigations that can last for years. In these cases, preventable human error almost always is faulted by the NTSB. Sometimes its aircraft maintenance or design, but usually the pilot or pilots are found to have been able to prevent the “accident”.

  16. “The purpose of that story was to illustrate that not every case of a car hitting a pedestrian is due to negligence, malice, intoxication, etc.”

    Yes, it is negligence. Not on the part of the driver personally, it is clearly an engineering/public policy failure. It is structural, it is built into the system. We’ve made the implicit choice that a few people will die so that other people can get to work a few seconds faster. (If we’ve made the explicit choice, then it isn’t technically a “failure.” Instead, we’ve “classified the bugs as features to make the ship date,” but I highly doubt that that is what we’ve done, or the city wouldn’t be lobbying the state to change the rules…)

    A couple months ago I read a book about “accidents” in general, and there really is no such thing.* One of the examples, was why US civilian nuclear power plants have an failure rate far higher than Russian nuclear submarines, even though the US civilian nuclear plants are based on far better technology. And it is the culture, a few dollars saved here and there on redundant parts/extra operators/etc is valued more to the stockholders than the lives of the people that live near the plant. Certainly, redundant parts are valued to keep the plant running, (because the shareholders don’t make money when it doesn’t produce electricity,) but lives are not. In fact, nuclear plant operators are explicitly NOT responsible for radiation related deaths, (the US government promises immunity.) On a submarine, even the simplest problems results in a submarine with no engine, which can easily kill everyone on board. So everyone, from the admiral who needs working submarines in his fleet, on down to the people that sweep the floor, have a interest in making sure that there isn’t a problem. Part of the message there is that culture and structure is often times more important than raw technology, but the point is that we can look at situations and know what is going to happen.

    *The term the book used to describe these failures was “normal accidents” (which is also the title of the book) which I think is a good term. The book opens with the example that if you play Russian Roulette enough times, someone dies. It isn’t an accident, it is going to happen. You might get lucky and not have it happen the first time, or even the tenth, but you don’t call it an accident when it does. If there are 50 chambers in the revolver instead of 6, that means the odds are better, but it doesn’t change the point, you know what is going to happen. And that example is contrived, but in most things in life, we do implicitly know what is going to happen…

  17. Yes, it is negligence.

    Or on the part of the idiot who walked in front of a moving vehicle against the rules. Why is it always the driver that’s faulted? If you really want to throw around fault, let’s blame the child that runs into the street, or the senior citizen who jaywalks in front of a truck, or the drunk who gets hit by a bus.

    I love the asymmetry in people who complain about freeways then complain about pedestrian deaths. If cars on on freeways, they should be nowhere near pedestrians. (Well, in Oregon they can be, but that’s just because we’re dumb enough to allow it.) Pedestrian deaths and freeway speeds should be completely unrelated, since pedestrians shouldn’t be on a freeway. That’s the point of building freeways.

  18. I would note that the traffic safety professionals use neither “collisions” nor “accidents” but the more neutral word “crashes”. In their world, even if one party is “at fault” there are often strategies to mitigate the risk, and assigning blame is seldom useful in developing those mitigation strategies.

  19. Great discussion here. Allowing the current level of traffic fatalities (not to mention millions of injuries!) is completely unethical, even before you consider the fact that the disadvantaged are far more likely to be killed.

    I hope that people will redouble their efforts to force their local communities to design and build roads that are safe for everyone, regardless of handicap, age, ethnicity, income level, or preferred mode of transit.

  20. “Or on the part of the idiot who walked in front of a moving vehicle against the rules.”

    Yes, after I posted that, I was thinking about it, and you are absolutely right. The crash should be considered a cascading component failure tightly coupled with an independent component failure. It is a classic example of what the book called a “system accident.”

    One of the component that failed was an operator, (which is a type of component,) in particular an operator of a ball. The ball failed to go where they intended, and while it should be noted that the operator was probably an amateur at ball operation, failure of balls to go where the operator wants them to go is a very common failure mode, (i.e. look at the Blazers, they don’t make every shot they shoot.) This failure resulted in the ball going into the street. There is a “safety device” that is supposed to take over in this situation, (in particular, the instructions from the parents that said “look both ways before crossing the street.”) This safety device failed, and given that those two failures are related, this is considered a cascading failure. Without more details, we don’t know if the second failure could be considered a forced operator error or not. (A forced operator error is when the operator is encouraged to do something dangerous for one reason or another: for instance, if someone has to pay a fine if they don’t pick up their children from daycare on time, speeding would be considered a forced operator error, they didn’t just speed because “they didn’t know better,” they sped because, in their view, it was better than the alternative.) If the ball operator was playing a game called “keep away,” or something like that, then chasing the ball into the street would be considered a forced operator error, (if they don’t chase it, then the other player would, and they’d get the ball instead.) In any case, if the operator was a young child, this is again a fairly common failure mode. The “system” is tightly coupled, (cars going down the street don’t have time to react to balls rolling out in front of them,) and another operator, (the other component, or better known as the car driver,) indeed didn’t react in time to avoid the crash. And then there was a first order victim. (Definition: In a plane crash, a 1st order victim is the pilot, a 2nd order victim is an airline passenger, a 3rd order victim is a person standing on the ground who got hit by an airplane, and a 4th order victim is the 3rd order victim’s unborn children who got birth defects from the toxic waste the plane was carrying. 1st order victims are considered less valuable than 2nd, who are less than 3rd, who are less than 4th, but they are all human lives.)

    Now, you can look at all of those things, and say with a high degree of accuracy how often they happen independently, (pretty dang often.) And you can then do some very simple statistical analysis, (multiplication,) and figure out how often they’ll happen together. And, it is often enough that something should be done about it…

    Looking at that, my solution is to loosen the coupling, i.e. slow the cars down so that the second operator does have time to react. If the road was a freeway, then the solution would be different, for instance, a better safety device might be in order, in particular, build a big wall so that errant balls don’t end up in the road or if they do, they aren’t automatically chased by the ball operators…

    But to stand there and say that, it was just an “accident”? I’d like to believe that human lives are worth more than that.

  21. But to stand there and say that, it was just an “accident”? I’d like to believe that human lives are worth more than that.

    Great post, I work in an IT intensive field, and it seems every network failure or system failure has multiple causes. The road network is no exception.

    Being an optimist, I remind myself I crash my car less than my computer.

  22. Matthew:You said that people wouldn’t drive 20 mph just cause a sign says that, and I’m pointing out that, yes there are ways to make people follow a sign, and in fact civilized countries, (we are talking Finland, not North Korea,) have done it. But what would you suggest, taking away licenses? That seems fair. They are clearly unfit to drive if they can’t follow a very simple sign…

    Taking away someone’s license for going too fast is punitive. We have all driven and looked down at our speedometer and saw that we were going in 15 even 20 mph over the speed limit. It easily happens especially when local streets are too wide.

    My point was that people will not follow a sign that says 20 mph when the streets are designed for a car to be able do 60 mph without feeling uncomfortable.

    We should be designing roads where even going 25 mph (in a 20 mph zone) feels uncomfortable and a put a sign that says 20 mph. Even the speed demons won’t speed because the lanes are not wide enough and are not conducive to speeding.

    Instead of building incredibly wide roads for local streets, why not build them narrower?

    The usual operation that occurs is that the neighbors complain about speeding traffic going by on their so called “safe” and highly engineered roads, only to have speed bumps be constructed a few months later to mitigate the problem.

  23. How do we protect pedestrians…

    Here’s my bus stop:

    http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=portland,+or&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=53.167773,79.101563&ie=UTF8&ll=45.444374,-122.736382&spn=0.002906,0.004828&t=h&z=18&iwloc=addr&layer=c&cbll=45.444353,-122.736465&panoid=EQBy4AKaG8RR2LFglUJfxQ&cbp=12,250.59278223235924,,0,1.1061565138947744

    View Larger Map

    Here’s the response:

    TriMet: “It’s not our responsibility. Call the City.”

    City of Portland: “Bus stops are not our responsibility.”

    ODOT: “This is an urban area within Portland city limits, the City is responsible.”

    Multnomah County: “We don’t maintain this road.”

    Metro: “Sidewalk/pedestrian safety is not our responsibility.”

  24. I don’t see the problem with the bus stop. What’s needed is a crosswalk. The problem is that there’s a conflict between pedestrians and: a) high speed/through traffic, b) a major freeway interchange, c) the road being a state highway, d) the hilly environment and e) a lack of surrounding pedestrian accommodations.

    Also, check out the scene just south of that bus stop–pedestrians aren’t the only ones that need to be protected.

  25. Jason McHuff Says:

    I don’t see the problem with the bus stop. What’s needed is a crosswalk.

    I don’t see that happening, because there’s nothing to cross for. Except, of course, that bus stop on the other side of the street. It also seems unlikely the existing sidewalk would get extended because there isn’t anything to walk to. As was mentioned on another thread, there are a good many areas in Portland, with considerable more foot traffic, that have no sidewalks. It doesn’t appear to be much of a priority for the City.

  26. Jeff F. wrote: Except, of course, that bus stop on the other side of the street.

    I would have thought that a bus stop would be enough of a reason in this supposedly transit friendly city.

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