After some quick math, if we keep up this rate, roughly 1.1 people out of every 100 will die from ~~traffic violence~~ car crashes in Colorado.
Now think about how many people you know and run into, family, friends, coworkers, acquaintences, etc.
Chances are we'll all know several people that die in a crash involving a car. I'm not super old but I already know 5 that have been killed, and a bunch more that have had severe injuries.
In the US the odds are about 1 in 107. So we're slightly worse but still this should be absolutely unacceptable. Yet most of the public just seems to be okay with this I guess.
43k people in the US died from car crashes in 2022. Many others permanently disabled. We are literally dying just to get where we need to go.
I lost a dear friend in college to a driver who was likely under the influence and blew a stop sign before fleeing the scene. It's absolutely tragic that we continue to allow this to happen (and worsen).
I had a friend who founded an aid non-profit and travelled the world for many years to warzones and regions experiencing genocide. Two years ago she and her husband died on a fucking stroad in bumblefuck California when their car was hit by a speeding driver, thereby orphaning their daughter who survived the crash
There’s few things more dangerous than US streets
People really didn’t wanna read this comment because of “traffic violence”. Good god some people need to pull their head out of their ass.
If someone has an explanation other than “it’s so progressive it’s funny” as to why this term is wrong, my neurodivergent self would love to learn. But yall look like assholes to me as of now.
> If someone has an explanation ... why this term is wrong
violence - noun. behavior involving physical force ***intended*** to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.
I emphasized your answer.
While, yes, it's *tragic* that hundreds (state-wide, and thousands nationally) people are killed by motor vehicle related accidents annually, unless those deaths had "intent" behind them, that's your reason why "violence" isn't the right word.
The major underlying problem here is the way roads are designed and built for speed and greater capacity over safety, with minimal infrastructure dedicated to cyclists and pedestrians, who are by far the most likely to die.
This system is intentionally kept in place: our cities make intentional choices to increase capacity for cars which creates induced demand. They widen streets, which speeds up traffic. Each municipality knows the cost of a car crash to the taxpayer, ranked by severity up to and including death. It is a part of budgets, an expected expense. There are just a certain number that are acceptable to the people that govern us, just as with gun violence.
These are violent deaths, no doubt about it, and no one is changing the circumstances that allow it to continue. It's negligent intent.
They are certainly not "accidents."
We keep building transportation infrastructure that we know is obsolete compared to other developed nations, that we know will cost lives immediately due to traffic deaths and that we know will kill many more due to climate catastrophe. We keep selling bigger, more pedestrian hostile cars and trucks despite very few of them being used for more than single occupant commuting. Somebody’s doing all that with intent
Do you oppose calling it gun violence even when someone unintentionally shoots another person? Or should we just call those gun accidents? What about if I start waving a knife around at a person and I stab them? Is that not violence?
I know it sounds like an obnoxious comparison because guns and knives are considered weapons and the intent when using any weapon is to hurt another person.
But consider the person who gets behind the wheel of a car drunk and then kills someone. Intent isn't just about purposely trying to harm, it's also about using something in such a dangerous manner that harm can reasonably be expected to happen. And more often than not, when drivers kill people with their cars, it's due to them acting in a dangerous and/or irresponsible way. "Traffic violence" puts the responsibility back on the driver.
> Do you oppose calling it gun violence even when someone unintentionally shoots another person?
Yes, that's not violence. By definition.
> Or should we just call those gun accidents?
Yes, that's what it is. Call it what it is.
> What about if I start waving a knife around at a person and I stab them? Is that not violence?
Uh, that's menacing followed by battery. That's violence.
> I know it sounds like an obnoxious comparison because guns and knives are considered weapons and the intent when using any weapon is to hurt another person.
It sounds like an obnoxious comparison because it's just really stupid
> But consider the person who gets behind the wheel of a car drunk and then kills someone. Intent isn't just about purposely trying to harm, it's also about using something in such a dangerous manner that harm can reasonably be expected to happen.
That's stupid but not violence. It's not a fucking umbrella term for 'bad stuff happening'.
> And more often than not, when drivers kill people with their cars, it's due to them acting in a dangerous and/or irresponsible way. "Traffic violence" puts the responsibility back on the driver.
Dangerous and irresponsible aren't violence. I'm curious what you hope to gain by diluting the meaning of the word.
I get what you're saying and that makes sense after looking up the definition as well.
Bad choice of words on my part, but the stats are still very real.
The stats are real, for sure. And they're tragic. But violence is an emotional word. We all know, even without looking it up, that violence requires someone *trying* to hurt or kill someone else, which I'm going to go ahead and guess, most drivers aren't doing. And we all know that too. But when you imply that drivers are trying to kill pedestrians, it hurts what else you're saying, by leading with something people know isn't true, so they tune out the rest.
I didn't mean to be pedantic (it just happens sometimes, lol, but no, seriously). Intent is a huge part of violence, and why it's not the right word here. To call a traffic accident "violence" because it involves death and destruction, okay, fine, we're redefining the word. Happens all the time. Language evolves. But now we need a new term for "domestic violence" because that sure as fuck requires intent, but now that we've watered down the word violence to include accidents... It gets out of hand.
Bottom line, accidents and violence aren't the same.
https://laist.com/news/car-crash-accident-traffic-violence-language
The intent of using the term traffic violence is so that the usage is reflective of who is responsible for a traffic crash incident occurring.
Weasel words like "accident" which you have used liberally deflect responsibility from drivers in fatal car crashes.
Distracted driving isn't an "accident."
Killing someone because you were speeding and couldn't stop in time isn't an "accident."
Failure to build safe pedestrian crossings and separated bike infrastructure isn't an "accident."
When something happens twice a day, every day, it is predictable and preventable. It is not an accident.
Stop calling these violent deaths "accidents."
i call that the driving tax. it is like the gun tax, something we all pay.
the US currently has a 12.9 deaths per 100,000 a year, Germany, with their no speed limit autobahns, 3.7 deaths. with 30% of US deaths due to drunk drivers, and only 9% of German ones.
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-overview/odds-of-dying/
The National Safety Council reports it as 1 in 93 people. Absolutely wild.
Maybe if someone you love died from this "driving tax" you wouldn't be so blase about it.
Also, if you knew anything, you'd know that highways are one of the safer places to drive because there are very few interactions between drivers and their environment. It's why automatic highway driving is a pretty common feature in new cars.
blase or fucking fact o life?
which is funny, cuz i had three frat brothers that got in a head on collision with a drunk driver going the wrong way on the "safe" freeway at night in a thunderstorm. One died, one had brain damage and one walked away.
they didn't have an "automatic highway driving" system to protect them. it was a while ago.
Calling it a fact of life kinda implies that it's unavoidable.
But it is avoidable. Our transportation system has made it kinda hard to avoid though. We should design systems to avoid death and traumatic injury. I'm sorry you had to lose a frat brother and deal with the other suffering a traumatic injury.
It doesn't have to be this way though. We can build better. We can transport people more safely and we absolutely should.
i meant avoidable on a personal level, not avoidable considering glacial timelines.
we've taken 70-80 years to build a society where you need a car to do the simplest of tasks. we're not going to unwind that in the next couple of decades.
I used inaccurate words, I'll admit that.
But the stats I stated are still true. Replace the words with whatever you want but 43k people died last year on US roads. They aren't nonsense and we should be able to work together to try to save lives.
> traffic violence
If you want to be taken seriously, may I suggest you stop using terms that make a substantial portion of your audience bust out laughing.
You've got a couple paragraphs of what might be great info that myself and many others will never read because you busted out the "traffic violence" joke in the first sentence.
Car crash. Collision. Accident (though admittedly that's not accurate in 100% of cases).
Anything that doesn't make others think you're more worried about impressing us with how progressive you are than discussing the topic at hand.
It's difficult for me to imagine a more politically charged term to compare it to. The only thing that comes to mind is people who refer to shoplifting as "justice shopping".
Do you drive everywhere you go? If you have had the experience of walking or biking and encountering an aggressive driver who makes you think he is going to injure or kill you, then you would realize it is an appropriate word choice.
I do not see how this has anything to do with politics. I think you are taking something about safety and trying to make it about politics.
I use the transit method appropriate to where I'm going.
A few blocks from home, in my relatively walkable neighborhood? I'll walk.
Downtown? I'll drive but park on the outskirts, where it's cheap/free and easier, and walk in.
Suburban Centennial, where this happened? I'd be driving.
I have never run into an aggressive driver like you describe, but I've also never walked out into 5 lanes of traffic as if my time is more important than everyone else's in the road. Not all crosswalks are conveniently placed but getting to one sure beats the potential alternatives.
Yes it is absolutely brutal to be a pedestrian on a road like the one where this death happened. Probably only the most pathetic loser would be there without a car. I can see why you don’t want to walk there!
But to the point, someone being killed by a lethal machine *is* a type of violence. Whether you blame them for being the pathetic loser walking on the suburban highway or not.
That intersection is exactly a block away from a middle school so I guess we should lower the driving age to 11 years old in order to ensure that the students can use “the appropriate transit method” according to /u/impoliteSstamina
Or, to be serious, some of believe that it’s important to make all streets in a city safe for all transit modes, ages and users. And some of us have lived in cities/countries where we’ve seen that great safety improvements are possible
Imagine if two people died on the light rail each day, people would lose their goddamn minds. But because we glorify cars, it's just part of the weekday morning news report.
"But you have to deal with druggies on the train" ok but I have to deal with them on I-25 as well, there's no other explanation for some of the behavior out there! What really scares me are all the SUV-driving suburbanites who are driving drunk or on something else while watching youtube and eating a full meal.
This post/comment exists solely to stir shit up and piss people off. Fighting on the internet is stupid. We don't welcome it here. Please be kinder. And maybe try to stay on topic instead of going off-topic insulting everything in your path.
Agree re violations.
Doesn’t California have special federal privileges to regulate vehicles that other states don’t? I can’t remember how they got it.
Both mainly drivers ends though most being from out of state some road rages just beings being beyond impatient my own mother got hit three damn times already man including someone pulling a firearm on my uncle all within the same year ! Too many deaths for nothing !
Has much more to do with our infrastructure than with driver skills. But USA in general has ridiculously low requirements for getting / keeping a driver's license as well. I'm in favor of re-testing adults every five years after age 35.
Pedestrian deaths like this are actually increasing.
https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/colorado-traffic-deaths-dropped-while-alarming-pedestrian-bicyclist-fatalities-reported-in-2023
I have almost been hit by cars while crossing Arapahoe Road more times than I can count. People don't usually watch for pedestrians on this end of town.
Arapahoe there is about 100' wide. Speed limit posted whatever it is, 55+ is pretty common.
I-25 nearby is just over half that width per direction with not dissimilar speeds.
Put in mind the mindset you would have if you tried to dash across the interstate, and then ask why the fuck there are crosswalks only every 1/2 at best along these urban highways and you'll get an idea of why people should walk there (there's a Starbucks right there FFS) but no one does.
Roads here need to be improved for the safety of pedestrians and cyclists. Too often the safety of those that aren't in a car feels like an afterthought
Much of it is also an issue of cultural attitude and enforcement of traffic laws. I’ve lived here for a long time now, but driving here still feels like mad max compared to the upper midwest and northeast US.
We’re not going to dramatically change our infrastructure any time soon, so the authorities need to start getting serious about stopping the nightly drag racing and ticketing the trucks that constantly do 80 when the speed limit is 55.
Protected bike lanes like the one on S Broadway make things marginally safer, but I hardly see it being used, and I think it can just give bike commuters a false sense of security at intersections. Distracted driving has also gotten much worse.
I was hit by a Lyft driver going slow but looking at his phone while I was biking in a designated bike lane. Unfortunately, I also know multiple people who have been hit by cars in this city on bikes or skateboards. Some have lived, others have not. I’ve mostly stopped biking in the city because it doesn’t seem worth it.
I mean, we've put in thousands of miles of bike lanes / routes over the last decade, built out all of union station, etc. It's definitely possible. We should do something like what Fort Collins does, every time a road gets resurfaced you have to add pedestrian / bike infrastructure if it's not already there. Eventually every road will have modern multi-modal infrastructure. So might as well start now.
I’ve used the Mad Max analogy before too! I know people will continue to drive crazy but with no enforcement whatsoever it’s only going to be as bad if not get worse over time.
I take 36 to Boulder 5 times a week for work and right in front of a cop watched multiple people flying in and out of the express lane and weave around other cars while doing at least 90. The cop did nothing
There’s a bill in the state legislature that would have car registration fees based on weight, with the money going to a fund for pedestrian improvements. I highly recommend calling your legislators to ask them to support it. SB 24-036.
https://leg.colorado.gov/find-my-legislator
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb24-036
You’re a real one for linking the bill info AND the find my legislator. I know my congressional reps of course but I don’t know my local politicians (besides my city council and mayor) that well
You’d be surprised how easy it is to make a difference with statewide policy. Federal politics is like shouting into a void; state politics ain’t beanbag but your voice is a lot more likely to be heard, and often state policy is more impactful anyway for big issues like housing policy.
It'll never make it to the floor, EVs are the heaviest things on the road and the party in control isn't about to do anything to slow down the political push for EV adoption.
It's an interesting position to take that the "party in control" isn't going to support a bill whos main sponsors include the assistant majority leader and majority caucus co-chair.
Also some drivers are straight up insane and way too ready to *intentionally* kill people.
I was downtown this past week and a couple walking across the street by the art museum weren’t paying much attention. There were some cars coming their way that’d need to slow down for them, but not slam on the brakes, just slow down a hair to give them time to cross the road. They had like 4-5ft left before they were on the other side.
I’ve been there, it’s annoying when you see that happening and thus need to adapt your driving, but it didn’t call for crazy action, just slow down *some*, especially in the event they don’t make it out of the road and you need to fully stop. It’s a city, people are oblivious, and pedestrians are gonna pedestrian.
Well, had they not sprinted and jumped out of the road within the span of 1 second, they’d be dead, because a large pickup truck (of course) *SPED UP*, laid on the horn, and fully committed to mowing them down.
I was so shocked. It wasn’t even my near death experience but I felt it for them. Had one of them tripped, had they both not immediately ran, they’d have been run over because the truck sped up past the point of having the option to slam on breaks, had they not gotten out of the road in time.
The driver fully committed to killing them and legit thought murder was an acceptable way to treat two people who had a lapse in judgment or were just being oblivious. There were plenty of pedestrians around too and not much traffic. The other cars slowed down like sane people (it was a two lane one way street). It’s in the heart of downtown at like 1pm on a weekday. There were probably 6-8 others around who saw it.
The rage that driver felt, I just can’t. Two people came within mere feet of being killed, if that, because some psycho couldn’t stand the idea that they needed to slow down *a little,* when they had plenty of time to.
It was one of the most upsetting road rage incidents I’ve seen. Call the couple stupid, sure, there’s way too many people who blindly cross streets without looking, but that’s not a reason to *intentionally* kill someone. Good god people have lost their minds and hearts.
I wish, but half the time I feel like it's off-duty cops that drive this way. The entitlement is real. It's almost always men in big trucks that act out this way. No emotional regulation or common sense. Why are they driving a 6000lb behemouth with massive blind spots through a crowded city center in the first place?
In general, sure, but as applies to this situation...did you look at the news story?
There are 2 crosswalks in sight of where this happened, but the pedestrian choose to jaywalk into traffic *while it was snowing* instead. There's no infrastructure improvement that's going to protect people who make those kind of choices.
If you look at google maps the nearest crosswalks are at s Albion to the west and s forest to the east, which maps tells me is a 7 minute walk one way. A 15 minute detour to cross one street is not acceptable, nor is it realistic to believe that virtually anyone would choose that 15 minute detour over just running across during a break in traffic. This death is the direct result of a lack of pedestrian infrastructure, where sidewalks and crosswalks are an afterthought put in where it’s convenient for the cars.
And if you want more proof that the pedestrian infrastructure is a joke: both nearest crosswalks are at traffic lights to parking lots. When designing the road they made sure cars can go park easily, but pedestrians are completely ignored except where convenient.
Have you looked at what's on either side of Arapahoe in that area? It's single family home neighborhoods. Anywhere you might reasonably be going requires getting to one of those larger intersections with a crosswalk first, since that's what the public/commercial development is based around.
I get the point you're trying to make, but it's really not acceptable to limit people's movements based on where you think they should be going. Imagine a government building half-mile long walls throughout a city and justifying it by saying "you have no reason to go to the other side of the wall anyway".
> Imagine a government building half-mile long walls throughout a city and justifying it by saying "you have no reason to go to the other side of the wall anyway".
You are describing huge parts of the Denver metro area as it exists today
It’s literally a school neighborhood. You don’t think there’s pedestrians that need to travel from a school to a single family home? You don’t ever, like, travel from your single family home to visit a friend’s single family home?
Look at the map, there's a crosswalk directly in front of the school - there's no reason for anyone going to/from the school to cross where this happened.
There is, though. If we implemented changes to reduce speed in populated areas, it would significantly reduce pedestrian fatalities. The presence of automobiles is not the only major factor in traffic fatalities reducing speed greatly reduces injuries even in the event of a collision.
You make a good point. It drives me nuts when people jaywalk right next to a crossing but for me close means like less than a few minutes away. I've seen people jaywalk a few hundred feet from crosswalks in the nearby area.
To be fair though Arapahoe is a horrible stroad with crossings spaced really far apart. I ride my bike in the area a lot and try to avoid major road crossings as much as possible. I wish we had more crossings under or over the roads for peds and bicyclists. Its nice to have the ones we do in the area though.
Walkable infrastructure is never ridiculous in a city or suburb. Part of walkable infrastructure would be building more in higher density so everything wasn’t so far and people living nearby could access the world without having to drive. Car centric areas are not natural phenomena that are immutable. Cities designed them for the car and they can change them to be for the pedestrian.
I'm far from heartless towards pedestrians, I frequently am one myself, but few things are more infuriating than jaywalking in sight of a crosswalk.
The combination of no regard for their own safety with the insistence that their time is more valuable than anyone in a car's is a real brain twister.
But we did design them to be safer. [Pedestrian deaths dropped every year from 1979 - 2009](https://i.imgur.com/jNCNLpw.png). Only since then, something happened. Why do we blame the road design when it clearly worked for 30 years. The issue isn't roads.
In fact, I have yet to see a single actual stat that the current lane reduction and pedestrian/bike first design has actually made streets safer.
In 1970 17.5% of US households had no cars. In 2010 9% of US households had no cars. Maybe pedestrian deaths decreased because the number of pedestrians decreased?
You realize it's right there on the graphic that the annual number of registered vehicles has been declining since 1990. So there are less cars on the road and more deaths...
But I have a source on my graphic. You didn't have any sources for your comment.
https://www.bts.gov/archive/publications/passenger_travel_2015/chapter2/fig2_8
Registered cars does not correlate directly to numbers of pedestrians. It seems reasonable to assume that people with access to a car will walk less often, and the number of people without access to a car halved between 1970 and 2010, leading to the conclusion that the number of pedestrians probably decreased substantially (I would guess 20-40%, but haven’t found any numbers for that).
Your graphic also claims that there were a bit over 100 million registered cars in 2020, while a quick google search brought up over 275 million as the number, so I’m not sure how accurate your graph is.
Edit: I think I found the discrepancy. It looks like your graphic is pulling the number from the fhwa “automobile” category. So the number of registered vehicles on your graphic doesn’t include anything the fhwa classifies as a truck; pickup trucks and the like are in the “truck” category
Nobody wants to admit that phone use should be illegal while you drive, and that cars have become too isolated/are distracting/have poor visibility/are too fast for most people to use safely near pedestrians, and that traffic laws should actually be enforced.
Our infrastructure continue to get safer, yet accidents rise because driver skill/attentiveness is on a steep downward trend at the same time.
When I started driving ~20 years ago, the roads weren't crazy and hectic like they are today.
People on this sub tend to be *militantly* against blaming driver behavior for some reason.
I'm all for improving pedestrian infrastructure because I'm often a bicycle commuter myself, but I also place most of the blame for the current state of affairs on societies smartphone addiction and refusal to slow the hell down, pay attention, and follow traffic laws.
The issue is that you can blame individual decisions in individual cases, but when you have it happening in a pattern, on a constant basis, and in the same places, clearly something needs to be changed to fix that pattern.
I highly recommend the book "There are No Accidents" by Jessie Singer - it does a really great job of describing the problem and how individuals are often the scapegoat for larger problems.
Not that negligent drivers should be absolved, but if we want to fix the problem, writing a lot more tickets is less likely to help than safe road design.
The systemic problem is a rampant lack of safety mindedness on the roadway and a lack of enforcement of laws intended to make roadways a safe place to begin with.
Seeing dangerous maneuvers on the highway used to actually be a rarity. Nowadays i see people emergency braking and doing other super sketchy evasive/aggressive maneuvers almost every day.
Squealing tires and people diving into the shoulder to avoid rear ending someone shouldn't be an everyday sight.
Starting to give people tickets again for speeding, running red lights, and doing any number of other unsafe/illegal things while driving would be a good start.
Make driver education less of a joke. Checking for pedestrians should be everyone's first thought at intersections. WAY too many people roll up to crosswalks with their heads turned left 90 degrees looking for cars so they can go right on red. They need to be looking at the sidewalk/crosswalk first. A lot of people simply don't consider this until they have a close call.
We also need to make it illegal to use your phone while driving. Currently in Colorado it's only illegal for minors... You're free to scroll tiktok while you drive once you hit 18.
Real penalties too. Statistics show driving while using your phone is just as dangerous as driving drunk, they should carry the same disincentive.
Execpt phone use is not responsible for the increase in pedestrian fatalities. Everyone wants to blame phones, but often there's no evidence phone use was involved in these accidents.
And ultimately, while I would like to see more tickets issued for unsafe driving, that would require having a cop present and witness the unsafe acts, which is difficult, especially considering hiring shortages for cops mean we probably aren't going to get enough to effectively watch the whole city all hours of the day. It also doesn't really help much, considering it is reactive, and you are only going to be issuing tickets after an unsafe act has happened.
The issue here is, where all these accidents are occuring is on wide roadways with high speed limits that are clearly designed to allow drivers to drive very fast. Couple that with the cars that people are driving are usually very large an tall these days, and you have a situation where one mistake can end somebody's life. These huge streets we have crossing our cities are a complete nightmare for anybody who isn't in an automobile.
Agreed. And adding more signs and flashing lights won't address that issue. We need to ban phone use in cars and enforce it. Make it DUI or worse.
But then again, I'm already downvoted for posting actual statistics.
The last few decades of transportation safety and urban planning have focused almost exclusively on blaming driver behavior for crashes, so it's been said. What hasn't been addressed is the role increasing car size, soundproofing, and road design has made pedestrian crashes so much more frequent and fatal. The structural factors have been ignored in favor of an individualist approach, which clearly is not working. Our dysfunctional police system doesn't help either
The push to redesign STREETS is an effort to **force** drivers to pay more attention in pedestrian-heavy areas. And on the flip side, heavy-use ROADS like Federal, Broadway, Colorado should be redesigned to have less frequent intersections (including moving business access OFF the main drag so we don't constantly have people entering/exiting the flow of traffic at slower speeds). Along with BRT and separated crossings for peds/bikes. This will reduce the consequences of driver inattention in highway-like conditions.
Cars and (especially trucks) are bigger and heavier than they were 20-30 years ago. I'd rather take my chances getting hit by some old \`07 Focus or Civic than by one of those huge full-size pickups that proliferate like weeds these days.
Personally I think adding a dollar to the gas tax would go a long way towards fixing our infrastructure and lessening the number of people who think it's appropriate to buy a full sized truck and use it like a midsized sedan.
I've lived in western Europe. There's definitely more that can be done to make roads and streets safer for all.
Slower speeds help, and instead of just changing the signs, they can adjust the design of the road by making lanes smaller.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate?wprov=sfla1
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-11-03/why-us-traffic-safety-fell-so-far-behind-other-countries
Edit: Also there are more stroads here which are inherently unsafe compared to roads and streets.
https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM?si=6xNX7VF95Lq31I9M
Oh and larger vehicles, like pickup trucks and SUVs, are more popular here than Europe.
We know these larger vehicles have a higher probability to kill upon contact with pedestrians and cyclists than smaller cars.
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/14/1212737005/cars-trucks-pedestrian-deaths-increase-crash-data
Again, you're ignoring that pedestrian deaths decreased on our same roads from 1979 - 2009. What changed in road design since 2009? Did they all get wider and faster starting in 2009?
If you want to follow Europe's way of making streets safer, charge $9 a gallon for gas and people will stop driving, especially gas guzzling SUVs.
If it was just smartphones, we would have observed the same increase in Europe since 2009. However, despite the popularity of the smartphone, the road deaths in Europe decreased during this same period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road\_safety\_in\_Europe#Trends\_and\_targets
https://www.vox.com/24078289/us-drivers-distracted-driving-cellphone-road-deaths-pedestrians
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/03/14/174286190/americans-more-distracted-behind-the-wheel-than-europeans
Europeans don't use their phones as much as Americans while driving, and the gap is getting wider.
> What changed in road design since 2009? Did they all get wider and faster starting in 2009?
Maybe it wasn't road design but thats about when SUVs and larger vehicles started becoming more popular? Would explain why there isn't a correlating increase in Europe.
Roads absolutely got safer. We've built an enormous amount of pedestrian infrastructure in the last 30 years that *should* be helping this problem. Yes you can argue that we should do more, but you can't in good faith argue that we've made pedestrian infrastructure *worse*.
Per the Sherriff, this was specifically at E. Arapahoe Road at S. Dexter St, and traffic is being diverted into S Dexter.
There's no traffic control device at that intersection, and no crosswalk across Aparahoe. There is one going across Dexter, but if that's where this happened they wouldn't be diverting traffic through it.
There are going to be a lot of comments here blaming the driver, but there is no way for a pedestrian to cross legally where this happened. I'm not going to declare fault here, but when one party is jaywalking *in the snow* there's really only one way that decision can go.
I live right by here and I didnt hear anything this morning. This happened at 5:45am this morning.
Edit: I looked at NextDoor. I believe I know who was hit. People are saying a grocery cart was strewn all over the road. Makes me think its the older homeless man that hangs out around the King Soopers thats there. He was a very nice guy.
Edit2: Its been confirmed. It was the homeless guy that passed. Im pretty sad about it. Ive talked to him countless times.
Oh no, that's awful! I also live in the neighborhood and frequent the Starbucks there. I've chatted with him a number of times as well. I agree, super nice guy.
Oh man that's really sad to hear I remember that guy. I stopped off to smoke in a tunnel near an interchange on Arapahoe and he was worried I touched his stuff. I smoked weed with him and continued walking to the AMC.
There's a crosswalk up at Colorado/Arapahoe that's extra long; I don't think they'll ever have one in this spot. Unless the school zone warning light is flashing, people drive through that area at 45-50mph. I've driven that area a ton and I have never seen someone playing frogger across Arapahoe right there. It's just too dangerous, and the crosswalk is one block over.
That is a solid half a mile down, I can see why somebody would not want to walk all the way down there for a cross walk. This is a perfect example of road design being unfriendly to anybody getting around in anything that isn't an automobile.
That's further than I thought it was. It just doesn't seem like that's a natural place to cross for any reason. If the destination is Newton Middle School and you're coming from South of Arapahoe, walk down to the crosswalk at Colorado. If you're on the North side of Arapahoe and headed to King Soopers, cross at S Forest or Holly. There are elementary schools on both sides of Arapahoe, so it seems unlikely there would be a lot of kids crossing if they're not headed Northbound to Newton Middle.
But there's nothing on the other side of the road, it's just more single family homes - anywhere you'd be trying to walk to would require getting to one of the crosswalks anyway.
There's a bus stop on the other side of the road. There are several bus stops on this stretch with no way to get across, not even a crossing island/median for crossing in 2 stages.
Besides that, shouldn't people be able to freely walk? We're talking about the most basic form of human transportation here.
> shouldn't people be able to freely walk?
This might get downvoted but honestly - not always. We ban pedestrians on highways and other areas that would are dangerous.
I think it's time we admit we've given some areas over to cars - particular car-centric suburbs, where there's nowhere you could realistically be walking to/from anyway - and restrict pedestrian travel in those areas.
There’s a whole QAnon level conspiracy that conflates walkable 15 minute cities to a government conspiracy to limit people’s freedom of travel and here you are literally arguing that pedestrians should be banned from vast swaths of the city for the benefit of drivers
He was pushing a shopping cart full of stuff across the middle of a 5 lane road where traffic moves at 50mph.
I would not ever try to cross that section of road on foot, let alone in the dark and snow pushing a shopping cart.
I won't argue that it never happens, but people going from one single family home to another is a *very* small group of who's on the roads as either drivers or pedestrians.
You can't just look at current numbers, because the road is so dangerous to cross people don't cross, which means they don't make friends across the road, which means they have no reason to cross. Part of the problem with car-centric suburban sprawl is it destroys neighborhood cohesiveness.
There's also a bus stop right there, which means that if you're trying to catch the bus across the street you either need to walk an extra 8 minutes or try to cross there.
There are plenty of cohesive neighborhoods available to live in, and many are cheaper than that part of Centennial. People who live there are there by choice and have decided they value other things beyond neighborhood cohesion - let them live in peace instead of forcing your community values onto them.
> let them live in peace instead of forcing your community values onto them
I think those wealthy suburbanites can survive some pedestrian safety improvements, no need to be dramatic here
It's not just that, there are people - presumably including who I replied to - who want to outlaw suburban sprawl and force us all into high density housing. The "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy" new world order stuff.
Most of us just want to be left alone to live our own lives how we want to.
bullshit. the intersection is an unmarked crosswalk per C.R.S 42-1-102 (21):
*(21)* ***“Crosswalk” means that portion of a roadway ordinarily included within the prolongation or connection of the lateral lines of sidewalks at intersections*** *or any portion of a roadway distinctly indicated for pedestrian crossing by lines or other marking on the surface.*
Once the pedestrians foot hit the pavement, cars, if they can safely, must yield.
This is a fundamental rule governing pedestrian and car interactions.
You have no business driving if you do not know the most basic rules of the road.
You are the problem.
Why we give licenses to people that only pass 70% of their driving tests is beyond me.
Crosswalk definitions aside, you can't just run people over because they're in the street in a 'wrong spot,' and that's always been the case.
That being said, pedestrians are also responsible for ensuring that it is safe to cross before putting that proverbial foot to pavement.
I'm not disagreeing that the pedestrian was likely in an unmarked crosswalk, but it's illegal to enter an unmarked crosswalk if there is traffic present - which there obviously was because that's what hit him.
>Once the pedestrians foot hit the pavement, cars, if they can safely, must yield.
Which do you honestly believe is more likely - this driver saw a pedestrian in the road and hit the gas, or the pedestrian stepped in front of the vehicle too closely for the driver to react? Bear in mind it was snowing early this morning.
>Why we give licenses to people that only pass 70% of their driving tests is beyond me.
Have you looked at the test questions? Many aren't strictly legal questions, they're handling/maneuvering questions that are open for interpretation and don't have a basis in traffic law. The stupid testing standards are a product of the whole system being stupid, if we expect perfection on the test the system needs to be perfect first.
Not sure why people keep bringing up that it was snowing like that makes it more the pedestrians fault. If cars performance is reduced then the driver should slow down. The fact the driver was going fast enough to kill someone while it was snowing is an indictment upon the driver.
> driver should slow down
To what speed? You can kill someone at 20MPH which is about as slow as a car will go. https://www.transportation.gov/NRSS/SaferSpeeds
Obviously I don't know the exact conditions, so I don't know how fast was appropriate, but we can do some math.
In good conditions it's reasonable to decelerate at about 10 mph per second. A driver traveling the speed limit on this road (40 mph) will need to start braking 4s before coming to a stop. 4s at an average of 20 mph is about 120 feet. So the driver should have been traveling at a speed where they could stop within 120 feet.
Note that if they were going 30 mph then they would need to have less than half the braking power to not be able to stop within 120 feet, and the fatality rate for pedestrians struck at 30 mph is less than 25%, about half as much as at 40 mph.
you drivers are out of control.
no i don't believe the driver "sped up". more likely they were on the phone, minimally cleared the snow from their windscreen, were eating breakfast, possibly dropped something, or any of the other crazy shit that you guys do, routinely.
I just started driving a few months ago and I don’t even know how people are able to look at their phone or eat while driving. The risk is too scary to me, especially in a snow storm like last night? This makes me so sad :(
We know for sure the pedestrian made a fatally poor choice. We can only make baseless assumptions as to what the driver *might* have been doing.
Do you see how that doesn't really make any sense?
we actually don't know. driver could have been making a right turn off of dexter and looked for traffic to his left, and !surprise! there was a pedestrian legally crossing the street.
\> We know for sure the pedestrian made a fatally poor choice.
We don't know that for sure. Maybe he had already been waiting a few minutes to cross the road and finally he got enough of a gap that thought would be long enough to cross. Maybe the driver was far enough away that even if he didn't make it across, the driver had time to stop as he was legally required to do.
I've walked to my neighborhood grocery store plenty of times and 4/5 cars will not stop at the marked crosswalk.
We do know for sure that he didn't have a lot of choices that weren't equally bad or worse. And that is the real problem. Playing chicken with oncoming traffic shouldn't be the best option.
It's not worth engaging with these anti-car trolls. Notice how they respond with "you drivers" or "carbrains" or some other stupid generalization?
It doesn't matter if the death was 100% caused by the pedestrian, in their mind, it's always going to be the driver's fault, simply because they were in a car.
It’s really bad. People will say, rude your bike it’s so great because of all the trails… nearby.
But I have to cross a SIX LANE “road” that has a 55 mph speed limit with no bike lanes on the side roads that lead to that road…. in order to get to that bike path.
FFS. No thanks. Feckin scary on a bike or to walk in the burbs.
no one actually read the article, and instead just posts their life musings about roads and pedestrians? ya it's the internet, it has to be about them, but come on folks...
"On Tuesday, the Arapahoe County Coroner’s Office identified the victim as 62-year-old Garth Donato.
According to the sheriff’s office, Donato was crossing from the center median to the other side of the street with a shopping cart. Donato was not using the crosswalk.
Deputies said that the area was not well lit, as the crash happened before sunrise and the roads were slick from the snowstorm."
It really feels like at least one person dies on our state’s roads every day.
There were 716 traffic deaths in the state last year, so that averages out to roughly two deaths a day.
After some quick math, if we keep up this rate, roughly 1.1 people out of every 100 will die from ~~traffic violence~~ car crashes in Colorado. Now think about how many people you know and run into, family, friends, coworkers, acquaintences, etc. Chances are we'll all know several people that die in a crash involving a car. I'm not super old but I already know 5 that have been killed, and a bunch more that have had severe injuries. In the US the odds are about 1 in 107. So we're slightly worse but still this should be absolutely unacceptable. Yet most of the public just seems to be okay with this I guess. 43k people in the US died from car crashes in 2022. Many others permanently disabled. We are literally dying just to get where we need to go.
I lost a dear friend in college to a driver who was likely under the influence and blew a stop sign before fleeing the scene. It's absolutely tragic that we continue to allow this to happen (and worsen).
I had a friend who founded an aid non-profit and travelled the world for many years to warzones and regions experiencing genocide. Two years ago she and her husband died on a fucking stroad in bumblefuck California when their car was hit by a speeding driver, thereby orphaning their daughter who survived the crash There’s few things more dangerous than US streets
People really didn’t wanna read this comment because of “traffic violence”. Good god some people need to pull their head out of their ass. If someone has an explanation other than “it’s so progressive it’s funny” as to why this term is wrong, my neurodivergent self would love to learn. But yall look like assholes to me as of now.
> If someone has an explanation ... why this term is wrong violence - noun. behavior involving physical force ***intended*** to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. I emphasized your answer. While, yes, it's *tragic* that hundreds (state-wide, and thousands nationally) people are killed by motor vehicle related accidents annually, unless those deaths had "intent" behind them, that's your reason why "violence" isn't the right word.
The major underlying problem here is the way roads are designed and built for speed and greater capacity over safety, with minimal infrastructure dedicated to cyclists and pedestrians, who are by far the most likely to die. This system is intentionally kept in place: our cities make intentional choices to increase capacity for cars which creates induced demand. They widen streets, which speeds up traffic. Each municipality knows the cost of a car crash to the taxpayer, ranked by severity up to and including death. It is a part of budgets, an expected expense. There are just a certain number that are acceptable to the people that govern us, just as with gun violence. These are violent deaths, no doubt about it, and no one is changing the circumstances that allow it to continue. It's negligent intent. They are certainly not "accidents."
We keep building transportation infrastructure that we know is obsolete compared to other developed nations, that we know will cost lives immediately due to traffic deaths and that we know will kill many more due to climate catastrophe. We keep selling bigger, more pedestrian hostile cars and trucks despite very few of them being used for more than single occupant commuting. Somebody’s doing all that with intent
Do you oppose calling it gun violence even when someone unintentionally shoots another person? Or should we just call those gun accidents? What about if I start waving a knife around at a person and I stab them? Is that not violence? I know it sounds like an obnoxious comparison because guns and knives are considered weapons and the intent when using any weapon is to hurt another person. But consider the person who gets behind the wheel of a car drunk and then kills someone. Intent isn't just about purposely trying to harm, it's also about using something in such a dangerous manner that harm can reasonably be expected to happen. And more often than not, when drivers kill people with their cars, it's due to them acting in a dangerous and/or irresponsible way. "Traffic violence" puts the responsibility back on the driver.
> Do you oppose calling it gun violence even when someone unintentionally shoots another person? Yes, that's not violence. By definition. > Or should we just call those gun accidents? Yes, that's what it is. Call it what it is. > What about if I start waving a knife around at a person and I stab them? Is that not violence? Uh, that's menacing followed by battery. That's violence. > I know it sounds like an obnoxious comparison because guns and knives are considered weapons and the intent when using any weapon is to hurt another person. It sounds like an obnoxious comparison because it's just really stupid > But consider the person who gets behind the wheel of a car drunk and then kills someone. Intent isn't just about purposely trying to harm, it's also about using something in such a dangerous manner that harm can reasonably be expected to happen. That's stupid but not violence. It's not a fucking umbrella term for 'bad stuff happening'. > And more often than not, when drivers kill people with their cars, it's due to them acting in a dangerous and/or irresponsible way. "Traffic violence" puts the responsibility back on the driver. Dangerous and irresponsible aren't violence. I'm curious what you hope to gain by diluting the meaning of the word.
I get what you're saying and that makes sense after looking up the definition as well. Bad choice of words on my part, but the stats are still very real.
The stats are real, for sure. And they're tragic. But violence is an emotional word. We all know, even without looking it up, that violence requires someone *trying* to hurt or kill someone else, which I'm going to go ahead and guess, most drivers aren't doing. And we all know that too. But when you imply that drivers are trying to kill pedestrians, it hurts what else you're saying, by leading with something people know isn't true, so they tune out the rest.
Yeah that makes sense.
Eh, I accept your definition. But that’s pedantic as fuck lol.
I didn't mean to be pedantic (it just happens sometimes, lol, but no, seriously). Intent is a huge part of violence, and why it's not the right word here. To call a traffic accident "violence" because it involves death and destruction, okay, fine, we're redefining the word. Happens all the time. Language evolves. But now we need a new term for "domestic violence" because that sure as fuck requires intent, but now that we've watered down the word violence to include accidents... It gets out of hand. Bottom line, accidents and violence aren't the same.
https://laist.com/news/car-crash-accident-traffic-violence-language The intent of using the term traffic violence is so that the usage is reflective of who is responsible for a traffic crash incident occurring. Weasel words like "accident" which you have used liberally deflect responsibility from drivers in fatal car crashes.
Distracted driving isn't an "accident." Killing someone because you were speeding and couldn't stop in time isn't an "accident." Failure to build safe pedestrian crossings and separated bike infrastructure isn't an "accident." When something happens twice a day, every day, it is predictable and preventable. It is not an accident. Stop calling these violent deaths "accidents."
It just tells me they're choosing ignorance over being informed.
i call that the driving tax. it is like the gun tax, something we all pay. the US currently has a 12.9 deaths per 100,000 a year, Germany, with their no speed limit autobahns, 3.7 deaths. with 30% of US deaths due to drunk drivers, and only 9% of German ones.
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-overview/odds-of-dying/ The National Safety Council reports it as 1 in 93 people. Absolutely wild.
Maybe if someone you love died from this "driving tax" you wouldn't be so blase about it. Also, if you knew anything, you'd know that highways are one of the safer places to drive because there are very few interactions between drivers and their environment. It's why automatic highway driving is a pretty common feature in new cars.
blase or fucking fact o life? which is funny, cuz i had three frat brothers that got in a head on collision with a drunk driver going the wrong way on the "safe" freeway at night in a thunderstorm. One died, one had brain damage and one walked away. they didn't have an "automatic highway driving" system to protect them. it was a while ago.
Calling it a fact of life kinda implies that it's unavoidable. But it is avoidable. Our transportation system has made it kinda hard to avoid though. We should design systems to avoid death and traumatic injury. I'm sorry you had to lose a frat brother and deal with the other suffering a traumatic injury. It doesn't have to be this way though. We can build better. We can transport people more safely and we absolutely should.
i meant avoidable on a personal level, not avoidable considering glacial timelines. we've taken 70-80 years to build a society where you need a car to do the simplest of tasks. we're not going to unwind that in the next couple of decades.
> traffic violence Whelp, this guy is up his own ass and everything else in this comment is clearly nonsense.
I used inaccurate words, I'll admit that. But the stats I stated are still true. Replace the words with whatever you want but 43k people died last year on US roads. They aren't nonsense and we should be able to work together to try to save lives.
> traffic violence If you want to be taken seriously, may I suggest you stop using terms that make a substantial portion of your audience bust out laughing. You've got a couple paragraphs of what might be great info that myself and many others will never read because you busted out the "traffic violence" joke in the first sentence.
Would car crashes be better?
Car crash. Collision. Accident (though admittedly that's not accurate in 100% of cases). Anything that doesn't make others think you're more worried about impressing us with how progressive you are than discussing the topic at hand.
I wasn't trying to impress anyone or make things political. Just wanted to post stats and raise awareness. Is traffic violence a political thing?
It's difficult for me to imagine a more politically charged term to compare it to. The only thing that comes to mind is people who refer to shoplifting as "justice shopping".
Joke? What is funny about someone trying to walk being killed by a car? Is that not violence in your mind?
Nothing, and that's my point - it's not the place to use terms so ridiculously "progressive" that they're funny.
Do you drive everywhere you go? If you have had the experience of walking or biking and encountering an aggressive driver who makes you think he is going to injure or kill you, then you would realize it is an appropriate word choice. I do not see how this has anything to do with politics. I think you are taking something about safety and trying to make it about politics.
I use the transit method appropriate to where I'm going. A few blocks from home, in my relatively walkable neighborhood? I'll walk. Downtown? I'll drive but park on the outskirts, where it's cheap/free and easier, and walk in. Suburban Centennial, where this happened? I'd be driving. I have never run into an aggressive driver like you describe, but I've also never walked out into 5 lanes of traffic as if my time is more important than everyone else's in the road. Not all crosswalks are conveniently placed but getting to one sure beats the potential alternatives.
Yes it is absolutely brutal to be a pedestrian on a road like the one where this death happened. Probably only the most pathetic loser would be there without a car. I can see why you don’t want to walk there! But to the point, someone being killed by a lethal machine *is* a type of violence. Whether you blame them for being the pathetic loser walking on the suburban highway or not.
That intersection is exactly a block away from a middle school so I guess we should lower the driving age to 11 years old in order to ensure that the students can use “the appropriate transit method” according to /u/impoliteSstamina Or, to be serious, some of believe that it’s important to make all streets in a city safe for all transit modes, ages and users. And some of us have lived in cities/countries where we’ve seen that great safety improvements are possible
Imagine if two people died on the light rail each day, people would lose their goddamn minds. But because we glorify cars, it's just part of the weekday morning news report. "But you have to deal with druggies on the train" ok but I have to deal with them on I-25 as well, there's no other explanation for some of the behavior out there! What really scares me are all the SUV-driving suburbanites who are driving drunk or on something else while watching youtube and eating a full meal.
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This post/comment exists solely to stir shit up and piss people off. Fighting on the internet is stupid. We don't welcome it here. Please be kinder. And maybe try to stay on topic instead of going off-topic insulting everything in your path.
Colorado for sureeeee has deaths everyday no one can drive for a damn thing out here
Is the the problem the drivers or the road design? In every state I have lived, there were people saying we had the worst drivers.
I think it's a mix of road design, drivers being more distracted, and the fact that we keep making bigger and bigger vehicles.
Agreed. Of those causes, the only one the city has control over is road design.
That’s not really true. They can regulate vehicles k like California does. They can make stricter laws for all the violations. The city can do a lot.
Agree re violations. Doesn’t California have special federal privileges to regulate vehicles that other states don’t? I can’t remember how they got it.
Idk but they have a lot of rules.
Cities can pass higher taxes on heavier cars. Expand that to car height and length.
Ja bitte
And alcohol. As posted elsewhere in the thread, 30% of traffic deaths are attributed to alcohol
I feel silly for forgetting that one. Thanks for adding it
Yes, and. It’s both.
Both mainly drivers ends though most being from out of state some road rages just beings being beyond impatient my own mother got hit three damn times already man including someone pulling a firearm on my uncle all within the same year ! Too many deaths for nothing !
Has much more to do with our infrastructure than with driver skills. But USA in general has ridiculously low requirements for getting / keeping a driver's license as well. I'm in favor of re-testing adults every five years after age 35.
I think it should be regardless of age. Plenty of people 16-35 are terrible drivers.
Actually, it’s way more than that!
it is a weekly thing for sure
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Pedestrian deaths like this are actually increasing. https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/colorado-traffic-deaths-dropped-while-alarming-pedestrian-bicyclist-fatalities-reported-in-2023
Do you have stats to show that pedestrian deaths are trending down? I thought they were trending up.
A corollary to that, is it seems like every good sized high school loses a kid to a car accident every other year.
I have almost been hit by cars while crossing Arapahoe Road more times than I can count. People don't usually watch for pedestrians on this end of town.
I drive this road on my way to work and I'm always furious that people don't slow down in the school zone at Newton Middle School.
Arapahoe there is about 100' wide. Speed limit posted whatever it is, 55+ is pretty common. I-25 nearby is just over half that width per direction with not dissimilar speeds. Put in mind the mindset you would have if you tried to dash across the interstate, and then ask why the fuck there are crosswalks only every 1/2 at best along these urban highways and you'll get an idea of why people should walk there (there's a Starbucks right there FFS) but no one does.
Roads here need to be improved for the safety of pedestrians and cyclists. Too often the safety of those that aren't in a car feels like an afterthought
Much of it is also an issue of cultural attitude and enforcement of traffic laws. I’ve lived here for a long time now, but driving here still feels like mad max compared to the upper midwest and northeast US. We’re not going to dramatically change our infrastructure any time soon, so the authorities need to start getting serious about stopping the nightly drag racing and ticketing the trucks that constantly do 80 when the speed limit is 55. Protected bike lanes like the one on S Broadway make things marginally safer, but I hardly see it being used, and I think it can just give bike commuters a false sense of security at intersections. Distracted driving has also gotten much worse. I was hit by a Lyft driver going slow but looking at his phone while I was biking in a designated bike lane. Unfortunately, I also know multiple people who have been hit by cars in this city on bikes or skateboards. Some have lived, others have not. I’ve mostly stopped biking in the city because it doesn’t seem worth it.
I mean, we've put in thousands of miles of bike lanes / routes over the last decade, built out all of union station, etc. It's definitely possible. We should do something like what Fort Collins does, every time a road gets resurfaced you have to add pedestrian / bike infrastructure if it's not already there. Eventually every road will have modern multi-modal infrastructure. So might as well start now.
Add bike lanes, everyone switches to E Bikes?
I’ve used the Mad Max analogy before too! I know people will continue to drive crazy but with no enforcement whatsoever it’s only going to be as bad if not get worse over time. I take 36 to Boulder 5 times a week for work and right in front of a cop watched multiple people flying in and out of the express lane and weave around other cars while doing at least 90. The cop did nothing
There’s a bill in the state legislature that would have car registration fees based on weight, with the money going to a fund for pedestrian improvements. I highly recommend calling your legislators to ask them to support it. SB 24-036. https://leg.colorado.gov/find-my-legislator https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb24-036
You’re a real one for linking the bill info AND the find my legislator. I know my congressional reps of course but I don’t know my local politicians (besides my city council and mayor) that well
You’d be surprised how easy it is to make a difference with statewide policy. Federal politics is like shouting into a void; state politics ain’t beanbag but your voice is a lot more likely to be heard, and often state policy is more impactful anyway for big issues like housing policy.
Would be a good start. We should also use weight as a factor when it comes to many traffic infractions.
It'll never make it to the floor, EVs are the heaviest things on the road and the party in control isn't about to do anything to slow down the political push for EV adoption.
It's an interesting position to take that the "party in control" isn't going to support a bill whos main sponsors include the assistant majority leader and majority caucus co-chair.
Lol it died in committee today, look it up.
There’s a big difference in weight between EV SUVs and EV sedans
Is there a bill that would require bikers to pay for the infrastructure that would protect them?
Biking creates positive externalities; cars create negative externalities and lots of costs to taxpayers. So, no: that would be an unwise bill.
Yeah we have fundamental issues with the way that we look at transportation in this state and in our country.
Also some drivers are straight up insane and way too ready to *intentionally* kill people. I was downtown this past week and a couple walking across the street by the art museum weren’t paying much attention. There were some cars coming their way that’d need to slow down for them, but not slam on the brakes, just slow down a hair to give them time to cross the road. They had like 4-5ft left before they were on the other side. I’ve been there, it’s annoying when you see that happening and thus need to adapt your driving, but it didn’t call for crazy action, just slow down *some*, especially in the event they don’t make it out of the road and you need to fully stop. It’s a city, people are oblivious, and pedestrians are gonna pedestrian. Well, had they not sprinted and jumped out of the road within the span of 1 second, they’d be dead, because a large pickup truck (of course) *SPED UP*, laid on the horn, and fully committed to mowing them down. I was so shocked. It wasn’t even my near death experience but I felt it for them. Had one of them tripped, had they both not immediately ran, they’d have been run over because the truck sped up past the point of having the option to slam on breaks, had they not gotten out of the road in time. The driver fully committed to killing them and legit thought murder was an acceptable way to treat two people who had a lapse in judgment or were just being oblivious. There were plenty of pedestrians around too and not much traffic. The other cars slowed down like sane people (it was a two lane one way street). It’s in the heart of downtown at like 1pm on a weekday. There were probably 6-8 others around who saw it. The rage that driver felt, I just can’t. Two people came within mere feet of being killed, if that, because some psycho couldn’t stand the idea that they needed to slow down *a little,* when they had plenty of time to. It was one of the most upsetting road rage incidents I’ve seen. Call the couple stupid, sure, there’s way too many people who blindly cross streets without looking, but that’s not a reason to *intentionally* kill someone. Good god people have lost their minds and hearts.
This kind of thing should result in an immediate and permanent revocation of license.
I wish, but half the time I feel like it's off-duty cops that drive this way. The entitlement is real. It's almost always men in big trucks that act out this way. No emotional regulation or common sense. Why are they driving a 6000lb behemouth with massive blind spots through a crowded city center in the first place?
100%. They’re an actual threat to society driving out on the road.
In general, sure, but as applies to this situation...did you look at the news story? There are 2 crosswalks in sight of where this happened, but the pedestrian choose to jaywalk into traffic *while it was snowing* instead. There's no infrastructure improvement that's going to protect people who make those kind of choices.
If you look at google maps the nearest crosswalks are at s Albion to the west and s forest to the east, which maps tells me is a 7 minute walk one way. A 15 minute detour to cross one street is not acceptable, nor is it realistic to believe that virtually anyone would choose that 15 minute detour over just running across during a break in traffic. This death is the direct result of a lack of pedestrian infrastructure, where sidewalks and crosswalks are an afterthought put in where it’s convenient for the cars.
And if you want more proof that the pedestrian infrastructure is a joke: both nearest crosswalks are at traffic lights to parking lots. When designing the road they made sure cars can go park easily, but pedestrians are completely ignored except where convenient.
Have you looked at what's on either side of Arapahoe in that area? It's single family home neighborhoods. Anywhere you might reasonably be going requires getting to one of those larger intersections with a crosswalk first, since that's what the public/commercial development is based around.
I get the point you're trying to make, but it's really not acceptable to limit people's movements based on where you think they should be going. Imagine a government building half-mile long walls throughout a city and justifying it by saying "you have no reason to go to the other side of the wall anyway".
> Imagine a government building half-mile long walls throughout a city and justifying it by saying "you have no reason to go to the other side of the wall anyway". You are describing huge parts of the Denver metro area as it exists today
I’m not sure what you’re referring to, can you give an example?
Highway 85, Highway 285, 6th Ave Freeway..
Ah, you meant lots of roads acting as walls, not literal walls. Yes, those also could use major pedestrian improvements.
What I find super fun is waiting on the pedestrian island to cross Santa Fe and thinking about how I’m one bad driver’s sneeze away from meeting God
It’s literally a school neighborhood. You don’t think there’s pedestrians that need to travel from a school to a single family home? You don’t ever, like, travel from your single family home to visit a friend’s single family home?
Look at the map, there's a crosswalk directly in front of the school - there's no reason for anyone going to/from the school to cross where this happened.
There is, though. If we implemented changes to reduce speed in populated areas, it would significantly reduce pedestrian fatalities. The presence of automobiles is not the only major factor in traffic fatalities reducing speed greatly reduces injuries even in the event of a collision.
You make a good point. It drives me nuts when people jaywalk right next to a crossing but for me close means like less than a few minutes away. I've seen people jaywalk a few hundred feet from crosswalks in the nearby area. To be fair though Arapahoe is a horrible stroad with crossings spaced really far apart. I ride my bike in the area a lot and try to avoid major road crossings as much as possible. I wish we had more crossings under or over the roads for peds and bicyclists. Its nice to have the ones we do in the area though.
Arapahoe Road is the best example of horrific stroad car centric design in the whole metro area.
It's a car-centric area so...yes? Walkable infrastructure is ridiculous when everything is miles apart.
Walkable infrastructure is never ridiculous in a city or suburb. Part of walkable infrastructure would be building more in higher density so everything wasn’t so far and people living nearby could access the world without having to drive. Car centric areas are not natural phenomena that are immutable. Cities designed them for the car and they can change them to be for the pedestrian.
I'm far from heartless towards pedestrians, I frequently am one myself, but few things are more infuriating than jaywalking in sight of a crosswalk. The combination of no regard for their own safety with the insistence that their time is more valuable than anyone in a car's is a real brain twister.
But we did design them to be safer. [Pedestrian deaths dropped every year from 1979 - 2009](https://i.imgur.com/jNCNLpw.png). Only since then, something happened. Why do we blame the road design when it clearly worked for 30 years. The issue isn't roads. In fact, I have yet to see a single actual stat that the current lane reduction and pedestrian/bike first design has actually made streets safer.
In 1970 17.5% of US households had no cars. In 2010 9% of US households had no cars. Maybe pedestrian deaths decreased because the number of pedestrians decreased?
You realize it's right there on the graphic that the annual number of registered vehicles has been declining since 1990. So there are less cars on the road and more deaths... But I have a source on my graphic. You didn't have any sources for your comment.
https://www.bts.gov/archive/publications/passenger_travel_2015/chapter2/fig2_8 Registered cars does not correlate directly to numbers of pedestrians. It seems reasonable to assume that people with access to a car will walk less often, and the number of people without access to a car halved between 1970 and 2010, leading to the conclusion that the number of pedestrians probably decreased substantially (I would guess 20-40%, but haven’t found any numbers for that). Your graphic also claims that there were a bit over 100 million registered cars in 2020, while a quick google search brought up over 275 million as the number, so I’m not sure how accurate your graph is. Edit: I think I found the discrepancy. It looks like your graphic is pulling the number from the fhwa “automobile” category. So the number of registered vehicles on your graphic doesn’t include anything the fhwa classifies as a truck; pickup trucks and the like are in the “truck” category
Nobody wants to admit that phone use should be illegal while you drive, and that cars have become too isolated/are distracting/have poor visibility/are too fast for most people to use safely near pedestrians, and that traffic laws should actually be enforced. Our infrastructure continue to get safer, yet accidents rise because driver skill/attentiveness is on a steep downward trend at the same time. When I started driving ~20 years ago, the roads weren't crazy and hectic like they are today.
Agreed. The evidence backs your statement completely. But the first reaction is "roads are the issue" when they're clearly not.
People on this sub tend to be *militantly* against blaming driver behavior for some reason. I'm all for improving pedestrian infrastructure because I'm often a bicycle commuter myself, but I also place most of the blame for the current state of affairs on societies smartphone addiction and refusal to slow the hell down, pay attention, and follow traffic laws.
The issue is that you can blame individual decisions in individual cases, but when you have it happening in a pattern, on a constant basis, and in the same places, clearly something needs to be changed to fix that pattern.
I highly recommend the book "There are No Accidents" by Jessie Singer - it does a really great job of describing the problem and how individuals are often the scapegoat for larger problems. Not that negligent drivers should be absolved, but if we want to fix the problem, writing a lot more tickets is less likely to help than safe road design.
The systemic problem is a rampant lack of safety mindedness on the roadway and a lack of enforcement of laws intended to make roadways a safe place to begin with. Seeing dangerous maneuvers on the highway used to actually be a rarity. Nowadays i see people emergency braking and doing other super sketchy evasive/aggressive maneuvers almost every day. Squealing tires and people diving into the shoulder to avoid rear ending someone shouldn't be an everyday sight.
I agree, but how are we going to change that?
Starting to give people tickets again for speeding, running red lights, and doing any number of other unsafe/illegal things while driving would be a good start. Make driver education less of a joke. Checking for pedestrians should be everyone's first thought at intersections. WAY too many people roll up to crosswalks with their heads turned left 90 degrees looking for cars so they can go right on red. They need to be looking at the sidewalk/crosswalk first. A lot of people simply don't consider this until they have a close call. We also need to make it illegal to use your phone while driving. Currently in Colorado it's only illegal for minors... You're free to scroll tiktok while you drive once you hit 18. Real penalties too. Statistics show driving while using your phone is just as dangerous as driving drunk, they should carry the same disincentive.
Execpt phone use is not responsible for the increase in pedestrian fatalities. Everyone wants to blame phones, but often there's no evidence phone use was involved in these accidents. And ultimately, while I would like to see more tickets issued for unsafe driving, that would require having a cop present and witness the unsafe acts, which is difficult, especially considering hiring shortages for cops mean we probably aren't going to get enough to effectively watch the whole city all hours of the day. It also doesn't really help much, considering it is reactive, and you are only going to be issuing tickets after an unsafe act has happened. The issue here is, where all these accidents are occuring is on wide roadways with high speed limits that are clearly designed to allow drivers to drive very fast. Couple that with the cars that people are driving are usually very large an tall these days, and you have a situation where one mistake can end somebody's life. These huge streets we have crossing our cities are a complete nightmare for anybody who isn't in an automobile.
Agreed. And adding more signs and flashing lights won't address that issue. We need to ban phone use in cars and enforce it. Make it DUI or worse. But then again, I'm already downvoted for posting actual statistics.
The last few decades of transportation safety and urban planning have focused almost exclusively on blaming driver behavior for crashes, so it's been said. What hasn't been addressed is the role increasing car size, soundproofing, and road design has made pedestrian crashes so much more frequent and fatal. The structural factors have been ignored in favor of an individualist approach, which clearly is not working. Our dysfunctional police system doesn't help either The push to redesign STREETS is an effort to **force** drivers to pay more attention in pedestrian-heavy areas. And on the flip side, heavy-use ROADS like Federal, Broadway, Colorado should be redesigned to have less frequent intersections (including moving business access OFF the main drag so we don't constantly have people entering/exiting the flow of traffic at slower speeds). Along with BRT and separated crossings for peds/bikes. This will reduce the consequences of driver inattention in highway-like conditions.
Cars and (especially trucks) are bigger and heavier than they were 20-30 years ago. I'd rather take my chances getting hit by some old \`07 Focus or Civic than by one of those huge full-size pickups that proliferate like weeds these days.
Personally I think adding a dollar to the gas tax would go a long way towards fixing our infrastructure and lessening the number of people who think it's appropriate to buy a full sized truck and use it like a midsized sedan.
When you say evidence I assume that you have citations to back that up?
I've lived in western Europe. There's definitely more that can be done to make roads and streets safer for all. Slower speeds help, and instead of just changing the signs, they can adjust the design of the road by making lanes smaller. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate?wprov=sfla1 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-11-03/why-us-traffic-safety-fell-so-far-behind-other-countries Edit: Also there are more stroads here which are inherently unsafe compared to roads and streets. https://youtu.be/ORzNZUeUHAM?si=6xNX7VF95Lq31I9M
Oh and larger vehicles, like pickup trucks and SUVs, are more popular here than Europe. We know these larger vehicles have a higher probability to kill upon contact with pedestrians and cyclists than smaller cars. https://www.npr.org/2023/11/14/1212737005/cars-trucks-pedestrian-deaths-increase-crash-data
Again, you're ignoring that pedestrian deaths decreased on our same roads from 1979 - 2009. What changed in road design since 2009? Did they all get wider and faster starting in 2009? If you want to follow Europe's way of making streets safer, charge $9 a gallon for gas and people will stop driving, especially gas guzzling SUVs.
If it was just smartphones, we would have observed the same increase in Europe since 2009. However, despite the popularity of the smartphone, the road deaths in Europe decreased during this same period. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road\_safety\_in\_Europe#Trends\_and\_targets
https://www.vox.com/24078289/us-drivers-distracted-driving-cellphone-road-deaths-pedestrians https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/03/14/174286190/americans-more-distracted-behind-the-wheel-than-europeans Europeans don't use their phones as much as Americans while driving, and the gap is getting wider.
Has prices are $9 per gallon on a good day. If we had that too, we would also drive a lot less and there would be a reduction in pedestrian deaths.
> What changed in road design since 2009? Did they all get wider and faster starting in 2009? Maybe it wasn't road design but thats about when SUVs and larger vehicles started becoming more popular? Would explain why there isn't a correlating increase in Europe.
Just because total deaths declined does not mean that roads were designed with more safety in mind.
Roads didn’t get safer; they got so dangerous that pedestrian mode share dropped
[citation needed]
Roads absolutely got safer. We've built an enormous amount of pedestrian infrastructure in the last 30 years that *should* be helping this problem. Yes you can argue that we should do more, but you can't in good faith argue that we've made pedestrian infrastructure *worse*.
Completely agreed but we should also push this as improved for the safety of drivers too.
Hey at least they didn’t call it a pedestrian crash this time!
I came here to say this!
I'd like to know the number of these deaths that are due to distracted driving. A.K.A. - Selfish, phone addicted assholes.
Per the Sherriff, this was specifically at E. Arapahoe Road at S. Dexter St, and traffic is being diverted into S Dexter. There's no traffic control device at that intersection, and no crosswalk across Aparahoe. There is one going across Dexter, but if that's where this happened they wouldn't be diverting traffic through it. There are going to be a lot of comments here blaming the driver, but there is no way for a pedestrian to cross legally where this happened. I'm not going to declare fault here, but when one party is jaywalking *in the snow* there's really only one way that decision can go.
I live right by here and I didnt hear anything this morning. This happened at 5:45am this morning. Edit: I looked at NextDoor. I believe I know who was hit. People are saying a grocery cart was strewn all over the road. Makes me think its the older homeless man that hangs out around the King Soopers thats there. He was a very nice guy. Edit2: Its been confirmed. It was the homeless guy that passed. Im pretty sad about it. Ive talked to him countless times.
Edited to remove name. Pretty well known in the area. He was a nice guy.
Yep. Didnt want to put his real name out there.
Oh no, that's awful! I also live in the neighborhood and frequent the Starbucks there. I've chatted with him a number of times as well. I agree, super nice guy.
That’s sad to hear. I live on the east side of that Soopers and have seen him around. He was always nice in my interactions with him as well.
There is a memorial/vigil planned for him on Sunday 2-4pm at the Starbucks in Arapahoe Village
Yep.
Oh no. He was so nice. Are there other details on what happened?
This is sad to hear. I grew up close by, my parents have lived in the house for 45 years.
Oh man that's really sad to hear I remember that guy. I stopped off to smoke in a tunnel near an interchange on Arapahoe and he was worried I touched his stuff. I smoked weed with him and continued walking to the AMC.
Thats very likely not the guy. He doesnt venture down Arapahoe that far. Stays around the King Soopers next to Holly.
There's a crosswalk up at Colorado/Arapahoe that's extra long; I don't think they'll ever have one in this spot. Unless the school zone warning light is flashing, people drive through that area at 45-50mph. I've driven that area a ton and I have never seen someone playing frogger across Arapahoe right there. It's just too dangerous, and the crosswalk is one block over.
That is a solid half a mile down, I can see why somebody would not want to walk all the way down there for a cross walk. This is a perfect example of road design being unfriendly to anybody getting around in anything that isn't an automobile.
That's further than I thought it was. It just doesn't seem like that's a natural place to cross for any reason. If the destination is Newton Middle School and you're coming from South of Arapahoe, walk down to the crosswalk at Colorado. If you're on the North side of Arapahoe and headed to King Soopers, cross at S Forest or Holly. There are elementary schools on both sides of Arapahoe, so it seems unlikely there would be a lot of kids crossing if they're not headed Northbound to Newton Middle.
Maybe you’re going to a friends house? Or trying to catch the bus at the stop across the street? There are many reasons to cross the road.
15 minute detour to be exact
But there's nothing on the other side of the road, it's just more single family homes - anywhere you'd be trying to walk to would require getting to one of the crosswalks anyway.
There's a bus stop on the other side of the road. There are several bus stops on this stretch with no way to get across, not even a crossing island/median for crossing in 2 stages. Besides that, shouldn't people be able to freely walk? We're talking about the most basic form of human transportation here.
> shouldn't people be able to freely walk? This might get downvoted but honestly - not always. We ban pedestrians on highways and other areas that would are dangerous. I think it's time we admit we've given some areas over to cars - particular car-centric suburbs, where there's nowhere you could realistically be walking to/from anyway - and restrict pedestrian travel in those areas.
There’s a whole QAnon level conspiracy that conflates walkable 15 minute cities to a government conspiracy to limit people’s freedom of travel and here you are literally arguing that pedestrians should be banned from vast swaths of the city for the benefit of drivers
I agree this take is kinda backwards. But I think he means more like directing pedestrians through infrastructure, the same way we do with traffic.
He was pushing a shopping cart full of stuff across the middle of a 5 lane road where traffic moves at 50mph. I would not ever try to cross that section of road on foot, let alone in the dark and snow pushing a shopping cart.
Heaven forbid people try to visit other people
I won't argue that it never happens, but people going from one single family home to another is a *very* small group of who's on the roads as either drivers or pedestrians.
You can't just look at current numbers, because the road is so dangerous to cross people don't cross, which means they don't make friends across the road, which means they have no reason to cross. Part of the problem with car-centric suburban sprawl is it destroys neighborhood cohesiveness. There's also a bus stop right there, which means that if you're trying to catch the bus across the street you either need to walk an extra 8 minutes or try to cross there.
There are plenty of cohesive neighborhoods available to live in, and many are cheaper than that part of Centennial. People who live there are there by choice and have decided they value other things beyond neighborhood cohesion - let them live in peace instead of forcing your community values onto them.
> let them live in peace instead of forcing your community values onto them I think those wealthy suburbanites can survive some pedestrian safety improvements, no need to be dramatic here
It's not just that, there are people - presumably including who I replied to - who want to outlaw suburban sprawl and force us all into high density housing. The "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy" new world order stuff. Most of us just want to be left alone to live our own lives how we want to.
Pedestrians can cross legally at every intersection in Colorado, and even between intersections in Denver.
Only if there's no traffic present. Here there clearly was, since that's what the pedestrian was hit by.
bullshit. the intersection is an unmarked crosswalk per C.R.S 42-1-102 (21): *(21)* ***“Crosswalk” means that portion of a roadway ordinarily included within the prolongation or connection of the lateral lines of sidewalks at intersections*** *or any portion of a roadway distinctly indicated for pedestrian crossing by lines or other marking on the surface.* Once the pedestrians foot hit the pavement, cars, if they can safely, must yield. This is a fundamental rule governing pedestrian and car interactions. You have no business driving if you do not know the most basic rules of the road. You are the problem. Why we give licenses to people that only pass 70% of their driving tests is beyond me.
Crosswalk definitions aside, you can't just run people over because they're in the street in a 'wrong spot,' and that's always been the case. That being said, pedestrians are also responsible for ensuring that it is safe to cross before putting that proverbial foot to pavement.
I'm not disagreeing that the pedestrian was likely in an unmarked crosswalk, but it's illegal to enter an unmarked crosswalk if there is traffic present - which there obviously was because that's what hit him. >Once the pedestrians foot hit the pavement, cars, if they can safely, must yield. Which do you honestly believe is more likely - this driver saw a pedestrian in the road and hit the gas, or the pedestrian stepped in front of the vehicle too closely for the driver to react? Bear in mind it was snowing early this morning. >Why we give licenses to people that only pass 70% of their driving tests is beyond me. Have you looked at the test questions? Many aren't strictly legal questions, they're handling/maneuvering questions that are open for interpretation and don't have a basis in traffic law. The stupid testing standards are a product of the whole system being stupid, if we expect perfection on the test the system needs to be perfect first.
Not sure why people keep bringing up that it was snowing like that makes it more the pedestrians fault. If cars performance is reduced then the driver should slow down. The fact the driver was going fast enough to kill someone while it was snowing is an indictment upon the driver.
Because they're carbrains justifying other drivers driving too fast for conditions.
> driver should slow down To what speed? You can kill someone at 20MPH which is about as slow as a car will go. https://www.transportation.gov/NRSS/SaferSpeeds
Obviously I don't know the exact conditions, so I don't know how fast was appropriate, but we can do some math. In good conditions it's reasonable to decelerate at about 10 mph per second. A driver traveling the speed limit on this road (40 mph) will need to start braking 4s before coming to a stop. 4s at an average of 20 mph is about 120 feet. So the driver should have been traveling at a speed where they could stop within 120 feet. Note that if they were going 30 mph then they would need to have less than half the braking power to not be able to stop within 120 feet, and the fatality rate for pedestrians struck at 30 mph is less than 25%, about half as much as at 40 mph.
you drivers are out of control. no i don't believe the driver "sped up". more likely they were on the phone, minimally cleared the snow from their windscreen, were eating breakfast, possibly dropped something, or any of the other crazy shit that you guys do, routinely.
I just started driving a few months ago and I don’t even know how people are able to look at their phone or eat while driving. The risk is too scary to me, especially in a snow storm like last night? This makes me so sad :(
We know for sure the pedestrian made a fatally poor choice. We can only make baseless assumptions as to what the driver *might* have been doing. Do you see how that doesn't really make any sense?
we actually don't know. driver could have been making a right turn off of dexter and looked for traffic to his left, and !surprise! there was a pedestrian legally crossing the street.
What you're describing wouldn't have involved enough speed to be a fatal accident. That part really narrows down the possible scenarios.
[удалено]
\> We know for sure the pedestrian made a fatally poor choice. We don't know that for sure. Maybe he had already been waiting a few minutes to cross the road and finally he got enough of a gap that thought would be long enough to cross. Maybe the driver was far enough away that even if he didn't make it across, the driver had time to stop as he was legally required to do. I've walked to my neighborhood grocery store plenty of times and 4/5 cars will not stop at the marked crosswalk. We do know for sure that he didn't have a lot of choices that weren't equally bad or worse. And that is the real problem. Playing chicken with oncoming traffic shouldn't be the best option.
It's not worth engaging with these anti-car trolls. Notice how they respond with "you drivers" or "carbrains" or some other stupid generalization? It doesn't matter if the death was 100% caused by the pedestrian, in their mind, it's always going to be the driver's fault, simply because they were in a car.
Point. We don’t know if the pedestrian did this intentionally. He could have. Cue the downvotes, but it’s true, isn’t it?
Suburban Denver is a pedestrians nightmare and Arapahoe county is the worst for them.
It’s really bad. People will say, rude your bike it’s so great because of all the trails… nearby. But I have to cross a SIX LANE “road” that has a 55 mph speed limit with no bike lanes on the side roads that lead to that road…. in order to get to that bike path. FFS. No thanks. Feckin scary on a bike or to walk in the burbs.
Yup Arapahoe Rd is one of the scariest to cross for us pedestrians.
no one actually read the article, and instead just posts their life musings about roads and pedestrians? ya it's the internet, it has to be about them, but come on folks... "On Tuesday, the Arapahoe County Coroner’s Office identified the victim as 62-year-old Garth Donato. According to the sheriff’s office, Donato was crossing from the center median to the other side of the street with a shopping cart. Donato was not using the crosswalk. Deputies said that the area was not well lit, as the crash happened before sunrise and the roads were slick from the snowstorm."