I just spent an hour in Traffic Jam Mode

I agree, but my Prius getting totaled last year forced me to buy.

 

As I've said many times, I can name about 11 or 12 people off the top of my head that I've known and that were ran over as pedestrians or cyclists, many of them killed as a result of left maimed for life. In some cases they were at fault, others were the driver's fault. But two things they all have in common, the driver is always in a full sized SUV or pickup and the driver always claims they couldn't see the pedestrian or cyclist. I don't know a single person hit and/or killed by a sedan.

But thanks for being a careful driver! That's the other part of the coin. If you can't see very well I'm front of your vehicle then whether there are pedestrians on their phones or not, you got to be extra careful. A couple of the people I know who were ran over and in parking lots, one killed, the other maimed, were small children that took off from their parents. Again, the parents may have been at fault here (in one of those cases the driver was found to be at fault), but as a driver you have to expect the unexpected.

 

i bet parking lots are some of the most dangerous places for pedestrians.

new parking lots should be designed with pedestrian walkways, but they aren't

 

You mean people would actually USE them? Not here in Virginia!

 

My GMC has a Streisand nose - but I've never felt that there was a blind spot there - and since it's a base model I don't have the 'wimp dots' or the bizarre alphabet soup of safety doo dads to keep me from squishing a kid.
Vehicles have rear and side mirrors for a REASON, and none that tell you what is in front of the vehicle.
The DRIVER is supposed to do that, or else the "blind spot" is between the seat and the steering wheel...

Pedestrians who get hit in a parking lot very often have their own blind spots.

Whether I'm driving, riding, or walking....I place ALL MOVING VEHICLES into one of two categories:

1. They don't and won't ever see me.
b. They DO see me and they're trying to hit me.

 

Actually, car manufacturers have been purposely designing vehicles with bigger blind spots. One reason I bought my 2008 Corolla was I saw the new big blind spot design that eventually arrived here in 2010.

When I mentioned this last year to a Toyota salesman, he said Toyota was more interested in safety than blind spots. He was serious. IMO bigger blind spots make safety much more complex.

 

Just blame others. That's the easiest way to keep a calm conscience.

America's cars and trucks are getting bigger, and so are their front blind zones. Children are paying the price.

 

It true then that validates my opinion of Toyota's corporate culture.

I keep mine clear by being an accident-free driver.
I always presume that pedestrians are engrossed by their phones and are wearing headphones or earpieces that put them in a deaf-blind mode in the parking lot - and act accordingly.
Sometimes I'm tempted to blip the horn and make them drop their phones but I try at these times to listen to my better angels and just let them be them.

The military and my company have the exact same policy for drivers of their vehicles.
Good drivers do NOT get into accidents.
If you're sitting at an intersection on a rural road, 100 miles away from the nearest human and your car is hit by a meteorite?
Then you shouldn't have been sitting there.

I cannot speak to other people's conscience.

 

That reminds me of an incident when I was a teen in canada. I was riding along the right side of the road and a large passenger bus came behind me and blew his horn. It startled me so I almost lost my balance!

 

To me, the way vehicle advertising and choice has gone in the USA isn't like going to the middle of nowhere and still getting hit by a meteorite but more like knowing there's a lightning storm going on and moving up the mountain in direction of past timberline.

But I digress. The way I see pedestrian safety is it's like society going from hand saws to chainsaws. Chainsaws can do a lot more damage by accident if you're not that well trained and/or don't have the proper PPE or safety equipment. Not that hand saws couldn't cause injury, but the risk increased with motorizing the saw. But with the right amount of safety equipment and training, a chainsaw can be pretty safe.

The same with SUV-ifying the car in relation to pedestrian safety. What I do question about people in general driving around SUVs and pickups is whether or not they have sufficient training and safety equipment to adequately avoid pedestrian injuries. Statistics indicate that no, they aren't sufficient. The same may go for pedestrians, but seeing how some are children I feel the pressure to make them safer should be on the drivers and manufacturers and perhaps the government. I mean, you wouldn't blame a child for getting cut by a chainsaw that an adult was actively operating.

To me, SUVs and pickups need things like thinner or partially transparent A-pilars, front crossover mirrors, front cameras with screens in appropriate places and automated braking, perhaps lower hoods too, and drivers need more training.

 

And....who would have thought an electric chainsaw was more dangerous than gas? Rips through the chaps material. Torque.

 

The driver....yes.
Since I'm COVID years old, I quail at the thought of the government trying to actually HELP actually HELPING.
The chainsaw to parking lot leap is a little interesting......but I'll pick up that baton by suggesting that the solution to the huge numbers of children being maimed by adults wielding chainsaws are not going to be ameliorated by putting child proximity sensors or UFO themed annunciators......on chainsaws.

Depending on who is lying with whose numbers, the top three causes of accidental deaths for children seem to be drowning, motor vehicle accidents or firearms - and the accepted definition for "child" when people like to warp discussions with numbers instead of facts is.......0-17.
WHEN I WAS 17, I was in the military, and I had already lost several classmates to motor vehicle accidents, and one to suicide, WITH......a firearm.
Not sure that's any more or less accidental than under-18 gang-bangers spraying parking lots with their Glocks - but, HEY.......'statistics.'
Am I right?

BTW.....Why no mandatory buyback programmes for swimming pools and bath tubs?

The fact is that ACCIDENTAL deaths for the littles by (real) private passenger trucks and (real) SUVs is very low because of several factors:
SUV's these days - AREN'T SUVs - they're CUVs - or smallish FWD or sometimes AWD cars sitting a few inches higher than sedans.
A non-trivial number of not-privately owned trucks are delivering stuff to the store who owns the parking lot - and these have to play 'frogger' in the parking lots just like we do.

I have three orange traffic cones in my company Jeeplet.
I'm required to use them every time I park my vehicle, and about every third or fourth time some chardonnay Mom will ask me why my beloved company is so worried about somebody hitting my Jeeplet.
I have to patiently explain to them that....no.....that's NOT why I use the cones.
We call it the 'circle of safety.'
I actually have to walk around my Jeeplet to pick UP the cones and put them back in the cargo bay.
I have to use them because parents let their crumb-snatchers run wild in stores and parking lots and they like to play grabass games INCLUDING hiding behind other people's trucks and even (more than once) in the wheel wells of our larger trucks.

Once during a company luncheon I 'borrowed' as many orange cones as I could find and put a double ring around my Jeeplet.
My boss was amused.
HIS boss?
Not so much......probably because THAT vehicle didn't have cones around it.

Not many people I know, actually....
I'm thinking that the comparatively low skill level of electric chain saw users might account for a higher level of injuries though.
They won't even let me TOUCH a chainsaw at work, and our church has a team of hurricane relief workers that are required to be certified in chainsaw safety.
Fortunately?
This was another "above average" hurricane season - so most of the training has been proficiency rather than OJT.

 

Bologna! You can call "fake news" all you want, but facts are facts, and peak pedestrian safety happened in the 90's and statistics show that pedestrians are more than twice as likely to get ran over these days since then. If they're so much safer, then prove it.

And trying to twist an analogy to your way of applying it doesn't make you right. The point is, anything that can injury or kill people is a hazard, and brushing the hazard off to the side when more and more people are getting hurt from it is a stupid way of thinking.

 

Maybe I am tired. But the circular cars, trucks, bikes, suvs and walkers topic is a bit ... Well, beaten enough?

Maybe I am just cranky, or maybe I am just being a word that rhymes with witch.

Irrelevant, I suppose, but I blame it all on politics....

Having said, that, I was hit by a cyclist and got pretty scraped up. I have been smacked by runners several times. Friends have been hit....you pick almost anything and folks have probably been hit by it.yes, drivers hit things.

Yes, I USED TO BE a rabid cyclist and bombed along trails much faster than I should.

MY REAL THOUGHT is peds are distracted with their gadgets...as are drivers whether two or four wheels. So they make stupid mistakes. Once every month or so, someone wanders in front of m Outback distracted by whatever they are looking at. And how many times does the car ahead fail to move when the light turns.

I guess my point is danger is all around. We need to all be careful but being human....

Time for happy thoughts??? What about those Oregon State University Beavers! LOL they are famous for chainsaws.

Check out this video from this search, oregon state beavers chainsaw https://share.google/aEyaht3VOa2orTtPF

kris

 

Maybe I got too cranky myself, sorry about that.

Hopefully "rich."

I've been seeing lots of beaver ponds at work. Maybe I'll take some photos of them. Here's where I'm parked in my water truck.

 

i love beavers, pics would be welcome

 

let's go back to pedestrian safety, i'm not cranky:68859195

 

I also saw a rock marten and a coyote up here.

 

i had to look that one up

 

Not to be confused with a tree climbing weasel.