Crossing the Street Shouldn't Be Deadly (but it is)

this video is sponsored by 880,000 hours the nonprofit organization that helps people find rewarding meaningful careers completely free of charge but more about that later I grew up in a car infested city called London London Ontario Canada though I've also lived in some nice places as well but for most of my life I lived in Canada or in the United States and crossing the street was stressful sometimes I now live in the Netherlands a country with some of the safest streets in the world for people walking crossing the street here is not stressful at all I'm still amazed when I go back to visit family in Canada how unnecessarily difficult and dangerous it is to cross the street it really shouldn't be but it is and most of that comes down to the way we design our streets to understand why it's safer and easier to cross the street in the Netherlands it's useful to look at the Alternatives first this Crossing probably looks pretty normal to anybody from the US or Canada so let me explain some of the problems here first North American intersections are pretty stupid I mean simple all traffic gets a green light in One Direction then the light turns red and all traffic gets a green light in the other direction sometimes there are some slight quirks like dedicated left turn arrows but for the most part this Behavior describes the vast majority of intersections in the US and Canada traffic lights are designed and timed primarily for cars the goal here is to keep motor vehicle traffic flowing as quickly as possible there are often Loops in the ground to detect cars but there's no detection of people walking and it's usually required to press a b button like this one to cross the street and depending how that signal is programmed it may be required to press the B button within a certain time window or it won't work for instance from one of my early videos about traffic lights this man pushed the button too late so the signal changed to Green without changing the walk indicator meaning that these people need to cross illegally and Scurry across the intersection like animals here I've pressed the button and the light goes red for cars but I'm still not allowed to go in this case there's a green left turn arrow or Advanced green which allows the left turn lane to clear so I still need to wait before I start walking through I have to look left because drivers are allowed to make right turns on red lights this is very dangerous to people walking as it's very very common for drivers not to stop when turning right on red and their attention is almost exclusively on the flow of traffic coming from the left which makes it harder to spot people crossing the street one American study found a 69% increase in cars crashing into people walking when right turn on red was permitted right turns on red light should never be permitted because it's dangerous and there are much better ways of speeding up car traffic but it's still the norm almost everywhere in the US and Canada with very few exceptions anyway back to crossing the street The Crossing length is quite long because of the multiple wide traffic Lanes as I get past the middle of the intersection I need to watch out for cars turning left or right through my Crossing and finally I get to the other side at a typical intersection in the US or Canada the walk signal and the green light trigger at the same time this means that anybody walking needs to watch out for cars turning right in this case all of the drivers decide to go first even though they should have yielded to the person walking the solution to this is what's called a leading pedestrian indicator which triggers the walk signal before the green light allowing pedestrians to get a head start these are quite common in the Netherlands but they're starting to be implemented in some cities in North America as well however this is much less effective when right turn on red is allowed because drivers can still turn right anyway and of course you need to check any drivers running a red light before Crossing to something particularly common in downtown Toronto a typical American walk signal will come on for only a few seconds then turn to a flashing hand with a countdown timer showing how much time is left to cross the street it's illegal to begin Crossing if the countdown timer has started and cities like Toronto are starting to enforce this rule at some intersections in order to speed up car traffic this means that if you're not waiting at the intersection at at just the right time to cross you missed your chance and have to wait another light cycle Crossing distances can be very very long in North America as well meaning that there's a very long time that a person walking is vulnerable in the intersection this is particularly bad in many parts of the American South like here in Las Vegas because these places are designed almost exclusively to move as many cars as possible not for the benefit of people outside of cars Las Vegas is a horrible place to walk but lots of people need to do it and these people are left dealing with whatever scraps are left over after Traffic Engineers are done designing exclusively for cars and even at traffic signals there are times when pedestrian Crossings aren't allowed in order to speed up car traffic it's very telling that North American cities will spend millions of dollars on projects designed to speed up a driver's commute by a few minutes but routinely make Road changes that add to the time it takes to walk somewhere this is also why you'll see another common problem crossing the street in the US and Canada there are often very long distances between Crossings because too many stop lights will slow down car traffic for example how are you supposed to get to this bus stop and when you do get off a bus in many Suburban places in America it's a long walk to the nearest intersection and finally there are Slip Lanes like this one that allow drivers to turn right without a signal and without slowing down these are extremely dangerous for people outside of of cars and should never be used where people are expected to cross they really highlight that North American Traffic Engineers value the convenience of the people who drive more than the lives of the people who walk in a few cities these are being removed to increase safety they used to be one here on this corner but it was filled in with a small storm water management Garden a few years ago now drivers need to make a much slower and safer sharp turn here so with all that in mind what is it like to cross the the street in the Netherlands this is viout strad which is one of the busier roads for car traffic in Amsterdam in the 1960s this intersection was a lot less friendly for people outside of cars but thankfully the city has done a lot of work to repair it what's really crazy to me though is that this road in Amsterdam is actually a little bit wider sidewalk to sidewalk than this road in Las Vegas you can always determine the priorities of traffic engineer by the way they use the space available but despite being very wide this road is still very easy to cross look what happens when the walk signal turns on people walking get a walk signal immediately and can cross to this area in the middle called a refuge Island even though cars are still able to drive in the lane that is farther away this is the genius of Dutch traffic lights every direction is completely independent so the behavior can change depending on what traffic is detected making the system work work better for everyone I made an earlier video about how this works better for drivers but it obviously works better for people walking too with an intersection like this you get to start Crossing earlier so there's less waiting at traffic lights but it's safer too because you only have to look in One Direction at a time as you're Crossing and you're safe from traffic while on The Refuge Island the island also forces drivers to take a wider turn which means they approach the crossing perpendicularly and are more likely to see anyone who is Crossing Street look what happens when I cross this time I'm able to walk across as usual but as I get to the other side the traffic control system detects that there's no other vehicle traffic coming in the next Lane so the walk signal turns green for the first half of the crossing by the time I make it across this part of the street the car traffic has cleared in the next Lane and I'm able to keep Crossing all this happened while the signal was still Green in the perpendicular Direction This is the benefit of smart traffic lights and allowing people to cross the street halfway interestingly many walk safety Advocates have argued against having these two-phase Crossings because North American Traffic Engineers tend to program the signals so that people walking need to cross in two phases making it take even longer to cross the street the channel Ontario traffic man has a great video about this it's definitely worth watching I'd like to quickly mention The Pedestrian scramble where all walk indicators turn on at the same time so that people can cross in any direction they want like at the famous shuyu Crossing in Japan or this example on Oxford Street in London there are a couple of these in Toronto too which is nice to see apparently there are two of these in the Netherlands though I've never been to them but personally I believe that if you have enough people walking to justify a scramble intersection then that place should probably be pedestrianized and what about beg buttons well we have them here too though they're usually only to turn on the the audio signal for people with limited Vision but one big difference here is that they can be pressed at any time watch how the light immediately turns green for these people when they press the button and at some intersections there are radar detectors which can automatically detect people approaching the crossing these radar sensors are also sometimes used to detect if someone is taking a long time to cross the street and will keep the walk signal on longer or turn it off if no one else is Crossing Lane widths are much narrower in the Netherlands than in the US or Canada so the crossing distance is shorter even if there are the same number of lanes for roads within cities the Netherlands has the narrowest lanes in the world some as narrow as 2.7 M while City roads and strods in North America are anywhere from 3.3 to 3.6 M wide that's wider than Highway Lanes here in the Netherlands which is part of what makes American strads so dangerous they're designed like highways some cities in North America are starting to purposely narrow their streets especially AC Crossings which really should be done more often here's another small detail that makes a big difference here in the Netherlands the traffic light for cars is on the near side of the intersection this means that in order to see the traffic light a driver needs to stop before the zebra Crossing but in North America the traffic light is on the far side of the intersection and this makes a huge difference because it means that a driver can drive into the zbra crossing and still see the traffic light on the other side which results at this very common situation of a driver blocking the Zer Crossing now what about Minor Junctions those that don't have a traffic signal here is a typical minor Junction like you'll find all over Canada in the US and there will almost always be a stop sign I made another video about the problems with stop signs so I won't cover that here I'm just glad I live in a country that doesn't use stop signs unless absolutely necessary anyway as you approach a junction like this the Sidewalk Ends then you need to step down to the level of the road to cross the street and then go back up to the sidewalk on the other side it is very clear that you are crossing a space meant for cars and this design really reinforces the idea that it's the responsibility of the person walking to be careful when crossing the street and since you need to go down to the level of the road in order to cross there need to be ramps for people in wheelchairs and these ramps can get clogged with water and debris drivers are supposed to come to a complete stop at this white line before the crossing but very few people actually do this in particular drivers turning right often turn without stopping at all while only looking left or oncoming traffic this is clearly a car first approach designed to allow drivers to turn as quickly as possible rather than for the safety of people walking now look at how this kind of minor Junction is designed in the Netherlands with A continuous sidewalk in this design the sidewalk continues through the intersection without dropping down making it very clear that this is a space for people walking drivers have to go up a ramp to get to the junction and this means that a car is guaranteed to slow down before the crossing because physics works better than science streets in older neighborhoods that haven't been updated yet still have the old design that looks a lot like North America but continuous sidewalks are now proven to be safer so this has become the new standard across the country and they're being built in many other cities in Europe as well I have a full video about continuous sidewalks if you'd like to learn more about them but since making that video I've heard from so many people with physical disabilities who tell me how much they prefer this kind of Crossing people who are blind or partially cited find it much easier to cross as there are no tripping hazards and people in wheelchairs are very happy not to have to go down and up ramps to get across the street these really are a vastly superior design and should be implemented everywhere ironically North America does have this kind of design along almost any strobe with a sidewalk but only at the entrances to businesses but this implementation is much worse the ramp is very gradual and cuts into the sidewalk space making it much easier for drivers to drive quickly over it as usual North American Traffic Engineers prioritize drivers speed and venience over the safety of people walking at small four-way intersections the entire area is raised up to sidewalk level this makes it much more convenient for people walking but it also acts like a big speed bump making it difficult for drivers to go to quickly through the intersection and there are roundabouts the remarkable design of a Dutch roundabout deserves its own video someday but what's important is that it's designed to make people walking or cycling much more visible to drivers of course if you find yourself wanting to cross the street in the Netherlands there's another option you can just cross the street wherever you want to which is not an option in most of the US because of Decades of automobile industry propaganda this is a famous video of Market Street in San Francisco taken from the front of a trolley in 1906 you can see that automobiles were already a common site but there was also a lot of public transit people walking and some people on bicycles too this looks chaotic but at slow speeds mixed traffic generally works pretty well unfortunately cars became heavier and a lot faster for example the Ford Model T released in 1908 had a top speed of over 70 kmph by the 1920s the general public hated cars and wanted to have speed Governors installed on them for use within cities cities also introduced High fines and penalties for Dangerous driving and when all this blowback resulted in a drop in car sales of 12% in 1924 the automobile industry started to get worried so they invented a new term jaywalking literally shaming people for crossing the street anywhere except at designated Crossings now I'm not going to go into the history of jaywalking you can read the links in the description if you want but what's important here is that the automobile industry flipped the conversation instead of drivers being held accountable for killing people the burden of responsibility was now on the person crossing the street even though it was the drivers who were making the streets dangerous in the first place to be clear jaywalking is not and was never about safety safety could have been achieved with speed Governors it was always about getting people out of the way of cars so that those cars could drive faster and this was a major change in the way Americans approach Road fatalities and crossing the street in general that persists even today here's what Market Street in San Francisco looked like in the 1960s with people confined to cross only at designated areas this is a major difference in a fairly short period of time incidentally in 2020 San Francisco banned all private vehicles from Market Street to make it more efficient for people traveling by public transit and bicycle unfortunately people aren't allowed to cross the street wherever they want yet so there's still some work to be done to repair it JW walking is a very American concept outside of the United States there aren't a lot of places that make it illegal to cross Midlock and there are even fewer places where these laws are actually enforced for example in Ontario Canada there is no law at all against crossing the street mid block so what I'm doing right here in Toronto is completely legal though because of American cultural influence in Canada most people don't know this and I've been literally threatened by ignorant drivers for crossing the street like this on multiple occasions here in the Netherlands there used to be a law that stated that you couldn't cross the street within 30 m of a zebra Crossing but that law was repealed in 1995 now the Dutch can cross wherever they damn well please because unlike America this is the land of Freedom what most people don't know is that it hasn't always been this way in the Netherlands if you had done this comparison in the 1960s or 1970s there wouldn't have been much difference between Dutch and American cities most of these changes only happened since the 1990s when the Dutch developed what they call sustainable Traffic Safety A system that focuses on making the streets fundamentally safer by fixing the infrastructure itself rather than the lazy approach of Education campaigns pedestrian victim blaming or asking drivers really nicely if they could please maybe consider not driving so dangerously this difference becomes very clear when you look at the approach to infrastructure here in the Netherlands the emphasis is on using infrastructure to appropriately slow cars so that it is very difficult for drivers to drive quickly through Crossings whereas in the US and Canada there's this outdated belief that crashes between cars and people are due to the people not being visible enough there's almost no acknowledgement that driver attention and Driver speed are the major contributing factors to Serious crashes because the overwhelming design goal for North American streets is to keep Cars Moving as quickly as as possible zebra Crossings in North America are really really dangerous because you usually have to cross multiple Lanes of high-speed traffic and hope that every driver stops oh Jesus but since no traffic engineer is willing to slow down the cars the design stays the same and the focus is only on making people walking more visible so we get designs like this these are technically called P crossovers but almost everyone in Canada will call this a crosswalk you'll find them between signalized intersections though usually only in urban areas when you want to cross the street you press this button and it makes these yellow lights flash then drivers are supposed to yield to pedestrians these are an improvement to regular zebra Crossings but there are still several issues for example drivers don't have to stop when the lights are on they just need to yield so there are many times that a driver doesn't notice or doesn't care that a person is crossing and since crosswalks often span multiple Lanes you need to ensure that both drivers notice that you're Crossing and that both drivers stop and there's no difference in Road design which means that a driver who isn't paying attention will just drive right through and of course they're still built on the myth that the reason people get hit by cars is because they're not visible enough I was hit by a car at this crosswalk by a distracted driver back in 2014 thankfully I escaped with minor injuries but only because his windows were open and he could hear me scream at him to stop the Netherlands also has midblock zebra Crossings as well but they're designed to be much safer in most cases these will have some kind of speed hump or raised Crossing that forces a driver to pay attention and there will almost always be only one lane for car traffic in each Direction at a Crossing in this example the street Narrows physically these lines make the street look more narrow visually and finally The Crossing itself is raised up like a speed bump this allows people to cross the street without any drop down to Road level and with multiple Refuge Islands in between in North America this would all be one un protected zebra Crossing spanning multiple Lanes of car traffic on roads with higher vehicle speeds there is a speed bump before the crossing so that drivers must slow down before reaching the crossing all of these things make Crossings like this much safer because again physics works better than science and flashing lights too in the US they have something even more insane and over engineered the hawk signal these monstrosities typically cost over $100,000 and have this bizarre configuration of Lights now logically it would make more sense to just install a regular traffic light but since this is America the hot Crossing is designed to allow a person to cross the street while inconveniencing drivers as little as possible when you press the button at a HW Crossing you have to wait the lights will Flash in this pattern and once the walk signal comes on you can start crossing the street the lights will flash red after a few seconds and drivers are now allowed to start driving if their Lane is clear of course a Haw Crossing still depends on what American Traffic Engineers call driver compliance which is normally good but one Delaware study found that at some hot Crossings more than 41% of motorists were observed disregarding the red signal and since Hawk signals are almost always used over multi-lane strods with no refuge Island you need to make sure that there's quote driver compliance for every single one of those four to six Lanes of traffic air crossing in the end all of this over engineered nonsense is here because American Traffic Engineers can't do what has been proven over and over again to actually improve safety for people walking slowing the cars it's at this point that some Americans will flippantly say that what we really need is pedestrian bridges that way people walking can cross the street without ever having to interact with cars at all but this solution is almost always proposed by the people who drive not the people who walk these Crossings are miserable and they make what should be a short trip across the street into a long ordeal there are always these ramps so the distance you have to walk is significantly longer and if you think it sucks to walk up one of these things it's even worse to take a wheelchair up them in my video collaboration with shifter last year he needed to cross a very wide stro in Calgary and had to take this pedestrian bridge which was more like a concrete ditch in the sky though the people on the ramp on the other side were nice enough to offer him some of their crack cocaine hey bu want a hoot now I'm good thanks Canadians are so friendly let's be very clear here approximately 0% of people prefer to walk out of their way along a long filthy conrete trench with an elevation of several meters rather than you know just walk along the ground to where they're going these bridges are built for exactly one reason so that people walking do not interfere with the flow of car cars these are not built for the benefit of people walking this is car infrastructure masquerading as pedestrian infrastructure the only pedestrian bridges that should exist are those that keep pedestrians at ground level like this one but I've saved the best for last because there's an American solution to Road Safety that can only be described as badshit crazy pedestrian Crossing flags at a growing number of zebra Crossings and America you'll find a container of flags like this at each side of the road if you want to cross the street you're supposed to take a flag check that it's safe to cross Hold the Flag out in front of you as you cross the street hope that nobody decides to run you over that day and then put it in the holder on the other side of course this is absolutely ridiculous and an insult to people walking so most people don't bother using them except this dude Bravo sir but if people do use them the utterly predictable happens all the flags end up on only one side of the street and then a driver Cuts you off as you're Crossing obviously these women weren't visible enough without their flag to be extra safe you can have a haot crossing and pedestrian Flags because clearly the only problem on this high-speed stro is that people walking aren't visible enough but the purpose of a Crossing flag is not actually to make it safer to cross the stro it's to make it your fault if you're hit by a car while not waving a flag in front of you like an imbecile and of course they still don't do anything to actually slow down drivers we know a lot more about Road Safety than we did in the 1920s or even the 1960s and there have been Decades of studies that show how to make the road safer to cross it's not education campaigns it's not flashy signs and it's definitely not these flags there have been many cities that have successfully implemented infrastructure changes based on Modern Road Safety Research such as Oslo which had zero pedestrian fatalities in 2019 but the US and Canada refus to properly Implement these Solutions because the research says that motor vehicle speeds need to be lower sometimes and that's a step too far for most American cities in 2020 there were 41 people on the street who were killed by cars in the Netherlands but the province of Ontario Canada which has a similar but smaller population had 114 people killed by cars in the same year that is a massive difference but it's even worse when you consider that a lot fewer people walk in Ontario because most Ontario cities look like this it's miserable to walk there an even worse example is Phoenix Arizona which is probably the most dangerous city for people walking in the entire developed World they had 69 people killed while walking in 2020 and 97 people killed in 2021 despite having a population of only 1.6 million people less than one tenth that of the Netherlands and an even lower percentage of people walk in Phoenix because it is basically the textbook definition of a car infested Wasteland so these numbers are way worse than they look this is not a trivial difference the streets and roads in the Netherlands are orders of magnitude safer for people walking but what the stats don't show you is that it also feels safer to walk here too and that makes a huge difference while I'm walking here I'm not worried that someone is going to speed up to pass me in a crosswalk I'm not concerned about someone smashing into me turning right at a red light while only looking left I don't have have to think about whether or not the driver will stop at the stop sign when I'm crossing I just cross the street and I know that the infrastructure will keep me protected it's really hard to convey just how much better this is for me and my family and how much lower my stress levels are when I'm out walking on the street and of course I'm also not constantly worrying about my kids crossing the street either all of this helps to contribute to the better quality of life we enjoy here in the Netherlands better than any place I've ever lived in the United States or Canada by far this is the difference the good quality road infrastructure makes we really need more people working to make the world a better place you spend a lot of your life at work 40 hours a week 50 weeks a year for 40 years that's 880,000 hours that's a lot of time and it means that your career is probably your biggest opportunity to make a positive impact on the world but how do you actually manage to achieve a high impact and fulfilling career well if you want quality impartial advice based on evidence and careful research completely free check out 880,000 hours 880,000 hours is a nonprofit that helps people have a positive impact with their career they provide research and support to help you find a career tackling one of the world's most pressing problems and it's all completely free if you're starting out with your career and not sure what to do looking to make a change in direction midcareer or even just want to help solve pressing Global problems from your current job they can help if this sounds good to you then I recommend checking them out at 800000 hour.org notjust bikes or by clicking the link in the description there you can sign up to their newsletter for a free copy of their in-depth career guide they also have a podcast featuring in-depth conversations with experts tackling important Global problems I was particularly interested in the discussion with Professor Stuart Russell about why our approach to artificial intelligence is broken and how to fix it because there's so much talk about fixing cities with AI these days with some of those fixes causing more harm than good on the 80,000 hours website you'll also find a job board career guides and lots of information about getting a career that makes a difference and to be clear 880,000 hours is a nonprofit organization and they're completely funded by filling anthropic donations their only goal is to help you find a fulfilling high impact career so check them out now at 80,000 hour.org just bikes I'd also like to thank my supporters on patreon who pay me to cross the street repeatedly while the people in the cafe nearby look at me like I'm crazy if you'd like to support the channel visit

Channel: Not Just Bikes

Views: 1,497,920

Keywords: amsterdam, netherlands, urban planning, road safety, crossing the street, jaywalking, pedestrians, pedestrian safety

Id: _ByEBjf9ktY

Length: 31min 24sec (1884 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 12 2022