DC Pedestrian Safety

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How does anyone know this was the driver's fault?

A driver who was turning right from Biltmore St NW onto Columbia Rd NW, at 3:30 pm on a Saturday, struck and killed a 24-year-old woman who was crossing Columbia Rd NW. And you want to talk about whether the driver was at fault? Really?

You don't actually know who was at fault. It's impossible to tell from the media accounts. Don't pretend you know what happened because you don't.

If you can't avoid hitting and killing a person in Adams Morgan on a Saturday afternoon, REGARDLESS OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES, you should not have a driver's license.

That's obviously silly. There are accidents where the driver was at fault. There are accidents where the pedestrian was at fault. There are accidents where no one was at fault. It depends on the particular circumstances of the incident.

No, it's obviously obvious. It's your duty as driver to not hit pedestrians. And not just on a busy city street on a Saturday afternoon, but always. We are talking about streets that people don't get killed on, and you're talking about, "Hey, maybe the pedestrian was at fault!"

It's so crazy how you know exactly what happened here, despite not witnessing the accident. Perhaps you should call the police and tell their investigators that they can stand down on this one, because you figured it all out while surfing the web in your mom's basement.

how could she possibly be at fault? she was IN THE CROSSWALK.

Have you never driven a car in D.C. before? I don't know what happened in this incident but sometimes people are stupid or not paying attention and step into crosswalks, and in front of oncoming cars, at the last moment. My car doesnt go 30 mph to zero mph in one second. I've had to swerve into the other lane to avoid people in crosswalks being idiots.

Well then you are a bad driver. The law does not say that if a pedestrian is not paying attention in the crosswalk then it is her fault for being hit. The law says that you have to yield to pedestrians and if you hit a pedestrian in a crosswalk then you are at fault. You should always drive as if a kid might dart into traffic at any time, but there is no excuse for doing it by a crosswalk. If you are appraising a crosswalk and you cannot stop if a pedestrian walks into the crosswalk then you are driving too fast.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Have you never driven a car in D.C. before? I don't know what happened in this incident but sometimes people are stupid or not paying attention and step into crosswalks, and in front of oncoming cars, at the last moment. My car doesnt go 30 mph to zero mph in one second. I've had to swerve into the other lane to avoid people in crosswalks being idiots.

You shouldn't be driving faster than 20 mph.

I think you're missing the point. Also, it sort of depends on the posted speed limit, doesn't it?

No, it doesn't. A speed limit is LIMIT and has nothing to do with stopping at crosswalks. I drive in DC all the time and I drive defensively and am constantly scanning to see if there are pedestrians approaching crosswalks. If that means I drive 20 MPH on 16th street because I don't have a full picture of the intersection then so be it, even though the limit is 30MPH there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I posted earlier today about how drivers need to drive really tentatively on city streets and that drivers used to Rockville Pike/Lee Hwy need to recognize they have to employ a totally different skill set here.

I just ran errands by car that took me through many blocks in Foggy Bottom and Dupont, paying special attention to my speed and how prepared I was to stop at crosswalks. Keep in mind there are stop signs on most corners on secondary/tertiary roads in central NWDC neighborhoods.

I found the natural speed between stops was between 15 and 22 mph (yes speed limit is 20--I'm not a saint). At these speeds, with an awareness that there could be pedestrians to yield to at every corner (the awareness that I argue suburban drivers too often lack), I felt fully prepared to stop at each crosswalk and corner. The issue is really that PP's expectation she can just barrel through is unreasonable. If she's driving under 20 mph and WATCHING for pedestrians starting to cross, she will see them in time to stop. They are unlikely to sprint into the road so quickly she can't stop... unless she's not really scanning for them. That whole line of argument about the whatever-pound SUV doesn't make sense if PP is driving with the expectation that she might need to yield at every corner.

Thank you PP. Weird murderous PP who thinks that pedestrians should get out of her way because her car is bigger, please read and implement this every single time you drive in an urban area. Just because you CAN kill someone or CAN blow through a crosswalk doesn't mean you should.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

You're basically arguing that it's impossible for a pedestrian to be at fault in an argument, which is so silly -- do I even have to dignify that with a response? It's like arguing that people with blue eyes cannot be at fault for a traffic accident.

Actually, the PP was saying, "This is how you need to drive in DC, if you want to avoid hitting people." That's not silly. Stop worrying so much about who's at fault, and start prioritizing not hitting people when you drive.

Not what they actually wrote! Also, I've never been in an accident in my life.

Terrific! Now, drive slowly and watch for pedestrians, when you drive in DC or anywhere else that isn't an interstate highway.

I love your sanctimoniousness. It's so amusing.

You must have a pretty thin skin if someone telling you to drive slowly and not kill people is somehow sanctimonious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s about to be a hugh reckoning for drivers in DC. Enjoy getting booted, MD and Va a-holes.

Booted by whom? DC DPW has the manpower and equipment to boot only about 36-50 vehicles per day (and its actual rate is much, much lower than that). At that maximum rate, it would take more than 25 years to boot all the drivers who technically should be booted because of unpaid tickets.

https://twitter.com/marycheh/status/1460325123832098816

Don't expect this to get better anytime soon. Lower-income Brown and Black residents always bear the brunt of more strenuous traffic enforcement, and that's a non-starter for a DC Council that blindly demands equity about all else.

And also, in order to be booted, there has to be a serious infraction. Unless PP is suggesting just randomly booting non-DC cars . . .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Would be helpful if cops sometimes enforced traffic laws. They seem to think that's beneath them.

MPD is too lazy to enforce traffic laws and our feckless mayor and her enabling council members don't want them to either. This is because they're all scared of offending drivers (reason #1) and because apparently MPD enforcing traffic laws is racist (reason #2). So savage drivers behave with impunity on DC streets and the dead bodies pile up at the highest rate since 2008.

F you Muriel Bowser.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
You're basically arguing that it's impossible for a pedestrian to be at fault in an argument, which is so silly -- do I even have to dignify that with a response? It's like arguing that people with blue eyes cannot be at fault for a traffic accident.

\

As the operator of a two ton death mobile, it is YOUR responsibility to not hit, kill nor maim anyone with your murder machine. Unfortunately the car industry has bought off our politicians to the point where the only way drivers are held accountable for the safe operation of their death mobiles is if they have been drinking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You're basically arguing that it's impossible for a pedestrian to be at fault in an argument, which is so silly -- do I even have to dignify that with a response? It's like arguing that people with blue eyes cannot be at fault for a traffic accident.

\

As the operator of a two ton death mobile, it is YOUR responsibility to not hit, kill nor maim anyone with your murder machine. Unfortunately the car industry has bought off our politicians to the point where the only way drivers are held accountable for the safe operation of their death mobiles is if they have been drinking.

+1 It's almost always the driver's fault. BUT I'd agree that if someone suddenly steps off a curb or into your path without warning there is NOTHING you can do sometimes even if you are going quite slow. I almost nailed a guy who was walking salmon-style (wrong direction) in the bike lane looking at his phone then without any warning stepped into the car lane. There is no separation besides a few inches of paint between the car lane and the bike lane, and he gave no indication he was about to veer off because his head was in his phone. And I had my eye on him because I was like WTF is this guy doing, but just assumed he was going to continue his best salmon life continuing walking the wrong way in the bike lane. If I was in my car rather than my motorcycle (which just takes up less of the width of the car lane thankfully), I would have hit him and there would've been nothing that I could've done about it. I was going about 15mph at the time and accelerating since I had just stopped at the stop sign ~20 feet before that. Now then again because I wasn't speeding like a maniac, even in my car, he would have survived that crash.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You're basically arguing that it's impossible for a pedestrian to be at fault in an argument, which is so silly -- do I even have to dignify that with a response? It's like arguing that people with blue eyes cannot be at fault for a traffic accident.

\

As the operator of a two ton death mobile, it is YOUR responsibility to not hit, kill nor maim anyone with your murder machine. Unfortunately the car industry has bought off our politicians to the point where the only way drivers are held accountable for the safe operation of their death mobiles is if they have been drinking.

Traffic fatalities are rare in D.C. (Sorry to disappoint you). There were 34 of them last year. There's 500,000 cars registered in D.C. and probably at least that many Virginia and Maryland drivers in the city on any given day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Traffic fatalities are rare in D.C. (Sorry to disappoint you). There were 34 of them last year.

34 lives destroyed by drivers and at least hundreds will suffer life long disabilities. You sound like there's room for more. You are a disgusting human being.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Traffic fatalities are rare in D.C. (Sorry to disappoint you). There were 34 of them last year.

34 lives destroyed by drivers and at least hundreds will suffer life long disabilities. You sound like there's room for more. You are a disgusting human being.

Well, some of the 34 were drivers in single-vehicle crashes. But they are equally lost to their loved ones. Fortunately the defenders of deadly driving are increasingly less likely to speak up, non-anonymously, in real life.

[Anonymous]

Allison Hart's mother spoke to City Council yesterday. Allison was a five year old who was killed by a reckless driver. In September. This isn't "rare."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You're basically arguing that it's impossible for a pedestrian to be at fault in an argument, which is so silly -- do I even have to dignify that with a response? It's like arguing that people with blue eyes cannot be at fault for a traffic accident.

\

As the operator of a two ton death mobile, it is YOUR responsibility to not hit, kill nor maim anyone with your murder machine. Unfortunately the car industry has bought off our politicians to the point where the only way drivers are held accountable for the safe operation of their death mobiles is if they have been drinking.

+1 It's almost always the driver's fault. BUT I'd agree that if someone suddenly steps off a curb or into your path without warning there is NOTHING you can do sometimes even if you are going quite slow. I almost nailed a guy who was walking salmon-style (wrong direction) in the bike lane looking at his phone then without any warning stepped into the car lane. There is no separation besides a few inches of paint between the car lane and the bike lane, and he gave no indication he was about to veer off because his head was in his phone. And I had my eye on him because I was like WTF is this guy doing, but just assumed he was going to continue his best salmon life continuing walking the wrong way in the bike lane. If I was in my car rather than my motorcycle (which just takes up less of the width of the car lane thankfully), I would have hit him and there would've been nothing that I could've done about it. I was going about 15mph at the time and accelerating since I had just stopped at the stop sign ~20 feet before that. Now then again because I wasn't speeding like a maniac, even in my car, he would have survived that crash.

This is a nutty thread - this poor woman was killed in a stop sign controlled crosswalk. Any car entering that crosswalk, whether a pedestrian was present or not, should be moving very slowly as they should have just come to a complete stop.

What I fully expect we are going to learn is that the driver in the luxury SUV, probably from MD, was treating the stop sign as a yield sign and only looking to the left to beat on-coming traffic and this poor woman was coming from her right.

And drivers are still required to yield to pedestrians even if the intersection is not stop sign controlled wherever there is a crosswalk which is one of the reasons the speed limit on most DC roads is now 20 MPH.

Another nutty thing in the responses - the average travel speed on DC roads is like 10MPH. Even on major arterials off-peak the average travel speeds are usually around 15MPH. Sure you can drive like a neanderthal/typical MD idiot but all you are doing is speeding up between congested areas and wasting gas and endangering every one else.

But hey the car commercials tell you if you buy that zippy SUV all the urban roads will be clear and there will be no pedestrians and you will be able to park wherever you want!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s about to be a hugh reckoning for drivers in DC. Enjoy getting booted, MD and Va a-holes.

Booted by whom? DC DPW has the manpower and equipment to boot only about 36-50 vehicles per day (and its actual rate is much, much lower than that). At that maximum rate, it would take more than 25 years to boot all the drivers who technically should be booted because of unpaid tickets.

https://twitter.com/marycheh/status/1460325123832098816

Don't expect this to get better anytime soon. Lower-income Brown and Black residents always bear the brunt of more strenuous traffic enforcement, and that's a non-starter for a DC Council that blindly demands equity about all else.

And also, in order to be booted, there has to be a serious infraction. Unless PP is suggesting just randomly booting non-DC cars . . .

Nope you are completely wrong - all it takes to be booted or towed in DC is an infraction that is unpaid 60 days past the date of the offense, and that applies to parking tickets too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You're basically arguing that it's impossible for a pedestrian to be at fault in an argument, which is so silly -- do I even have to dignify that with a response? It's like arguing that people with blue eyes cannot be at fault for a traffic accident.

\

As the operator of a two ton death mobile, it is YOUR responsibility to not hit, kill nor maim anyone with your murder machine. Unfortunately the car industry has bought off our politicians to the point where the only way drivers are held accountable for the safe operation of their death mobiles is if they have been drinking.

+1 It's almost always the driver's fault. BUT I'd agree that if someone suddenly steps off a curb or into your path without warning there is NOTHING you can do sometimes even if you are going quite slow. I almost nailed a guy who was walking salmon-style (wrong direction) in the bike lane looking at his phone then without any warning stepped into the car lane. There is no separation besides a few inches of paint between the car lane and the bike lane, and he gave no indication he was about to veer off because his head was in his phone. And I had my eye on him because I was like WTF is this guy doing, but just assumed he was going to continue his best salmon life continuing walking the wrong way in the bike lane. If I was in my car rather than my motorcycle (which just takes up less of the width of the car lane thankfully), I would have hit him and there would've been nothing that I could've done about it. I was going about 15mph at the time and accelerating since I had just stopped at the stop sign ~20 feet before that. Now then again because I wasn't speeding like a maniac, even in my car, he would have survived that crash.

This is a nutty thread - this poor woman was killed in a stop sign controlled crosswalk. Any car entering that crosswalk, whether a pedestrian was present or not, should be moving very slowly as they should have just come to a complete stop.

What I fully expect we are going to learn is that the driver in the luxury SUV, probably from MD, was treating the stop sign as a yield sign and only looking to the left to beat on-coming traffic and this poor woman was coming from her right.

And drivers are still required to yield to pedestrians even if the intersection is not stop sign controlled wherever there is a crosswalk which is one of the reasons the speed limit on most DC roads is now 20 MPH.

Another nutty thing in the responses - the average travel speed on DC roads is like 10MPH. Even on major arterials off-peak the average travel speeds are usually around 15MPH. Sure you can drive like a neanderthal/typical MD idiot but all you are doing is speeding up between congested areas and wasting gas and endangering every one else.

But hey the car commercials tell you if you buy that zippy SUV all the urban roads will be clear and there will be no pedestrians and you will be able to park wherever you want!

There is no stop sign at this crosswalk.