Originally Posted by
unterhausen
that is the way the main drag through town is set up here -- there simply is no safe place for a pedestrian to cross. No crosswalks for miles, and obviously no pedestrian cycles for the traffic lights. They used to have no pedestrian crossing signs all over the place, but they took those down. It's clear that having 4 travel lanes and a suicide lane encourages speeding, and makes it so people go down this road rather than the parallel freeway. I am of the opinion they should reduce the width of the road to two travel lanes so that people in a hurry go the other way.
Similar problems here. Large 8 lane arterial encourages speeding and makes for an impossible situation for pedestrians. 45 speed limit with many cars going 65-70 mph. If there are no crosswalks for miles, even at intersections, what do they expect people to do? Walk 10 miles to cross the street? I find blood to be on the hands of whomever designs roads like that.
I've seen a pedestrian get hit by a car before on a similar road. Luckily they were not seriously injured, but the violence of seeing a human body get tossed into the air by a car was still shocking. The driver had to have been just totally zoned out, because the ped just got caught in the middle of a very short green light cycle while running across. The idiot driver just floored it the second the light turned green, oblivious to what was in front of them. Then, they didn't even stop after seeing the woman they hit get up.
I made a complaint to the state DOT about the hazardous conditions, but they didn't even bother to respond despite laws requiring them to do so. Most of society just doesn't care if pedestrians die as long as they can drive their car as fast as they want while zoning out on the phone.