Does it help to keep people walking or on bikes safe if they make eye contact with drivers? Sure, sometimes. So go ahead and gaze at the driver who is barreling through the “Stop for Pedestrians” bollard. He or she might stop. But what about tinted windows, or glare? What about people who are blind?
We hear it all the time. “Safety is a shared responsibility.” But it is not. Asbury Park Complete Streets Coalition believes that the larger, heavier, faster road user must be held responsible for looking out for the more vulnerable. Our roads have been, and continue to be designed to move vehicles as quickly and efficiently as possible, at the cost of nearly 6000 pedestrian deaths in 2017.
Drivers have been conditioned to believe that they own the roads. Infrastructure in Asbury Park is being designed and built with the intention of keeping people walking and riding bicycles safe. Here’s a start: Asbury Park Plan For Walking And Bicycling
On the 11th day of Safety Myths, my DOT gave to me…Make eye contact!
The 12 Days of Safety Myths
December 20, 2018
By Don Kostelec
“It’s this day-to-day reality makes a seemingly common sense suggestion like “make eye contact” so frustrating. It doesn’t align with how roads are actually engineered and how motorists are encouraged via that engineering to operate on them. Add to that the issues associated with window tinting and glare off of windshields…”
A Professional Traffic Operations Engineer: ““Operating any transportation system, particularly those in urban/suburban contexts, is a matter of balance – maintaining a certain amount of mobility for all users while incorporating infrastructure in a way that balances everyone’s needs…
Blanket installation of right turn on red restrictions is problematic from an enforcement perspective, and is challenging if the case is isolated to specific times of day.”