I mean, say what you will about cars but the sidewalk is a dedicated lane for pedestrians. Walk on the street, fuck around and find out.
Plus if you’re walking in the road walk against the flow of cars not with. That way if a drunk driver (or just general asshole) comes swerving down the road you can see it and react.
I’d like to know why this was downvoted. Walking against the flow of traffic so you can see what’s coming is sensible advice.
my dad always said: walk facing toward traffic, and make eye contact with drivers, so they can be haunted by your face for the rest of their lives if they run you over.
Fuck around and find out is a pretty shitty attitude towards people sharing a street. Is that the excuse you will give a parent after injuring a kid that chased a ball onto the street? It isn't like this is a highway, people have homes on the street. The street is not exclussively for cars, cars just tend to get the most space and priority.
Don’t share the street is what I’m getting at. I can’t and won’t share the sidewalk with my car, why should I share the street with pedestrians? The picture in the OP is not a kid running into the street for a sec to get a runaway ball. It’s people walking down the street with a sidewalk mere feet away from them. This isn’t the 1800s where there is no sidewalk and you had to contend with horses. Now there are multiple thousand pound death machines. Have a little regard for your own safety and use the dedicated lanes for people.
Drivers are expected to share the street with cyclists, in many places it is the law to provide a minimum distance for a cyclist. On a residential street like this, i don't see how some pedeatrians are a real problem or risk unless the driver is already driving unsafely. The street is not exclusively yours because you bought a car.
It's still a multi thousand pound machine with a fallible human operator. Better to be in a space not designated for it.
Edit to be clear the fault would generally rest with the driver, but pedestrian driver interactions should be limited at all costs
Walking on them is literally the entire purpose of sidewalks. I mean its right there in the name. This picture is exactly why - so they're safe from cars and don't obstruct drivers. Your opinion of cars is completely immaterial when determining who is being reasonable in this context.
You can fit like 3-4 cars on there. Why not half that space and extend the sidewalk then? You could not walk next to each other on those or pass others, let alone someone in a wheelchair or with a stroller. Or better, have all the cars park outside of the residential areas and use the space for parks, playgrounds, and other leisure stuff.
Posts like this are part of the reason why the rest of us don't take you people seriously.
I kinda understand him. If I have a sidewalk, I use it, simply because I don't want to fucking get run over by a car. However, the comments are also quite disgusting.
I do that all the time here in Europe and nobody gets mad. It's such an immense space and I don't want to be relegated to 30cm of sidewalk. People hang out in the streets and car drivers are chill
I think it still very much depends where in Europe you do that
Italy, to be exact. Maybe doing the same in Germany would make me end up with a fine
I do the same in Japan. Most residential streets don’t have sidewalks so we share them with cars, pedestrians and bicycles. Some of the bigger streets have quite wide sidewalks (one car lane’s width or more) so I would use those.
But in this photo, the sidewalks are minuscule. I especially understand the dog walker choosing the road instead.
I’m happy that my town has started to widen sidewalks and reduce the width of roads to promote more foot traffic in the downtown area.
We need a “fuck pedestrians” instance for this one guys
But there is a sidewalk. I'm also wondering why these people are walking on the street
If they're gonna walk in the street, I guess I'll drive on the sidewalk. 🤷🏻♂️
All for reducing or eliminating cars; but I'm not going to act like this ain't fucking stupid.
People from Bakersfield walk on the street, all over. Once you get used to it though it's really not that difficult to live with. I imagine if people still used roads for walking like before cars, we could figure it out.
We don’t have sidewalks in my community. Kids play in the streets and people are out walking on them all the time. Pushing strollers, walking their dogs, etc. The real difference is everyone is respectful. Cars drive slow and slow down more to go by giving extra space. Folks on the road move over and let the car go by. Kids collect up and move out of the way. A lot of the folks walking their dogs will step into the grass and wait. Everyone waves at each other. It’s like having a nice little community of friends that I never have to actually talk to. After living here for almost two years I strongly believe that I could stop and ask for help from any of them and I’d do the same. Kind of crazy reflecting on being that I’ve only ever talked to a few people, one of which only because she does crossing guard duties for the school crosswalk I take my son to in the golf cart.
I feel like many people commenting are not familiar with walkable streets. They have however been very common for most of the time in history. Using the sidewalk is not really a good substitute for that. I used to live in a neighborhood where there were so many people on the streets on weekends, that u wouldn’t want to drive there even if it was technically a street. The quality of life there was amazing especially in the evening and on weekends.
Maybe they do it to slow down traffic. It’s clearly a residential area. It could be that speeding is a problem.
It's been tried and tested. Human bodies barely slow a car down. It's much better to place something solid, like a concrete block
Part of the problems is humans won't damage the paint on the cars. You want drivers to slow down, make them worry about their paint tends to be more effective than making them worry about hitting a pedestrian.
Just fill your pockets with balloons full of brake fluid. That way when someone hits you their car gets covered in brake fluid, ruining the paint job.
Using a human body as traffic calming is psycho mode zoning use change
You don't deserve more space just because you bought F150.
Something Americans don't know about is that streets were shared spaces between pedestrians, cars, bikes, everything. Then cars got a bigger role and pushed everyone else to sidewalks. Then bars and restaurants also wanted part of that space for outdoor serving. Now pedestrians, bikes, bars/restaurants, bus stops, e-scooters and parking spaces, advertising signs, and trees share the side walk, which in turn has become much more narrow because of car lanes..
This lack of self awareness always astounds me. You are in a car, it transports you way faster than your own two legs, it protects you from elements with tons of steel and glass. The same steel that has tons of potential energy. Carless pedestrians are your inconvenience?
If there were a bunch of cars in the driveways blocking the sidewalk I would agree, or if they had strollers or something with wheels that could get bumpy on the cracks, but since neither of those are true I'm with OOP on this one.
I get this sentiment but cars will kill you.
I don't care about whatever argument you have about the existence of cars, stay out of their way.
You might have the right of way, you might have the law on your side, you might fully well be in the right but.
The car wins. You either die or end up with permanent lifelong injuries.
Keep yourself safe above all. Bitch all you want but don't deliberately put yourself at risk to "prove a point" you'll just die or get fucked up for no reason other than pride.
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