FOLLOWUP: ‘Driver report card’ signs, week 5

It’s the fifth week of what’s supposed to be a six-week experiment with “driver report card” signage showing what percentage of drivers stopped for pedestrians at two crossings in High Point, and things haven’t gotten any better. The signs are updated on Fridays, so that’s when we’ve been checking them. The one above is the sign at an unmarked crossing on Sylvan Way, and this week’s check showed only 9 percent of the drivers stopping, down from 17 percent last week, which is as good as it’s gotten at that spot. At the westbound sign, a marked crosswalk at 34th/Morgan, the 27 percent count was up a bit from last week’s 22 percent:

SDOT says the counts are taken midweek by student interns working with the Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association. The announcement of the project said it’s based on one in St. Paul, Minnesota, that “led to more drivers following the law.” (We found a slide deck from that city suggesting it was part of a broader pedestrian-awareness program; SDOT says there’s more to come in theirs too.)

Auntie April 15, 2022 (8:54 pm)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – these signs are so small that most people probably don’t even notice them. If you want to launch an awareness campaign, your signs have to be big enough to be seen!

Strictly pedestrian April 15, 2022 (9:28 pm)

I really don’t think the poor driving can be blamed on the small signage, try again.
- Anne April 15, 2022 (9:43 pm)
  
  If you want to change poor driving habits -promoting awareness is worth a try -& bigger signs would be helpful .,
- flimflam April 16, 2022 (10:20 am)
  
  @strictly – i don’t really think anyone that will knowingly ignore pedestrians will be influenced by a scoldy sign. I don’t y what they cost but it seems kind of silly.
Goldilocks April 15, 2022 (10:16 pm)

Maybe the signs are that size for a reason. Just like how stop signs and yield signs are the size and shape they are. How big do you want these signs to be? Billboard size? Wait, is that too big? Which size is just right?
Car-free resident April 16, 2022 (9:27 am)

Yeah I don’t know if small signs is a good excuse for blowing through crosswalks.
- Auntie April 16, 2022 (10:50 am)
  
  I was not excusing bad driving habits, by any means. I was just pointing out that in order to be “an awareness campaign,” the signs need to be more noticeable.

Teddy Tinklepants April 15, 2022 (9:26 pm)

Get people to be more careful drivers by putting up more signs on the side of the road for them to read. Brilliant!

Zipda April 15, 2022 (9:44 pm)

I’m worried I’m going to flunk this test too.

Jort April 15, 2022 (9:45 pm)

I imagine SDOT will respond to these findings by proposing more car lanes and trying to tax pedestrians for crossing the street. #trafficengineerlogic

Larry April 16, 2022 (5:09 am)

I was assuming the opposite —- making all roads one way and converting the other lane to a pedestrian only lane.

they April 16, 2022 (6:27 am)

Blue lights always slowed me down…

anonyme April 16, 2022 (6:33 am)

Just imagine if, instead of little signs to distract drivers, there had been a campaign of handing out tickets to offenders. What a concept! But no, in Seattle everything has to be so…subliminal. And worthless.

Delridge neighbor April 16, 2022 (7:12 am)

I wish the city would put crosswalk flashing lights in the ground at every crosswalk. The visibility would make seeing pedestrians much easier.

JoAnne April 16, 2022 (11:28 am)

There are much better ways to ensure pedestrians can cross safely and be seen. One obvious method is simply to paint the crosswalks and keep up with the paint, which SDOT does not do. I have also seen flashing lights across the walkway, which are quite effective and more visible than overhead flashing lights. Some jurisdictions even use a small pedestrian bulb with pole reflectors in the center of the crosswalk. Too bad SDOT hires only social engineers, not actual engineers.

PG April 16, 2022 (11:48 am)

I’m curious as to what car drivers feel would be helpful interventions that would nudge them towards stopping for pedestrians more often? I walk a lot in the Arbor Heights area, and try suggestions I have seen here (wearing light colored clothing, trying to make eye contact, looking alert at intersections) but still find many drivers won’t stop to allow me to cross streets. Other suggestions would be helpfu.

K April 16, 2022 (4:13 pm)

I would love to see solutions that focus on the car drivers sharing responsibility for pedestrian safety, instead of the “solution” always being for pedestrians to adjust their behavior more to accommodate cars. If stopping for human being is just too hard, you shouldn’t drive a car. If pausing at a cross walk is going to make you late for something, you should have left earlier. If you hate the bridge re-route traffic, try the bus. Honestly, individuals and society as a whole ask SO LITTLE of car drivers. Stop for pedestrians. It’s not that hard.
cross walker April 16, 2022 (7:37 pm)

How about spikes that pop up in some major intersections with the cross walk and retract when light changes? Knowing your tire might get spiked and you’ll be stuck in the intersection with a blow out might get drivers to take stopping at crosswalks more seriously? Maybe?
Lauren April 18, 2022 (9:59 pm)

I’ve put up crossing flags at certain interactions. I’d say effective 20% of the time.

Bob W. April 16, 2022 (7:36 pm)

I propose that the City issue to pedestrians, upon request, a small bright orange plastic paintball pistol, loaded with a supply of officially safety-approved low-speed non-injurious short range yellow-orange paintballs, for use on vehicles in near-collisions with pedestrians.

This would probably work 1,000 times better than those pitifully few temporary signs manned by a few student observers.

Or at least give paintball guns to the students doing this fundamentally useless counting project.

Kathy April 16, 2022 (8:03 pm)

This worked in St. Paul, Minnesota? But not so much here? Maybe because so many Seattle drivers are not “Minnesota nice”. Or even nice at all. Maybe we should try this at some more intersections: https://www.route-fifty.com/infrastructure/2022/04/road-art-projects-reduced-vehicle-crashes-involving-pedestrians-50/365642/

Al April 17, 2022 (8:55 am)

This only part of the story. Yes, 9% of cars stopped, but the other 91% crushed an SDOT intern to death! Over 25 interns have been lost so far. Surely there must be a safer way to determine whether drivers would stop than placing our young adults in their path?! I call on the city to end this outrageous program of tragedy and horror.

Lauren April 18, 2022 (10:01 pm)

Al, that is… 100% not true.WSB consider deleting this comment? It’s fear mongering.

Bob W. April 17, 2022 (7:55 pm)

Seattle’s Vision Zero project started in 2015, with the goal of eliminating many of our traffic deaths and injuries.

But according to The Urbanist, Sept. 9, 2021: “Data from 2021 points to a clear upward trend line for people walking and biking, indicating the city is headed in the wrong direction despite having committed in 2015 to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries on our streets by 2030.”

“So far in 2021, 12 out of the 21 fatalities in the City of Seattle have been pedestrians… with four months still remaining in 2021. Seattle tallied 24 traffic deaths in 2020 – 14 of them people walking, rolling, or biking.”

From the City’s SDOT Blog, April 11, 2022: “Over the past five years, 18 people have lost their lives in a traffic crash on Aurora Ave N (between Mercer St and N 145th St). This includes 15 pedestrians.”

Those stats aren’t a fluke. Overall in Seattle, the majority of traffic deaths are pedestrian deaths.

From KUOW’s Jan. 24, 2022 report titled ‘Pedestrian deaths climb in Seattle, despite city’s pledge to eliminate them’:
https://kuow.org/stories/pedestrian-deaths-climb-in-seattle-despite-city-s-pledge-to-eliminate-them

“Fatalities are headed in the wrong direction – not toward zero,” said Allison Schwartz, the Vision Zero coordinator for the Seattle Department of Transportation.”

The same report indicated that “Seattle’s Black, homeless, and senior communities are disproportionately impacted.”

Well, there you have it. Who are generally the losers? There’s your answer. And that’s why SDOT and SPD don’t care to spend too much time and money on this. Because it doesn’t much impact their more important constituencies, and poorer people have near zero influence on City policy and spending. So of course the results are going backwards, and of course you get these lip service answers from various mayors and their SDOT and SPD leadership. It’s business as usual, so of course the problem is still going backwards.

Don’t kid yourself, Vision Zero isn’t really underway in any important way, of course. Obviously, no one who matters really cares at all. And so Vision Zero languishes in disuse, neglect, lip service and stupidity today, just as it has done for the last 7 years. As expected, if you understand who the typical pedestrian victims are and aren’t.

Now you know why a few schoolkids are doing this barely funded project instead of our traffic engineers. And after talking to a couple of stubbornly unresponsive SDOT traffic engineers, I’d expect more sensible and responsible results from those schoolkids.

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