I don't know if I've posted about this before

[conuly]

There are two ads that play in the Whitehall terminal, about driver safety, specifically looking out for pedestrians. In one, a car hits a man crossing the street because the driver was busy texting, and in the other it hits a small child because the driver was speeding and didn't stop at the light.

Every time I see those ads, I get so annoyed. I don't want to blame the victim, but I just can't figure it out - who the hell are these people who step into the street without looking? Sure, as a pedestrian you have the right of way, especially when you've got the light, but I've never actually met the person who was willing to die to prove the point.

And that's what the ads show. The light changes, and immediately the pedestrian is in the crosswalk, heedless of the fact that there is a car barreling towards them. I know looking doesn't prevent car crashes in and of itself, but in the ad, they don't even check!

It just seems to me that if you're about to tell drivers "fuck it, pay attention" it'll work better if the pedestrians aren't completely inept at the simple task of walking from here to there. I pay more attention when crossing my kitchen!

*******

The Tantalizing Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

How, And Why, Some Farmers Are Bringing Livestock Back To The Prairie

The 41 Most Important Hot Dog Styles in America

Into a competitive world, guppies are born not just bigger, but more mature

Jellyfish May Be the Snack Food of the Future

Clerics offering religious edicts in Cairo metro stir debate

Why We All Scream When We Get Ice Cream Brain Freeze

Google Trends eclipse interest

What Were Screen Savers?

The Mischievous ‘Ghost Hoaxers’ of 19th-Century Australia

Japan Might Be What Equality in Education Looks Like

Millennials and Generation Xers outvoted baby boomers in 2016, analysis finds

The Watchdog Inside the DA's Office

A Mysterious Island and a Deadly Lost Tribe

Teen criminals savor freedom as parole ends life sentences

A Big Win For Afghan Women's Wheelchair Hoopsters

Officials: Young Afghans trafficked to study under Taliban

People find it difficult to judge how good their intuitions are

Unpaid internships damage long-term graduate pay prospects

Are Humans to Blame for the Disappearance of Earth’s Fantastic Beasts? (Yeah, probably. I mean, is this even a question?)

Moneylending has been taboo for most of human history. So how did usury stop being a sin and become respectable finance?

Islamic school seeks to steer sons of militants to new path

Chicago giving departing inmates overdose-reversing drug

Why Corrupt Bankers Avoid Jail

Watch Swarms of Earthquakes Sweep Across Oklahoma (Oklahoma, where the earthquakes come sweeping down the plain!)

Farmer suicides rise in India as climate warms, study shows

Two degrees of warming already baked in

Rising Levels Of Carbon Dioxide May Rob Crops Of Nutrition, Leaving Millions At Risk

Comments

[alatefeline]

Tangential to your comment on crossing the street: As someone who is physiologically, neurologically poor at judging distances, and also has not-great peripheral vision, I can look around me three or four times and still not *see* a car, or mis-perceive it as moving away from me. Which means I wait for very long breaks in traffic and/or a traffic light where I can see the *stopped* cars; or I ask a trusted loved one to let me just follow them instead, which only works if they are okay watching out for both of us.

[conuly]

Sensible if you can't trust your own judgment.

[plicease]

As a driver in Maryland this is not my experience at all. I have to break to avoid pedestrians who do not bother to look, or forget to look in both directions far too frequently!

[pauraque]

Unfortunately it happens. A few years ago there was a terrible accident right outside my then-workplace where a pedestrian was killed by an oncoming car. According to all the witnesses she just darted out into the street without looking, not even at a crosswalk or corner. People did this quite a bit because it was a very long block and they wanted to take a "shortcut" to the shops across the street rather than go the long way around to cross where they should. For a while afterward they had a police officer stationed at all times on our block to cite people who were jaywalking or crossing against the light.

Also: Kids. When my stepson was little I often had to physically grab him to stop him from simply walking into the street without checking for cars while I was walking him to school.

[flexagon]

"Two degrees of warming already baked in"... SO TO SPEAK.

[conuly]

Yeah, bit of a tasteless pun there.

[zesty_pinto]

Personally, I think those ads reflect Cuomo's agenda of caring only about driving infrastructure rather than commuting and mass transit. There's also that Adam Ruins Everything episode about the history of "jaywalking" that I think is reminding us it's still there...

The article on farmer suicides reminds me of one take about how climate change is encouraging refugees since the arable land is decreasing to such a degree.

White collar crime pisses me off for the same reason as that article you shared, by the way. I honestly wish there were organizations that had the manpower and resources to chase down these "screw the long term" idiots who ruin the financial infrastructure so they can come out of it with millions.

[zesty_pinto]

While I'm at it, I always thought that if I ever wanted to start a band, I think those ads remind me that I would call our group "Suspicious Package." And yes, our outfits would include a slot to hold cucumbers in our crotches (even for any women in the group).

[conuly]

I thought those ads were a city initiative, not a state one.

[zesty_pinto]

I suppose it can depend, I'm not familiar with the ads themselves, only that the MTA is funded by the state rather than the city and this feels more in line with their thinking. I'm okay with being wrong with this too, just find it corroborating oddly well.

[conuly]

They're not MTA ads. They just happen to be in the Ferry terminal, alongside ads for STD testing and jewelers.

Also, the MTA doesn't run the Ferry, the DOT does.

[zesty_pinto]

Ah, got it. In that case no clue what their thinking is.

[stardreamer]

Where do those pedestrians come from? Two answers (there are doubtless others):

1) People who are focused on their cellphones. There's at least one documented instance of a guy who was so intent on his conversation that he walked around a lowered light-rail barrier and onto the tracks in front of an oncoming train, with predictable results.

2) Seattle, where the "pedestrians have the right of way" ordinance is absolute. I was on vacation there a few years ago and observed this behavior repeatedly, and it freaked me out for exactly the reasons you state. Ever since then, I've wondered how many Seattleites move to other cities and become pedestrian traffic casualties due to never having developed those reflexes.

[conuly]

In this ad, the only person using a cellphone is one of the drivers. So that's not it. If that were it, I'd understand.

[mme-n-b.livejournal.com]

Those are the blind, the foreigners (left-handed driving is confusing), the children, the mentally unbalanced (did his girlfriend just dump him? is his mother dying? has his kid been beaten up at school? is he mentally ill?) and the temporarily distracted - none of which deserve to die.

[conuly]

Not in this ad they're not. (Even the kid is holding his mother's hand.) If they were, it'd be a better ad.

[bubblesbrnaid]

I saw that all the time when I was working at Blank. Some were just distracted, but it seemed that a scarily high percentage assumed that the lights somehow *actually* controlled the drivers. The only reason more people didn't get hurt was because traffic through campus was so congested cars didn't usually get very fast.