Originally Posted by
Paul Barnard
It appears to me that he is advocating for defensive riding, or walking as the case may be. He's right about that. I don't think it's "on them" when someone is killed by a driver who doesn't yield right of way, but it is useful to point out ways that operating defensively could have prevented it. Road users, especially pedestrians, can be remarkably detached from their surroundings. It's incumbent upon all of us to be as defensive as possible. If you look at his point rather than his style of delivery, he's right on the money on this topic.
I walk in downtown NOLA nearly every day. To the observant, it should become obvious very quickly that traffic laws are optional. There are often vehicles that block my line of sight as I prepare to enter a cross walk. I make darn sure they aren't obscuring oncoming traffic. I see other people blindly follow the green signal and cross without looking. If I use a crosswalk at a 4 way intersection where two one way roads meet, I clear all 4 directions. Bicyclists going the wrong way are quite common. There are times I would have been hit by a wrong way cyclist If I hadn't looked both ways on a one way street crossing.
From the operating defensively standpoint, his message is all wrong. The primary reason for talking about these flaws is because they are by definition examples of how your sense that the way is clear can be fooled. He's right to say this is a good reason to be aware of your blind spots, but this blame crap is just an excuse to post the inevitable "this could never happen to me because I always" blah blah blah that is actually the opposite of the attitude you need to operate defensively. The problem with Joey's rules is they skip a step-- check your intuition that the way is clear. The design flaws we are talking about are situations where the pedestrians are going to likely be in a hurry to get across and the danger is literally hidden from them. It really is counterintuitive that you can be a few feet away from a moving commuter train and have no way to see it without losing your head. It's a hell of a lot more effective message if you point out that the people who did step.out were.not doing anything that was obviously dangerous to them at the time than to act like they were just idiots doing something I would never do.