They have a very good safety record.
So here is my idea. We make robo-pedestrians. They scrupulously adhere to the rules of the road. They cross at cross walks, and always wait for the walk signal.
BUT. They always walk when they have right-of-way.
The result? A whole lot of traffic accidents between car and robot Fender benders. I prefer the idea of 500 pound supertough robots that do a good number on the car. Soon, those drivers can no longer afford car repairs, or end up with too many demerit points to drive, or their insurance goes very high. A very few might learn how to drive.
The other day, a scenario from a coupla weeks ago happened again. I thought it was a blue-moon rare sort of things. Apparently not.
Once again, a woman driver stared on oncoming traffic to her left, with the intention to turn right. She waited for the light to turn. No more traffic was coming through the red light. She had right of way. And... she did not even LOOK anywhere else before starting to roll out. Of course, I had been there the whole time, and she had plenty of time to glance about.
She didn't. I've described cross walks as kill zones for walkers.
Robots would convert them into fender-bender zones instead.
A great improvement, if you ask me.
Additional beef- there was a bicyclist killed by UW last year. I am not sure how the driver ended up in the bike lane. But I've been watching how cars drive with roads with bike lanes. About 1 in 20 or so drivers centres off the cub and not the bike lane line. Most of the time, they have good visibility and reaction time to move left if there is a cyclist in the bike lane.
Well, most of the time. Bad drivers typically have clumps - veritable swaths - of poor driving skills. So they also drive about a second behind the vehicle in front of them. If that vehicle happens to be a van or SUV or truck, then such drivers have poor sight lines to see a cyclist as well as little reaction time. The result:
1) cyclist in their bike lane
2) cyclist suddenly struck from behind with a speed difference of possibly 40kph. Which starts getting dangerous if not downright lethal.
Related beef - I KNOW the city does not use street cleaners very often to maintain bike lanes. The result is a mix of gravel and possibly glass. It's hard to see glass in time with that much debris. Cyclists react by hanging left in the bike lane, often straddling the car lane in the process. If a car centres on their lane properly, they may very well still clip the cyclist. It's not enough to build a bike lane. It must be built well and then MAINTAINED. Otherwise, best not to bother.
Just saying.
