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This is how pedestrians die on Chicago streets
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this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2026
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Perfect example of how legislation doesn't really make roads safer when the designs directly encourage the illegal behaviour and there's not enough police to enforce it everywhere.
Narrow the intersection to one lane, elevate the crosswalk to sidewalk height, block parking two car lengths before the crosswalk, and turn the beg buttons into hard-countdown crossing buttons.
Since pedestrians have right-of-way at crosswalks, we should be designing the crosswalks to reflect that. Otherwise we'll continue seeing this kind of behavior from drivers.
Laws without actual enforcement and stiff penalties are the same as no law.
Random enforcement with large fines is great at getting people to obbey the rules of the road "just in case I might get caught" - it's sad but you can't relly on people doing the right thing even if by not doing so they're seriously endangering the lives of others (like the second car in that video).
Worse, if at first it's only the assholes (a small fraction of people) breaking the rules and endangering others by doing so, if they're not punished by it eventually the "neutrals" (the bulk of people, who are neither inherently understanding towards others nor assholes) will do the same as the assholes since they see them getting away with doing the selfish thing and by that point it's only a minority of drivers doing what they're supposed to be doing.
I've lived in several countries in the EU and now live in Portugal, the rules of the road being pretty much the same in all of Europe and yet there is way (WAY!) more reckless life-endangering rule-breaking on the road like this in Portugal than in the Netherlands and Britain. My impression is that the reason is that in the other two countries you're way more likely to get caught (not least because they actually have cameras at traffic signs and other places), the police are actually strict about enforcement rather than forgiving "just this once" (only next time around that driver is caught it's a different police officer so it's "just this once" again) and the fines are stiff.
I remember when I first emigrated out from Portugal and went to live in The Netherlands, having the same kind of driving habits as the typical Portuguese, so I did the typical Portuguese thing at a traffic sign in The Netherlands (yellow light gets treated as "accelerate" and the first few seconds of "red" are treated as "can still pass") and a week later got a fine on the post because there was a camera there, so I phoned them to appeal and the answer was "Rules are rules: crossing one second after it turned red or crossing one minute after it turned red are both crossing a red light" so I had to pay the fine.
Lets just say that my driving in The Netherlands quickly lost all the funny business habits from Portugal.
This shit happens because it's allowed to happen.