Autoholics

i love the disney spoof using Goofy as the driver...

Gotta say, everywhere I have been that they "protected" pedestrian by giving them the right of way - they immediately became "empowered" and clueless.

Does it matter who is in the right when you are in the hospital?

ASIDE: The Stanley Steamer was so quiet pedestrian collisions was common, so everything old is new again!

C'mon guys and gals, lets invent a mobile personal airbag system. I can already see all of the pedestrian fliers bouncing down the road safely cocooned within their safety bubbles.

It'll be great. Imagine a bag of giant rubber balls splitting open 100 feet off the ground and sending bouncy bodies in every direction. Then we can institute a point system for distance, accuracy, multiple target hits,... The list could be endless!

Am I the only one who likes this?

Extra points if you don't knock thier hat off.

Well I saw an American study that showed that (from memory) people being killed by a vehicle while on the sidewalk was about 2 orders of magnitude higher than being killed by terrorists (based on total yearly deaths I believe). Heart disease was the number one or two (way higher than murder). I wish I saved that study, here were some other numbers instead.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126953.100-wheels-of-death.html

Perhaps there is something in it, or JUST DON'T DRIVE ON THE SIDEWALK AND USE YOUR HORN ONLY WHEN YOU NEED TO.

Come on people, it isn't rocket science. Perhaps "Not so smart" is right, but instead the mobile personal airbag system automatically inflates if you try to enter a fast food "restaurant" more than once a week.

i know of at least 2 stories of that.. driving on the sidewalk..intentionally trying to reduce the over - population in the city's downtown area...

i'm thinkin` that this type of behaviour is for people who :" if they had 2 brains , 1 would be lonely " ...

& i'm glad that what ever they did for a living i didn't have to interact with them..

You mean like death race 2000?

People should just be aware of their surroundings

I must say the article was a bit shocking, however they have made a major oversight, they have forgotten the major countries such as china and india, where automotive accidents are part of everyday life. I think these may bring road fatalities globally on par with other causes.

http://autos.canada.com/news/story.html?id=6dde2c54-c14f-41af-83af-1dc1b6ec1ea4

Here in Pittsburgh, it's a very stylized game - something like bullfighting. The pedestrian keeps your car just in his peripheral vision to see if you make any movement to slow or swerve. He has to be careful; if the driver sees him actually look, the pedestrian has lost and the driver will now speed up. Once the driver visibly slows, the pedestrian now gets that thousand yard stare and slowly strolls about in the road, seemingly completely unaware of where he is. We try to never make contact since you go to the penalty box for that. The exception is blonde yuppies in fur coats - you get a decal on the fender for those.

The majority of motor-vehicle-pedestrian/bicycle collisions are the fault (or greater contributory fault) of the motor vehicle driver. So something to reduce head trauma (the more critical injury) and laceration in exchange for only leg fractures is a reasonable safety innovation.

Seattle is not so much filled with militancy as it is home to a population, the majority of which is inebriate to some degree at all hours of the day and night; hence its, and Washington state's, reputation for people so easily stimulated to irrational, hostile outbursts. Alcohol does that to a person.

Albuquerque passed a pedestrian protection law, basically allowing pedestrians to step into traffic anywhere safely.

To enforce the concept during the transition (because this is pretty alien out west), they put a bunch of cruisers at the end of the block to observe, than had a policewoman in jogging gear repeatedly step out into traffic mid-block.

If you failed to yield to her, they wrote you a ticket at the end of the block.

More than one driver threatened to go back and run her down

How about external (and internal, for the texting yuppies) slapping machine to smack their arses while they walk (drive) around with their heads stuck up inside them?