Business & Economy
January 6, 2020

Women are More At Risk In Car Crashes Because Vehicles Are Not Designed for Them

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Last Fall Consumer Reports revealed that although most Americans killed in car crashes are male, data shows that it is fact women that are at a greater risk of death or serious injury in a car crash. A female driver or front row passenger with a seatbelt is 17 percent more likely to die, and 73 percent more likely to have a serious injury.

Crash researchers have known for forty years that the bodies of male and female react differently in crashes,  but automotive research still stubbornly clings to the “50th percentile male” which is understood to be a 171 pound 5 foot 9 inch dummy  first developed in the 1970’s. And that crash test dummy has not substantially changed, despite the fact that the average American man weighs 26 pounds more.

It was not until 2003 that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) used a scaled down male dummy to represent a woman. This dummy was so scaled down that it also could double as a 13 year old child. It is a 5th percentile crash dummy as even to  1970’s standards it represented only 5 percent of women.

Crash tests do not recognize that  half the drivers in the United States are now female. The 5th percentile female crash dummy rides as a passenger, not a driver. As Consumer Reports writer Keith Barry states “Because automotive design is directly influenced by the results of safety testing, any bias in the way cars are crash-tested translates into the way cars are manufactured. So if safety tests don’t prioritize female occupants, carmakers won’t necessarily make changes to better protect them.”

Automotive safety relies on regulation to do the right thing. Using crash dummies that are not smaller models of male dummies is the first step, along with recognizing that women’s  structures are different than men’s. Today’s average female is five inches shorter and 27 pounds lighter than the average male, and wear seatbelts differently and sit closer to the steering console.

While there is a new generation of dummies coming, there is still no plan to build an average female for crash tests. Called THOR (Test Device for Human Occupant Restraint) these new models are due to be used in Europe this year for testing and will collect more data than previous crash test dummies.

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Infrastructure
December 17, 2019

Contractor for Pedestrian Crossing Construction Goes His Own Way

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In this Strange But True tale from Tsawwassen, this image was sent in of a brand new crosswalk installation on 53A Street. But take a look at this truck which on Friday the 13th was parked right on the sidewalk  at 8:15 a.m, blocking the access used by kids on their way to school.

And who was in the truck? It was the contractor,  Crown Contracting,  (their website says they build “bright, safer streets”) which had won the bid to construct the crosswalk in the first place. The driver left the vehicle blocking the sidewalk while he read through his cell phone , despite the fact there is lots of parking on the street.

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Infrastructure
December 5, 2019

Three Metro Vancouver Pedestrians Die in 30 Hours-This is Not Okay

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Last week three people within 30 hours in Metro Vancouver lost their lives doing a very simple act-walking on the street. A senior was mowed down by a truck driver in the early afternoon. And a 40 year old woman and a  man in his thirties lost their lives at 5:00 a.m. and 5:50 p.m., both times on dark streets. The man had tried to cross the street near the Ladner McDonald’s,had tripped on the median and was then struck by a vehicle driver. He was the father of three children ranging from 13 years to 18 months. His eldest children had lost their mother ten years ago.

There is already a go fund me page for the young family of that  Dad, Robbie Oliver, who was self-employed as a roofer. He was well loved and respected in Ladner, and the community has already held a candlelight vigil for him at the site of the accident.

We somehow have to stop thinking that  these needless deaths are necessary collateral to the use of vehicles. This CBC article with author Neil Aranson  talks about making cars smarter . The large denlike vehicles so popular today increase the likelihood of a pedestrian fatality by 50 percent. Neil who wrote ” No Accident: Eliminating Injury and Death on Canadian Roads” also suggests that while the European Union and Japan require pedestrian survivable design in their manufacturing rules, North America does not.  Outrage and insistence is needed to get vehicular manufacturers to do better.

But there is more to safe streets than vehicular design. Speed, visibility, road design, and driver behaviour  are also important factors.  The B.C. Coroners Service in their 2019 report identified that “from 2008 to 2016, more than one-third of traffic fatalities involved drugs or alcohol. ”

Of the 314 traffic fatalities in B.C. in 2018, 18 percent were pedestrians. Across the province 43 pedestrians died in 2017; that number increased to 58 people in 2018. ICBC, the insurance corporation estimates that in Metro Vancouver 2,100 vehicular crashes involve a pedestrian annually. A study done by Transport Canada in 2011 showed that 63 percent of fatalities at urban intersections were pedestrians aged 65 or older.

November, December and January are the danger months for pedestrians in Metro Vancouver. There is darkness, rain, and road glare and many intersections are not well lit. The City of Vancouver has hinted at installing more Leading Pedestrian Intervals (LPIs) which allow a pedestrian a “lead green time” when crossing. NACTO (the National Association of City and Transportation Officials) cite LPIs as reducing pedestrian crashes by 60 percent. There are several thousand LPIs installed in New York City, and the cost per intersection is minimal at $1,200 U.S. dollars.

Reducing speed at intersections allows for drivers to have more reaction time. And in Europe as part of Vision Zero (Zero deaths on the road) Finland requires pedestrians to wear some type of small reflective toggle.

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Architecture
October 22, 2019

Broadway: Awaiting Transformation

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As noted below, the Expo Line, which opened in 1985, has transformed the corridor along which it runs, especially at many of its station areas.  In that same time, nothing much has happened along Central Broadway.  Some of the blocks between Granville and Broadway seem curiously untouched since the 1970s.

The blocks between Granville and Burrard have some of the widest sidewalks in the city – and some of the least active street life.

This block from Burrard to Cypress has never had street trees, for no apparent reason:

At six lanes, it feels more like an urban highway than a streetcar arterial.  This is Motordom 2.0 – a redesigning of the city for the car and truck.

Because of the width of the road at six lanes and the height of the buildings at one and two storeys, there is no sense of enclosure, no ‘village’ feeling.  The Broadway subway offers the chance for a complete reordering when the train comes through  – a case where higher heights and densities will actually give the street a more ‘European’ feeling.

A classic example is in central Paris, where the ratio was set by Baron Haussmann in a 1859 degree that determined the height of the buildings as a function of the width of the street:

Six lanes allows five storeys, plus mansard roof (and no doubt higher storeys than our nine to ten feet for residential).  Even without street trees, it works.

 

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Motordom
October 17, 2019

Global Growth of SUVs Means the ICE Age is Not Over

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You can forget about reducing vehicular emissions, a major source of climate change, if we can’t change our habits. As the International Energy Agency has stated while there are 350 plus of different electric models of vehicles planned in the next five years, only 7 percent of all automobiles will be electric by 2030.  Around the world sales of internal combustion engine vehicles (ICE) have fallen 2 percent, the first reduction in ten years. Surprisingly China and India have had substantial declines in the purchase of ICE vehicles, by 14 percent and 10 percent respectively.

The real challenge~and you see it in marketing everywhere~is the ICE motor vehicle manufacturers peddling of their darling, the SUV (Sport Utility Vehicle)  built on a truck frame that gets around car regulations due to its truck platform. These SUVs are killing machines, and along with trucks represent 60 percent of all vehicle purchases and directly responsible for a 46 percent increase of pedestrian deaths. As well, drivers of SUVs are 11 percent more likely to die in an accident.

Automakers advertise the SUV’s as safe rolling dens for drivers, and there are now globally 200 million SUVs, up from 35 million ten years ago. Sales of SUVs have also doubled in a decade.

The numbers are staggering~half of all vehicles sold in the United States are SUVs, and in gas conscious Europe, one-third of all purchases are for SUVs.

And they have an appeal. “In China, SUVs are considered symbols of wealth and status. In India, sales are currently lower, but consumer preferences are changing as more and more people can afford SUVs. Similarly, in Africa, the rapid pace of urbanisation and economic development means that demand for premium and luxury vehicles is relatively strong.”

Given that 25 percent of global oil goes to vehicular consumption, and the related CO2 emissions, “The global fleet of SUVs has seen its emissions growing by nearly 0.55 Gt CO2 during the last decade to roughly 0.7 Gt CO2. As a consequence, SUVs were the second-largest contributor to the increase in global CO2 emissions since 2010 after the power sector, but ahead of heavy industry (including iron & steel, cement, aluminium), as well as trucks and aviation.”

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Cycling
October 7, 2019

Why We Should Ban SUVs in Cities

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I have been writing about how SUVs and trucks which make up 60 percent of all vehicle purchases have been responsible for a 46 percent increase in pedestrian deaths.

Never doubt the power and strength of the motor vehicle lobby. A SUV  (sport utility vehicle) is a vehicle built on a truck platform with a “high profile” on the street. Statistics show that SUVs with the high front end grille are twice as likely to kill pedestrians because of the high engine profile, but this information has not been well publicized. In the United States a federal initiative to include pedestrian crash survival into the vehicle ranking system was halted by opposing automakers.

It was the City of London England that banned a certain type of truck when the city realized that it was responsible for 50 per cent of all cycling mortalities and over 20 per cent of all pedestrian deaths. Of course there was pushback, but the Mayor of London just said no.

Laura Laker  in  the Guardian  now asks the question~is it time to ban SUVs from our cities? SUVs are heavily marketed and are highly profitable for car companies, but they are also deadly. Drivers have an 11 percent increase in the chance of fatality in them, as their size and bulk is connected with more reckless driving. They are also killing machines in the conventional sense. In September a SUV driver in Berlin lost control of his vehicle and killed four people on a sidewalk, a grandmother and grandson and two twenty year old men.

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Infrastructure
October 2, 2019

Rolling too Much of the Red Carpet in Vancouver Bus Zones

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So much to unpack with some of the City of Vancouver’s most recent initiatives, so let’s get started. If you have been anywhere near  Broadway, you may have seen the street appearing~well, red.  It appears the City of Vancouver and TransLink decided it would be a Good Idea to use this rather berryfruit juicy colour as a demonstration project to show where the B-Line bus stop zones are.

The City of Vancouver in the twitterverse got right on the messaging by warning drivers to “Steer clear of the red zone! Along with @Translink, we’re piloting red zones at key bus stops to remind people bus stops aren’t for cars. A single stopped car can slow down hundreds of people. If the red zones work, we’ll look for rolling out more in the future”.

Just a small quibble, people don’t need to be reminded that bus stop zones  are not for cars, drivers do. And those drivers would also react just as well to increased enforcement at bus zones, so hopefully the Police will work in partnership with TransLink to enhance monitoring.

But back to the temporary installation of this strange red paint on city streets-what is with the really bright colour? Take a look at the Washington D.C. bus lane below which at least is in the more muted burgundy palette and edged and stenciled as a “bus only zone”.

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Motordom
September 23, 2019

Paris, Vehicular Noise & Acoustical Radar

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Besides the sights of Paris, the sounds can be fairly intense, especially if you are walking close to a motorway. As this article on Engadget.com states Paris is trialling “noise radar” that focuses in on powerful muscle cars with loud muffler noise. Using a quartet of microphones appended to street poles, the system triangulates on noise and uplinks with a CCTV camera to pinpoint the offending vehicle.

It’s no surprise that these devices have been located near bars in Paris’ entertainment districts as well as around major buildings. With nearly sixty of the noise radar systems installed, there is a two year trial to figure out if this technology works, and also to ascertain what noise level will result in fines.

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Infrastructure
September 9, 2019

UBC International Road Safety Symposium~Nov 7-8

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Following great feedback from the Vision Zero Summit, UBC’s Bureau of Integrated Transportation Safety and Advanced Mobility, in partnership with BC Centre for Disease Control, will host an International Road Safety Symposium to continue supporting expertise and knowledge exchange for road safety across BC. Renowned international experts from the Netherlands, Australia, and Canada will join municipal and provincial experts to discuss and share their experience and recent research with a focus on application, implementation and equity at the local level. The symposium will provide a forum for dialogue with all attendees to allow for focused discussions on specific issues and solutions.

The two days will cover:

International Expert Presentations followed by discussions on:
Road Safety Challenges in the Smart Mobility era
Causation and Prevention – how to best develop a crash prevention program
Road User Distraction
Transportation and Health
The Safe Systems Approach and critical success factors

Interactive Attendee Panel Discussions:
Active Road User Safety
Speed Management
Legal and illicit substances and road safety
Data Driven Transport safety -“linchpin” data issues, big data, and data-sharing opportunities
New and Advanced Mobility (e.g. ride-hailing, e-scooters)

Our distinguished line-up of international experts include:

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