[last_responder]

Texting and driving have to be behind some large portion of this increase.

[doytch]

I live in a smaller American city and ride my bike for most trips. I ride conservatively and am constantly watching cars tires or looking into the cabin to get early warning about sudden unsignalled turns or any other odd maneuvers. The amount of people I see just casually browsing Instagram or texting is insane.

I grew up in another country where it was illegal to hold a cellphone while driving and it was actually enforced. I'm just completely dumbfounded at the behaviour here and the lack of enforcement.

[systems_glitch]

I occasionally have to drive a class 7 truck for work, which sits at about the same height as a semi truck (tractor/trailer). From that height you can see into most passenger cars. I'd guess 50-75% of people on the Interstate are more engaged in using their phones than driving their cars.

[luxurytent]

The hands-free law was IMO, a failure. What used to be people staring at their phones while holding them up at the steering wheel now has people trying to be more discreet and placing phones between their legs or near the cup holders.

Hands-free! But also doubly dangerous.

[donatj]

This is my exact experience! People used to text with their phone in front of them, which is dangerous but at least they had peripheral vision. Now they hide their phone while they do it. You see it so often, someone not everyone looking vaguely at the road.

[xnx]

I thought this was a problem at first, but I don't see anyone trying to hide it anymore. "Driving" is just an app that people glance at while using their phones.

[smt88]

It's a combination of phone use, increasing size/weight of vehicles, and urbanization (more people to hit on the same streets).

I suspect CarPlay and Android Auto are incredibly dangerous, but there isn't great data on how they contribute to accidents yet.

[sokoloff]

I went out of my way to install CarPlay in our old ICE car and think it adds safety, especially with maps in an unfamiliar area. Trying to read the map on a 3” wide screen in a cup holder or clipped to an air vent is way worse than on a 7” screen mounted in an easily viewable area.

[kgwxd]

Touchscreen car control too.

[systems_glitch]

This. None of our cars require it (we drive older used stuff) but every time I rent a car I wonder how people operate e.g. the climate controls without crashing.

[retrac]

Walking and on their phones, too. In recent years I've seen people step into intersections while on their phone without even looking up.

Edit: anyone who disagrees and has downvoted me care to explain why? I wrote the comment from the perspective a pedestrian. I don't even drive!

Some cities consider it such problem they've talked about making it illegal to walk around in the street looking at your phone: https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/20/us/new-york-walking-while-tex...

[dghlsakjg]

Walking and texting isn't dangerous on its own. A person bumping into someone because of texting, while annoying, has close to 0 ability to cause serious harm when compared to drivers doing the same.

I think the downvotes come from the fact that this argument is used as a relatively dumb anti-pedestrian rant in a lot of places. Frequently the pedestrian is "stepping into the road" where they have right of way (which in a lot of cities is any uncontrolled/unlighted intersection, regardless of whether a crosswalk is painted), and the car driver is loathe to admit that they didn't want to stop or didn't know that the pedestrian has right of way.

As a pro-cycling and pro-pedestrian person, my feeling is that walking and texting is just a red-herring complaint that is not the cause of any sort of serious problems. Putting it into the same bucket as distracted driving, which is VERY dangerous, and has a death toll attached feels disingenuous. Its like comparing a scraped knee to cancer. One of those is a serious problem killing lots of people, one of them is not. Even though both should be treated medically, we shouldn't be talking about them in the same context.

[wnolens]

It's blaming the victim?

I see this very often as well, but you're not operating a several ton vehicle. At worst you run into some kid and knock his ice cream over.

It's the presence of cars, their prioritization in our infrastructure, and unenforced laws surrounding them that are the problem.

[ch4s3]

You're being down voted because of your odious victim blaming. Moreover, CDC data shows alcohol being the leading cause of fatal crashes where a vehicle strikes a pedestrian. Texting by pedestrians doesn't even register in the statistics. Furthermore, no city is making it illegal to text while walking, that would be fucking absurd. The law proposed in the article you cited was proposed by State Senator John Liu who is a joke, and it never went anywhere.

Blaming pedestrians for bad infrastructure and giant cars is a super dickish, car-brained take. European cities don't have the same problems and people are no less likely to text and walk in those places.

[youreincorrect]

I agree, but with the noted caveat that pedestrians who are completely oblivious to their surroundings are usually only a danger to themselves, whereas drivers who are even somewhat oblivious to their surroundings can be far more dangerous.

When I lived in SF, I saw this constantly btw. I probably saved on guy's life who saw a walk sign turn on at an intersection, proceeded to look at his phone, and stepped into the intersection. Meanwhile a car was running the red light at a fast speed (it was crossing Market somewhere up near 2nd Street), so I had to tug this guy by the back of his shirt to prevent him from getting creamed. And he actually gave me an annoyed look. This was sometime around 2015 though, so just an anecdote that doesn't have much to do with the data in the article.

[kashunstva]

Personally, I’m a careful no-phones driver and an equally careful pedestrian especially in high density environments. But I’ve lost count of the number of pedestrians who are waiting at an intersection, and lose situational awareness while looking down at their phones and based on some incorrect cue in their peripheral vision step out into traffic. (Is that the most common scenario where a car injures a pedestrian? No; but it’s an empirical observation.)

I suspect your downvotes are coming from readers who interpret it as some kind of victim-blaming because of the asymmetry in forces involved. Let’s just acknowledge this is a multifactorial problem and that there are going to be interventions from both the pedestrian and driver perspectives that keep people safe.

[fzeroracer]

Do you ever consider why the problem of rising pedestrian deaths is a US oddity? Or do you simply think that smartphones etc don't exist in Europe?

[systems_glitch]

Used to see them walk into lamp posts, sign posts, bollards, etc.

[yardie]

That could be the primary cause of the collision. The actual deaths come from the way cars are now designed.

[bigbacaloa]

.ay e texto g while walking is part of the problem too