Pedestrian safety

Urban streets serve a much different purpose than rural ones: They're for walking, socializing, and local commerce, not just moving vehicles. Unfortunately, American engineering guides tend not to capture these nuances.

In February, 7-year-old Amar Diarrassouba was killed while crossing the street in East Harlem. Truck driver Robert Carroll ran him over while turning from East 117th Street to First Avenue. Because Carroll was driving a truck registered out-of-state, the vehicle wasn't covered by the state law requiring crossover mirrors for large trucks on New York City streets. Community Board 11 recently asked Representative Charles Rangel to introduce a bill that would mandate crossover mirrors nationwide, but federal action seems unlikely in the near future and the loophole allowing out-of-state trucks to skip the safety mirrors remains in place.

Some New Haven residents were fed up with a dangerous intersection near Yale University, where repeated requests for a crosswalk had gone ignored. So one night last May, they painted a zebra-striped crosswalk on Whitney Avenue near Audubon Street.

After U.S. DOT released a report earlier this month on pedestrian safety, media outlets around the country raced to produce indictments of "drunk walking."

As long as her granddaughter can remember, Tulsa resident JoAnn Carlson never drove a car. Even at age 80, Carlson would walk to work from her apartment near St. John’s hospital.

UPDATED 5:43 p.m. with more details from NHTSA on eligible grant activities.

You know the stereotype of the arrogant Porsche driver? Well, science says there's some truth to it.

Today in police behaving badly, this madness from Toronto...

The Federal Highway Administration classifies roads as either "rural" or "urbanized." But the "urbanized" label is deceptive, because it applies suburban street design standards to any street that isn't rural. So if you live in, say, downtown St. Louis, the FHWA applies the same standards to your streets as to the streets in Orlando's most distant suburbs. This contributes to a horrendous mismatch: Many city streets where walking should take precedence are in fact designed for moving massive amounts of traffic.