Beware the stroad!

[LanghamP]

What do most of the accidents on this video have in common? They occur on stroads.

Now this is just one video. If you take any similar video chances are about 80% of the crashes will occur on stroads. That means If you ride an electric device, a bicycle, or walk, then your biggest danger above all is being hit on the so-called stroad.

A stroad is a combination of Street and Road. Although both words are used interchangeably, they actually mean two very different things.

A road comes from railroad; roads are high-speed with limited access. They get people from one place to another fast and cheap. They commonly do not have sewage, water, electricity underneath them. Roads are quite safe because vehicles have few distractions, and there's limited access.

A street commonly has both stores and residentials, with water, sewage, electricity, and typically vehicles travel quite slow because of the vast numbers of interesting things to see and stop for. Streets are quite safe because everyone travels quite slow, typically about 20 mph top speed; streets are quite narrow with lots of illegal parking so drivers' default behavior is to go even slower.

We know that 9 out of 10 pedestrians will survive if they are hit by a car going 20 mph. We know that only 1 out of 10 survive if the speed is 30 mph. Above 30 mph, of course, the chances of survival are almost none.

Why is all this important? Because regardless of which form of transportation you're using, the stroad is by far the most dangerous place to be.

A stroad is dangerous regardless of what safety equipment you're wearing! That is, wearing a helmet won't reduce your chances of death and injury (although reflective equipment does, by a small amount). Numerous studies show wearing a helmet increases a driver hitting you (risk compensation).

It combines the high energy for the railroad with the distractions of the street, with the end result of high-energy collisions occuring more often. Just about every local wreck I've seen is on a stroad; it's where drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians go to die. 

Personally, when I had to think about all the times I was hit by a driver or had a close call, all but one were on stroads. The one exception was on a dead-end street that was recently widened...so perhaps it was a stroad.

This is why assigning undue weight to safety equipment is a mistake; far more prudent is avoiding these stroads in the first place. I suspect most people on bikes and EUCs instinctively do so already, but I'd suspect most people cannot be shown a road and immediately identify it is safe or unsafe.

Here is some visualization of identifying stroads. 

https://www.ksdk.com/mobile/article/news/investigations/half-her-body-was-on-the-street-fast-cars-wide-roads-and-pedestrians/63-522073208

 

[tihoa]

8:16 must be ded >_<

[Freewheeler]

Wait. Huh? You mean I gotta share the road with numbskulls like this? 😉

Good post. It's sobering that so many of the accidents on that video breached the confines of the stroads and would have taken out pedestrians and riders alike.

Even being super aware AND having all the safety equipment is no guarantee. Nothing can save you from all incidents. All you can try to do is to try avoid their occurance and mitigate their consequences.

Thanks for the post.

[Heyzeus]

This was interesting.  Can see good reason to plan routes around residential streets when possible even if it's a little bit extra out of the way if one can do so instead of going along on high speed roads.  Getting hit by a car pulling out of a drive way is a lot better than getting hit by a car running a red light.  Obvious stuff is obvious I guess but the article really helps one see the distinction between the two.

[ir_fuel]

Most distractions these days aren't from "stroads" I think. The biggest distraction is in the car of most drivers. It's called their smartphone.

[Dzlchef]

Nice sobering reminder before hoping on the wheel this morning.  I always use residential streets and bike lanes but do have many stroads to transverse.  Thanks for the increased awareness!

[Unventor]

On 2/20/2019 at 3:58 PM, ir_fuel said:

Most distractions these days aren't from "stroads" I think. The biggest distraction is in the car of most drivers. It's called their smartphone.

Imho biggest desraction is that people do not respect that being in public traffic is not: race track, your back yard, your rules do not set aside traffic laws, lag of comen curtsey. 

People just are so busy thesr days and not understanding the impact of when to pay attention and have focus on what you are doing. Smartphones are a big part in this, but only because people let it. 

The above just many instances of people thinking they squeeze throught, where 20 seconds of pause would have saved the moment or just breaking a little sooner letting another get in front of you instead blasting past and get pased 1 more car infront.

This is why I upgraded from a bike helmet to a full face DH helmet and now to a full face mc helmet and d3o backplat safety jacket. I knew know when some didn't pay attention hit me.

[LanghamP]

On 2/20/2019 at 8:58 AM, ir_fuel said:

Most distractions these days aren't from "stroads" I think. The biggest distraction is in the car of most drivers. It's called their smartphone.

What can we do about cell phone usage in cars?

The common reaction is to call upon drivers to not use their cellphones via legislation. Does this work? No, it increases crash rates because now drivers hide their cell phone usage; while before they might have used their cell phone on top of their steering wheel they now place it low so others cannot see they are using their cellphones. In short, laws made to reduce crashes have, instead, increased them.

We could make cellphones unusable above certain speeds. This has been tried over the years to greater and lesser extent.

Finally, and this is my preference, we could make roads and cars less dangerous when people crash. By assuming people can and will crash, design everything around crashes first. Narrow two-way street, vehicle fronts that don't punch through people, governors that limit speeds on streets to 20 mph, open neighborhoods that don't depend on arterial roads, sidewalks seperated by trees, and almost all elimination of driveways.

A stroad takes the mistakes you would make while driving on a street and multiplies the consequences of a mistake by something like 10. 90% of fatalities occur on arterial roads despite being under 10% of the total road length...that should give most people a clue as to the deadlines of stroads.

[ir_fuel]

6 hours ago, LanghamP said:

Narrow two-way street, vehicle fronts that don't punch through people, governors that limit speeds on streets to 20 mph, open neighborhoods that don't depend on arterial roads, sidewalks seperated by trees, and almost all elimination of driveways.

Yeah, let's punish everyone because of some idiots.

 

[LanghamP]

3 hours ago, ir_fuel said:

Yeah, let's punish everyone because of some idiots.

You've never been in a wreck that was your fault? Like not even once? Everyone I know has.

If a few drivers wrecked then we can call them idiots/morons/stupid/retarded, but if most people are wrecking then it's the design that prioritizes high speed/high capacity over anything else.

And how much time are you saving when you dash at 30-45 mph along a road only to get stuck behind other vehicles at red lights or a wreck caused by a tailgater?

[ir_fuel]

1 minute ago, LanghamP said:

You've never been in a wreck that was your fault? Like not even once? Everyone I know has.

No.

Been driving since 1998.

[ir_fuel]

4 minutes ago, LanghamP said:

And how much time are you saving when you dash at 30-45 mph along a road only to get stuck behind other vehicles at red lights or a wreck caused by a tailgater?

That's always the excuse. And 30 years from now we all do 10mph everywhere.

If you go from 80 to 60. "In practice it doesn't change much"

FFWD 10 years

We go from 60 to 40 "In practice it doesn't change much"

FFWD 10 years

We go from 40 to 20 "In practice it doesn't change much"

And in the end you went from 80 to 20.

I've seen it happen where I live. Roads where in the 90's 120km/h was allowed ( 75 mph), and today, in several "it doesn't change much" steps we end up with 70 km/h on that same road (43mph), while in the mean time reducing the number of lanes (and no, not to replace them with bicycle or pedestrian lanes).

[ir_fuel]

5 minutes ago, LanghamP said:

If a few drivers wrecked then we can call them idiots/morons/stupid/retarded, but if most people are wrecking then it's the design that prioritizes high speed/high capacity over anything else.

Or the problem is driver education.

[LanghamP]

4 minutes ago, ir_fuel said:

Or the problem is driver education.

I've not wrecked since summer of 1993 buuut before that I had some totals.

Since you've been extraordinarily skillful in not wrecking, then what do you suggest for people not to wreck and if they do then the wreck is not very harmful?

[ir_fuel]

1 minute ago, LanghamP said:

Since you've been extraordinarily skillful in not wrecking, then what do you suggest for people not to wreck and if they do then the wreck is not very harmful?

I have no idea. TBH most of my friends haven't been in a wreck that is their fault. It's just a matter of paying attention and knowing what you should and shouldn't do. For one I have my phone set so no notifications pop up while I am driving so I can't be lured in to "just quickly reply once", and I don't have tailgating as a hobby either.

 

I think most accidents involving other road users are caused by either of the following factors:

- bad judgement (I can still go in front of that ca.... ow crap)

- not looking or not looking around correctly (someone in a blind spot or that you simply didn't notice)

- not knowing the traffic rules and applying them incorrectly

- being distracted (smartphones, grabbing stuff on the passenger seat, daydreaming etc etc)

 

The first three can be solved by decent driver education. You are running a device that is capable of killing quite a few people at once, including yourself. Maybe having a good driver education system whereby you need to get recertified every X years isn't a bad idea? Sometimes traffic rules change, and this would help people stay up to date too.

The last one is a lot harder to solve and requires making sure people doing this get caught. If I see the amount of people around me using their phones while driving, it can't be hard for an undercover cop to do the same and write tickets. He'll probably has to stop after one hour because of the amount of paperwork needed to send out all the tickets he wrote. 

Of course there will always be accidents. That's the price you pay. There is no such thing as zero risk. I think technology has already come a long way (blind spot detection systems and such), but I presume driver education can be improved a lot.

 

[ir_fuel]

The above post excludes obvious stuff such as drugs and alcohol of course.

[LanghamP]

Here's a recent video of the stroad (although not named as such).

 

 

[LanghamP]

Last Thursday my girlfriend borrowed my car and then was peripherally involved in a four car wreck on a stroad.

Basically, while she was stopped and about to make a left hand turn from a street into a stroad, two drivers perpendicular (on the stroad) collided with each nearly head on, with one vehicle spinning into the car stopped to her right, which then minorly hit my car and punched a fist size hole in my car's front right 1/4 panel.

I think the speed limit there is 50 or 55 mph, but of course no one drives that slow.

The end result was three totaled cars, and all three drivers plus one passenger all getting ambulance rides, as the forces involved was just tremendous.

I'll see if I can pull the video out of my dashcam later today and post them on YouTube. From the pictures, a new Toyota Camry, a Chevy Impala, and a new BMW M5 were destroyed or heavily damaged, and the medical damage had to be quite expensive.

Impala -$15,000

BMW - $40,000

Camry - $30,000

Three ambulance rides at $2,000 apiece, with emergency medical at $5,000 is about $26,000. That's the way too low to be true estimate...

This is probably a $100,000 crash, at the very least.

The stroad is a road design that takes what should be a minor fender bender and turns it into an expensive disaster. 

[Darrell Wesh]

On 4/22/2019 at 2:29 PM, LanghamP said:

Last Thursday my girlfriend borrowed my car and then was peripherally involved in a four car wreck on a stroad.

Basically, while she was stopped and about to make a left hand turn from a street into a stroad, two drivers perpendicular (on the stroad) collided with each nearly head on, with one vehicle spinning into the car stopped to her right, which then minorly hit my car and punched a fist size hole in my car's front right 1/4 panel.

I think the speed limit there is 50 or 55 mph, but of course no one drives that slow.

The end result was three totaled cars, and all three drivers plus one passenger all getting ambulance rides, as the forces involved was just tremendous.

I'll see if I can pull the video out of my dashcam later today and post them on YouTube. From the pictures, a new Toyota Camry, a Chevy Impala, and a new BMW M5 were destroyed or heavily damaged, and the medical damage had to be quite expensive.

Impala -$15,000

BMW - $40,000

Camry - $30,000

Three ambulance rides at $2,000 apiece, with emergency medical at $5,000 is about $26,000. That's the way too low to be true estimate...

This is probably a $100,000 crash, at the very least.

The stroad is a road design that takes what should be a minor fender bender and turns it into an expensive disaster. 

M5 is wayyy more than 40k 😲

[LanghamP]

On 4/24/2019 at 2:01 AM, Darrell Wesh said:

M5 is wayyy more than 40k 😲

My mistake; it was a 2018 Mercedes.

I wasn't at all surprised today to discover that this overweight female, member of a minority, driving a 2018 Mercedes Benz, was actually driving without automobile insurance.

I do have uninsured auto insurance, but I'm still pissed at having to pay my $500 deductible.

[Liam9653]

To go on the road you need to know the basics of the rules of the road. Otherwise, it will all end quite badly. The best option is not to go out of the way in transport.

[LanghamP]

Evidently, the two drivers that collided initially were both uninsured. That's two of four cars that were uninsured. Three of the cars were totalled.

[Dzlchef]

@LanghamP, I must say that most of the time I don’t agree with your argument, or angle on a topic.  However, you nailed it with this topic.  It’s very relavent to me as a daily commuter and should be a must view before anyone deciding to do the same. Thank you! 

[LanghamP]

Yesterday I saw the worse of cliches; a driver in an SUV bumped a wheelchair-bound man.

I guess no harm no foul, but the right turn in red should be banished because drivers place the hood of their car over the crosswalk or over people. While I don't think right on red on right angle intersections is particularly dangerous due to the extremely low speeds, I do keep seeing people bumped or knocked over.

[Circuitmage]

Yeah...intersections. Avoid them.

https://www.autoaccident.com/statistics-on-intersection-accidents.html

"Nationally, 40 percent of all crashes involve intersections, the second largest category of accidents, led only by rear end collisions."

One huge benefit we have on EUC's is to avoid intersections, whenever possible. I do. I have 3 stoplights going from my house to the train. I avoid the 2 biggest intersections and am very happy to do so. Just go up another 30 yards to cross the street when there is no traffic. I do not trust any cross walk, especially at a 4-way stoplight. At a 4-way stop there is ALWAYS moving traffic, and you don't know who may be coming at high speed from one of your blind spots.

Also, given the right of way by a car stopping in traffic (WTF!?!?!) or waving me to go in front of them, I do not. I ride around them or wait for them to get out of the road.