Seems great in practice, but wait until someone with the slightest hint of paranoia misattributes a threat against their car, to a threat against their safety.
One of three things happen:
Driver freaks out and freezes up.
Driver freaks out and speeds away (possibly causing an accident)
Driver freaks out and aims their car at you and puts their foot down.
@mondoman712
I fashioned a large, hand held metal stop sign on a board. That’s why I carry when I cross busy streets in my neighborhood. I hold it out in front of myself like a flag. Drivers will slow if they think they might hit a big piece of metal. And drivers will bully soft fleshy humans with the threat of great bodily harm. It’s not very nice but it helps keep me alive.
I think it's important to keep in mind that the dominant traffic control structure in the US is the stoplight, which relies heavily on "mutually assured destruction" to work. So that's in everyone's head when driving around: "I stop because I don't want to get hurt." To me, it's pretty clear that escalation to vehicular damage is the only thing that makes sense for pedestrians in such an environment. Yeah, it's not nice, but so is the rest of the game.
In America. Maybe in Surrey if you are brown and offend the wrong also brown people... Anyway here even the tough guy persona compensators generally don't have guns and are pushovers when it really comes down to getting into an insurance claim where icbc will guaranteed try to put at least partial blame on the driver and not budge without the guy paying for a lawyer.
The only Canadians I have met that legally own a gun are also mentally stable and would never shoot a person. Just hunters that love to share homemade deer jerky and sausage with their coworkers.
Words cannot describe how happy I am that my chance if getting shot over a minor traffic argument are 0. I can't imagine what it's like to live knowing that at any moment a lunatic with a gun can decide to kill you.
In Canada you need to take a safety course, pass a written and hands on test, apply for the permit to acquire firearms which includes at least 28 day waiting period and checking with current and former partners that you are safe to have guns.
If you get charged with crimes then the police know you have guns and may come and take them away.
Pistols require a restricted permit and have further restrictions like having to travel only between home and the range, no stopping for shopping or dinner with the gun left in your vehicle. No carry permits except in very specific conditions.
They would have to take budget from the military to afford this, what an outrageous act! Wait they can just defund hospitals and schools even more, but do you honestly think they would allocate even a dollar to safety for their citizens? Nah they would just shove the new money into the military again
This whole thing is satire, I didn't say /s since it looked like it's just focusing on the last sentence instead of the whole comment
I'm from a much less pedestrian friendly city, and I completely agree with point #1. There are a lot of other ways to get to Granville and it's so close quarters with cars, you can't even swing a cat
is it legal to carry flashing red and blue lights when crossing streets as a pedestrian? The number of times I've gotten stuck in the middle of the crosswalk bc no one will stop is absurd
Maybe custom blinking shoes like what they used to make for kids back in the day? Just mimic the blinking pattern.
There are many people who still wouldn't notice until the siren comes on though. I can spot an interceptor if the sunlight just happens to hit it right, yet my mom will drive right past a parked white cop car with lights on and be surprised when I told her she didn't slow down to pass it. Then if an emergency siren goes off she panics and tries to pull to the shoulder without locating the emergency vehicle when fully blocked in by other cars and only moving enough to block the ambulance driving along the shoulder.
It seems, that the laws are to blame. In my country, when a pedestrian stands near a crossing tha car has to stop under penalty. Even if the pedestrian is just walking towards the crossing. Drivers usually comply.
That is the law on Ontario, all lanes of traffic must stop for someone using a pedestrian crossover (zebra crossing). The penalty for failure to comply is $1000 and 4 demerits. Fines are doubled ($2000) in community safety zones.
The law isn't to blame; driver compliance, enforcement, and road design is.
The number of people that slowly inch their bumpers towards the old lady crossing the street so they can zoom past is truly disgusting. Could you imagine treating your own mother like that?
I think when you press the button to cross a spike strip should automatically deploy directly on the stop line. Inching into the ped area with just the front tires will cost you two tires, running the light costs 4 and probably some scratches in the paint.
Amazing how America has to have the threat of damage to property to get people to not run over pedestrians, while Japan just has a little flag to increase visibility.
Hahahaha I think this sign is tongue in cheek. Most of the surrounding area outside of Granville Island is very easy to walk and enjoy yourself without a car. At Granville you have to be careful of a large influx of tourists in cars and cement mixer trucks.
If they're anything like the ones in Korea, they hire someone to be there during busy times, and whenever someone wants to cross, the person steps out with the flag and stops traffic. Usually in school zones.
You just pick one up and carry it across the road and then drop it off in the little bin on the other side. The idea is that you're more visible when you're holding a flag.
oh I've been there before. Anti-getting-hit-with-a-car-bricks aren't even the weirdest part about the place. They got so many seagulls over there they have professional falconers who have trained hawks to scare off the seagulls. Absolutely bizarre to see IRL
They can't just establish an independent population of falcons in the city? That's what we did in Montréal for the pigeon problem. A university introduced them a few years ago and now they're having babies.
Not that rare. I live in a coastal town in England. We have hawk handlers come every year. We also have speakers that blast the sound of hawk calls on the dockside but the seagulls seem to have worked out that they're bullshit.
I am doing this. I have to walk along a narrow pavement next to a road to get to the nearest bus stop. During a rain it has many puddles and I've been splashed on many occasions. Will be making a foam brick next week.
I saw a video a few weeks ago of a trucker who had to pull over on a fast road and he was holding a sharp pole in his hand. People usually reacted by giving him space, rather than driving inches away from him at 80km/h, like they usually do.
Looks to me like a lot of them are slowing down to see what kind of performance art he's doing. Even the bus driver pointed at him in curiosity. Admittedly, there are also a lot of them swerving away from the puddle in a moment of sudden awareness, or just swerving away from him in a moment of fear.
There may be some aspect of attention-grabbing that would work no matter what was in his hand. People see so many umbrellas on a rainy day that it barely registers, but if you hold anything at all that's eye-catching, you'll pop up in their conscious attention and they'll treat you like a person instead of a road hazard.
I mean, if it works it works, but I think it would be less effective if a lot of people did it. "Oh, I've seen this one, he never actually throws the brick."
I mean, if it works it works, but I think it would be less effective if a lot of people did it. “Oh, I’ve seen this one, he never actually throws the brick.”
seems easily solved by having at least some people actually throw it when called for
That's true, it wouldn't take very many before people were always cautious.
EDIT: Wait, what am I saying. Drivers routinely just kill each other for a million reasons, and then never do anything about the reasons or use any caution whatsoever.
