Category: Safety

Tesla’s Electric Self-Driving Car Euphoria Gets Jolted

An event predicted by many finally occurred: the first fatal crash in an electric self-driving car, on May 7 in Florida. That crash was followed soon by two more non-fatal crashes, one in Pennsylvania on July 1 and another in Montana early Sunday morning. Tesla’s stock fell and the media is having a field day predicting the death of […]

Is Tesla Autopilot Safe?

There’s been a lot of news (and misinformation) over the past few days about Tesla Autopilot (AP). Primarily about the NHTSA opening a Preliminary Evaluation of AP performance in relation to a crash on May 7 in Florida that resulted in a man losing his life. More recently there was a crash in Pennsylvania with […]

A Police Shooting at the Crossroads of Minnesota

My Thursday morning had a strange start when I checked my Twitter feed and saw news that an African-American man, Philando Castile, had been shot and killed shortly before I’d gone to bed, and it had happened in a place I knew pretty well. Disturbing live video taken by his girlfriend in the moments immediately after […]

Chart of the Day: Pedestrian Crash Survival Rates by Age and Speed of Car

Simply put, pedestrian safety is basic physics. The fundamental relationship here is really not that complicated, and there have been lots of charts showing the correlation between speed and fatality in crashes. But these charts, via Streetsblog, are the best that I’ve seen yet, and they throw in the added variable of the age of the […]

Map Monday: Saint Paul Streets Ranked for Road Diet Potential

I’ve been following the progress of erstwhile streets.mn commenter and cartographic wunderkind Al Davison via Twitter as he has been putting together a map project showing the road diet potential of Saint Paul’s 4-lane streets. This kind of map is a big deal given the increased conversation around pedestrian safety in Saint Paul. (See also today’s […]

Maryland Avenue Pedestrian Safety Meeting Recap

On May 23rd Erin Durham was killed while trying to cross Maryland Avenue at Greenbrier Street. Just a few days later on June 7th Channy Kek was killed in a crosswalk trying to cross Cayuga in the same St. Paul neighborhood. The Payne-Phalen Transportation Committee hosted a community forum on June 9th to get information […]

Not Seeing Pedestrians is Not an Excuse

My kids always seems to be running into each other, knocking each other down, and otherwise hurting each other. “But I didn’t try to,” they’ll say. “You have to try not to,” I respond. Kids have to learn to control their movements so they don’t hurt the people around them. For example, if you throw […]