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Drivers Tend To Kill Pedestrians At Night. Thermal Imaging May Help. (www.forbes.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Drivers Tend To Kill Pedestrians At Night. Thermal Imaging May Help.::Pedestrian automatic emergency braking (AEB), which may become mandatory on U.S. cars in the future, tends to not perform well in the dark.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The law says, regardless of the speed limit, you need to be driving slow enough to react to someone suddenly stepping on the road. If you can’t do that while driving at the speed limit, you’ll just have to drive slower.

Taken literally, that means that since you won't be able to stop if someone steps just in front of your vehicle, you should never drive faster than ~10kmph. Which can be a valid interpretation, but I doubt it's going to be a widely accepted one. For example at least where I live, if someone steps in front a vehicle within breaking distance driving at the speed of the road's legal limit, both pedestrian and driver will share responsibility (the exact ratios being determined by the exact situation).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

If you actually think about it, it's absolutely makes sense. The Autobahn has additional stopping lanes for broken down cars and several meters of grass to each side, which means you can safely drive hundreds of kilometers an hour while still being able to see obstructions early enough to brake in time.

Slower motorways have smaller setbacks, but still enough to keep their speeds.

City streets where you can't see people entering the road in time to brake usually have relatively low speed limits to reduce the braking distance as well as the damage caused by a collision.

But if the visibility or braking distance are affected due to weather or broken streetlamps, it's up to you to slow down accordingly. But even for situations like that traffic planners usually add additional signs, it's common to see roads with signs that say

/❄️\
(60)

to warn people to drive slower when the road is freezing or signs that say

/🦌\
(50)
[400m]

to warn of crossing animals in the next 400m and set a lower speed limit.

The same obviously applies when it's not crossing deer but crossing pedestrians.