Except that most vehicular deaths don't occur in cities [1]. Banning cars in metro areas would do basically nothing to change the things you mention. Banning cars where deaths actually happen is a complete non-starter.
New York City sees ~200 traffic deaths every year, the good majority of them pedestrians, and it's traumatic every time it happens. Sure, as a percentage of our population, we have fewer people dying from car crashes than Montana, but so what? Does that mean the 200 deaths per year is acceptable, especially when we can do a lot more to bring down the number of deaths than Montana can because we're dense enough for people to use alternatives?
It would make a real difference in NYC, so why wouldn't we do it. I'm always a little bit on edge when crossing intersections on foot, and especially when biking, because so many drivers are so erratic and dangerous. We don't need to put up with it.
What does "traffic deaths" mean and what are the detailed stats on that? I'd love to see a source because I strongly suspect a large portion of those are not private passenger vehicle collisions.
Also, every transportation method includes accidents. From [1] describing NYC subway safety, "There were nearly 900 incidents last year [2017] in which someone was on the tracks or was hit by a train after getting too close while on the platform." Should we also ban subways because people die as a result of them?
The majority of those are people on foot or on bike who get run over by cars and trucks. The rest are people in cars and trucks who die either in single vehicle crashes or in crashes with other vehicles. This doesn't include subway deaths; that's a separate stat. I'm not playing semantic games here.
As for the subway, that's a separate topic. I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish with your whataboutism. Yes, of course it can and should be made safer. One obvious way to do so would be to add platform gates as many other subway systems worldwide have. But the subway is already a lot safer than on-street vehicle traffic, and no, of course we shouldn't ban it.
Your NYT article does not provide any actual detailed statistics on type of vehicle involved, let alone whether the drivers were always at fault.
And I'm pointing out the issues with transportation safety in general because people such as yourself demonize cars specifically when it's not at all clear that cars are the real problem, let alone the biggest one. Look at Tokyo for example. Cars are all over the city, but pedestrian fatalities are extremely low because affordances are given to pedestrian traffic (ex. elevated crosswalks). If you want to sell people on banning personal vehicles in cities, the burden of proof is on you that 1) cars are the best problem to focus on, 2) the only way to solve the problem is to ban cars, and 3) the available alternatives are actually better than cars
> let alone whether the drivers were always at fault
Why is this relevant? If the city has a 60mph highway running through a dense neighborhood, and a toddler walks into the street, and is killed by a driver (not the driver's fault), that hardly absolves the city of addressing this problem.
I suspect this kind of thinking is what adds to a lot of the friction. Nobody is demonizing drivers. What many of us are upset with is our cities' planning, giving far too much leeway to vehicles and too little to human beings living there.
> Look at Tokyo for example. Cars are all over the city, but pedestrian fatalities are extremely low because affordances are given to pedestrian traffic (ex. elevated crosswalks). If you want to sell people on banning personal vehicles in cities, the burden of proof is on you that 1) cars are the best problem to focus on, 2) the only way to solve the problem is to ban cars, and 3) the available alternatives are actually better than cars
Tokyo has a lower car ownership rate than every city in the U.S. So... although cars may be "all over the city", they're still relatively uncommon.
And what problems do you think we're focused on here? It's not just about safety from car accidents. It's also:
- Is cheaper to not build / maintain roads/streets/bridges/parking lots that would otherwise be unnecessary.
- More pleasant for city residents (fewer honking horns, less sitting in traffic, more space for parks and greenery, more walking -> healthier residents, etc.)
- More environmentally friendly from both a localized air pollution standpoint and a global climate one.
Besides the other commenter pointing out that Tokyo has low car ownership rates, so if that's your ideal model then you too are essentially on the same side as getting rid of most of the cars, there's a telling fact in your suggestion to remove people from the urban streetscape entirely by removing them to elevated walkways. Cities are for people. Why are cars so important that they should take over everything? Why ban people from the streets instead of banning the cars? I don't want to have to take stairways and bridges everywhere, and then have huge numbers of vehicles whizzing by constantly at ground level emitting lots of pollution (yes, even EVs emit brake and tire dust). That sounds like a dystopian nightmare city, not a pleasant city.
And I don't know what to tell you, but I've been to Tokyo, and it's nothing like what you're describing. You sure you went to the right place? The most busy pedestrian crossing in the world, the Shibuya scramble, is in Tokyo, and it's an at-grade intersection. You know why it's safe? Because pedestrians are prioritized over vehicles, and the longest part of the light cycle stops all the car traffic entirely and lets people walk everywhere. And also, the Japanese are simply more communally-minded than Americans. Simply put, their drivers are better-behaved. They generally won't park in marked bike lanes (same as in Amsterdam) because of the social stigma of doing so. Meanwhile, in the US, drivers don't give a shit, and so we need a solution that isn't social stigma -- building more physical protection and removing cars entirely from many spaces, since people can't and won't operate them safely.
And the discussion of "fault" is entirely missing the point. It doesn't matter who's at fault in any given fatal crash. What matters is that we have 40k deaths per year in the United States caused by vehicles, more than almost any other cause, and we need to fix it. The fault if anything is a systems problem; we have way too many cars, not enough alternatives to them, and the built city environment prioritizes cars too much and doesn't do enough to separate vulnerable people who aren't in cars from them entirely.
Does "vehicular deaths" include deaths caused by air pollution? I think I've read that cars cause more deaths through air pollution than through collisions.
Great, how many vehicular deaths is that exactly, and how many are cars instead of other vehicles not banned? For comparison, let's also make sure to check the number of CalTrain and BART deaths each year (at least 20 last year)[1].
It would make a real difference in NYC, so why wouldn't we do it. I'm always a little bit on edge when crossing intersections on foot, and especially when biking, because so many drivers are so erratic and dangerous. We don't need to put up with it.