Maybe, instead of trying to scare (scar?) children you should just teach them to make eye contact with the driver so you are sure they have seen you before you put yourself in the path of their car?
How much of our "safety" culture around kids is because people don't have basic life skills and aren't passing them on to kids?
So many scenarios where this doesn't save you. SUV driver makes eye contact, stops, kid starts crossing the street, impatient driver behind them (who can't see past their big rear) gets tired of waiting and floors it around them into the open lane, not realizing that the driver in front was stopped for a valid reason...
You can only mitigate risk so much. At some point life is for living and there is a risk involved in it. Sequestering oneself or one's kids to home seems outright inhumane to me.
Making eye contact and waiting for a vehicle to actually respond to the conditions at hand will eliminate the vast majority of "assumed" mistakes. Trying to be 100% aware of traffic and understanding that folks can be even bigger aggressive idiots is also part of it, but not perfect.
You just have to accept that in some rare instances the swiss cheese holes will line up regardless of what you do. And be at peace with it.
I suppose since this seems to logical and "not a big deal" to me means that I am extreme outlier on the subject.
Where I live, overtaking at a crosswalk is illegal because of that risk.
If every driver abided by traffic laws at all times we would have a lot fewer accidents.
If you’re breaking the law it’s harder to call it an accident.
I would live for this to be the answer - it’s definitely helpful, but I know a number of people who have made eye contact with a driver who has then proceeded to drive directly into them. I’ve had near misses like this too. It’s hard to imagine until you’ve experienced it, but incredibly scary to see someone who is looking directly at you and still somehow not reacting.
Both scar(r)ing them AND telling them to make eye contact seems better to me. People don't appreciate low-likelihood or abstract risks. I bet children appreciate them even less than grown-ups. They've never witnessed someone being hit by a car but they've witnessed thousands of people NOT being hit by a car. How do you think they would really internalize the rule to make eye contact without any evidence? Hell, even I'm more likely to make eye contact with the driver after yesterday's spike in my heart rate, and I'm not 5 years old
In my experience, the practice of eye contact is natural and generally pretty effective. "I see you, you see me. Acknowledged."
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Drivers will still hit people who make eye contact. But besides that, this doesn’t help much if your kid is a runner.
Or drivers could look where they're going.
It never ceases to amaze me how many drivers appear to not register blindingly obvious objects in their path.
Ranging from the understandable, but unacceptable (Say, CBDR/Constant bearing, decreasing range, which makes a lot of drivers misidentify an object as stationary even as it is moving towards them on a collision course) to the flat out unbelievable - I've been almost run over in a lit pedestrian crossing. While wearing hi-vis clothing. Pushing a baby stroller, also hi-vis. AFTER having made eye contact with the driver and even gotten a nod from her. After the car slowed down. Sigh.
In the latter case, it turned out she had assumed that us making eye contact meant that I had seen the car and would wait until it had safely passed the crossing. At least that was what she claimed when I asked why, oh why she'd approached the crossing, slowed down, made eye contact with the pedestrian - and yet proceeded to drive through...
Oh, and don't even get me started on the proliferation of touch screens forcing the driver to take his or her attention off the road to interact with the car. This was a solved problem, using physical buttons you soon learned the exact location of so you could reach for them while still keeping your attention on what was in front of you.
Yes, but as a pedestrian, do you want to bet your life on that?
And slow down too.
or maybe drivers should stop being reckless and dangerous
Suggestions should remain in the realm of the possible.