A Type of Road Junction that Kills Cyclists - <AUTHOR> http://singletrackworld.com/2018/01/collision-course-why-this-type-of-road-junction-will-keep-killing-cyclists/ <comment><USER4> I feel a lot of commenters are simply focusing on what signs can do or what sort of junction to build, rather than focus on the fact that on high speed primary country roads, bicycles shouldn't be sharing the road with the cars.

In Denmark, a lot of high speed roads (excluding motorways, of course) out in the country have separate dual-way bicycle lanes near it but not attached to it. (Example: [https://i.imgur.com/dS6jqXS.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/dS6jqXS.jpg))

That way, the cyclists can cross the side roads on their own accord, where they are more visible and have their own junction with the side road. Additional, one can set up a traffic light that only turns red for the cars when a cyclist is crossing (i.e. activated by a button).

Furthermore, one might consider signage that warns drivers about cyclists in the junction: [https://i.imgur.com/CX6SJdW.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/CX6SJdW.jpg)

Also, a way to reduce speed of the motorists without putting in stop signs would be to add chicanes just before the junction, so they are _forced_ to slow down.

Plus, as I've mentioned before (see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15977162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15977162)), I also think it is because UK drivers don't really have enough training with how to deal with bicycles and the fact that they are also participants on the road.

<comment> keir-rex There's a subset of drivers in the UK who have a resentment to sharing the road with cyclists. Their primary arguments follow; "car drivers pay road tax..." or "cyclists should be forced to sit a driving/road test..." blah blah.

There are certainly cyclists who do nothing to help the reputation for the rest but car drivers fail to realise how vulnerable cyclists and motorcyclists are.

<comment><USER5> Why shouldn't cyclists need a license to ride on the road? Others road users must have one.

\----

It's a shame I'm getting downvoted, but the current state of affairs is that in cities like London bicycles, cars and trucks will be sharing the road for the near-mid future.

I'd rather not have trucks or cars in the city, and ideally cyclists would have their own road separate from cars and pedestrians, but I think that's a pipe dream.

Until then what else can do we? At least if we require tests for cyclists, like we do for cars, buses and trucks, it might help reduce the number of cyclists doing risky things that perhaps they aren't even aware of?

Sure there are still reckless drivers, but at least they have a license that can be revoked and points that can be fined. How do we ban reckless cyclists from the road?

<comment><USER6> > Why shouldn't cyclists need a license to ride on the road?

Thought experiment: if you didn't have any motorised vehicles on the road, would you still want cyclists to have a licence?

In a general case though, requiring cyclists to have a licence would reduce the number of cyclists, probably significantly. This would correspondingly increase the number of motorists.

This dual effect would have a number of negative impacts. More motorists lead to more congestion, more CO2 emitted and poorer air quality. Poorer air quality leads to health problems, up to and including deaths. CO2 causes climate change, and greater congestion has an economic impact. Fewer people cycling mean fewer people getting exercise, leading to more health problems, up to and including deaths.

I'm confident these problems would overshadow the small improvements in cyclist safety you might gain with a cycling licence requirement. There are better ways to improve cycling safety.

<comment><USER5> > Thought experiment: if you didn't have any motorised vehicles on the road, > would you still want cyclists to have a licence?

Of course! In a world where there were only cyclists there would still need to be a set of rules that all cyclists are required to follow. Those might include how to behave at intersections, how and when you should overtake other cyclists, and so on. To be allowed to cycle, each cyclist should have demonstrated that they understand and follow these rules by taking some kind of test.

> In a general case though, requiring cyclists to have a licence would reduce > the number of cyclists, probably significantly. This would correspondingly > increase the number of motorists.

I don't think so. I expect the government to continue to penalize use of motor vehicles in cities such as London. The bicycle will remain the cheaper mode of transport.

<comment><USER7> > Of course! In a world where there were only cyclists there would still need > to be a set of rules that all cyclists are required to follow.

What about walking? People can run into other people, knock them down stairs, it's a risk...

I think that most observers find the idea that bike use is a public hazard, and must be restricted to be obviously ludicrous.

<comment><USER8> I don't. In the United States, bicyclists must follow largely the same rules of the road that drivers of motor vehicles must follow. They can even be ticketed for violating those rules although usually the tickets don't have much in the way of teeth (except things like DUI while biking).

Here in the Bay Area, it's a rare bicyclist that actually follows the rules. Talking to other bicyclists, I've found a large number of them are simply ignorant to the fact that the rules apply to them as well; or they have adopted some bizarre version of the rules or a sense of entitlement.

I could talk anecdotes for hours, but one particularly egregious example is a bicyclist who showed up to a 4-way stop _after I was already moving through the intersection_ , cut through my path, and gave me the finger, all without even slowing down, much less stopping.

Requiring bicyclists to pass at least a basic test would go a long way towards clearing things up or at least changing the "bicyclists don't have to follow the rules" culture that exists here, making the roads safer for themselves, walkers/runners, and drivers alike.

<comment><USER9> Forcing bicycles to follow rules designed for cars is often silly and sometimes actively dangerous. For example, the bike route from downtown to my house involves making a left turn on a busy street. For a mile and a half, the street is nice and wide, with generous bike lanes in both directions - sensible and safe. But the moment I have to turn left? By _car laws_ , I need to stop in the middle of the road, with traffic coming up behind me (often at 40+mph), and wait until I have a clear path to turn left, which can take a while. _This is deadly_.

So I do the illegal. I turn _right_ on the quiet side street and immediately u-turn to the stop sign, to wait to cross both sides. It's not a dangerous maneuver for me or anyone else, although it would be dangerous for a car to do so.

See the problem?

edit: A car waiting to turn left is in considerably less danger. It's much easier for traffic coming from behind to see, so it's less likely to be hit. And if it is hit, the driver is protected by the car itself. At worst, the car gets totaled. But a bicycle hit at 40mph? The cyclist is likely going to be killed. It's not just silly to follow the car law - it's hazardous.

<comment><USER10> That u-turn sounds legal for everybody.

I think one the purposes of traffic law is to make the behavior of all participants predictable. My only issue with cyclists is I feel I can never predict what they're going to do.

<comment><USER11> "That u-turn sounds legal for everybody."

There's usually laws about how far you can see, how far you have to be from an intersection etc.

"My only issue with cyclists is I feel I can never predict what they're going to do."

This is not entirely the fault of the cyclists, it's the fault of the law givers

The laws are not written in such a way that it appears safe to people using bikes to follow all the rules, so everyone is compelled to come up with their own rules. The build of roads is the same; a small detour for a person in a car can become quite substantial for a person on a bike.

At the moment the laws get written and the roads get design assuming almost everyone is going to use a car, and then they say "well, is it physically possible to follow it on a bike?" \- if they consider bikes at all.

If governments wanted people to ride bikes predictably, they must consider them when crafting the laws. It's probably quite okay for people riding bikes to act differently than people driving cars: just like people walking around behave differently. It will then take some time to spread the word and regain the trust of cyclists. But it's a more helpful solution than saying "they must follow rules and infrastructure designed for cars in the same way as cars, except that they must not delay me: that way they will be predictable and safe".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> temp-dude-87844 There's a lot of math in this article about blind spots and car pillars and whatnot, but a Google Maps Street View appears to show the terrain and brush blocking the view on approach [1][2], making all of this math largely moot. That the drivers in question didn't even so much as slow down for this approach is beyond reckless, aside from the other lawbreaking that followed.

The 'Give Way' sign is idiotic, put a Stop sign on the other, flatter road, or make it a 4-way stop. The drivers causing accidents were blowing through the intersection, and shame on the wording of the law that they were able to weasel out of harsher punishment.

Altering the roadway geometry, either as proposed, or more drastically with a roundabout, is a brute-force solution on this country road when other societal measures don't suffice, but it seems that there's plenty of room to enact other changes before you dig up the road.

[1] [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-1.4511249,3a,75y,26...](https://email@example.com,-1.4511249,3a,75y,269.62h,66.23t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sgp5ZPCZzLXnphyQnR_xhww!2e0!7i13312!8i6656) [2] [https://email@example.com,-1.452595,3a,75y,269...](https://email@example.com,-1.452595,3a,75y,269.9h,68.29t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sZFSqQto6dDxulLvfKmzH6g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

<comment><USER12> « _make it a 4-way stop_ »

You may be unaware, but 4-way stop signs are very uncommon outside of the US. In fact, in the UK they have always been formally prohibited by the Department for Transport in 2002.

As a European driver, I discovered the existence of 4-way stop signs when I moved to the US, and I have always found them dangerous in a counter intuitive way: drivers are so used to 4-way stop intersections, that they may adopt the habit of (1) doing _rolling stops_ and (2) assuming an intersection with a stop sign is almost always a 4-way stop. Both of these 2 habits are dangerous... At least that's my personal experience. I prefer the _consistency_ of my home country where _every_ stop is a 2-way stop, therefore I'm never surprised by non-stopping traffic at an intersection.

<comment><USER13> They do exist in Germany.

<comment><USER14> I won't dispute it because of the general "If you've never seen a black swan, is that proof that none exists? (No)" fallacy, but speaking as a German, I cannot remember having seen one in Germany, ever. So even if one exists it's an exceedingly rare thing.

When I lived in the US I always found it unnecessary that _everybody_ has to stop. In Germany we always have a "main" road and a "secondary" road, and those on the main road don't have to stop. That priority pattern is kept from major roads to tiny roads. Then there's the "right before left" rule when the roads are equal - creating a priority without signs and without "everybody has to stop" rule.

<comment><USER15> In the places where I see four-way stop, there is some constant but not heavy traffic during parts of the day, so if you had a primary / secondary road with only a two-way stop, the secondary road would not flow well. However, the traffic was not high enough to warrant a signal.

This makes sense to me, and I don't see how other systems would be anything but worse. A signal would have a short cycle and only delay people during large parts of the day, a two-way stop would cause problems in one direction, it seems excessive to tear out a bunch of road to put concrete in, etc.

It is of course very natural that the roads in the US are built to completely different standards than Germany, given how incredibly different the layout of US cities are from German ones, broadly speaking.

<comment><USER16> Almost every such intersection in Germany was replaced with roundabouts, afaik. Perfect use case for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good write-up about a phenomenon I'd never expect to matter in a car. In aircraft it is the norm for mid-air collisions to occur this way. For example, [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_Airwest_Flight_706](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_Airwest_Flight_706) but there are many others. Aircraft in the US now have autonomous transponders broadcasting their location to each other. The author overlooks this fact since the "pilot training" to avoid this problem actually does not work very well. The pilot training is to take advantage of services that can alert you to other traffic, such as Air Traffic Control.

<comment><USER18> > _The author overlooks this fact since the "pilot training" to avoid this > problem actually does not work very well._

This is critical in the context of the author claiming that drivers should be expected to recognize the risk in this situation. Pilots are required to undergo significantly more training and expected to be much more methodical about operating their vehicles than drivers. In spite of all that, they're not very good at watching for this kind of scenario either.

Instead, a combination of air traffic control, transponder-based traffic warning systems and the fact that air traffic is vastly more sparse than road traffic make collisions between aircraft rare events. If a particular intersection design causes collisions, the primary fault should be considered to be with the intersection rather than the drivers.

<comment><USER19> IIRC CBDR is not really in the FAA PPL curriculum at all. I only recall a quick mention from my CFI when I went through it. It's much more heavily emphasized to military pilots as missiles are designed to predict an impact point and fly towards that rather than the aircraft (lead pursuit) so pilots are trained to determine if a missile is maintaining guidance towards them by seeing if it appears stationary in space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This type of "Shared Space" junction in a rural area in the Netherlands is an interesting solution: [https://email@example.com,6.2410165,255a,35y,32...](https://email@example.com,6.2410165,255a,35y,328.48h,44.92t/data=!3m1!1e3)

Several bad accidents happened here before this was implemented, none since 2009 when it was. Note that there are distinct paths for bicycles next to the roads, but that's standard.

There are _no signs_ , no rules, but the roads can't be taken in a straight line anymore and it's certainly suggested that the junction is a pedestrian area. Drivers get confused which grabs their attention and makes them _slow down_.

<comment><USER21> > no signs

Wow. I thought there must be at least one sign saying "shared space". But apparently not :o

> no rules

So cops can't ticket you if you cause an accident? I guess the rules are just the basic driving rules. Give way to people coming from your right, and anyone who goes straight has some advantage. But since this is basically an unmarked roundabout (drivers are supposed to keep to the right), that rules probably doesn't apply.

<comment><USER20> I meant no special rules for this kind of setup, its precise status is quite undefined, it's certainly not a roundabout.

In the Netherlands if a motorized vehicle is in an accident with a weaker traffic participant (pedestrian or bicyclists) they are automatically liable anyway, that doesn't change. So you're left with give way to the right and don't hit each other, yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The conclusion of the article reminds me of the idea behind blameless postmortems for system outages. Human mistakes are inevitable, and it's our responsibility to design resilient systems that acknowledge that simple fact.

While software engineering is an immature discipline in many ways, blameless postmortems seem like a counterexample -- they're a well-known best practice in software that don't seem as common in some other fields.

<comment><USER23> Most vehicle collisions are not blameless though. They are caused by inattentive people; I've almost been hit multiple times by people either on their cell phone, or chatting with a passenger in their vehicle.

Other times drivers are purposely driving with a priority on agressivenss over safety.

If we ever get to a state of zero traffic fatalities then maybe blameless post-mortems would make sense. But there's too much blatantly bad behavior occuring.

It would be as if a pilot crashed buzzing the control tower. Clearly a human operator was being reckless and deserves punishment.

<comment><USER24> If you acknowledge that people are inherently inattentive or malicious then you can design a system that protects people even when someone is to blame.

<comment><USER25> Such a system probably wouldn't include people driving automobiles?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I know most comments indicate that even without the maths, the rolling geography would seem to block the view, and that the best solution would be a 4-way stop, a roundabout or the split road suggestion in the article.

But going back to the a-pillar, Volvo did have a concept design with a see through a-pillar. I'm not sure why it never made it to market. I'm guessing it didn't pass their safety requirements?

[http://www.dangar.com/brochure12.htm](http://www.dangar.com/brochure12.htm)

<comment><USER27> Judging from the considerations evinced in this article, pillar strength and thus rollover safety do seem to be limiting factors: [https://www.redbook.com.au/car-news/toyota/toyota-patents- tr...](https://www.redbook.com.au/car-news/toyota/toyota-patents-transparent- pillars-invention-108558?csn_tnet=true)

It also indicates, however, that the industry is putting real development effort into solving the problem, whether through clever optics like Toyota's efforts, or cameras and screens like Jaguar's concept.

<comment><USER28> I would have thought you could build an open truss pillar that was as strong as a solid one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A vehicle doesn't have to be obscured by the pillar for you not to notice it. If you're both moving at a constant speed, anything on a collision course will have the same bearing and appear relatively motionless. If you look left and right, your eyes might saccade right past the target.

<comment><USER30> I think I found this link from another HN post. In any event, "A Fighter Pilot's Guide to Surviving on the Roads" discusses this:

      If you get to a junction and move your head right and left
      to look for oncoming traffic, you need to understand that
      you cannot guarantee that you have seen approaching traffic.
      It is entirely possible for our eyes to 'jump over' an
      oncoming vehicle during one of the saccades. The smaller
      (and specifically, the narrower) the vehicle, the greater
      the chance that it could fall within a saccade. You are not
      being inattentive, you are physically incapable of seeing
      anything during a saccade. Remember the 'Think Bike!'
      adverts, where a driver pulls out into the path of a
      motorcycle? I am convinced that it is the phenomena of
      saccades and fixations that is most likely to lead to this
      sort of accident.

From [http://www.slobc.org/safety/documents/road-survival- guide.pd...](http://www.slobc.org/safety/documents/road-survival-guide.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > The truly contemptible human error is not in a single person carelessly > failing to see. It (...) is in our incessant support of a system which cries > "human error" as an excuse to do nothing, rather than as a stimulus to > understand that error in order to create a solution.

Interestingly, I've seen parallels at work, when doing retrospectives: "this didn't go well mostly due to human error (slacking, forgetting, etc.), so the lesson for next time is to just do that better."

Instead, I'd prefer us to be looking for a way to prevent human error to cause problems in the future. But I guess the reason for us often not doing that is probably because it's too much effort compared to the perceived benefit - <USER2> that's probably true most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER32> Why does this junction not have a roundabout? Would having one there reduce the chances for a crash by forcing vehicles to reduce their speed when approaching the intersection?

<comment><USER26> Another comment explained how the UK hates stop signs, but yes, a roundabout would be a great and very British/European solution that would probably be very effective.

<comment><USER33> I still don't understand this comment. A stop sign a simple 100$ fix to the problem but we hate stop signs so...

<comment><USER32> Why should it be necessary to always have to come to a complete stop before yielding to traffic on the intersecting roadway? A stop sign doesn't prevent one from failing to yield to traffic even after coming to a complete stop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Thinking back to all of the times I've been hit or almost hit on a bicycle, visibility hasn't been a problem.

I think by far, the most common was the 'right hook', where the driver passes on the left, and makes a right turn in to a driveway.

After that were various intentional murder attempts, such as the taxi driver that honked at me, drove around me, and then tried to brake check me.

</comment><comment><USER35> As a driver, I do my best to slow down a bit at any intersection, but particularly ones like this. Unfortunately, that tends to frustrate anyone driving behind me, sometimes to the point that they'll try to overtake me (illegally) before the intersection.

In my mind, better traffic engineering is the best solution, but that seems unlikely, at least in the US. I'd imagine that the article's suggested changes would cost more to build, even for new construction. To compound the issue, I get the feeling that most drivers would prefer it if cyclists weren't allowed to ride on public roads.

<comment><USER36> Slowing down an intersections like you describe really ought to be the minimum standard of attentiveness required on the part of drivers, but instead, as you point out, many drivers are far too impatient for that.

Traffic engineering combined with a different legal standard that places greater liability on the driver for exercising due caution would go a long way towards fixing this, and hopefully doing something about the mass carnage on the world's roadways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I find myself with a somewhat similar problem, if not as dangerous, at four way stops often in San Francisco. When coming to a stop at an intersection where the slopes of the roads involved match certain configurations, most commonly on a road that has descended a slope to meet the intersection, my rear view mirror almost perfectly obscures the space that a car stopped at the road to my right occupies. I glance left, glance right, and see nothing, then suddenly stop short after starting to proceed as the movement reveals a vehicle that was there all along.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is also of high interest to motorcyclists who even have a name for the phenomena: SMIDSY (Sorry, Mate I Didn't See You).

OP was focused on the A pillar and some other effects, while this excellent video goes a little further into some perception psychology about camouflage and how we perceive moving objects across backgrounds. You can ignore the motorcycle stuff but the explanation is enlightening. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqQBubilSXU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqQBubilSXU)

</comment><comment><USER39> Relevant link: [http://www.slobc.org/safety/documents/road-survival- guide.pd...](http://www.slobc.org/safety/documents/road-survival-guide.pdf)

"A Fighter Pilot's Guide to Surviving on the Roads" explains the same thing, and more. Plus, it gives practical tips on how to mitigate these problems.

</comment><comment><USER40> Basic rule of the road: if you haven't made eye contact with someone, you should assume they haven't seen you and don't know you're there.

I mean, they could improve the intersection by making it a full stop, but educating bicyclists not to ride out in front of somebody who will hit you if they don't slow down seems like a good step too.

<comment> proto-n The article describes that the cyclists don't see the car either because it is coming up on them _from behind_ (at a 94 degree angle, with higher speed).

You can't know you haven't made eye contact if you don't know they are there.

<comment><USER40> I'm not sure if I would describe a 94 degree angle as "behind them", but I would also observe it's a good idea to exercise caution in navigating a blind intersection whether you're on a bike or in a car.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Could it also have something to do with the wild horses hanging out at the intersection:

[https://goo.gl/qTSZWJ](https://goo.gl/qTSZWJ)

Perhaps they are not 'wild', I'm just not used to seeing horses near a roadway, without a fence between us. Is this a common thing in England?

<comment><USER42> It's not common throughout the country, but the roads in question are within the New Forest where there are a large number of ponies and other animals roaming free ..

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Forest#Ponies,_cattle,_pig...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Forest#Ponies,_cattle,_pigs)

<comment><USER43> It's also worth noting that while wild, New Forest animals are _very_ comfortable around people and cars, to the degree that they're often wandering around in village centres, standing in the middle of the road etc.

If you go camping there, you should expect ponies to wander in to your campsite, especially if you leave food out. I've had one poking its head in to our tent before.

They basically have total right of way, and they know it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> >We must note that there are two parts to the definition of dangerous driving. Firstly the standard of driving must be "far below what would be expected of a competent and careful driver", and secondly it must be "obvious to a competent and careful driver that driving in that way would be dangerous".

The longer I use the road in any function (cycling, driving, walking, etc), the more I am convinced that the vast majority of people are not competent drivers. So if one is interpreting the guidelines as whether an average person could have made the mistake, then they will surely come to an incorrect conclusion, as the average person is absolutely terrible at driving.

I'm reasonable good at controlling my car and I'm fairly aware of what is going on around me. I never drive distracted or drunk, and I follow all of the rules of the road. However, I don't consider myself a particularly good driver. I am lucky thus far that none of the mistakes I've made have resulted in harm to anyone. My skill in handling the car and my general attentiveness have prevented accidents (or perhaps even deaths), but there have been plenty of times where I've had near misses due to human error.

I've often wondered whether other people are fundamentally more competent drivers; whether they had a trait that I lacked. The more rides I take with other people, the more I am convinced that most people are fundamentally terrible drivers. Human nature and human perception are not suited for driving. It is nearly impossible to be a competent driver, regardless of how much care you take. Some of the worst drivers I know are the most careful. They diligently check every mirror and every blind spot before making a move, yet do so at such a slow pace that all the information they gathered when they checked each of the prior locations is irrelevant. Their caution can only go so far, as they eventually need to move to reach their destination, and at a certain point their hesitance is a danger to others, as massive differentials in speed one of the biggest hazards in driving.

Humans are just astoundingly incompetent drivers on all levels. Most people I know can't even adjust their mirrors so they can be used without moving their head substantially. How can a person be a competent driver if they have deprived themselves of easy access to what is happening next to their vehicle or behind it.

According to the World Health Organization, traffic deaths are the 10th leading cause of death in the world. There is no more likely 'accidental' cause of death than a car accident; each of the nine causes of death more common than car accidents are diseases. In 2013, 1.4 million people died from road traffic accidents, and 54 million people were injured.

I love driving. I love the open road, and the freedom that comes with it, but the truth of the matter is that people are terrible at driving. The sooner we have an alternative to people driving cars, the better.

<comment><USER45> This is true! It's one of the big reasons I cannot wait for self driving cars. I love driving on empty country roads but feel it's impossible to 100% safely drive on busier roads, especially if you also need to read road signs because you don't know where you are going (what's up with US traffic sighs being covered in text btw.? That's obviously a terrible idea!).

I came to this conclusion a few weeks after I had gotten my drivers license. I was meeting onto a Autobahn exit. I had a big truck in front. I check the mirror. All fine. Look over my shoulder to check blind spot and my girlfriend who was the passenger starts screaming because the truck in front had jammed on its breaks. I immediate slowed down and all was well. However it was a reasonably close call. Even now, many years later I'm unsure what I should have done differently. I need to look over the shoulder, I couldn't have kept meaningful, more space between me and the truck because I needed to adjust speed to the lane I wanted to merge into. I'm convinced it's a situation that can't be reliably handled 100% of the time given human limitations. Yet most people I talk to think that you just need to get gud.

<comment><USER23> The truck almost certainly had a good reason for stopping. The question then becomes why you couldn't you see what the truck driver had seen (debris in the road, a broken down car, etc). Obviously you can't always see around a large truck, but often times danger can be spotted by looking far ahead. For example coming around a blind cliff I was able to deduce there was a person who would be standing in the middle of the road because I saw a photographer on the opposite side. I started slowing and my instructor was like "what are you doing?" which then turned in to "how did you know a person would be in the road?"

<comment><USER45> That's just a heuristic though. Given humans can't look into multiple directions at once therr is always the chance that something unforseen well happen in the direction you just stopped looking at. If the truck hadn't stopped, maybe the car behind me in the gap I wanted to me into could have accelerated to closer the gap. Unlikely, especially on the Autobahn, but could easily happen in LA.

<comment><USER23> You're right we can't see or predict everything. I just heard a story where a pilot had to drop a snake out of their small private aircraft while flying over a highway. There was a high likelihood that a driver below had no way of knowing a snake might fall out the sky and perhaps shatter their windshield. Most things that happen on the road though aren't that random.

I once had a bicyclist coming down a curvy mountain road. There was something about their riding that seemed uncomfortable, so I started slowing down. The biker then wiped out and crossed over the yellow line, stopping a few feet from my truck. If I hadn't been proactively scanning and thinking about everything that could go wrong they probably wouldn't have been able to get up, and say "thanks for not running me over."

I don't write this to judge you, or brag about myself. I've made plenty of mistakes myself. This is more a general lesson for people: synthesize all inputs received while driving and take proactive steps to mitigate potential risks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Driver should be moving his/her head slightly to eliminate this phenomena, to change angles of view. Very useful when approaching difficult situation in a moving car. One has to anticipate these effects and try to disturb linearity in movement by changing your car speed non-linearly to alter viewing angles in some situations.

These approaches together it will help driver to much better asses other objects speed and direction of movement and generally it improve one situation awareness.

This is something you can do about it if you dont want to wait for all crossroads to be rebuilt ;-)

</comment><comment><USER47> I have a Honda Fit and I find the exact same problem when I'm driving in areas with a lot of pedestrians, especially San Francisco. The pillar is especially wide in the Fit and I've almost hit several pedestrians because their walking speed exactly coincides with the speed of my car and they get blocked by the exact same pillar so I never see them.

It has happened about 6 times so now whenever I drive in areas with pedestrians I move my head right in the middle of the car so that my view is no longer obstructed.

</comment><comment><USER48> For reference: [https://email@example.com,-1.4532871,3a,90y,...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-1.4532871,3a,90y,161.23h,75.4t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1swMw3UmSj5XheUtniJfifAg!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DwMw3UmSj5XheUtniJfifAg%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D68.36434%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656)

</comment><comment><USER49> I got hit by a car, as a cyclist, in exactly this kind of intersection. Got a Bankart repair on my left shoulder as a reward, but also got the motivation to go to medical school. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Incidentally, as a sailor, I totally get the constant bearing decreasing range problem. That phrase still sends shivers down my spine. I can't tell you how many times I've thought about what's on the other side the front pillars.

</comment><comment><USER50> It's interesting that they were so focused on CBDR, but then totally dropped the ball when it was time to extend the analogy to overtaking (where you assume to be overtaking if you are >22.5° abaft the other vessel's beam, which is not the case at a 94° angle.)

</comment><comment><USER51> We have a few intersections like this near me, and as a cyclist I can assure you that you really don't see anything. It's crazy. But luckily they are all traffic controlled with full on signals so there's no ambiguity about what one should be doing.

</comment><comment><USER52> I understand the geometry in this situation and its impact, but if you're on a bicycle and you don't come to a complete stop at an intersection with potentially 40mph cross-traffic, you're going to have a bad time no matter what the angle is.

</comment><comment><USER53> A few speed bumps at the intersection would slow drivers. Speed bumps are cheap and effective. You can lay several in series to encourage drivers to slow. It would be a shame not to use them in such an instance, where lives might be saved.

<comment><USER54> Speed bumps have proven to be undesirable tools in many situations. For instance, it is often the case that motorists will increase their speed after a speed bump to make up for the time lost because of the speed bump.

<comment><USER55> In this situation it's fairly irrelevant, as it would serve to slow down drivers approaching and within the intersection - a few mph faster afterwards is far less likely to come with a butcher's bill than continued high-speed crossings of the intersection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Does cyclists count as pedestrians, and if so is entitled to ride on the opposite direction as follow ed by vehicular traffic.That is if cars drive on the left, then cyclists ride on the right, as do pedestrians?

</comment><comment><USER57> >With this design, no longer would it be reasonably possible for any driver to simply blow through the junction. Drivers would have to come almost to a stop.

just put a good bump there, or a couple.

</comment><comment><USER58> Why can't they just add stop signs to the east-west route? That way the north- south can keep right-of-way and the threat of collision is eliminated

</comment><comment><USER59> Build cars with the driver seat on the left then. All this discussion over an obvious flaw which removed would solve the problem.

</comment><comment><USER60> Unrelated, a few days ago I was thinking about this intersection: [https://email@example.com,-96.3308952,243m/dat...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-96.3308952,243m/data=!3m1!1e3)

Traffic on Hwy 164 does not stop, Hwy 39 does stop. However Hwy 39 has yield lanes that can be used to enter 164 via a right turn, and only slowing down, and not coming to a complete stop.

A few years ago there was a lot of gas drilling in the area, and the trucks working the drilling sites would use the yield lanes - to turn left!

This made me pretty mad, until I thought about it for a while. In a big truck you would not be able to see traffic from both directions, so they used the yield lane to 'square up' to traffic.

\---

When you design your User Experience, consider the human. Humans slip up[0], momentarily forgetting to do the right thing.

If your design becomes dangerous due to a slip, it is the worst kind of design. You see this kind of design on older industrial equipment - <USER3> instance presses without safeguards. Managers back then would make the same comment you regularly see on articles like this: 'All you have to do is pay attention, and it's safe.'

This is, frankly, stupid. If all it takes for a system to become unsafe is a momentary lapse in judgement, then the system is unsafe.

Manufacturers learned this via lawsuits (both for in-plant and user injuries) and now there are strict safety standards.

In the case of this unsafe intersection, responsibility is diffuse - it is split between driver, cyclist, local government, and the original contractor.

In a controlled environment like a hospital or manufacturing plant, you can measure near-misses as proxies for dangerous events. At a rural intersection, who would measure near-misses? An individual cyclist may have a near-miss and comment on it to her friends; would any drivers ever hear about it? Would the government ever hear about it? Would anyone care?

0\. [https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the- gloss...](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-glossary-of- human-computer-interaction/human-error-slips-and-mistakes)

\---

To improve your perception in situations like this, you can add two tools -

1\. Always take your foot off the gas and cover the brake when going through intersections. This naturally slows you down a bit, and if there is an issue you are in position to stop.

2\. Owl bob your head from time to time. It sounds stupid, but it moves you out of your blind spots, and also clears saccadic masking - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccadic_masking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccadic_masking)

<comment><USER61> > In the case of this unsafe intersection, responsibility is diffuse - it is > split between driver, cyclist, local government, and the original > contractor.

Arguably, the cyclist had right of way and did everything expected of them in the situation. Also, the original contractor was following the specifications given to them by local government. Therefore responsibility can really only be placed with two parties; primarily with local government as they should be designing fault-tolerant intersections, and secondarily with the driver approaching from the east.

<comment><USER60> I guess "responsibility" implies legal responsibility - I meant something more generic, like capacity or function.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Road Junctions don't kill people, people kill people.

</comment><comment><USER63> First rule of cycling: assume drivers don't see you.

<comment><USER64> In the article, the author explains that from the cyclists orientation, the car approaches from 94 degrees.

<comment><USER63> Doesn't matter. If you're cycling and you see a moving car, assume the driver doesn't see you. Never cross the path of a moving car even if you have the right of way or a green light etc. When you approach a junction, your head needs to be on a swivel constantly looking left and right and you need to be prepared to stop even if you have the right of way. This pretty much goes for motorcyclists as well.

I'm not blaming the cyclists here, but the reality is that when you are cycling it doesn't matter whose fault it is if a car hits you. You're still dead.

<comment><USER65> If you read the article, then you'd know that the cyclist probably did not see the car at all.

<comment><USER66> The cyclist may not see the car if they stare blindly into the distance in front of them. GP is making the point that the cyclist should be aware of their surroundings, and taking precautions accordingly. This includes looking for approaching traffic down the length of a side road on approach to an intersection.

While I don't discount that there may be freak scenarios, as a motorcyclist I agree. If I don't see a car, a pedestrian, a bird, a kangaroo, a log on the road, I go to hospital. It's as much my responsibility to ensure my own safety as anyone else's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Wow, after all these years I finally learned the name of this phenomenon, constant bearing decreasing range.

I recall a scene in the movie Sin City where two cars crash and the camera was moving in CBDR to the perpendicular car as it zoomed into the impact site. I thought it was a cool shot.

Also I've almost hit pedestrians several times when they were obscured by my A pillar. Sometimes I wonder if I would have actually hit them if anyone would have believed I didn't see them, now I know the proper term to describe the cause of such an accident.

<comment><USER66>
        > Sometimes I wonder if I would have actually hit them if anyone would have believed I didn't see them

As a daily motorcyclist that also drives a car, I'm uncomfortably aware of how much of your vision the A-pillar obscures. Not to mention the passenger side one, the B-pillars, and seating.

That said, it is as much my responsibility (or any road user, or pedestrian) not to put myself into a dangerous position as much as it is for you to do your best to keep an eye out.

<comment><USER68> It seems to be worse in newer cars. Most cars I've driven have been older models, pre-2000, every time I have to drive a new car, I'm always surprised at how bad the visibility is, they all have tiny rear windows and massive A pillars.

I used to own an old Datsun truck from the 1980s and the A-pillar blindspot was tiny because it had small, vertical A-pillars. A-pillars are a lot thicker and a lot more angled in newer cars.

This study [1] (from 2001) here goes into some details about A-pillar blindspots and how newer cars have worse visibility. I'm sure in the 17 years since the study was performed, cars have only gotten worse.

[1] [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.884...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.884.49&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

<comment><USER69> It sounds like what happens in every other instance of engineering: trade- offs. Emphasise performance in one metric -- preventing roof collapse and preserving the integrity of the passenger compartment in this case -- and it can come at the cost of other metrics (here, visibility). I don't think vehicle engineers are deliberately making cars hard to see out of, but I do think it's possible that those setting the policy which drives A-pillar thickness don't realize such is making cars less safe from a visibility perspective.

<comment><USER68> The cynic in me says that it's a liability thing.

Manufacturers are more likely to be liable if you roll your car and the roof caves in, killing you.

Manufacturers are less likely to be found liable if you couldn't see through your A-pillar and hit a cyclist, as apparently proven by the article.

It's very hard to point the finger at the driver for their roof caving in, there's nothing the driver can do to stop that from happening. But there's plenty a driver could do to avoid trouble from blindspots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Really disappointed at the solution.

<comment><USER71> Care to explain your reason(s) for disappointment, and/or posit a sensible alternative for consideration?

<comment><USER72> Forcing drivers to make left turns just to stay on the same road is a recipe for more car accidents. The proble could be resolved simply by putting up a stop light.

<comment><USER67> If the goal is to maintain speed through the intersection they could have built a bridge to overlap the other road.

<comment><USER73> This is in the New Forest National Park. You can't just go constructing massive structures because drivers are too lazy to read signs.

<comment><USER67> As the body count begins to rise we'll see how much that really matters.

<comment><USER73> In terms of targeting infrastructure to reduce cycle casualties in Britain, overbridges at rural crossroads are about no. 73689532686 in the list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> I posted this 2 days ago, but for some reason it didn't make it to the front page like yours.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16094431](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16094431)

<comment><USER75> Unless there's a significant discussion in a previous submission, this sort of comment isn't particularly useful.

HN's collective choice in what to promote / demote is exceptionally fickle and happenstance.

Rather like success in the SV start-up world.

In both cases, backing a winner is generally more rewarding than doubling down on an attempt which, through no fault of its own, has failed.

HN also periodically give a second chance to submissions deemed high quality. So you've got that option as well.

<comment><USER76> submissions had different titles</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Examples where you make something people want, but are unable to profit? - <AUTHOR>

I'm asking this to test the YC mantra "make something people want." <comment><USER2> Any non-excludable goods, which includes public goods (which are also non- rivalrous) are very difficult to profit from. These include lighthouses, laws, national defense, clean air and water, a sustainable population of fish and game, and so forth.

I say "very difficult" because search engines, for example, are non-rivalrous and non-excludable in practice. They are "public goods". The trick is, access to the attentions of and data generated by search engine users _is_ excludable, and this is the good that Google actually sells. But any sort of non-excludable good from which your consumers cannot generate an excludable good you can sell for others would be unprofitable.

Programming languages (mentioned by another post) are another good example of a public good: they are non-rivalrous, and while they may be excludable as long as you sell the only compiler/interpreter/runtime and sue everyone else who writes a different compiler/interpreter/runtime, in practice no one will pay for a programming language anymore so you have to make it non-excludable for it to even exist in the outside world. Likewise, Google is probably excludable in the sense that they can set up a paywall before you use it, but in practice Google has chosen to make the search engine non-excludable and it's hard to see how a paywalled search engine would work (though I won't rule it out as a possibility).

<comment><USER3> Paywalled search can definitely work, given that you are searching an exclusive data set. Look to Lexis Nexis.

<comment><USER4> But when a non-paywalled alternative comes about (see Google Law), it threatens to eat its lunch.

I think people view for-pay information brokerage as unfair, unless it comes with service. If it's something they know costs the other party 0 marginal cost to provide, people start resenting them, which causes the paywalled service to hurt doubly hard when a free alternative comes about - even if they follow to free, people might stay away out of spite.

<comment><USER5> _I think people view for-pay information brokerage as unfair, unless it comes with service. If it's something they know costs the other party 0 marginal cost to provide, people start resenting them_

I think you are projecting your own personal views, or possibly views which are non-negligible in your social circle of tech-rich cash-poor twenty something males, onto the population at large. Empirically, people will pay for LOTS of things that have zero marginal cost. A short list: airplane tickets, gym memberships, list of bankruptcy sales in Chicago (my dad is a real estate agent and has had stacks of this weekly publication for as long as I can remember -- that info is _expensive_ and worth every penny), and WoW.

<comment><USER4> I may be, but I don't think most people think of those things you list as having 0 marginal cost, as they're tangible goods or services (although the listings one is a bit sketchy, I think a lot of people view being charged a lot for access to that sort of info as highway robbery, despite its very real value). The cost of information has been anchored at $0 repeatedly over the past decade, and we now use that reference point when deciding the monetary value of new info.

I think I was probably off the mark in my post. It's likely not the marginal cost they're considering, it's likely just that $0 is the new reference cost for info in many people's minds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Make something people want" is primarily valuable as a negative test:

You probably _won't_ profit if you make something people _don't_ want.

But making something people _want_ doesn't correlate nearly as well with whether or not your product is commercially viable.

<comment><USER7> And there are oh so many ways to totally botch the execution. You can make the best thing in the world and still fail because you couldn't market it and no one ever knew that it existed.

<comment><USER8> And even if you do market well, the timing may be completely off or you may have bad luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Medicine for the 3rd world. It's a big problem.

<comment><USER10> Can you point to someone who developed a useful medicine for 3rd-world diseases and failed to make money?

Few diseases are confined to only extremely poor areas. Medicines against malaria, for example, are a robust business. If you developed a good vaccine, you could make a lot of money selling it in Brazil, China, India, and other developing countries. The reason there is no vaccine isn't because there's no money to be made, but people have actually tried pretty hard and been unable to develop vaccines that aren't as risky as the disease itself.

<comment><USER11> The point is that most customers in the Third World are not able to afford the price point that makes such medicines profitable.

The workaround since 2000-01 or so has been differential pricing or licensing for the Third World. But this took decades to get agreements for that to happen.

Here's a good page about the situation with HIV drugs. <http://www.avert.org/generic.htm>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Programming languages and tools.

There are some counter-examples (e.g. Franz, LispWorks), but I think it's best to just consider this sort of work a labor of love.

<comment><USER13> Visual Studio is quite expensive and yet it is selling very well to enterprise markets.

The trick is to pick the right customers.

<comment><USER14> I think you meant "The trick is to own the platform and then sell the tools you must use to develop on it at an absurdly high price."

<comment><USER15> Which platform is that? Windows? .NET? It's perfectly possible to target both without using Visual Studio. Microsoft has somehow[0] convinced people that using VS makes their lives easier. Lots of people pay for IntelliJ too. I think the trick here is to get people hooked on languages that have a lot of boilerplate and therefore require a powerful IDE to be usable, then sell people the IDE.

[0]Based on personal conversations with individual VS users, it actually appears that VS is what many developers want or think they want, not just something forced on them by management.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I give out free $100 dollar bills. People want it, I don't profit.

<comment><USER17> "Make", not give.

<comment><USER18> A quibble really. I could _make_ diamond rings that are worth $1000 and sell them for a $10. _Lots_ of people would want them.

There are a million easy ways to make $0.10 by spending $1.00

<comment><USER19> Or you could sell them for $1100 and make a profit. The original question wasn't about ways to throw away money.

<comment><USER16> Then people wouldn't want them anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> We really need to remember that "make something people want" is a specific piece of advice relative to building a product. We get all giddy about this advice because as programmers, that's what we love to do; _build things_. But a business depends on many many more things than just your product. I'd argue that a company's product is, at max, 30% of what matters to the profit- generating system as a whole.

So to answer your question: it is irrelevant. And I encourage you to separate "product" from "profit". Because if you want to make profits, you need to master business and marketing. Making products is for those programming guys. The great thing about HN, is that we think we can do both ... and we can! - Just remember that they are different hats for a reason.

=)

</comment><comment><USER18> What I've found is that there's almost always _some_ people that want any particular thing. The two _really big_ questions are 1) How many of them are there? 2) Can you make money off them?

#1 is much tougher. If you're in a niche inside a niche inside a niche and you end up with 10 paying customers sending you $20/mo it's technically "working", but too small to be worth it.

#2 is easier. The situation Twitter is in. They have tons of users and now it's purely a matter of ingenuity to come up with a way to profit in a big way.

</comment><comment><USER21> Twitter

<comment><USER22> I very strongly doubt that they will be unable to profit. They've just managed to rack up so much funding without doing so that they haven't made it a short time priority yet. If they had no master plan for huge profitability only idiot VCs would continue investing.

<comment><USER23> If anyone has an idea for how they will make money, they are keeping them to themselves. I haven't heard of a single plausible idea.

<comment><USER24> Twitter will make money using premium accounts, selling access to the stream, selling their own premium clients, and selling targeted advertising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It depends on your definition of profit. You can make something people want and end up with a business that makes $10K profit, but you won't be quitting your job to run that business.

<comment><USER26> If that's $10K profit after paying your employees and yourself reasonable salaries, then you're off to a sustainable start, and should stick it out. You're probably still growing, and if your marginal costs are not too high, any further growth should be almost pure profit.

If it's $10K without paying yourself, then you've got some work to do, but if you can live lean off your savings, you may still be able to improve the situation to the point where the business is sustainable or better.

If it's $10K before you pay your employees, find a new business, this one's not going to happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Fully on demand cable television. So many people tell me "I'd love it if I could just pay per channel and forget about the other channels."

That got me thinking it may be something to exploit. Not so, with infrastructure costs swallowing up so much of the potential profits. People will just have to deal with all the channels they end up paying for. So, it's either the internet or bust if you don't want to play the cable game.

</comment><comment><USER28> <http://mbusreloaded.com/umbus> \-- several hundred people use it every day, all of them cheap/lazy college students who aren't going to pay for the privilege. The value of advertising on the system seems to be barely greater than costs (a few tens of dollars per month) and the current advertiser is behind on payments.

</comment><comment><USER29> Jury is still out, but free/freemium music services look hard. (People don't seem to want subscription services.) lala sold allegedly because they weren't getting to profitability fast enough, imeem struggled, and Pandora needed an act of the United States Congress to deal with sharp increases in streaming royalties.

</comment><comment><USER30> A huge thing to note, even with a large number of unprofitable cases, is not that the YC mantra is flawed, but more likely systems may not yet be in place to facilitate profitability. For example, if there were an awesome micropayment solution I'll bet a lot of currently unprofitable sites could find profitability.

<comment><USER4> Agreed - I think the minimum viable visa charge (due to high minimum fee) and the increased abandonment rate due to the hassle of using your CC is holding a lot of things back.

I think this is a very necessary startup, but one that's going to be very difficult to pull off well, and will require serious cash.

<comment><USER29> There are a lot of broken bodies on the micropayment road. Millicent & Peppercoin come to mind to start. Maybe the world has changed since then, but if you were doing a company on micropayments and came to me, I'd want a clear answer as to what you would do that everyone else did not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Making something people want : easy.

Making something people want enough to pay what it costs to create it : hard.

</comment><comment><USER32> 4chan is probably the best example of this. Loads of people want an image board but it isn't profitable.

<comment><USER22> It's skirting profitability though. From <http://www.4chan.org/news/?all#95>

"We've long since shed the notion of recouping costs through donations, and instead turned to ad revenue for covering operating expenditures. Our entry into the wild and not-so-wonderful world of advertising has been mixed. We've added more ad positions to the site over the years to offset rising overhead and been bounced around between so many ad networks and account managers that I'd be hard pressed to list them all. But we've succeeded—4chan is still here, after all."

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Amazon is losing $2 on each e-book. Sometimes forward thinking innovations take a while to get profitable. Sometimes the market is too small. There may be 5 people who want it, but it costs more than they can afford.

<comment><USER34> Discussed in: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=979905>

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The CrunchPad? Ignoring the legal problems, it sounded like people would buy it at cost but with any markup it would be too expensive.

</comment><comment><USER36> It's a tautology (how do you know they want it? They're willing to buy it!), but a useful one.

</comment><comment><USER37> When the cost of production exceeds the market value you are unable to profit.

</comment><comment><USER38> I think a better motto is "Make something people want to pay for."

<comment><USER39> The problem with that is that people will always want to pay less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Free software. (but only if you confuse the two meanings of free)

</comment><comment><USER41> General Motors

Investment Banks

Railways

Subprime lenders

<comment><USER10> All these things have historically made huge amounts of money. While there are some very visible recent failures, the average return on all these industries over their lifetimes has been very good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Charles Goodyear

</comment><comment><USER43> Music

<comment><USER44> Some companies and people profit from it and have figured out ways to do it, so... disagreed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Wikipedia needs 7mm in donations but only has raised like 2mm so far.

Hiphopgoblin had a bunch of people who proclaimed their love for the site, but I doubt any one of them would have paid cash for it. Maybe I could have cooked up some sort of new media advertising plan had I realized enough traffic, but I decided to abandon..

People's love is a revealed preference when they vote with their wallets.</comment>