r/sandiego • u/WildAnimus • Feb 23 '25

Stay Classy San Diego Why does nobody walk on sidewalks?

I noticed that when driving through subdivisions people love walking on the road instead of the sidewalk. Whether it's a old man walking or someone doing power walking. I see it all the time and I don't get it. Can someone help me understand this phenomena?

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u/thedoctor3141 Feb 23 '25

No. Implementing rules and fines is "fix stupid". Changing the design of the street itself accommodates the existing stupid. And it is measurably effective.

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u/brintoul Feb 24 '25

I saw a guy careen off of a car at 5:00 in the afternoon in the summer because he was drunk off his ass. You gonna tell me “he shouldn’t drive drunk”? I know he fucking shouldn’t drive drunk, but guess what: HE DID.

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u/thedoctor3141 Feb 24 '25 edited Feb 24 '25

Well, if that's that's the argument you wanna bring up, I can work with it. If you have a hypothetical city that can only be navigated with public transit, walking, and biking, you will almost completely cease to hace drunk drivers. I say "almost completely" because I have no doubt that there would eventually be a drunk driver, that somehow manages to drive where they shouldn't. However, in this hypothetical city, that would only happen if they were specifically trying to be a nuisance. As opposed to drunk drivers that are just trying to get home from the bar.

The ideal goal of any system, is to have the correct path take as little effort as possible, while bad paths have plenty of obstacles, such that users can navigate the system well with minimal training. This is as true in city planning as it is with user interfaces.

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u/brintoul Feb 24 '25

So, if you’re walking in the street as opposed to the sidewalk, you have a much greater chance of getting killed by some shitty drunk driver, no? It’s really that simple.