> Letting cars have priority lets people with wealth and opportunity have priority.
I would actually argue the opposite. As the saying goes, "Location, Location, Location." Many of the wealthiest people / most expensive homes are either walking distance to or in the middle of big hubs. The next most expensive places are walking distance to public transport to take them to big hubs. You can get a much cheaper place if you go to somewhere that's an hour's drive outside the city with no public transport (or the only public transport available is by bus), and that's what many people do to cut down on costs.
You've also mentioned that cars probably shouldn't be able to go even as fast as 40kmph when pedestrians could cross... Should we be making all of our highways 30kmph now if we're saying pedestrians should be able to cross them at-will?
No I think UK law already makes an exception for highways (in the sense you mean), so no I don't think people should be able to cross for example three-lane roads purpose built for cars where people are going 70 mph.
This thread has digressed a bit. It was originally about jaywalking in cities. Should it be a named crime to cross a road in the middle of New York City? Come on - no - pedestrians owned those first and should still do.
The reason jaywalking can be a crime is because a pedestrian crossing a road with cars in it in a non-designated location or at a non-designated time runs the real risk of recklessly endangering others.
I know we're just going round in circles here... but why don't we make it the cars' responsibility to stop for pedestrians, instead of the pedestrians' responsibility to stop for cars?
Why are we starting from the point of the default is that it is space for cars rather than people?
Because cars take longer to stop? Well then how about the cars slow down in cities?
Because cars are more dangerous? Well that sounds like a reason to restrict them, not the pedestrians.
It's not one or the other, it's both. There are different types of routes. Some are:
- built for humans to walk on[1]. Cars are not allowed on here at all.
- built for cars to drive on[2]. See the big double yellow lines in the middle? That's how you know this part of the road was designed with cars in mind. However, because we don't have the money to build footbridges over every road, we put a zebra crossing in the middle of it so that pedestrians can cross between the routes that only they are allowed on.
Cars get the right of way on roads because that's what we built them (or in the case of old roads that existed before cars, repurposed/maintain them) for. Just like we built the sidewalks/pavements/footpaths/footbridges/etc for pedestrians (and sometimes cyclists).
Maybe part of the problem here is that you seem to be using "road" to mean "things people go on", when the rest of us are using the word road to mean "the things people drive on", and generally use other words to describe the things we've built specifically for walking on.
But how did the cars end up with the prime space? Look at how much they've got here. The pedestrians are pushed to the side and squeezed. Why do we accept that?
And why do we talk about pedestrians 'crossing the street'? How about instead we call crosswalks an extension of the sidewalk and talk about cars 'crossing the sidewalk'?
How did we let cars get the upper hand on people?
And why is anyone driving through a freaking city in the first place? Unless you're disabled, or delivering physical goods, what on earth are you doing? Get out!
> And why is anyone driving through a freaking city in the first place?
Because I can, and there is literally nothing you can do about it. Heck, sometimes I just get in my car and drive for no reason at all, just because I have the freedom to do so.
People's reasons for driving through a freaking city include 'couldn't be bothered to walk', 'couldn't be bothered to take public transport', and in the case of the person I'm replying to, literally 'sometimes I just get in my car and drive for no reason at all'.
Mostly because tanks aren't optimized for getting normal people from A to B as quickly and efficiently as possible, so we don't build infra for that. Also because approximately zero people have tanks for the aforementioned reasons.
That being said, tanks aren't actually that big, so usually you can drive a tank on the road. Main problem is you need to stick to low speed roads because they don't go very fast.
I would actually argue the opposite. As the saying goes, "Location, Location, Location." Many of the wealthiest people / most expensive homes are either walking distance to or in the middle of big hubs. The next most expensive places are walking distance to public transport to take them to big hubs. You can get a much cheaper place if you go to somewhere that's an hour's drive outside the city with no public transport (or the only public transport available is by bus), and that's what many people do to cut down on costs.
You've also mentioned that cars probably shouldn't be able to go even as fast as 40kmph when pedestrians could cross... Should we be making all of our highways 30kmph now if we're saying pedestrians should be able to cross them at-will?