San Francisco has a "WalkFirst" program that is using empiricism to analyze pedestrian accident: Source: Walk First What a relief, someone actually doing a credible study of pedestrian accidents. I'm still unhappy with the "Bell the Hybrid" Act that with no fatalities, used dodgy statistics to claim hybrids were a pedestrian risk. Now that nonsense law has been passed and hybrids have those silly noise makers, that Red Herring is gone. Finally, serious people are looking at pedestrian accidents, what is really going on. If passing "Bell the Hybrid" Act means that false claim no longer has standing, that finally we can start seeing serious, empirical data being used, it will have been worth it. Yes, I realize the risk is someone may try to hijack the report and claim all cars must be proceeded by someone walking with flags and a bull-horn. But finally, at last, maybe we have a chance to look beyond 'what sounds nice' and get to the root cause(s). Over the years, I've had to deal with 'tiger teams' trying to address some technical problem. Usual 8-10 people from different disciplines show up and discuss the symptoms and proposed resolutions. One thing I know to be true is there tends to be two camps: 'Because I am an expert, it must be . . .' - these professional idiots don't bother to gather any facts and data. They simply spout some claim and seem to think loud, repetition, and monopolizing the discussion will 'make it so.' My experience has been these braggarts typically delay effective solutions because they are 'a hammer looking for a nail.' But you have to bite your tongue and let them shoot their load. Let's get some data - my camp, we start by gathering direct observations. Typically, we don't speak much in a meeting except to state "thank you, if you don't mind, I'd like to use <some tool> to get some metrics." This group does not leave the first meeting with proposed solutions but rather a plan, often executed solo, to find out what is actually going on. Then armed with the 'facts and data,' we bring effective solutions to the problem. So I welcome "WalkFirst" because they have a clue. Facts and data, get real accident data and include both fatality and injury data (i.e., "Bell the Hybrid" excluded fatality data because there was none supporting their false claims . . . and they knew it!) Bob Wilson
