ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[danbrotherston]

 
A pedestrian could have been walking along Victoria when they come to the intersection. I agree with the rest of your point, but they don't have to have walked by the station.

Good point. Thank you. I was basing my scenario on the reddit thread that (I assume) spawned this discussion in which the gentleman/woman was walking south.

It's also the case that the operator will definitely see (and is looking for) pedestrians at this point, and has a gong, and a horn.

I really don't feel this is actually terribly dangerous, but I do find it ironic and symbolic of our broken transportation engineering field.

Edit: Upon reading the reddit thread, it's also clear that our right of way rules are entirely ambiguous and broken. I liked the Netherlands, where that type of thing has careful attention paid. Not only are there unambiguous pavement markings 100% of the time, the design of the roadway itself shows who has right of way. There are numerous places in our city where you have a sidewalk continue uninterrupted, yet there is a walk sign that in theory must be obeyed. Whoever built those (and there is a brand new one with the LRT) should lose their engineering degree....

Edit 2: Rules are an interesting question, the rules generally have a purpose, and if that purpose is being achieved, that is what is important, in my opinion. However, very often, there are people in our society who believe they know better than the rules, and often don't. Thus, they contradict the goal, while believing themselves to be in the right. The easy solution is to obey the rules all the time, and usually it's the right outcome (although there are plenty of rules which actually contradict their goal, both directly, and as a result of human factors). Drivers who crawl through a stop sign only bug me when they complain about cyclists doing the same thing. Drivers who intentionally endanger pedestrians for their own convenience are by far the bigger problem, just today a driver nearly ran my partner over while crossing in a marked crosswalk, on a green, there was no reason not to see the ped, the driver simply chose to force her to jump out of the way. This probably happens at least hourly at every busy intersection in the city, and nobody cares one iota. Yet we read continual blame for peds when they are hit. Okay, this took a bit of a tangent....sorry.