SEOUL: At least nine people were killed and four others were injured when a car struck pedestrians near Seoul city hall on Monday (Jul 1), police said. There were six fatalities at the scene, while three others were pronounced dead after being rushed to hospital, firefighter Kim Chun-soo said.
What systemic problems are you referring to? Seoul has some of the best public transport in the world and the vehicle was a sedan. The driver either was drunk/high or had a stroke.
The systemic problems are a stroad which seems designed for high speeds, yet with many dangerous points of interactions with pedestrians and other drivers. There seems to be no infrastructure to protect pedestrians and no design features to limit speeds. As you point out, this wasn’t caused by a tank of a vehicle but a standard sedan.
This is in stark contrast to Vision Zero, a strategy where it’s nearly impossible for vehicle collisions to cause fatalities. It doesn’t matter if a driver is impaired, we have the technology to engineer away these deaths. From the images in article, the road seems to follow almost none of the tenants of Vision Zero.
Looking at the second photo in the article it looks like it bent the bollards over, which I would guess mightve launched the car into the air…
I think the bigger systemic problem would be the 8 lane roads in the area which enabled enough space for the car to get up enough speed to do that sort of damage to a bollard: https://maps.app.goo.gl/aHDmVJMPt3LKvAeL9?g_st=ac
Another systematic problem is the enbiggening of vehicles in the name of occupants saftey(larger pillars for better rollover protection, and extra passenger cabin rigidity, which also harms visibility for the driver due to wider pillars)
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What systemic problems are you referring to? Seoul has some of the best public transport in the world and the vehicle was a sedan. The driver either was drunk/high or had a stroke.
The systemic problems are a stroad which seems designed for high speeds, yet with many dangerous points of interactions with pedestrians and other drivers. There seems to be no infrastructure to protect pedestrians and no design features to limit speeds. As you point out, this wasn’t caused by a tank of a vehicle but a standard sedan.
This is in stark contrast to Vision Zero, a strategy where it’s nearly impossible for vehicle collisions to cause fatalities. It doesn’t matter if a driver is impaired, we have the technology to engineer away these deaths. From the images in article, the road seems to follow almost none of the tenants of Vision Zero.
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You could start with the systemic problems you mentioned. Go ahead
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Looking at the second photo in the article it looks like it bent the bollards over, which I would guess mightve launched the car into the air…
I think the bigger systemic problem would be the 8 lane roads in the area which enabled enough space for the car to get up enough speed to do that sort of damage to a bollard: https://maps.app.goo.gl/aHDmVJMPt3LKvAeL9?g_st=ac
Another systematic problem is the enbiggening of vehicles in the name of occupants saftey(larger pillars for better rollover protection, and extra passenger cabin rigidity, which also harms visibility for the driver due to wider pillars)
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Ah yeah true, they were railings not bollards, but they look like they were solid steel, so I don’t think it’s fair to just call them “decoration”.
As someone working in the field of bollards: If they arent rated to stop a hostile vehicle, they are just decoration.