If we go back to lower speeds then maybe it could be manageable in a same way.
But as it is actually used now for 3000 pound vehicles to zoom about in, it makes no sense for pedestrians to be intersecting and sharing the space at all. Just due to the physics of collisions between a person and a vehicle. I don't think slow vehicles is a good solution because we do need to get places.
I think an actual good (but very expensive) solution is for new cities to be designed differently in several ways. One of which is for roads to be be autonomous vehicles and entirely separate from pedestrian paths. To make that reasonably practical you need some other core assumptions to be changed. And also a totally new development probably.
Cars can go “quickly” between cities and towns but around pedestrians they really do need to slow down.
I wouldn’t want to live anywhere where the car is king and everyone else must cede to its ultimate priority.
People need to give themselves more time to get places, rather than thinking they are far more important than the greatly decreased safety of others.
The American mindset is not. I swear that a huge portion of people in the US have been propagandized to believe that the car is king and that any idea to the contrary is heresy punishable by death under the front bumper of a Ford F-250 jacked up 3 feet higher.
https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/sustainable-sa...
https://swov.nl/system/files/publication-downloads/dv3_en_ko... (pdf)
As I understand it, this vision does not compute. The number of movements of people in a dense city is too large for everyone to move in a car, autonomous or not. Cars take a lot of space. They need to stop someplace for someone to get in and out, merge in and out of traffic. Streets cant be designed in a way that accomodates this at the scale of a city like NY.
Similarly, in spread-out suburbia, autonomous cars would still get stuck in traffic jams if everyone has to use them to get to work. Making cars autonomous makes things a bit more efficient, but not by orders of magnitude.
Mass transit, combined with walking and biking, is simply way more efficient for moving people in cities and is a proven model that does scale.
Urban design talks about street vs road. You can have places for vehicles to zoom about in (roads), and you can have places with shops and businesses and homes for people to use (streets), but you shouldn't try to make the same place serve as both. So in cities and town centres you need to prioritise pedestrians and cyclists: low (and enforced!) speed limits, narrow streets that naturally reduce speed, car-free zones. It doesn't need radical new development, you just need to break the assumption that cars are entitled to go full speed everywhere and everyone else has to deal.
It's a 1990s concept from France. It was implemented in the 1990s on Theater Way in Redwood City. CA, and did not work well. One side of the street has a curb, but the other side does not. Vehicle traffic was allowed, and people could get out in front of the movie theater. The other side of the street, with no barriers, had cafe tables.[1]
This worked badly. The cafe tables kept creeping outward. Some auto traffic was too fast. During COVID, the outside seating kept growing into the roadway. Plastic bollards were erected to discourage non-delivery traffic. Overpowered electric bikes zooming through became an problem. Police cars were sometimes deployed to block the roadway. Then plastic Jersey-type barriers were set up at one end, but not filled with water, so they could be moved for deliveries. Currently, one end of the street has been torn up for installation of some kind of raiseable barrier.
[1] https://earth.google.com/web/@37.48560402,-122.22909676,5.07...
[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/unsafe-at-many-speeds
From https://aaafoundation.org/impact-speed-pedestrians-risk-seve...
"Results show that the average risk of severe injury for a pedestrian struck by a vehicle reaches 10% at an impact speed of 16 mph, 25% at 23 mph, 50% at 31 mph, 75% at 39 mph, and 90% at 46 mph. The average risk of death for a pedestrian reaches 10% at an impact speed of 23 mph, 25% at 32 mph, 50% at 42 mph, 75% at 50 mph, and 90% at 58 mph."
Slower speeds mean a collision is less likely to occur. We're pretty good at moving in crowded conditions without frequent collisions at low speeds. See also NYC sidewalks.
Also, it appears the video is slowed down. I played at 1.5 speed to make my estimates
You can easily experience the scenario you envision, practically average 1905 San Francisco roads, by walking or biking through JFK street in Golden Gate Park, which is closed to all vehicles but food trucks and shuttles.
It's so crazy fucking nice, fun and safe so I have no idea what you're talking about.
Wait why would your impulse be to regulate pedestrians at all? The street doesn't even seem that dangerous without high-speed vehicles.
It's obvious major regulation was needed, and not just for pedestrians. Pretend cars didn't exist on that street for a moment and think about the changes needed to make it safe: carts needed lanes and rules for changing lanes, cable cars needed dedicated lanes, intersections needed a system to allow traffic from multiple directions, and pedestrians were being a bit too free with their judgement calls.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uINgSqEU26A