Comment by ryanisnan
2 days ago
This is a really uninformed article that comes off as just plain whiny. Taking the traffic curb example, it's entirely plausible that the person who designed that ramp isn't a cyclist, and didn't think about what it would actually be like to be a cyclist making that curve.
I hired a contractor once, who was a fantastic one. We were designing some changes to one of our rooms, and he had a proposal that would have made for some interesting, yet unfortunate corners in one of our rooms. It would have been more annoying and more expensive, but I don't think for one minute that it was because they didn't care.
They just didn't live in the space, they didn't spend enough time sitting in the problem to appreciate other solutions. I however had, and when I presented them with a cleaner solution, they ruminated on it for a bit and loved it. Saved a ton of time and money, and the end solution was better.
All it took was a conversation, and building a shared understanding of the needs and possibilities.
Ha. The traffic curb example is actually a good one. I don’t think it’s an excuse to build a potentially dangerous ramp because you aren’t a cyclist yourself. People who design ramps should be capable to do it properly.
Imagine it were a ramp for wheelchairs and they would have decided that a 20 degree slope is doable.
This may be intentional.
Road to sidewalk is a speed transition point. The transition from street to sidewalk via a tight turn here is an effective traffic-calming component to slow down bikes from road speed to walking speed. That's done on freeway off-ramps, where there's a curved section or two of decreasing radii to force vehicle speeds down before they reach a stop sign or traffic light. Same problem.
This is the most likely reason. They should have put a sign, but the ramp looks right to me if you want them to match pedestrian speed when merging into a pedestrian space.
Yes, this is most likely the reason.
Which means that the author didn't "care" enough to think through what the reason might have been or didn't "care" enough for the pedestrians.
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This reminds me of Tempest in a Pothole, an episode of The Paper Chase TV show from 1984:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEFBX4M5LCQ&t=2896s
The thrust is that standards of accountability are (or should be) higher for a professional than for a random reasonable person.
I agree people should be able to design things property, but I'm not sure this ramp is actually a good example. It might be! But no one is talking about an obvious issue for any ramp that would exist in that photo: it is merging bikes in to pedestrian traffic. So I'd think that you specifically want a ramp that forces the bike to slow down.
Yeah, not doing one's job well because they don't know how to (and won't bother to figure out) is an example of not caring, fundamentally.
People who aren't competent to do a job also generally aren't competent to teach themselves the job. That's why we the whole idea of qualification, competency testing, supervision, training, etc., exists.
I imagine the designer was under a set of constraints, for example, only a certain about of linear space was available for the ramp, because of other issues in the area; or maybe there was some budget constraint.
The designer may have thought about what it's like for a cyclist to make that curve, and thought, "the bicyclist can slow down to make the ramp."
None of those things have anything to do with not caring.
> This is a really uninformed article that comes off as just plain whiny. Taking the traffic curb example, it's entirely plausible that the person who designed that ramp isn't a cyclist, and didn't think about what it would actually be like to be a cyclist making that curve.
They literally mentioned it to the Director of the Seattle DOT. If the person who designed a bike lane isn't aware of the needs and dangers to bike users then they are not fit for the job. Engineers must make decisions for the curve of car lanes based on speed limits and terrain. They must make those same decisions for other vehicles.
>Taking the traffic curb example, it's entirely plausible that the person who designed that ramp isn't a cyclist, and didn't think about what it would actually be like to be a cyclist making that curve.
So... In other words... They did not care about their job enough to investigate and think through the situation. They just did the default easy thing and moved on with their day.
it's entirely plausible that the person who designed that ramp isn't a cyclist, and didn't think about what it would actually be like to be a cyclist making that curve.
Can you even imagine any piece of automobile infrastructure being designed in a way that is dangerous to drivers, and those drivers' concern being downplayed with the excuse that perhaps the person who designed the infrastructure isn't an automobile driver and didn't think about what it would be like to be a driver?
That would be inconceivable, but when non-drivers are the ones whose safety is ignored in favor of automobile drivers' convenience, nobody cares.
If the person designing it can't consider the needs of people who are biking then they shouldn't have that job.
> isn't a cyclist, and didn't think about what it would actually be like to be a cyclist making that curve.
But this is exactly the "don't care" attitude. Ignore the specifics of the problem, avoid studying it or just giving it a thought. Didn't think that, not being a cyclist themselves, they should ask somebody who is. Didn't even think about very obvious things, like putting a warning sign ahead of the actual object that it would warn about.
No. That person did not care. Really sad.
Imagine building an app for a market you’re totally unfamiliar with. You don’t research the market, you don’t talk to potential users, you don’t do any real world testing. You just build something that seems like it should be ok, ship it, and never touch it again.
None of us would dream of doing that, but that’s what the designer of this atrocity did, if we’re assuming the best.
Bonus: the app probably isn’t going to kill anyone.
Usually constraints are financial related. It takes money to do all that and public works is not some big tech company
True. But putting the signpost 20 yards ahead likely costs exactly the same.
The whole article is "This design isn't optimized for me" and "No one else prioritizes my priorities". Empathy is something one can develop with practice if you take the self-reflection to recognize things from others perspectives. Their "Nobody cares" can easily be redirected back to author with how little other perspectives they consider. Multiple times their "objectively" better thing is worse for some.
I completely agree. The author is attributing apathy to every action or inaction of everybody they see.
Just take the banal examples, like the person listening to their headphones. Maybe that person is listening to an audio book about medicine, because they are in medical school, and they really care about being a good student. Or the people taking up the whole escalator. Maybe they are old friends who have the opportunity to be together, and they care about listening to the conversation. Maybe the man zoned out in traffic who doesn't see your signal has his mind occupied by thoughts of his new baby who is sick in the hospital. Maybe the bike ramp was designed by a plucky intern who, despite inexperience, successfully got the entire mile-long bike lane installed in the first place.
The author is entirely wrong because they are myopic. It isn't that nobody cares, but rather that _everybody cares_. About different things, but the author has no insight into this and it's not their place to judge those things in the first place. They reach a good conclusion though, which is to change the things they care about with personal activism.
Yes, I get a lack of empathy from this article. The author mentions a lot of little things other people do that annoy him, without the sense that maybe you need to put up with a little annoyance to get along with other people, and without any awareness that maybe he does little things that annoy other people.