3-Way Street follow up
That said, the video was designed to work within the context of a campaign that begins on the street level with a poster series, and leads to a website containing the video and education tied to the behaviors seen in the video.
Here are a few points to be stressed:
The video is not an attempt to say NYC streets are the most dangerous in the world. They are not. It is an attempt to clearly illustrate very specific behaviors — that if adjusted — would make a huge difference in our streets and our quality of life.
The video is not trying to be statistically relevant in terms of numbers of infractions per day or percentages. Existing statistic-based studies are great for research, but very boring to the general public who are the most important end-users of this information, and already largely ignore existing studies and corporate-feeling ad agency campaigns. The video is a carefully edited collection of clips shot during Summer/Fall 2010, intentionally chosen to graphically illustrate points of tension within NYC intersections, where 74% of all accidents in NYC occur. Does this make the piece subjective? Yes. Garbage? No. It is an artistic approach to a subject (street awareness and education) that up to this point has been treated very formulaically and without impressive results.
The video is not about NYC bike lanes. The mention of bike lanes is relevant only to give a context to the large increase in cycling in NYC. The video focus is on a single intersection because that is where most confrontation happens between pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists — not mid-block on a bike lane.
The video does try to offer a solution (not only point out problems) by working in tandem with a street-level campaign with a clear focus on interconnection (NYC Goes Three Ways). The video is intended to live on a website that clearly discusses the bad habits that were highlighted in the video. Pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists each have a section that points out long-standing bad habits, and how to help break them. The bad habits addressed on the website are marked with text on the left hand side of the video.
To those who think the accident stats in NYC are not bad, and the street system 'regulates' itself, I disagree. The problem with a barely-functioning system is that it becomes very difficult or impossible to introduce change. And the same people who are obsessed with statistics and percentages are also obsessed with accident stats. But this is the wrong approach. Quality of life is the ideal and is not necessarily reflected in 'low' fatality stats. The conflicts highlighted in the video may be nothing more than invasions of personal space (or not) — but repeated block by block, day by day — they amount to an important quality of life issue, whether or not someone ends up dead or 'only' with a broken hip.
We are fortunate to live in a city trying to modernize and evolve. It is not good enough to be satisfied with old (selfish) thinking, behaviors, and street systems.
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Update: See A Left-Brain, Right-Brain Disconnect 6/15/11
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Update: See 3-Way Street Part of New Approach to Driver's Ed 11/19/2011
3-Way Street from ronconcocacola on Vimeo.
Posted by RonConCocaCola at 6/10/2011 10:27 AM 
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: NYC traffic street usage 3 Way Street
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: NYC traffic street usage 3 Way Street
Very good follow-up and explanation for the knee-jerk reactions.
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I loved this. What an awesome illustration job you did on it. I shared it everywhere! I hope it will bring some much needed attention to a very insane problem. I added your blog to my blogroll.
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Thanks so much, Anni.
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A fascinating video, and an excellent choice for music. It would be great to give the artists full credit, however. "Peter Gunn" by Art of Noise and Duane Eddy, won a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental of 1986.
Thank you so much.
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Thank you, Bobbi. I just updated my post.
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Very much appreciated, sir.
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With 12,000 intersections, assuming an average of 1000 crossings per day, that's a 0.00003% chance of getting seriously injured or worse. Compare that to the daily death rate in the US which is 0.002%. Conclusion: Crossing streets in NYC is several orders of magnitude safer than whatever it is you're doing right now. Math wins over hype, sorry. (Death rate data: http://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/death_rate.html)
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Thanks for your note, but to me it is a quality of life issue obscured by 'low' fatality statistics.
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wow, I liked your video very much. What software do you used to marking at the people and cars in the video? I would like do a similar video in a street of my city (Cali, Colombia) like a way to show of chaos in the streets
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Astonishing. Alarming. And ... beautiful - the level of cooperation, between completely unlike mobile units. I didn't count but, in the number of dangerous behaviors by drivers, was the number taxis, on a per capita basis, low?
This video, unless assembled by some anti-bike nut (which I seriously doubt), shows how far the bike lobby has to go in its PR program.
Christopher Gray
NYC
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