Hello everyone. It's been a while since i've worked on my custom map, but now had the chance to continue it, so let's do that.
First, a quick note about my previous post, where i extracted the Mad Max files, in search for sand textures to use in my project; The results actually came up with nothing good; the sand textures i have now look better than the ones i found in the game's files. I have a suspicion that there's a lot of code going on into building the sands of Mad Max, as there where very few usable plain ol' textures.
Anyway.
Back to the Roads
So, i don't have an infinite amount of road pieces to work with here. This means i'm limited as to what shape i can make the roads into. I've already laid out locations on the map, and built most of them - town, water station, electrical plant, etc, and now i have to make the road fit that.
Being so, there's times where i can't connect roads that come from one place, into another. What i'm doing is hiding "impossible road connections" (is what i'll call them) with sand, in locations where i don't have a specific idea of what i want the player to see.
For example, i want the player to drive through this specific location. A long road along side a cliff.
So they experience driving through that "setting".
So i can't hide any impossible road connections there. That just means, i also am limited by the places where i can hide these impossible connections, without remaking things, and most of them are set in stone.
Now, i've moved to this location, the entrance of my town, to start replacing the roads here, starting from that connection between the two differing roads, and moving towards the empty desert.
Now, this area is of visual importance, as it's the town's main entrance. And it's not finished. Only after finishing it could i be informed as to the location where the connection between these two differing roads could occur.
So, i started micro-arranging some things, further finishing out the area.
Which brought me to the crosswalks!
Now, i've always wondered about why they're placed where they are, in real life. In my neck of the woods, they're usually a couple dozen meters away from a crossroad's corner.
It's always been weird because that just makes me walk more when i reach said corner.
Thinking about it, to me, it makes sense they're placed there. People wouldn't unconsciously walk in a straight line because. Say they're distracted on their phone, for example. They see the white stripes and give no other thought about it. They have passage priority. But a vehicle can be approaching and in this instance there's reduced visibility between the two, due to a parked vehicle close to the crosswalk.
The pedestrian walks in a straight line, distracted, as the vehicle is reaching the low-vis crosswalk. And while the driver should always consider there might be a pedestrian approaching the crosswalk and be prudent, that's not always the case. And with the low-visibility, there's a high chance an accident might happen.
Placing the crosswalk not directly in front of the pedestrian would force the pedestrian to pay a bit more attention.
Is what i think regarding crosswalk placements. But then i got curiouser and got googling.
Determining the Ideal Location for Pedestrian Crosswalks at Signalized Intersections - a study i found on the subject. I was currently reading through it, and there's a very interesting point regarding to why some countries (there's no universal standardized placement for crosswalks) place them away from the intersections (called recessed crosswalks in the study).
And it's mostly to do with long vehicles, their wheels, and angles. I'll try to sum up this consideration in favor of recessed crosswalks.
A pedestrian standing at the beginning of a non recessed crosswalk might look at the front wheel of, say, a bus and see it far away from the sidewalk, so they might instinctively think it's safe to start crossing. What they might not consider is that the rear wheel won't be passing where the front wheel did, but instead, it'll be passing much closer to the sidewalk, if not mount the curb all together, and the pedestrian gets clipped by the wheel.
In case i butchered that, hopefully you can infer what i'm saying from the image:
Image source: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/
See that there's a wider gap between the rear right wheel of the bus and the sidewalk in the recessed crosswalk? That's the most prevalent reason they consider in the study, in favor for recessed crosswalks. So pedestrians don't get caught under long vehicle's rear wheels.
There are more considerations.
There's also visibility factors.
Image source: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/
And pedestrian congestion; placing the crosswalks further away from the crossroad means less pedestrians accumulated on the corner, therefore a less accident prone situation.
Regarding disadvantages to recessed crosswalks, there's the one i always thought was weird, and which seems to be the most pertinent, according to the study: less direct path for the pedestrian (and a bigger disadvantage to the visual impaired). But there's others: jaywalking at the corner, costs of installing guard rails to force pedestrians towards the recessed crosswalk (although this one would help the visual impaired, and can beautify intersection corners, ie, with plant beds) and increased traffic green-light time for vehicles, as they need to cover more distance.
Conclusion
Bottom line is that recessed crosswalks seems to increase pedestrian safety, and that's the why (according to this study) of having them be placed away from the crossroads. I mean, surely it's wasn't to annoy people, i know that much. But long wheel vehicles being the major factor? Never would have thought!
There's also an interesting suggestion as to why we should use recessed crosswalks, in unsignalized crossroads; placing them at least a car's length away from the crossroads signs (either Stop or Yield). Pedestrians would cross behind any vehicle that could potentially be waiting at the sign, for it's chance to advance.
All and all, very interesting considerations. Thank you, study by some guy that reminds me of James Woods for some reason which at close inspection looks nothing like him and actually is called George but looks a hell of a lot like Harry Shearer, the voice of The Simpsons's Mr.Burns.
I'll go back to the dev tools, and re-place crosswalk locations. And then back to mocking up the town entrance, and then back to the roads.
Ah, rabbit holes!
