The term #VRU implies that being in danger (e.g., in danger of being hit by someone driving a car on a poorly designed street) is a condition the 'vulnerable user' opted in to.

#VulnerableRoadUser is thus used to define people ouside of cars according to the dangers imposed by cars and the people who drive, design, and cater to cars.

It's textbook #VictimBlaming, characterizing people as vulnerable because they dare exist in public without a #car.

#CarBrain #RoadSafety #VisionZero (3/4)

The people who prop up #CarCulture are the ones who tell #pedestrians, #cyclists, and others they are vulnerable and must watch for cars.

The people who prop up #RapeCulture are the ones who tell women they are vulnerable and must not go out after dark.

These are the same thing.

No one should get to build or perpetuate a system that knowingly and consistently puts people in harm's way and then call those people "vulnerable"

#CarBrain #RoadSafety #VisionZero #NoMoreVRU (4/4)

@DrTCombs I usually try to avoid this by specifying which groups of road users, based on their attributes, are being studied or for whom policy measures might have effects.

A conclusion can be that a situation or measure makes certain groups vulnerable. But you're right. The environment/exposure part is what creates vulnerabilities if not mitigated or prevented.

@DrTCombs Formally, you could say that the sloppy term 'vulnerable road users' is in fact 'road users that suffer most from unthoughtful policies and designs 'RUTSMFUPAD'. the acronym needs work tho.

@DrTCombs

I dunno...is this a safe place where I can disagree?

I'd like to see evidence of this being a real problem (beyond that of an idiotic Twitter reply because if that's the standard we can burn anything down). What policies adopt this framing? What policy makers have used this term in this way?

Because I see this as the kind of tone policing and self policing that is so common on the left and destructive to progressive causes.

Further, I fundamentally disagree. Vulnerability isn't just an artefact of policies, pedestrians, cyclists, and especially those with disabilities (or ones who are children) are inherently less protected than people in cars. Yes, the lack of a metal exoskeleton is not intrinsic to me as a human being, but in my role as road user, it is inherent to me, and not to government policy.

Government policies must seek to PROTECT vulnerable groups for that very reason. The "you're vulnerable so watch out" is heinous but isn't solved by pretending that we aren't vulnerable any more than racism is solved by nonsense like "not seeing colour".

@danbrotherston I see the term being used regularly by traffic engineers and decision-makers to cast aside concerns over about safety, mobility, and comfort of anyone outside a car. It's rampant in transportation policies and plans, and it's definitely used as a shortcut to avoid actually confronting the problems our road designs create.

It's not just about semantics. The term is literally used every day by engineers, and they use is specifically to pretend like they care.

@danbrotherston I had reports kicked back to me for using more human terminology like "person" or "non-driving road user" or other context-sensitive descriptions, on that basis that my insistence of using such context-sensitive and human-centered descriptions is too confrontational, and poses too much of a challenge to conventional practices.

@danbrotherston I agree with you that government policies should be used to protect vulnerable people, and then remove the conditions that create the vulnerability.

But that's in idealized notion of what our governments typically do in the US regarding anyone who's not in a car. The reality is that people who are "vulnerable" here are assumed to have brought their vulnerability on themselves. We kid ourselves that labeling people as "vulnerable" means we care about fixing the root cause.

@DrTCombs

I hope fixing toxic people was as simple as using more human vocabulary.

I think it really became clear during COVID when people started dismissing COVID deaths as "meh, those people were sick anyway".

I don't oppose anyone using terminology they prefer, honestly, all the power to you, but I do find the left's/progressives tendency to tone police (to put it mildly sometimes) our own side to be incredibly destructive.

Sure, we should set some standards (supporting/denying war crimes/probable genocide would be the kind of a line we should draw for example) but calling my use of "vulnerable road users" as "lazy, inaccurate, offensive, and counterproductive" I think is actually the counterproductive thing.

Your reports are rejected for using more human language...talk about that...gosh I'd agree right away how wrong that is and harmful, I might even think about why you use that kind of language.

@DrTCombs

Sorry to hear that. That's absolute crap. A report should not be rejected for using clear but different terminology, especially in an evolving field.

And especially rejecting things for being too "confrontational"....that fucking liberal bullshit is destroying the fabric of our society.

For me, I've never seen the term used that way (although my experience is limited to a handful of Canadian cities). Typically I see the word used in a reasonable context "we have vulnerable users, so we implemented these (usually mediocre) interventions to improve safety" At worst I've see "vulnerable users are important and require attention and safe infrastructure, to that end here, is this car oriented business as usual project that meets all engineering standards"

I don't see terminology as the limiting factor there, but US experience might be different.

@uire yep. that's a good one.

remove the danger, don't try to adapt the vulnerable person to the danger (which DOTs love to try do with fun things like giant chain link fences and 'shared responsibility' campaigns and proposals to outfit pedestrians with bluetooth beacons)