Because of the implication?

@lgsp @mondoman712 I remember my preschool having a big stack of cardboard bricks to build with. Maybe they still have those in toy stores?

I am doing this. I have to walk along a narrow pavement next to a road to get to the nearest bus stop. During a rain it has many puddles and I've been splashed on many occasions. Will be making a foam brick next week.

LMFAO Drivers hate this one trick

Looks to me like a lot of them are slowing down to see what kind of performance art he's doing. Even the bus driver pointed at him in curiosity. Admittedly, there are also a lot of them swerving away from the puddle in a moment of sudden awareness, or just swerving away from him in a moment of fear.

There may be some aspect of attention-grabbing that would work no matter what was in his hand. People see so many umbrellas on a rainy day that it barely registers, but if you hold anything at all that's eye-catching, you'll pop up in their conscious attention and they'll treat you like a person instead of a road hazard.

I mean, if it works it works, but I think it would be less effective if a lot of people did it. "Oh, I've seen this one, he never actually throws the brick."

Gotta say it's good carrying a passive threat.

What are they used for? You just take one and wave it?

I've seen those in the US not too long ago, too.

You mean "bonus points" flags?

Amazing how America has to have the threat of damage to property to get people to not run over pedestrians, while Japan just has a little flag to increase visibility.

America is sick.

That whole place is a wasted opportunity for a pedestrian zone. It would be so nice if they'd kept the temporary tram line from the Olympics and banned personal vehicles.

me talking about "outside"

I think you're right and Strong Towns just tested out that theory. Spoiler: it did not work. I really hope they try it again with the brick.

The flag needs a longer pole so that American drivers can see it from the top of their SUVs.

They have these in a town I live near, they seem fine? Why are they dumb? They seem to work pretty well. It's a different context than the video, a much smaller road but in a downtown area where there are always plenty of people walking. Obviously if someone got hit by a car, the driver would still be at fault regardless of whether or not the pedestrian has a flag.

Bring your own brick (BYOB) just in case.

BYOB (Bring Your Own Bricks)

It’s not very nice but it helps keep me alive.

I think it's important to keep in mind that the dominant traffic control structure in the US is the stoplight, which relies heavily on "mutually assured destruction" to work. So that's in everyone's head when driving around: "I stop because I don't want to get hurt." To me, it's pretty clear that escalation to vehicular damage is the only thing that makes sense for pedestrians in such an environment. Yeah, it's not nice, but so is the rest of the game.

You can also do this with a bike if you're skilled at controlling your bike's direction from the seat pole.

That is the law on Ontario, all lanes of traffic must stop for someone using a pedestrian crossover (zebra crossing). The penalty for failure to comply is $1000 and 4 demerits. Fines are doubled ($2000) in community safety zones.

The law isn't to blame; driver compliance, enforcement, and road design is.

They would have to take budget from the military to afford this, what an outrageous act! Wait they can just defund hospitals and schools even more, but do you honestly think they would allocate even a dollar to safety for their citizens? Nah they would just shove the new money into the military again

This whole thing is satire, I didn't say /s since it looked like it's just focusing on the last sentence instead of the whole comment

Maybe custom blinking shoes like what they used to make for kids back in the day? Just mimic the blinking pattern.

There are many people who still wouldn't notice until the siren comes on though. I can spot an interceptor if the sunlight just happens to hit it right, yet my mom will drive right past a parked white cop car with lights on and be surprised when I told her she didn't slow down to pass it. Then if an emergency siren goes off she panics and tries to pull to the shoulder without locating the emergency vehicle when fully blocked in by other cars and only moving enough to block the ambulance driving along the shoulder.

Ear plugs and an air horn would probably do the trick.

For carrying a brick?

Not likely, they look like fake bricks.

Cars are violent

In America. Maybe in Surrey if you are brown and offend the wrong also brown people... Anyway here even the tough guy persona compensators generally don't have guns and are pushovers when it really comes down to getting into an insurance claim where icbc will guaranteed try to put at least partial blame on the driver and not budge without the guy paying for a lawyer.

The only Canadians I have met that legally own a gun are also mentally stable and would never shoot a person. Just hunters that love to share homemade deer jerky and sausage with their coworkers.

"Guns not being there" is the norm for most of the world.