The Driver Who Hit Me Got Two Years in Prison. But I Got a Life Sentence
December 7, 2021 1:18 PM Subscribe
A driver hit Andrew J. Bernstein with his car, very nearly killing him, and ran from the scene. Years later, the driver is finally caught, reaches a plea deal, and is sentenced. But what is two years of jail time against the lifetime consequences faced by the victims of reckless drivers? What does "justice" mean when the legal system puts only the most egregiously dangerous drivers in prison but refuses to take steps to prevent this kind of violence in the first place?
The only fitting punishment for a person who’s shown such little interest in being a safe driver is to take them off the road forever, which I stated in court. But in this country, we give such priority to cars that a punishment of that nature is deemed unthinkably severe. Therefore, the best solution our society has is to put him in jail. He will likely be able to drive again soon after his release, and I can only hope that when he does drive again, he doesn’t crash into another person. If he does, it will be entirely because the justice system was unable to keep him off the road.
Early in this ordeal, I was predisposed to find a way to forgive this person. But with all that I’ve lost, how can I forgive someone who doesn’t acknowledge their actions, even as they plead guilty?
The only fitting punishment for a person who’s shown such little interest in being a safe driver is to take them off the road forever, which I stated in court. But in this country, we give such priority to cars that a punishment of that nature is deemed unthinkably severe. Therefore, the best solution our society has is to put him in jail. He will likely be able to drive again soon after his release, and I can only hope that when he does drive again, he doesn’t crash into another person. If he does, it will be entirely because the justice system was unable to keep him off the road.
Early in this ordeal, I was predisposed to find a way to forgive this person. But with all that I’ve lost, how can I forgive someone who doesn’t acknowledge their actions, even as they plead guilty?
Wow. It reminds me of this story from Atlanta, which had a pretty similar resolution. I'm not a cyclist, but I am a frequent pedestrian in an environment that is openly hostile to us as well. It's scary out there in the car-dominated world.
posted by hydropsyche at 1:41 PM on December 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 1:41 PM on December 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
It's entirely possible to build cities and suburbs where cars are not required to live and are not a menace to society, but we continually refuse despite the very clear benefits to everyone, including even the most self centered drivers.
But that would cost money and would annoy some drivers, which are two things that politicians are as a rule very reluctant to do.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:45 PM on December 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
But that would cost money and would annoy some drivers, which are two things that politicians are as a rule very reluctant to do.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:45 PM on December 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
The punishment for reckless or even just bad driving that hurts people should be to lose your license. In Toronto, a young man drove on the sidewalk for 20 metres before killing a woman, but was acquitted because it was deemed a terrible accident. It was - I don't think he had any intention - but he absolutely should have lost his license. He didn't have the maturity and good sense to be allowed to drive. (He looked away from the road and lost control of his car because he had dropped a water bottle and was trying to pick it up, rather than slowing down and pulling over as he should have done.)
More recently, a 16-year old killed two children who were in their own driveway. Again, it may have been an accident, but he still should not be allowed to drive again for a long time, or maybe ever. (Very similar circumstances - he claims to have dropped something and leaning down to pick it up).
Driving is not a right, it's a privilege and one that comes with great responsibility. We don't let people who are blind drive, or people who have seizures, regardless of how great their need may be or how rural a place they live in. Why should the able-bodied but incompetent be treated better? We should not allow people who drive badly to drive.
posted by jb at 1:47 PM on December 7, 2021 [76 favorites]
More recently, a 16-year old killed two children who were in their own driveway. Again, it may have been an accident, but he still should not be allowed to drive again for a long time, or maybe ever. (Very similar circumstances - he claims to have dropped something and leaning down to pick it up).
Driving is not a right, it's a privilege and one that comes with great responsibility. We don't let people who are blind drive, or people who have seizures, regardless of how great their need may be or how rural a place they live in. Why should the able-bodied but incompetent be treated better? We should not allow people who drive badly to drive.
posted by jb at 1:47 PM on December 7, 2021 [76 favorites]
A friend suffered two broken legs and a broken arm after a head-on collision in New England, after the other driver swerved onto the wrong side of the road because they were looking for something on the back seat and couldn't be bothered to pull over. No sentence, although she's pursuing him in the civil courts.
A co-worker's sister and her family spent Christmas in hospital here in Ireland with multiple broken bones two years ago, after a speeding car ran a red light and hit her car from the side. Suspended sentence - the judge said that prison was "not appropriate", except in the case of "life-changing injuries". They're still looking for justice for that one too.
As a cyclist, I feel incredibly vulnerable sometimes.
posted by kersplunk at 1:49 PM on December 7, 2021 [13 favorites]
A co-worker's sister and her family spent Christmas in hospital here in Ireland with multiple broken bones two years ago, after a speeding car ran a red light and hit her car from the side. Suspended sentence - the judge said that prison was "not appropriate", except in the case of "life-changing injuries". They're still looking for justice for that one too.
As a cyclist, I feel incredibly vulnerable sometimes.
posted by kersplunk at 1:49 PM on December 7, 2021 [13 favorites]
I’ve quit riding for a while. I was a die hard rider when I lived in Eastern Oregon, even to the point of having studded bike tires for winter. My dog and I used to have great fun wandering the suburban back roads. But where I live now the roads are clogged with roaring giant pickups and RVs and I am just not feeling it anymore. I worry about something like that happening to me. They just aren’t careful enough for me so we stay home.
posted by cybrcamper at 2:07 PM on December 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by cybrcamper at 2:07 PM on December 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
In related news, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is months away from opening the last link in the Minuteman Bikeway's extended path from Concord all the way to the Charles River. The Minuteman's extension, the Community Path, right now runs to Winter Hill. That bike path system runs from Bedford to Somerville, and will now link to a path going wast all the way to Revere, and to a path reaching East Cambridge right to the entry of downtown Boston.
Miles upon miles shared with nothing with motors.
posted by ocschwar at 2:12 PM on December 7, 2021 [19 favorites]
Miles upon miles shared with nothing with motors.
posted by ocschwar at 2:12 PM on December 7, 2021 [19 favorites]
Outside posted this podcast episode (38 minutes) last year about the collision and the aftermath. It's brutal, infuriating, and worth your time.
posted by maudlin at 2:12 PM on December 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by maudlin at 2:12 PM on December 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
Miles upon miles shared with nothing with motors.
Well, except ebikes.
posted by Dysk at 2:18 PM on December 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
Well, except ebikes.
posted by Dysk at 2:18 PM on December 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
I remember reading this guy's story when it came out. I can't call this a resolution because it sure as hell doesn't feel like one.
On my ride this past Saturday, I almost wound up in the front seat of a car because the driver was busy frobnicating her phone (yes, we have a hands-free law here, why do you ask?). I've been hit by cars before and I figure it's just a matter of time before my number is up. See that my ghost bike is kept clean.
posted by adamrice at 2:19 PM on December 7, 2021 [12 favorites]
On my ride this past Saturday, I almost wound up in the front seat of a car because the driver was busy frobnicating her phone (yes, we have a hands-free law here, why do you ask?). I've been hit by cars before and I figure it's just a matter of time before my number is up. See that my ghost bike is kept clean.
posted by adamrice at 2:19 PM on December 7, 2021 [12 favorites]
Nothing will change until lawmakers (and their voters) start to emphasize with the victims more than the drivers. Right now, most people subconsciously think that some pedestrian is going to run into their car. The fact that drivers face almost no responsibility for "accidents" is by design.
posted by Popular Ethics at 2:22 PM on December 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by Popular Ethics at 2:22 PM on December 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
Sadly reminded me of a previous MeFi post:
Broken Stride: When Ashley Poissant was killed by an alleged drunk driver, she became the latest victim of the rapidly growing risk runners face (2014)
Apparently at the time of the murder, the driver had a history of driving drunk. The defense blamed the victim, then also said that drunk driving was so commonplace that it wasn't enforceable. The driver wasn't allowed to drive for five years, and may have served up to six months of jail (or none).
In 2016, the driver violated his parole by driving and was sentenced to six months in jail.
posted by meowzilla at 2:36 PM on December 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
Broken Stride: When Ashley Poissant was killed by an alleged drunk driver, she became the latest victim of the rapidly growing risk runners face (2014)
Apparently at the time of the murder, the driver had a history of driving drunk. The defense blamed the victim, then also said that drunk driving was so commonplace that it wasn't enforceable. The driver wasn't allowed to drive for five years, and may have served up to six months of jail (or none).
In 2016, the driver violated his parole by driving and was sentenced to six months in jail.
posted by meowzilla at 2:36 PM on December 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
Drivers, engineers, planners and municipalities should all be bearing more of the burden. Roadway design that has even a fraction of a second of inattentiveness creating a lethal result is a design fault even if the driver also deserves some small amount of censure for inattentiveness. I try and be hypervigilant as a driver and frequent cyclist, but I'm not sure it's humanly possible to correct for sightline issues caused by roadside parking of SUVs and delivery trucks along with frequent conflict points of driveways, etc... Design is the only real solution in those circumstances. I doubt that vision zero countries are getting there strictly from better driver behavior as opposed to designs minimizing the risks when drivers aren't thinking.
HWY 7 / Arapahoe road in Denver looks like a lot of routes I ride on a bicycle. Those routes are simultaneously relaxing: straight line riding, few driveways, wide enough shoulder that you can ride in the shoulder without cars having to swerve around you — and low-grade terrifying: cars passing mere feet away at 15-35MPH relative speed differences, drivers lulled into complacency by lack of challenges requiring attention. I ride those kinds of routes on long weekend rides sometimes, but on my commute I try to stick to roads that require me to take the middle of the lane or provide buffered or fully protected bike infrastructure. The in-between seems like a 'when' not 'if' kind of situation. I am not in any way implying that Bernstein did anything wrong to ride that road, or to ride a bike in general. The risks of cycling America's peri-apocalyptic infrastructure, even without a helmet for those that hate them, are in my mind much less than the health risks of living a sedentary life.
posted by BrotherCaine at 2:38 PM on December 7, 2021 [9 favorites]
HWY 7 / Arapahoe road in Denver looks like a lot of routes I ride on a bicycle. Those routes are simultaneously relaxing: straight line riding, few driveways, wide enough shoulder that you can ride in the shoulder without cars having to swerve around you — and low-grade terrifying: cars passing mere feet away at 15-35MPH relative speed differences, drivers lulled into complacency by lack of challenges requiring attention. I ride those kinds of routes on long weekend rides sometimes, but on my commute I try to stick to roads that require me to take the middle of the lane or provide buffered or fully protected bike infrastructure. The in-between seems like a 'when' not 'if' kind of situation. I am not in any way implying that Bernstein did anything wrong to ride that road, or to ride a bike in general. The risks of cycling America's peri-apocalyptic infrastructure, even without a helmet for those that hate them, are in my mind much less than the health risks of living a sedentary life.
posted by BrotherCaine at 2:38 PM on December 7, 2021 [9 favorites]
I walk Mr. Dog twice a day. In the morning we go up a relatively quiet road, but in the afternoons we now drive a few miles to utilize the (very nice) public park's trails because I got tired of dodging cars on the busier afternoon route we were taking before. The people I don't understand are those who refuse to give us some space when there is no oncoming traffic for them to worry about. I mean, it's a movement of perhaps a few centimeters of your wrist.
posted by maxwelton at 2:52 PM on December 7, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by maxwelton at 2:52 PM on December 7, 2021 [5 favorites]
I'm not sure it's humanly possible to correct for sightline issues caused by roadside parking of SUVs and delivery trucks along with frequent conflict points of driveways, etc..
Sure it is. Lower speed limits a lot and obey them, and enforce them. Penalize --better, forbid! -- high flat fronts on vehicles.
posted by clew at 3:02 PM on December 7, 2021 [28 favorites]
Sure it is. Lower speed limits a lot and obey them, and enforce them. Penalize --better, forbid! -- high flat fronts on vehicles.
posted by clew at 3:02 PM on December 7, 2021 [28 favorites]
I've long said that if I ever wanted to murder someone, I would put them on a bicycle and hit them with a truck. I just have to say they "came out of nowhere" and apparently that's good enough to avoid appropriate punishment!
It's appalling how vulnerable everyone is on the roads, and how entitled drivers are about "their" space. That non-drivers subsidize.
Drivers need to be more afraid of hurting or killing people.
I never want to hurt anyone, and I know that I'm most likely to hurt someone while I'm behind the wheel.
posted by Acari at 3:06 PM on December 7, 2021 [22 favorites]
It's appalling how vulnerable everyone is on the roads, and how entitled drivers are about "their" space. That non-drivers subsidize.
Drivers need to be more afraid of hurting or killing people.
I never want to hurt anyone, and I know that I'm most likely to hurt someone while I'm behind the wheel.
posted by Acari at 3:06 PM on December 7, 2021 [22 favorites]
Clew, yes, these are effectively planning/design issues. I meant possible for drivers to accomplish without some kind of design effort. My non-expert rule of thumb is if you sat and watched that road and you saw less than 1 in 10,000 drivers making a mistake that could result in a collision, then you've got an issue that enforcement might fix, if 1 in a hundred, you've got an issue that education and enforcement might fix. If you've got more than 1 in a hundred you've got an issue that only design can fix.
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:08 PM on December 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:08 PM on December 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
We don't feel that way about manslaughter with other tools, BrotherCaine.
posted by clew at 3:11 PM on December 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by clew at 3:11 PM on December 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
I'm a pedestrian and often a cyclist when warmer weather permits. I live in terror more on my bike--though the amount of times I have been nearly hit when crossing the street with the walk signal is up there--and try to figure out the safest ride to work. But alas, residential streets are no longer considered sedate speed zones; they are Fast and Furious streets despite the fact you're just gonna hit a stop sign in like, 30 feet. I have been clipped, I have been honked at, flipped off, you name it. Like, I just want to ride my bike to and from work, and get to either destination alive.
There was another sad accident here in Ontario recently where a 76 year old driver ploughed through 10 (!) people. It was not intentional but now there's one less family with their kid to celebrate Christmas.
I find it jaw-dropping that we don't regularly test drivers to see if they can continue to be safe drivers. You get your license mostly when you're young and after that, you're done until you die. Regular drivers tests should be a part of the system. Driving is a privilege, not a right.
posted by Kitteh at 3:15 PM on December 7, 2021 [13 favorites]
There was another sad accident here in Ontario recently where a 76 year old driver ploughed through 10 (!) people. It was not intentional but now there's one less family with their kid to celebrate Christmas.
I find it jaw-dropping that we don't regularly test drivers to see if they can continue to be safe drivers. You get your license mostly when you're young and after that, you're done until you die. Regular drivers tests should be a part of the system. Driving is a privilege, not a right.
posted by Kitteh at 3:15 PM on December 7, 2021 [13 favorites]
(also I don't own a car anymore but when we had to choose between a car or a house, we opted for the house. we can't afford a mortgage payment and a car)
posted by Kitteh at 3:16 PM on December 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 3:16 PM on December 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
Lower speed limits a lot and obey them, and enforce them.
It would cost more to have sufficient speed enforcement to get people to drive at or below the speed limit on roads designed for excessive speed than it would to just replace the road. Ironically, pedestrians and bike riders add to the feeling of danger and slow drivers down, so every time shitty road design and bad connectivity leads someone to choose to drive instead of walk or bike it compounds the problem.
But really the solution is to stop building new public spaces to the current car-centric standards and stop making the same mistake again when roads are reconstructed. It'll take a while to get to the necessary level of human scale design, but the best time to start was yesterday and the second best is now.
It's not like cities don't know how to do this or even that people are necessarily against it. Cities build spaces that slow down cars and prioritize pedestrians all the time. People often flock to those areas and consider them the best their city has to offer. Problem is there is a lot of money and political/institutional inertia (and in some states outright hostility from the state transportation department) behind building more roads.
In Miami, the state is spending the better part of a billion dollars to rebuild one of the bridges to Miami Beach. The only problem with the existing bridge is that it's overcrowded. Problem is that Miami Beach is also choked with cars, so adding capacity across Biscayne Bay physically can't actually help anyone. The issue is so plainly obvious that everyone from transit activists to people from the suburbs begged FDOT to build a new rail bridge instead, but adding lanes is what FDOT does, largely because the state government is actively hostile to transit.
Point being that even when cities pull their heads out of their behinds, the people with the money for the big projects often ignore the wishes of local communities even when a large part of that community is their core constituency. However, most local street work is funded by cities and counties themselves, and where that is the case they can absolutely make a dent with every road that is already set to be reconstructed. They're spending the money anyway, so it doesn't actually cost anything to make a road safe for people not in cars.
posted by wierdo at 3:28 PM on December 7, 2021 [9 favorites]
It would cost more to have sufficient speed enforcement to get people to drive at or below the speed limit on roads designed for excessive speed than it would to just replace the road. Ironically, pedestrians and bike riders add to the feeling of danger and slow drivers down, so every time shitty road design and bad connectivity leads someone to choose to drive instead of walk or bike it compounds the problem.
But really the solution is to stop building new public spaces to the current car-centric standards and stop making the same mistake again when roads are reconstructed. It'll take a while to get to the necessary level of human scale design, but the best time to start was yesterday and the second best is now.
It's not like cities don't know how to do this or even that people are necessarily against it. Cities build spaces that slow down cars and prioritize pedestrians all the time. People often flock to those areas and consider them the best their city has to offer. Problem is there is a lot of money and political/institutional inertia (and in some states outright hostility from the state transportation department) behind building more roads.
In Miami, the state is spending the better part of a billion dollars to rebuild one of the bridges to Miami Beach. The only problem with the existing bridge is that it's overcrowded. Problem is that Miami Beach is also choked with cars, so adding capacity across Biscayne Bay physically can't actually help anyone. The issue is so plainly obvious that everyone from transit activists to people from the suburbs begged FDOT to build a new rail bridge instead, but adding lanes is what FDOT does, largely because the state government is actively hostile to transit.
Point being that even when cities pull their heads out of their behinds, the people with the money for the big projects often ignore the wishes of local communities even when a large part of that community is their core constituency. However, most local street work is funded by cities and counties themselves, and where that is the case they can absolutely make a dent with every road that is already set to be reconstructed. They're spending the money anyway, so it doesn't actually cost anything to make a road safe for people not in cars.
posted by wierdo at 3:28 PM on December 7, 2021 [9 favorites]
It would cost more to have sufficient speed enforcement to get people to drive at or below the speed limit
This whole thing seems like a Covid mask argument.
40,000 people die, and hundreds of thousands of maimed each year in the US alone due to vehicular accidents.
You could reduce the death toll by 98% by mandating a maximum speed of 25mph.
Not by enforcement, but by simply passing a law that for a vehicle to be legal for sale, the engine and transmission itself should be incapable of accelerating the vehicle past 25mph. Emergency vehicles (ambulances, fire trucks) would be exempt, of course.
It wouldn't even inconvenience drivers that much. According to my vehicle, my lifetime average driven speed is about 45kmph, or 27mph. Sure, it's a mixture of highway and urban driving, but I'd expect if my speed were capped lower the average would still end up at about 20mph.
So we currently accept 40,000 deaths per year in a single country because we want to arrive at our destination a few minutes faster?
I guess it's the same way some people would accept another 10,000 deaths just to not have to wear a mask.
As another benefit, you'd get really good fuel efficiency and lower emissions because the engine could be optimized to a much narrower band of operation.
Anyway, if I was ever the dictator of a country, that's what I would do...
posted by xdvesper at 3:58 PM on December 7, 2021 [17 favorites]
This whole thing seems like a Covid mask argument.
40,000 people die, and hundreds of thousands of maimed each year in the US alone due to vehicular accidents.
You could reduce the death toll by 98% by mandating a maximum speed of 25mph.
Not by enforcement, but by simply passing a law that for a vehicle to be legal for sale, the engine and transmission itself should be incapable of accelerating the vehicle past 25mph. Emergency vehicles (ambulances, fire trucks) would be exempt, of course.
It wouldn't even inconvenience drivers that much. According to my vehicle, my lifetime average driven speed is about 45kmph, or 27mph. Sure, it's a mixture of highway and urban driving, but I'd expect if my speed were capped lower the average would still end up at about 20mph.
So we currently accept 40,000 deaths per year in a single country because we want to arrive at our destination a few minutes faster?
I guess it's the same way some people would accept another 10,000 deaths just to not have to wear a mask.
As another benefit, you'd get really good fuel efficiency and lower emissions because the engine could be optimized to a much narrower band of operation.
Anyway, if I was ever the dictator of a country, that's what I would do...
posted by xdvesper at 3:58 PM on December 7, 2021 [17 favorites]
You could reduce the death toll by 98% by mandating a maximum speed of 25mph.
Some of the cities in metro Boston have been trying to force this through a mix of road redesign and legislation - traffic calming "tricks" as well as (hopefully, eventually) reducing the speed limit city-wide to 20 mph. People take it as an affront that they can't blast down residential side streets at near highway speeds. Some of the measures seem to actually work; narrower lanes and curb bumps and speed plates all seem to help a little bit, but I really think it's going to take more than that to really get speeds down in the city.
Massachusetts has a reputation for aggressive driving, and as I'm going back into the office more and more now I'm reminded of that fact frequently. Maybe it's still some residual impacts of covid turning everyone shitty, but in just the past couple weeks I've witnessed: a driver honking at pedestrians in a crosswalk; a driver honking at another car because that driver stopped for a pedestrian in a crosswalk; a driver traveling in the opposite travel lane and the bike lane to avoid waiting at a stop light; too many right hook attempts to count; plus the usual speeding, red-light running, and driving without lights in the dark.
And then there's the active sabotage against any attempts to make the streets more equitable. Cambridge recently created a mile or so stretch of bus-only lane on Massachusetts Avenue; someone retaliated by throwing tacks and bricks in the road. A local business owner wrote a lengthy op-ed about how bicycles are a Chinese plot to control us (or something). Flex posts go up and are immediately demolished. We had a neighborhood meeting a couple years ago about removing on-street parking from an arterial road to add bike lanes, and a resident angrily accused the city of "stealing their property" and then demanded to know how their seven children would be able to visit them all at once since each of them needs to drive there.
Far and away, though, the complaints about traffic calming don't even come from the people that live in the city! Traffic studies have been done around here, and a huge portion of the cars on the road are simply transiting through - they don't originate or end their trip in town. And they want to go fast, because they're used to driving on the highway, but they're not using the highway because it's clogged full of cars.
I've been lucky enough in my now 13 years of riding in the city that the only crashes I've been involved in have been self-inflicted (damn you trolley tracks...). And it really does feel so much safer now than when I started. There's still a long ways to go, though.
posted by backseatpilot at 4:22 PM on December 7, 2021 [10 favorites]
Some of the cities in metro Boston have been trying to force this through a mix of road redesign and legislation - traffic calming "tricks" as well as (hopefully, eventually) reducing the speed limit city-wide to 20 mph. People take it as an affront that they can't blast down residential side streets at near highway speeds. Some of the measures seem to actually work; narrower lanes and curb bumps and speed plates all seem to help a little bit, but I really think it's going to take more than that to really get speeds down in the city.
Massachusetts has a reputation for aggressive driving, and as I'm going back into the office more and more now I'm reminded of that fact frequently. Maybe it's still some residual impacts of covid turning everyone shitty, but in just the past couple weeks I've witnessed: a driver honking at pedestrians in a crosswalk; a driver honking at another car because that driver stopped for a pedestrian in a crosswalk; a driver traveling in the opposite travel lane and the bike lane to avoid waiting at a stop light; too many right hook attempts to count; plus the usual speeding, red-light running, and driving without lights in the dark.
And then there's the active sabotage against any attempts to make the streets more equitable. Cambridge recently created a mile or so stretch of bus-only lane on Massachusetts Avenue; someone retaliated by throwing tacks and bricks in the road. A local business owner wrote a lengthy op-ed about how bicycles are a Chinese plot to control us (or something). Flex posts go up and are immediately demolished. We had a neighborhood meeting a couple years ago about removing on-street parking from an arterial road to add bike lanes, and a resident angrily accused the city of "stealing their property" and then demanded to know how their seven children would be able to visit them all at once since each of them needs to drive there.
Far and away, though, the complaints about traffic calming don't even come from the people that live in the city! Traffic studies have been done around here, and a huge portion of the cars on the road are simply transiting through - they don't originate or end their trip in town. And they want to go fast, because they're used to driving on the highway, but they're not using the highway because it's clogged full of cars.
I've been lucky enough in my now 13 years of riding in the city that the only crashes I've been involved in have been self-inflicted (damn you trolley tracks...). And it really does feel so much safer now than when I started. There's still a long ways to go, though.
posted by backseatpilot at 4:22 PM on December 7, 2021 [10 favorites]
It would cost more to have sufficient speed enforcement to get people to drive at or below the speed limit on roads designed for excessive speed than it would to just replace the road. Ironically, pedestrians and bike riders add to the feeling of danger and slow drivers down, so every time shitty road design and bad connectivity leads someone to choose to drive instead of walk or bike it compounds the problem.
And yet the most common form of speed enforcement, photo radar, is derided by opponents as a 'cash cow'. If we were serious about preventing deaths due to road crimes such as driving dangerously with excessive speed, then we could treat the criminals committing these crimes even a little bit like criminals, such as fining them. And not putting the money into general police revenue or general revenue, putting the money into more cameras. If a typical morning's commute to work speeding got you three to five $200 tickets, I reckon fewer people would speed. As it is, there are a handful of cameras in a city, and people treat it like the reverse lottery, just some random bad luck that hits you when you do the same (dangerous, illegal) thing every day.
It's easy enough to walk out of a store with stuff you haven't paid for, especially when there's now one person and 10 self-checkouts. If 99 out of 100 shoplifters walked out of a store with a TV and went on their way, and the 100th got a stern talking to but then let go because they seemed remorseful, that wouldn't be a reasonable basis for determining that enforcement does not work to prevent shoplifting.
Yes, we should stop building bad roads and start retrofitting the ones we have, but that's a multigenerational project. In the intervening years (40,000 deaths per year in the US, remember) let's not pretend that enforcement doesn't work, because it hasn't been tried.
posted by Superilla at 4:23 PM on December 7, 2021 [12 favorites]
And yet the most common form of speed enforcement, photo radar, is derided by opponents as a 'cash cow'. If we were serious about preventing deaths due to road crimes such as driving dangerously with excessive speed, then we could treat the criminals committing these crimes even a little bit like criminals, such as fining them. And not putting the money into general police revenue or general revenue, putting the money into more cameras. If a typical morning's commute to work speeding got you three to five $200 tickets, I reckon fewer people would speed. As it is, there are a handful of cameras in a city, and people treat it like the reverse lottery, just some random bad luck that hits you when you do the same (dangerous, illegal) thing every day.
It's easy enough to walk out of a store with stuff you haven't paid for, especially when there's now one person and 10 self-checkouts. If 99 out of 100 shoplifters walked out of a store with a TV and went on their way, and the 100th got a stern talking to but then let go because they seemed remorseful, that wouldn't be a reasonable basis for determining that enforcement does not work to prevent shoplifting.
Yes, we should stop building bad roads and start retrofitting the ones we have, but that's a multigenerational project. In the intervening years (40,000 deaths per year in the US, remember) let's not pretend that enforcement doesn't work, because it hasn't been tried.
posted by Superilla at 4:23 PM on December 7, 2021 [12 favorites]
Tell me about it… I got hit and runned by a DUI repeat offender, with a suspended license. Ended up on disability for a year. Entered into both criminal and civil law. On the criminal side, the DA plea bargained it down to misdemeanor, after numerous bench warrants had to be issued to re-arrest the guy who never showed up in court. Note: the DA plea bargained it down. The judge on the case lied to me on the record regarding my making a statement as the victim of the crime. On the civil side, the guy stopped paying his bills, all his seven houses got foreclosed, and then he drank himself to death before anything could go to trial. Why the hell didn’t they confiscate his car? It may have stopped all this from happening.
posted by njohnson23 at 4:33 PM on December 7, 2021 [14 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 4:33 PM on December 7, 2021 [14 favorites]
GPS plus in-car speed monitoring and recording would be a pretty simple way to enforce speed limits, and you could have a soft introduction of the technology by having insurance companies offer big (and profitable!) discounts for voluntary early adopters.
posted by jamjam at 4:38 PM on December 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by jamjam at 4:38 PM on December 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
Speed enforcement literally pays for itself, and then some. In fact, that's the most common criticism of it.
I'm in favour of a speed camera on every road, a red light camera at every junction. You're not being surveilled unless you're breaking the law, since the cameras only fire when you're speeding or running a red.
posted by Dysk at 4:45 PM on December 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
I'm in favour of a speed camera on every road, a red light camera at every junction. You're not being surveilled unless you're breaking the law, since the cameras only fire when you're speeding or running a red.
posted by Dysk at 4:45 PM on December 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
I once witnessed someone crossing the street get hit by a car running a light. If you ever see anything like that happen and aren't needed as a first responder, it is your duty to remember as much as possible and come forward to provide a statement. Preferably, write down as much as you remember as soon as you can.
It was almost a year before the prosecutor's office contacted me to ask how much I could remember. I gave them a copy of my own hand-written (and dated!) statement. It was much more detailed than what the police officer had hastily scribbled in the dark when I had spoken with him. They introduced the statement at a pretrial hearing and asked me to read it. I doubt I could have provided as vivid an account if I hadn't written everything down so soon after seeing it happen.
I purposefully didn't pay attention to the case after that and I don't know what the outcome was. But I do know that a year prior a driver who hit a man crossing that same street in broad daylight got off because there weren't any witnesses who remembered enough details to contradict the driver's allegation that the guy just ran out into the road.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:49 PM on December 7, 2021 [20 favorites]
It was almost a year before the prosecutor's office contacted me to ask how much I could remember. I gave them a copy of my own hand-written (and dated!) statement. It was much more detailed than what the police officer had hastily scribbled in the dark when I had spoken with him. They introduced the statement at a pretrial hearing and asked me to read it. I doubt I could have provided as vivid an account if I hadn't written everything down so soon after seeing it happen.
I purposefully didn't pay attention to the case after that and I don't know what the outcome was. But I do know that a year prior a driver who hit a man crossing that same street in broad daylight got off because there weren't any witnesses who remembered enough details to contradict the driver's allegation that the guy just ran out into the road.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:49 PM on December 7, 2021 [20 favorites]
Auto Immunity Syndrome.
posted by RandlePatrickMcMurphy at 5:03 PM on December 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by RandlePatrickMcMurphy at 5:03 PM on December 7, 2021 [1 favorite]
Drivers need to be more afraid of hurting or killing people.
I still feel bad about a snowball I threw in grade 4 so I know hitting someone with a car would destroy me. I opted out of driving about 25 years ago when I learned the odds of being in car crash resulting in someone needing medical attention was in 2000 per year.
posted by srboisvert at 5:06 PM on December 7, 2021
I still feel bad about a snowball I threw in grade 4 so I know hitting someone with a car would destroy me. I opted out of driving about 25 years ago when I learned the odds of being in car crash resulting in someone needing medical attention was in 2000 per year.
posted by srboisvert at 5:06 PM on December 7, 2021
If I'd ever seen a widespread camera installation that didn't regularly issue tickets in error and didn't involve being run by a private company that gets a lion's share of the revenue, I might feel better about them. I still wouldn't feel great about them since erecting speed cameras instead of fixing the damn road is quite literally subliminally telling people to do a thing and then fining them for doing the thing.
It's not actually a multigenerational project to fix our roads and streets. We are constantly tearing them up and rebuilding them at great expense because of wear and tear. If we had decided to do the right thing when I was born, we'd be nearly done already, and I'm only 40.
Problem is that would require vision, not vengeance, so instead we talk about punishing people for the failures of the system. A system which is failing all of us, whether we drive or not.
I'm all for reducing the speed of cars, by the way. In addition to the danger, they also make a huge fucking racket, which is dramatically reduced at lower speed. However, the problem has been studied to death for most of my life and it's well proven at this point that if you design roads that look like they are designed for high speed people will drive at high speed. The fact is that people simply don't look at their speedometer that much, and thank $DIETY, because if they did they'd not be looking at the damn road and I'd be even more likely to get creamed.
The answer is to make the roads feel dangerous where the people are to encourage walking, cycling, etc. and provide separated routes where people aren't for the cars to get around. Amsterdam was a car-centric hellscape in the 70s, yet today is one of the few urban areas where one can safely and pleasantly ditch the car. They didn't do it with a panopticon or some other quick fix, they did it with sustained effort to rethink how people get around a city and then did the work to make it a reality.
My story about the bridge in Miami was meant to illustrate that even people who are wedded to their cars can see the benefits of doing things differently. Like it or not, we need people who prefer driving to get on board as well if we want anything to change. They aren't the problem, the system is.
posted by wierdo at 5:13 PM on December 7, 2021 [8 favorites]
It's not actually a multigenerational project to fix our roads and streets. We are constantly tearing them up and rebuilding them at great expense because of wear and tear. If we had decided to do the right thing when I was born, we'd be nearly done already, and I'm only 40.
Problem is that would require vision, not vengeance, so instead we talk about punishing people for the failures of the system. A system which is failing all of us, whether we drive or not.
I'm all for reducing the speed of cars, by the way. In addition to the danger, they also make a huge fucking racket, which is dramatically reduced at lower speed. However, the problem has been studied to death for most of my life and it's well proven at this point that if you design roads that look like they are designed for high speed people will drive at high speed. The fact is that people simply don't look at their speedometer that much, and thank $DIETY, because if they did they'd not be looking at the damn road and I'd be even more likely to get creamed.
The answer is to make the roads feel dangerous where the people are to encourage walking, cycling, etc. and provide separated routes where people aren't for the cars to get around. Amsterdam was a car-centric hellscape in the 70s, yet today is one of the few urban areas where one can safely and pleasantly ditch the car. They didn't do it with a panopticon or some other quick fix, they did it with sustained effort to rethink how people get around a city and then did the work to make it a reality.
My story about the bridge in Miami was meant to illustrate that even people who are wedded to their cars can see the benefits of doing things differently. Like it or not, we need people who prefer driving to get on board as well if we want anything to change. They aren't the problem, the system is.
posted by wierdo at 5:13 PM on December 7, 2021 [8 favorites]
If I'd ever seen a widespread camera installation that didn't regularly issue tickets in error and didn't involve being run by a private company that gets a lion's share of the revenue, I might feel better about them.
Come to the UK.
posted by ambrosen at 5:14 PM on December 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
Come to the UK.
posted by ambrosen at 5:14 PM on December 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
FTA: "it will be entirely because the justice system was unable to keep him off the road"
This is weirdly compounded in DC: Maryland and Virginia drivers do not have to pay traffic camera tickets. This was a big story around here this fall, and it almost seems like MD and VA drivers have embraced it. For these drivers, there are no consequences for speeding and running red lights or stop signs as long as an officer doesn't see you doing it (this does mean that DC drivers don't have to pay their tickets in MD and VA, but there are *way* fewer DC drivers. A lot of the workforce here commutes in from MD and VA). Maryland and Virginia drivers owe D.C. more than $370 million in outstanding traffic and parking fines. There used to be a twitterbot that would look up unpaid tickets, but it seems out of service.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 5:20 PM on December 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
This is weirdly compounded in DC: Maryland and Virginia drivers do not have to pay traffic camera tickets. This was a big story around here this fall, and it almost seems like MD and VA drivers have embraced it. For these drivers, there are no consequences for speeding and running red lights or stop signs as long as an officer doesn't see you doing it (this does mean that DC drivers don't have to pay their tickets in MD and VA, but there are *way* fewer DC drivers. A lot of the workforce here commutes in from MD and VA). Maryland and Virginia drivers owe D.C. more than $370 million in outstanding traffic and parking fines. There used to be a twitterbot that would look up unpaid tickets, but it seems out of service.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 5:20 PM on December 7, 2021 [4 favorites]
I think in most of these instances we should focus less on personal responsibility and more on the systemic factors. The fact is that we've structured our cities in a way that privileges cars over pedestrians and that means that just simply means people will die or be greviously injured by cars (and in cars). When we embark on road building projects, we hardly ever make this fact apparent, that expanding this or that highway or building this stretch of interstate will inevitably cause X number of deaths and injuries. But the point is that, bad drivers or not, it's the way we build our roads and cities that are the causal factor here and nothing we do besides rearchitecting our cities in a way that favors human beings over cars will have a significant impact on the damage wrought by cars on the world.
posted by dis_integration at 5:21 PM on December 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by dis_integration at 5:21 PM on December 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
GPS plus in-car speed monitoring and recording would be a pretty simple way to enforce speed limits, and you could have a soft introduction of the technology by having insurance companies offer big (and profitable!) discounts for voluntary early adopters.
I voluntarily have an app from my insurance company that rewards me for good driving. Since I’m a granny driver, I currently have at least $500 worth of Amazon credit, which I can’t decide how to spend.
posted by Melismata at 5:26 PM on December 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
I voluntarily have an app from my insurance company that rewards me for good driving. Since I’m a granny driver, I currently have at least $500 worth of Amazon credit, which I can’t decide how to spend.
posted by Melismata at 5:26 PM on December 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
She agreed that he will be out of prison long before my life sentence ends.
I don’t know that the writer fully understands what a felony conviction and a prison sentence can do to someone’s life. It will absolutely not be over for him when he’s out of prison. I don’t think that improves anything or changes anything about it or makes it a better punishment or means we should feel bad for the guy going to prison but … going to prison isn’t something people just shake off.
posted by sock poppet at 6:09 PM on December 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
I don’t know that the writer fully understands what a felony conviction and a prison sentence can do to someone’s life. It will absolutely not be over for him when he’s out of prison. I don’t think that improves anything or changes anything about it or makes it a better punishment or means we should feel bad for the guy going to prison but … going to prison isn’t something people just shake off.
posted by sock poppet at 6:09 PM on December 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
And yet the most common form of speed enforcement, photo radar, is derided by opponents as a 'cash cow'.
If only there were some way to drive at a speed below the posted limit! Alas!
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:21 PM on December 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
If only there were some way to drive at a speed below the posted limit! Alas!
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:21 PM on December 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
I find it jaw-dropping that we don't regularly test drivers to see if they can continue to be safe drivers. You get your license mostly when you're young and after that, you're done until you die. Regular drivers tests should be a part of the system. Driving is a privilege, not a right.
Yeah, this is wild. I recently had to redo my forklift certification. The license is only good for 3 years, then you not only have to do a test to show that you still know how to drive, but there's hours of classroom training as well. And these machines only go like 12kph, tops. But cars are different I guess.
posted by rodlymight at 6:31 PM on December 7, 2021 [8 favorites]
Yeah, this is wild. I recently had to redo my forklift certification. The license is only good for 3 years, then you not only have to do a test to show that you still know how to drive, but there's hours of classroom training as well. And these machines only go like 12kph, tops. But cars are different I guess.
posted by rodlymight at 6:31 PM on December 7, 2021 [8 favorites]
We don't let people who are blind drive, or people who have seizures, regardless of how great their need may be or how rural a place they live in. Why should the able-bodied but incompetent be treated better? We should not allow people who drive badly to drive.
The problem is that by the time you find out someone is a bad driver, it's likely that they've already hurt someone--that's how they outed themselves as a bad driver.
I put off driving for as long as I could because I felt completely unequipped for it. At 16 I knew I would be an abysmal driver. I later drove for a handful of years out of pure necessity. In those handful of years I never had an accident involving a living creature, but I definitely had more close calls than I could stand. I gave up my car again the minute I possibly could. But I passed every driving test, every driving class.
It's a big joke to my family how I don't drive. Partly, the joking masks their annoyance, because it's a moderate inconvenience to them (I can't be summoned at a moment's notice, I sometimes need a ride). But partly it's just because they can't fathom how an otherwise smart and capable person can't drive. "How could you be a bad driver? You're smarter than us and we're good drivers!"
EXCEPT THEY AREN'T. My god so many of my relatives are fucking TERRIFYING DRIVERS. They drive distracted, they speed, they fudge their alcohol intake to themselves. They just have no idea because they haven't, thank fuck, been in terrible accidents yet. Or gotten DUIs (they've deserved a few).
So I don't know. What do we decide is the threshold for a bad driver? If we take them off the road after one death, one maiming--that's still one person dead or maimed. Is it enough? It's better than what we have...
If we find some way of determining the bad drivers Minority-Report style, then we save the lives of possible victims, but what becomes of the drivers? In how many regions are they then condemned to lifelong poverty?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 6:38 PM on December 7, 2021 [13 favorites]
The problem is that by the time you find out someone is a bad driver, it's likely that they've already hurt someone--that's how they outed themselves as a bad driver.
I put off driving for as long as I could because I felt completely unequipped for it. At 16 I knew I would be an abysmal driver. I later drove for a handful of years out of pure necessity. In those handful of years I never had an accident involving a living creature, but I definitely had more close calls than I could stand. I gave up my car again the minute I possibly could. But I passed every driving test, every driving class.
It's a big joke to my family how I don't drive. Partly, the joking masks their annoyance, because it's a moderate inconvenience to them (I can't be summoned at a moment's notice, I sometimes need a ride). But partly it's just because they can't fathom how an otherwise smart and capable person can't drive. "How could you be a bad driver? You're smarter than us and we're good drivers!"
EXCEPT THEY AREN'T. My god so many of my relatives are fucking TERRIFYING DRIVERS. They drive distracted, they speed, they fudge their alcohol intake to themselves. They just have no idea because they haven't, thank fuck, been in terrible accidents yet. Or gotten DUIs (they've deserved a few).
So I don't know. What do we decide is the threshold for a bad driver? If we take them off the road after one death, one maiming--that's still one person dead or maimed. Is it enough? It's better than what we have...
If we find some way of determining the bad drivers Minority-Report style, then we save the lives of possible victims, but what becomes of the drivers? In how many regions are they then condemned to lifelong poverty?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 6:38 PM on December 7, 2021 [13 favorites]
I'm glad to see my friend Andrew's story - and the story of many other people like him, frankly - is sparking such serious conversation about the roles that cars, and the impunity with which they can be operated, play in our society.
Me... well, I'm glad to hear his thoughts publicly, and I'm proud of his strength and resilience and thoughtfulness about this whole thing, which is something that people shouldn't have to face.
posted by entropone at 7:25 PM on December 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
Me... well, I'm glad to hear his thoughts publicly, and I'm proud of his strength and resilience and thoughtfulness about this whole thing, which is something that people shouldn't have to face.
posted by entropone at 7:25 PM on December 7, 2021 [3 favorites]
Visiting a friend who lives in East Texas four years ago or five maybe, I was deep into my 11 miles per day bike ride no matter what, rain or shine or hot or cold or wind or calm, I'm riding sometime between waking up and going to sleep. So I'm visiting my friend but I know enough to know that bicycles are seen as absolutely nothing, or less than nothing, so I stayed off any of the highways, mostly rode his neighborhood, with maybe two miles on a busy road but it had wide shoulders and I was hyper-alert.
This really cool guy pulled over his really cool old hot rod and came and said hi, said he's been seeing me, and what's the scoop? Turns out Tim is an avid bicyclist, we're talking long races, we're talking riding every day right here, and he's got an extra road bike and he's tall as I am so I fit and I'm game. It. Was. Insane.
There is real hatred aimed at you on a bike. This one woman, perfectly typecast, maybe 60 years old, big gray hair, driving -- No shit! -- driving this Buick. She sailed within 12 inches of me, had to be 60mph, maybe more, likely more. It wasn't constant but it was enough, I'd be on those rides with Tim with a Force 10 Pucker Factor, my butt wound up tight enough to power the electricity in a huge metropolis -- say, Houston -- had we some way of harnessing that energy from my rectum to electricity. (Having spent time in Houston, I know for a fact that it is pretty much the rectum of Texas, peppered as it is with flaring red republican hemorrhoids, their rantings and ravings sounding -- and smelling like, also -- vile, horrific, disgusting, red republican farts. But -- I digress.)
My buddy wanted me to move there, and it's true that I could buy a really nice place for under a hundred grand, if willing to wait a short while, a bit of patience, and also willing perhaps to replace kitchen cabinets and splash some paint around. Easy-peasy. But I had to explain to my friend, after coming to the understanding myself, I explained that if I moved to East Texas I would then be a person who lives in East Texas, and that I was not willing to do, regardless the beautiful trees. The bicycle rides were a great tell but just one of many, I think the one that really got me to seeing clearly. Bike rides are fun. East Texas is beautiful, but it is East Texas. Nope.
~~~~~
I don't even remember who it was, some singer-songwriter was talking about drinking in a tavern on a cold winter afternoon somewhere or other in Europe. They came out the door and the people who lived there began walking over this way, and the US citizens said "Hey, no, we parked over there." and the people from Europe were just unbelieving. You just flat don't drink and drive. If you *do* drink and drive, you never drive again. While here in the US we give lip service to driving being a privilege, and not a right, apparently it's different on the other side of the pond. Or so some un-named singer-songwriter claimed -- it must be true!
What we do know, this side of the pond, is that driving is seen as a right. I no longer drink, nor do my brothers, but when we did drink we'd say the next morning "Oh man, it's a good thing I was driving because I sure couldn't walk." It was a big joke. And, truly, we saw people who were unlike us to be fishes. If all your friends and all your relatives do it this way, well, that's how it's done. I wrecked a fantastic car, I had just finished building it, wrapped it around a tree. Cops would pull you over, shake their finger, tell you to go home, and if you wanted to, and didn't have any more beer in the car, you'd go home. One of my brothers especially wrecked a lot of cars. One Saturday night he wrecked his wifes brand new car, he and I, that next morning, blistering hangovers, we're in his garage thinking we're going to fix it -- completely delusional, we had a couple of boxes of tools that's it. We didn't think for a minute that he could have died, could have killed someone, or both of those -- what we were concerned with was how mad his wife was. That garage was cold but neither of us would go in the house, not for anything.
If after one of us lost -- for life, and no way out -- if one of us lost for life the privilege of driving, I can guarantee that it would have been different. We'd still have drank and drugged but we wouldn't have driven.
~~~~~
Last February we had this monster ice/snow storm, knocked Texas on its ass for three or four days, it was warmer inside my refrigerator than in my condo. Something else. I was still doing the bike rides, 11 miles a day, that first night it was not a problem at all, mostly just how goddamned cold it was but who cares. The second day sucked it, snow and ice everywhere, I must have fallen over fifty times, maybe more, but it was ice so mostly I'd go down and slide around. Plus one really good thing of riding as much as I did, I learned how to fall; you don't go down on your elbow and/or your hip, you sling your body 'round and hit on your ass and your shoulder, it's almost fun. (OK, so that's not true, but on the ice it wasn't too bad, what with the sliding part. And really, if you're on your ass and your shoulder it's meat not bone, not that big a deal.) The entire last half of that ride was a complete fucker, had to carry my bike most of the time, deep snow, I got home totally exhausted, to a icy condo -- sweet. I went down and started my truck, to warm up but also to charge phone and ipad. I'm talking to family in the Chicago area and it's warmer there than it was here inside my condo. Dang...
The next night I knew what to expect, plus there were not too many people out, ice and snow ET CET. I was having fun, falling down and whatnot, I got down to one street that goes over the dam, and it's tight tight tight, hardly any room, here's some asshole coming at me with his brights on, well, I have headlights and also flashlights that are LEDs, I can shine them in the sky and see Pluto, I grabbed that flashlight and aimed it dead in the drivers face, and here comes the flashing lights -- cops. Ah, fuck, I go over, I'm apologizing but also saying well hey, you did have your brights on ET CET and since I'm a white guy they didn't shoot me. In fact, they loved me, here I'm this old gray mope out on the ice, they couldn't get over it, they're asking me WTF and I'm all like "Hey, I ride every day, can't let a little weather get in the way" blah blah blah, we had some laughs, they told me to be careful, I told them of *course* I'm careful, which is ridiculous, we're all laughing, they go on their way, I stagger on my way, mostly had to carry the bike over the dam, on the other side the streets are death but they're empty so I'm just having my fun, go down, get up, go a few more feet, go down, on and on. It was snowy/icy so really great sliding when I went down.
I get across I35 and the streets are better and still nobody out, I'm just getting into downtown and went down again. I looked all around, no one to be seen in any direction, I start to pulling back up and this homeless guy gets to screaming, I look at him and he's pointing at the white SUV that is right on top of me.
I'd give a thousand dollars to have tape of what happened. I wear clips, I was still locked to the bike, I have to think that I pulled free of them, got my feet back and kicked off of his bumper or fender or who knows, I went sailing in circles (I think -- it was so, so fast) ended in the oncoming lane and this motherfucker in the SUV keeps on his way, dragging my bicycle. It's my favorite bicycle. He went maybe half block, then a passenger got out and set to getting my bicycle out from where it was caught under the SUV. The man made a mistake. He left me for dead. I wasn't.
It's my favorite bicycle.
I set to running, fast as I could.
I've been told that I have poor impulse control. I didn't consider that as I ran; what I considered was the pepper spray wrapped on my wrist, and the very sharp knife in my belt. I considered being left for dead. I considered again the pepper spray, the knife. I was clear-headed, very angry but very clear-headed.
Turns out that I have very good impulse control indeed.
I have the very best pepper spray you can buy. The door of the SUV was open from where the passenger got out to get my favorite bicycle free. I got into the SUV and greeted the man. It seemed that he didn't like pepper spray. At all. He got all hand-wavy. He turned aside, seemingly not wanting any more pepper spray in his eyes and/or mouth and/or nose.
His ear was a perfect target.
He didn't like that, either. I did, but he didn't.
More on his face, then his neck. And then I was done.
The passenger was returning as I was leaving. A woman. I told her that she was very lucky that she was a woman. And she was.
I walked over to my favorite bicycle. Mostly okay, lots of scratches though, some fragile parts trashed. I don't know who drove away; I cannot imagine it could have been the guy. I mistakenly got some of that on my arm once and it is fire.
I'm standing there with my favorite bicycle and who shows up? My policemen friends from the other side of town. Comical. I told them about it, they desperately wanted his license tag. I had no idea, nor cared. We talked some about pepper spray, how unhappy the guy had to be. We laughed a lot. I know that I am lucky that I'm a white guy.
I had to walk the bicycle home, derailleurs really trashed.
~~~~~
Magically, in the past year I lost half the strength in my heart. Always my heart has been a beast, now it is a kitten. If that. Yesterday morning I got a defibrillator installed high on my left chest. Thank god -- and I do, sorry to any/all atheists -- thank god I've got good insurance, and this whole thing isn't costing me everything I own. But it's cost me my strong heart. It's cost me peace of mind -- the numbers aren't terrible but they aren't great, either, I could die before I post this comment, which would probably be A Good Thing for you.
So ... But ... WTF? How did this happen? Can't know. It's just One Of These Things That Happens. But, three cardiac nurses have told me that many people who are covid long-haulers, what they are hauling are hearts as hosed as mine is.
I have hated, loathed, held in total contempt people who refuse to wear masks. Austin parades around pretending that it's A Blue City. But just ask The Fine Blue Citizens to wear a mask and a different color showed up, and in a big hurry. Austin is A Deep Purple city.
I can't know -- ever -- if covid cost me my cardiac health. There is certainly no other explanation. Still, I cannot know. But I loathe, and will loathe people who refuse to wear masks. I wish they had a defibrillator put into their chest yesterday. I wish them ill.
posted by dancestoblue at 7:31 PM on December 7, 2021 [23 favorites]
This really cool guy pulled over his really cool old hot rod and came and said hi, said he's been seeing me, and what's the scoop? Turns out Tim is an avid bicyclist, we're talking long races, we're talking riding every day right here, and he's got an extra road bike and he's tall as I am so I fit and I'm game. It. Was. Insane.
There is real hatred aimed at you on a bike. This one woman, perfectly typecast, maybe 60 years old, big gray hair, driving -- No shit! -- driving this Buick. She sailed within 12 inches of me, had to be 60mph, maybe more, likely more. It wasn't constant but it was enough, I'd be on those rides with Tim with a Force 10 Pucker Factor, my butt wound up tight enough to power the electricity in a huge metropolis -- say, Houston -- had we some way of harnessing that energy from my rectum to electricity. (Having spent time in Houston, I know for a fact that it is pretty much the rectum of Texas, peppered as it is with flaring red republican hemorrhoids, their rantings and ravings sounding -- and smelling like, also -- vile, horrific, disgusting, red republican farts. But -- I digress.)
My buddy wanted me to move there, and it's true that I could buy a really nice place for under a hundred grand, if willing to wait a short while, a bit of patience, and also willing perhaps to replace kitchen cabinets and splash some paint around. Easy-peasy. But I had to explain to my friend, after coming to the understanding myself, I explained that if I moved to East Texas I would then be a person who lives in East Texas, and that I was not willing to do, regardless the beautiful trees. The bicycle rides were a great tell but just one of many, I think the one that really got me to seeing clearly. Bike rides are fun. East Texas is beautiful, but it is East Texas. Nope.
~~~~~
I don't even remember who it was, some singer-songwriter was talking about drinking in a tavern on a cold winter afternoon somewhere or other in Europe. They came out the door and the people who lived there began walking over this way, and the US citizens said "Hey, no, we parked over there." and the people from Europe were just unbelieving. You just flat don't drink and drive. If you *do* drink and drive, you never drive again. While here in the US we give lip service to driving being a privilege, and not a right, apparently it's different on the other side of the pond. Or so some un-named singer-songwriter claimed -- it must be true!
What we do know, this side of the pond, is that driving is seen as a right. I no longer drink, nor do my brothers, but when we did drink we'd say the next morning "Oh man, it's a good thing I was driving because I sure couldn't walk." It was a big joke. And, truly, we saw people who were unlike us to be fishes. If all your friends and all your relatives do it this way, well, that's how it's done. I wrecked a fantastic car, I had just finished building it, wrapped it around a tree. Cops would pull you over, shake their finger, tell you to go home, and if you wanted to, and didn't have any more beer in the car, you'd go home. One of my brothers especially wrecked a lot of cars. One Saturday night he wrecked his wifes brand new car, he and I, that next morning, blistering hangovers, we're in his garage thinking we're going to fix it -- completely delusional, we had a couple of boxes of tools that's it. We didn't think for a minute that he could have died, could have killed someone, or both of those -- what we were concerned with was how mad his wife was. That garage was cold but neither of us would go in the house, not for anything.
If after one of us lost -- for life, and no way out -- if one of us lost for life the privilege of driving, I can guarantee that it would have been different. We'd still have drank and drugged but we wouldn't have driven.
~~~~~
Last February we had this monster ice/snow storm, knocked Texas on its ass for three or four days, it was warmer inside my refrigerator than in my condo. Something else. I was still doing the bike rides, 11 miles a day, that first night it was not a problem at all, mostly just how goddamned cold it was but who cares. The second day sucked it, snow and ice everywhere, I must have fallen over fifty times, maybe more, but it was ice so mostly I'd go down and slide around. Plus one really good thing of riding as much as I did, I learned how to fall; you don't go down on your elbow and/or your hip, you sling your body 'round and hit on your ass and your shoulder, it's almost fun. (OK, so that's not true, but on the ice it wasn't too bad, what with the sliding part. And really, if you're on your ass and your shoulder it's meat not bone, not that big a deal.) The entire last half of that ride was a complete fucker, had to carry my bike most of the time, deep snow, I got home totally exhausted, to a icy condo -- sweet. I went down and started my truck, to warm up but also to charge phone and ipad. I'm talking to family in the Chicago area and it's warmer there than it was here inside my condo. Dang...
The next night I knew what to expect, plus there were not too many people out, ice and snow ET CET. I was having fun, falling down and whatnot, I got down to one street that goes over the dam, and it's tight tight tight, hardly any room, here's some asshole coming at me with his brights on, well, I have headlights and also flashlights that are LEDs, I can shine them in the sky and see Pluto, I grabbed that flashlight and aimed it dead in the drivers face, and here comes the flashing lights -- cops. Ah, fuck, I go over, I'm apologizing but also saying well hey, you did have your brights on ET CET and since I'm a white guy they didn't shoot me. In fact, they loved me, here I'm this old gray mope out on the ice, they couldn't get over it, they're asking me WTF and I'm all like "Hey, I ride every day, can't let a little weather get in the way" blah blah blah, we had some laughs, they told me to be careful, I told them of *course* I'm careful, which is ridiculous, we're all laughing, they go on their way, I stagger on my way, mostly had to carry the bike over the dam, on the other side the streets are death but they're empty so I'm just having my fun, go down, get up, go a few more feet, go down, on and on. It was snowy/icy so really great sliding when I went down.
I get across I35 and the streets are better and still nobody out, I'm just getting into downtown and went down again. I looked all around, no one to be seen in any direction, I start to pulling back up and this homeless guy gets to screaming, I look at him and he's pointing at the white SUV that is right on top of me.
I'd give a thousand dollars to have tape of what happened. I wear clips, I was still locked to the bike, I have to think that I pulled free of them, got my feet back and kicked off of his bumper or fender or who knows, I went sailing in circles (I think -- it was so, so fast) ended in the oncoming lane and this motherfucker in the SUV keeps on his way, dragging my bicycle. It's my favorite bicycle. He went maybe half block, then a passenger got out and set to getting my bicycle out from where it was caught under the SUV. The man made a mistake. He left me for dead. I wasn't.
It's my favorite bicycle.
I set to running, fast as I could.
I've been told that I have poor impulse control. I didn't consider that as I ran; what I considered was the pepper spray wrapped on my wrist, and the very sharp knife in my belt. I considered being left for dead. I considered again the pepper spray, the knife. I was clear-headed, very angry but very clear-headed.
Turns out that I have very good impulse control indeed.
I have the very best pepper spray you can buy. The door of the SUV was open from where the passenger got out to get my favorite bicycle free. I got into the SUV and greeted the man. It seemed that he didn't like pepper spray. At all. He got all hand-wavy. He turned aside, seemingly not wanting any more pepper spray in his eyes and/or mouth and/or nose.
His ear was a perfect target.
He didn't like that, either. I did, but he didn't.
More on his face, then his neck. And then I was done.
The passenger was returning as I was leaving. A woman. I told her that she was very lucky that she was a woman. And she was.
I walked over to my favorite bicycle. Mostly okay, lots of scratches though, some fragile parts trashed. I don't know who drove away; I cannot imagine it could have been the guy. I mistakenly got some of that on my arm once and it is fire.
I'm standing there with my favorite bicycle and who shows up? My policemen friends from the other side of town. Comical. I told them about it, they desperately wanted his license tag. I had no idea, nor cared. We talked some about pepper spray, how unhappy the guy had to be. We laughed a lot. I know that I am lucky that I'm a white guy.
I had to walk the bicycle home, derailleurs really trashed.
~~~~~
Magically, in the past year I lost half the strength in my heart. Always my heart has been a beast, now it is a kitten. If that. Yesterday morning I got a defibrillator installed high on my left chest. Thank god -- and I do, sorry to any/all atheists -- thank god I've got good insurance, and this whole thing isn't costing me everything I own. But it's cost me my strong heart. It's cost me peace of mind -- the numbers aren't terrible but they aren't great, either, I could die before I post this comment, which would probably be A Good Thing for you.
So ... But ... WTF? How did this happen? Can't know. It's just One Of These Things That Happens. But, three cardiac nurses have told me that many people who are covid long-haulers, what they are hauling are hearts as hosed as mine is.
I have hated, loathed, held in total contempt people who refuse to wear masks. Austin parades around pretending that it's A Blue City. But just ask The Fine Blue Citizens to wear a mask and a different color showed up, and in a big hurry. Austin is A Deep Purple city.
I can't know -- ever -- if covid cost me my cardiac health. There is certainly no other explanation. Still, I cannot know. But I loathe, and will loathe people who refuse to wear masks. I wish they had a defibrillator put into their chest yesterday. I wish them ill.
posted by dancestoblue at 7:31 PM on December 7, 2021 [23 favorites]
We don't feel that way about manslaughter with other tools, BrotherCaine.
Seriously? As a country we spent decades killing people with farming equipment, assembly line equipment, chemicals, silicosis, table saws, guns without safeties, shitty diving equipment, poorly designed ventilation systems, worn out scaffolding, etc... etc... All dismissed with shrugs and fatalism. My father made a career out of cutting down how many people die young from environmental hazards in factories. I'd like the driver who hit Bernstein to die in a fire, but it's not because he hit Bernstein. It's because he left the scene. This fixation on blame of the driver masks the part of the problem we can fix. Because as a cyclist I don't care as much about the driver that's going to kill me as I do about the planners and engineers and civic leaders that are killing me and all of my cycling buddies. The terrible secret is that all drivers are horrible. Some are horrible every day, and some are horrible one day a year. I really don't think someone who constantly checks text messages while driving is any better morally than the person who took their eye of the road one second too long and killed a person for it. I think they're actually worse. But worse than either is the person who shrugs and says getting people to work two minutes faster is worth thirty thousand deaths a year or whatever horrific abattoir we've created with our car centric culture.
As for speed governors in cars, the funny thing is that the predecessors of the league of American bicyclists and AAA used to both lobby together for safer roads until a bunch of kids and pedestrians got hit in Chicago about a hundred years ago and someone came up with the idea of installing governors on engines. The car lobby campaigned hard against it, invented the crime of jaywalking and the primacy of cars and we've been at war ever since
posted by BrotherCaine at 8:21 PM on December 7, 2021 [14 favorites]
Seriously? As a country we spent decades killing people with farming equipment, assembly line equipment, chemicals, silicosis, table saws, guns without safeties, shitty diving equipment, poorly designed ventilation systems, worn out scaffolding, etc... etc... All dismissed with shrugs and fatalism. My father made a career out of cutting down how many people die young from environmental hazards in factories. I'd like the driver who hit Bernstein to die in a fire, but it's not because he hit Bernstein. It's because he left the scene. This fixation on blame of the driver masks the part of the problem we can fix. Because as a cyclist I don't care as much about the driver that's going to kill me as I do about the planners and engineers and civic leaders that are killing me and all of my cycling buddies. The terrible secret is that all drivers are horrible. Some are horrible every day, and some are horrible one day a year. I really don't think someone who constantly checks text messages while driving is any better morally than the person who took their eye of the road one second too long and killed a person for it. I think they're actually worse. But worse than either is the person who shrugs and says getting people to work two minutes faster is worth thirty thousand deaths a year or whatever horrific abattoir we've created with our car centric culture.
As for speed governors in cars, the funny thing is that the predecessors of the league of American bicyclists and AAA used to both lobby together for safer roads until a bunch of kids and pedestrians got hit in Chicago about a hundred years ago and someone came up with the idea of installing governors on engines. The car lobby campaigned hard against it, invented the crime of jaywalking and the primacy of cars and we've been at war ever since
posted by BrotherCaine at 8:21 PM on December 7, 2021 [14 favorites]
And then there's the active sabotage against any attempts to make the streets more equitable. Cambridge recently created a mile or so stretch of bus-only lane on Massachusetts Avenue; someone retaliated by throwing tacks and bricks in the road. A local business owner wrote a lengthy op-ed about how bicycles are a Chinese plot to control us (or something).
The Boston area is physically changing. Everywhere you go, there's construction going on, and the old and shabby older things in Boston are disappearing. And they're not even always replaced with anything new. So many mainstays of 20th Century Boston are gone. And a lot has been replaced for new commercial space ready for whatever new tenant will come along post covid. I commute from Medford to near Boston City Hall every day, on my bike, and I see this every day.
The thing is, for the people born here, they see every day a reminder that the city is reshaping itself, but not for them. Everywhere they go there's a reminder of this. And since the road re-work is also very much something the city is doing at the behest of newcomers and for newcomers, they're lashing out at it. This too shall pass.
posted by ocschwar at 8:55 PM on December 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
The Boston area is physically changing. Everywhere you go, there's construction going on, and the old and shabby older things in Boston are disappearing. And they're not even always replaced with anything new. So many mainstays of 20th Century Boston are gone. And a lot has been replaced for new commercial space ready for whatever new tenant will come along post covid. I commute from Medford to near Boston City Hall every day, on my bike, and I see this every day.
The thing is, for the people born here, they see every day a reminder that the city is reshaping itself, but not for them. Everywhere they go there's a reminder of this. And since the road re-work is also very much something the city is doing at the behest of newcomers and for newcomers, they're lashing out at it. This too shall pass.
posted by ocschwar at 8:55 PM on December 7, 2021 [2 favorites]
To add to idea of speed restricting cars to 25mph - the reason people are driving around in vehicles that weigh 3000-4000 pounds is that people want to be able to crash into a brick wall or other cars at high speeds and walk out the experience alive. This is massively inefficient in terms of our use of fossil fuels, and also one reason electrification has been difficult. We use a container weighing 3500 pounds to transport one human weighing 130 pounds....
Cars being speed limited to 25mph could achieve a similar safety profile while weighing just 1/4 of what they do today - you'd be looking at something similar to a golf cart, which with high tech materials should weigh about 800 pounds. Much more efficient, and much cheaper to produce as well.
Our production plant went through this evolution a a decade ago, where they replaced as many forklifts as possible with smaller electric buggies that towed several segments behind it like a train. A forklift weighs 6000 pounds unloaded and frequently shares space with human workers, and an accident can result in catastrophic injuries and death. Instead of moving parts around using pallets and boxes using forklifts, the entire workflow was redesigned so waist height electric vehicles would tow parts around the plant like a small train at low speeds. These waist height electric buggies were then automated - because of their low speed and relatively low weight, the risk of an accident was low, so they were allowed to drive around autonomously. Their slower speed was then not so much an issue because you weren't incurring the cost of a driver. The amusing part was when some of them would occasionally get lost and we'd have to send someone to hunt around the massive plant to find them.
I know it's nowhere near the same thing but in a certain point of view, it's something a private, for profit corporation has been able to do because it has full control over its processes, but something that seems almost impossible for a democracy in charge of a country to achieve.
posted by xdvesper at 9:36 PM on December 7, 2021 [14 favorites]
Cars being speed limited to 25mph could achieve a similar safety profile while weighing just 1/4 of what they do today - you'd be looking at something similar to a golf cart, which with high tech materials should weigh about 800 pounds. Much more efficient, and much cheaper to produce as well.
Our production plant went through this evolution a a decade ago, where they replaced as many forklifts as possible with smaller electric buggies that towed several segments behind it like a train. A forklift weighs 6000 pounds unloaded and frequently shares space with human workers, and an accident can result in catastrophic injuries and death. Instead of moving parts around using pallets and boxes using forklifts, the entire workflow was redesigned so waist height electric vehicles would tow parts around the plant like a small train at low speeds. These waist height electric buggies were then automated - because of their low speed and relatively low weight, the risk of an accident was low, so they were allowed to drive around autonomously. Their slower speed was then not so much an issue because you weren't incurring the cost of a driver. The amusing part was when some of them would occasionally get lost and we'd have to send someone to hunt around the massive plant to find them.
I know it's nowhere near the same thing but in a certain point of view, it's something a private, for profit corporation has been able to do because it has full control over its processes, but something that seems almost impossible for a democracy in charge of a country to achieve.
posted by xdvesper at 9:36 PM on December 7, 2021 [14 favorites]
Flat fines are not good enough. $200 is life-wrecking money for some people and trivial to others.
I want fines as a fraction of income. No income, and you're caught turning into a crosswalk and swerving around a pedestrian? You have to go to a week of road safety and risk management counseling, or community service, or something.
And if you do have a monthly income, you should lose at least a quarter of it every time you're caught endangering another human being's life. Every. Time.
posted by All Might Be Well at 9:37 PM on December 7, 2021 [11 favorites]
I want fines as a fraction of income. No income, and you're caught turning into a crosswalk and swerving around a pedestrian? You have to go to a week of road safety and risk management counseling, or community service, or something.
And if you do have a monthly income, you should lose at least a quarter of it every time you're caught endangering another human being's life. Every. Time.
posted by All Might Be Well at 9:37 PM on December 7, 2021 [11 favorites]
Nah, if you're caught driving recklessly, you should just not be allowed to drive for a while and, depending on the actual offense, a requirement for meaningful retraining (which in many states would actually just be training..as in the first time) or possibly therapy/anger management class as is appropriate. At the same time, we need to make it easier to get around without a goddamned car and also make license suspensions less punitive. In many states there are large fees and a significant waste of time associated with getting it reinstated even though there's no reason it shouldn't be automatic for anyone who isn't a repeat offender.
But really just fixing the streets so that they don't feel like they are primarily for cars will cut the sense of entitlement that leads to a lot of the really bad behavior.
I've personally seen reconstruction projects drastically cut down on shitty behavior and dramatically increase the number of pedestrians and bike riders practically overnight even when it wasn't a particularly good design, just not entirely centered around cars. I wasn't entirely convinced that it mattered that much until I lived in a neighborhood with widely varying streetscapes in a relatively small area and saw first hand how differently drivers behaved. Given the right kind of streets, even Miami drivers (who are much more aggressive than those in Boston or anywhere else I've driven) will calm the fuck down. Give them a race track, though, and they'll treat it like one.
posted by wierdo at 11:12 PM on December 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
But really just fixing the streets so that they don't feel like they are primarily for cars will cut the sense of entitlement that leads to a lot of the really bad behavior.
I've personally seen reconstruction projects drastically cut down on shitty behavior and dramatically increase the number of pedestrians and bike riders practically overnight even when it wasn't a particularly good design, just not entirely centered around cars. I wasn't entirely convinced that it mattered that much until I lived in a neighborhood with widely varying streetscapes in a relatively small area and saw first hand how differently drivers behaved. Given the right kind of streets, even Miami drivers (who are much more aggressive than those in Boston or anywhere else I've driven) will calm the fuck down. Give them a race track, though, and they'll treat it like one.
posted by wierdo at 11:12 PM on December 7, 2021 [6 favorites]
Regarding the system creating accidents, my biggest frustration is traffic lights at complex intersections that turn green while simultaneously the walk light illuminates for pedestrians on the cross street. Especially where the walk sign isn't visible to drivers.
The system here, starting from a state of zero conflict, tells two parties it is time to go. It increases conflict and injury.
It would be so much less cognitive load on drivers and pedestrians in a complex environment if the car green were prohibited while the walk sign was illuminated, or at least delayed to allow peds to initiate their crossing, and that this behavior be consistently applied to intersections with lights vs the current guessing game of "will we or won't we be told to enter this same spot at the same
time."
posted by zippy at 11:58 PM on December 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
The system here, starting from a state of zero conflict, tells two parties it is time to go. It increases conflict and injury.
It would be so much less cognitive load on drivers and pedestrians in a complex environment if the car green were prohibited while the walk sign was illuminated, or at least delayed to allow peds to initiate their crossing, and that this behavior be consistently applied to intersections with lights vs the current guessing game of "will we or won't we be told to enter this same spot at the same
time."
posted by zippy at 11:58 PM on December 7, 2021 [7 favorites]
To all the people in this thread that are talking about harsher penalties and more enforcement, etc., please remember: driving while black is still treated as a crime by many officers of the law. Any laws that are enhanced will not be enforced equitably: they will be used a pretexts for the detention and harassment of minorities.
You want to talk traffic calming, street redesign, traffic cameras, ok, let's engineer slower and safe streets, I'm all for that. But let's not give institutional abusers even more tools for being institutionally abusive.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 12:26 AM on December 8, 2021 [34 favorites]
You want to talk traffic calming, street redesign, traffic cameras, ok, let's engineer slower and safe streets, I'm all for that. But let's not give institutional abusers even more tools for being institutionally abusive.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 12:26 AM on December 8, 2021 [34 favorites]
Twenty years ago I was driving on a four lane city street with two lanes in each direction. Ahead of me was a crosswalk with lights flashing and a city bus stopped in the right lane in front of the crosswalk. In the left lane ahead of me was another car that proceeded to pass the bus, just as a six year old boy stepped out from behind the bus and was thrown forward by the car. I blocked the live lane of traffic and called 911, and then went up to see if I could assist with first aid. By the time I got up to the crosswalk, the driver of the car that ran the crosswalk was standing beside the boy who was clinging to his ten year old sister who had been protected by inches behind the bus. I explained that emergency services were en route, but the other driver insisted he was going to drive the two children to the local hospital only 5 blocks away. Despite my protestations that it would be best not to move him, they loaded him into the car that hit him and drove away. I followed them to the hospital to keep an eye on them and to act as a witness when the police arrived.
Fortunately, it turned out the boy was not severely injured. I gave my statement to one of the attending police officers, and asked if the driver was going to be charged. He said no, because he had stayed at the scene, acted responsibly, and would be punished by the trauma of reliving the accident. At the time I was very disturbed by this outcome.
Even as a bystander, I experienced quite vivid traumatic memories of seeing the incident for about a year afterwards and it still occasionally pops up in my memory to this day. I can only imagine what it would be like to be the at fault driver seeing, hearing, and feeling the boy hit first hand.
So my question now is, outside of irredeemable maniacs and unrepentant scofflaws, are the majority of perpetrators of incidents such as this really going to benefit from the punishment of having their licenses revoked or by doing jail time? Will society benefit? Would any ordinary person in this situation even be able to drive afterwards without traumatic flashbacks? Would they be likely to be at a high risk for repeat offenses?
And if we as a society do choose to punish them in this way, should we not then also provide the same punishment to drivers who engage in the same behaviors without the unfortunate timing of having victims cross their path?
posted by fairmettle at 12:41 AM on December 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
Fortunately, it turned out the boy was not severely injured. I gave my statement to one of the attending police officers, and asked if the driver was going to be charged. He said no, because he had stayed at the scene, acted responsibly, and would be punished by the trauma of reliving the accident. At the time I was very disturbed by this outcome.
Even as a bystander, I experienced quite vivid traumatic memories of seeing the incident for about a year afterwards and it still occasionally pops up in my memory to this day. I can only imagine what it would be like to be the at fault driver seeing, hearing, and feeling the boy hit first hand.
So my question now is, outside of irredeemable maniacs and unrepentant scofflaws, are the majority of perpetrators of incidents such as this really going to benefit from the punishment of having their licenses revoked or by doing jail time? Will society benefit? Would any ordinary person in this situation even be able to drive afterwards without traumatic flashbacks? Would they be likely to be at a high risk for repeat offenses?
And if we as a society do choose to punish them in this way, should we not then also provide the same punishment to drivers who engage in the same behaviors without the unfortunate timing of having victims cross their path?
posted by fairmettle at 12:41 AM on December 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
are the majority of perpetrators of incidents such as this really going to benefit from the punishment of having their licenses revoked or by doing jail time?
Australia is kind of an ongoing experiment in this: a member of parliament lost his license for 12 months after being caught with a blood alcohol level of 0.131. He was forced to leave his political career.
The law in Victoria is that you automatically lose your license for 6 months with a BAC of 0.05 to 0.10, and rapidly escalates after that - even with a spotless driving record.
Automated speed detecting / red light cameras are everywhere, I have to drive through 6 of them on my commute to work. You are automatically issued a fine if you exceed the speed limit. If you exceed it by 25kmph you immediately lose your license for 3 months, and it rapidly escalates from there.
Driving while your license is suspended means the police will immediately confiscate the vehicle you are in, even if it's not your vehicle - one of my friends had that happen to his car. Police have AI powered 360 degree cameras to scan all vehicles on the road as they are driving and they can detect vehicles owned by people who have had their license suspended, and will immediately pull them over.
Like, Australia projects an image of an easygoing, friendly nation, but at their heart they're actually pretty strict authoritarians.
posted by xdvesper at 3:48 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Australia is kind of an ongoing experiment in this: a member of parliament lost his license for 12 months after being caught with a blood alcohol level of 0.131. He was forced to leave his political career.
The law in Victoria is that you automatically lose your license for 6 months with a BAC of 0.05 to 0.10, and rapidly escalates after that - even with a spotless driving record.
Automated speed detecting / red light cameras are everywhere, I have to drive through 6 of them on my commute to work. You are automatically issued a fine if you exceed the speed limit. If you exceed it by 25kmph you immediately lose your license for 3 months, and it rapidly escalates from there.
Driving while your license is suspended means the police will immediately confiscate the vehicle you are in, even if it's not your vehicle - one of my friends had that happen to his car. Police have AI powered 360 degree cameras to scan all vehicles on the road as they are driving and they can detect vehicles owned by people who have had their license suspended, and will immediately pull them over.
Like, Australia projects an image of an easygoing, friendly nation, but at their heart they're actually pretty strict authoritarians.
posted by xdvesper at 3:48 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
To all the people in this thread that are talking about harsher penalties and more enforcement, etc., please remember: driving while black is still treated as a crime by many officers of the law. Any laws that are enhanced will not be enforced equitably: they will be used a pretexts for the detention and harassment of minorities.
You want to talk traffic calming, street redesign, traffic cameras, ok, let's engineer slower and safe streets, I'm all for that. But let's not give institutional abusers even more tools for being institutionally abusive.
Agreed. in NYC, the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives framed the need for "self-enforcing streets" through the lens of all these fundamental problems with racist and unreliable policing. It's a strong stance. Report here. (pdf)
posted by entropone at 4:12 AM on December 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
You want to talk traffic calming, street redesign, traffic cameras, ok, let's engineer slower and safe streets, I'm all for that. But let's not give institutional abusers even more tools for being institutionally abusive.
Agreed. in NYC, the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives framed the need for "self-enforcing streets" through the lens of all these fundamental problems with racist and unreliable policing. It's a strong stance. Report here. (pdf)
posted by entropone at 4:12 AM on December 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
I work in a business campus in Brooklyn, where they have a 20-mph speed limit for cars driving inside the campus. However, there isn't much traffic on the straightaway where my company is located, and I have seen so many fuckheads break the speed limit by treating it like a drag strip that I am seriously considering making note of their license plates and trying to do a citizens' arrest or something. Particularly the guy who has some kind of privacy-screen kind of thing over his license so you can't read it clearly if you're looking at it from the side - which means that fucker is regularly speeding and trying to get away with it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:27 AM on December 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:27 AM on December 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
Just want to reiterate but differently: Signs indicating a maximum speed don't and will never control the speed of traffic, which will always always go as fast as it can given the design of the roads. If you want 20mph traffic you have to build 20mph roads. It's wild to me how many people are saying: just go the speed limit! I've lived and driven in just about every major region of the united states and literally never seen a major road where it was safe to drive the speed limit. The only safe speed for the driver is the speed of the traffic, which is determined by the width of the lanes and other road design factors. Here in Milwaukee 43 and 94 run through the city with a 55mph posted speed, but with the same basic road design as the 70mph speed when you're outside the county limits. And so nobody drives 55, they drive 75 to 85 the way they do on the rest of the interstate. If you are out there driving the speed limit, you're going too slow and making the road less safe, ironically perhaps. Traffic moves according to the design of the roads, not the will of the drivers, it's a force of nature almost and we should think of it that way, according to it's own collective laws and not as the sum of individual actions, because that's what the evidence shows us. It moves in flows and waves and can be mathematically modeled, including estimates of pedestrian deaths and injuries. Drivers don't kill people, roads do
posted by dis_integration at 5:12 AM on December 8, 2021 [15 favorites]
posted by dis_integration at 5:12 AM on December 8, 2021 [15 favorites]
I've sometimes encountered digital "YOUR SPEED IS" signs which flash "THANK YOU" or even a large a smiley face when you're going at or below the posted speed limit.
I'd like to think they change driver behavior, but seeing as how I take trollish delight whenever I pass one while someone's really riding my bumper, they're probably having the opposite effect.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:07 AM on December 8, 2021
I'd like to think they change driver behavior, but seeing as how I take trollish delight whenever I pass one while someone's really riding my bumper, they're probably having the opposite effect.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:07 AM on December 8, 2021
For the sake of comparison, in the past thirty years, the number of people who've been killed in battle hasn't gone above about 150,000 deaths per year [PDF link].Approximately 1.3 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes.
The United Nations General Assembly has set an ambitious target of halving the global number of deaths and injuries from road traffic crashes by 2030 (A/RES/74/299)
Road traffic crashes cost most countries 3% of their gross domestic product.
More than half of all road traffic deaths are among vulnerable road users: pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists.
93% of the world's fatalities on the roads occur in low- and middle-income countries, even though these countries have approximately 60% of the world's vehicles.
Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 5-29 years.
In our cities and our freeways we have created the biggest and most brutal gladiatorial arena in history, in which everyone from teenagers to grannies has to strap themselves into their modern suits of armor and go out and try not to get hit. And every time we go into battle we kill the planet a little more.
posted by MrVisible at 7:02 AM on December 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
I asked a related question in Ask.me recently. My town will not build protected bike lanes and my understanding is that the de facto engineering regulations specify a minimum width for cars, but it's remarkably hard to get a straight answer on these kinds of questions.
There seem to be some wonderful people and organizations working on these design issues, but there's strong institutional inertia behind the default thinking that engineers and others are governed by.
posted by idb at 7:15 AM on December 8, 2021
There seem to be some wonderful people and organizations working on these design issues, but there's strong institutional inertia behind the default thinking that engineers and others are governed by.
posted by idb at 7:15 AM on December 8, 2021
fairmettle: "So my question now is, outside of irredeemable maniacs and unrepentant scofflaws, are the majority of perpetrators of incidents such as this really going to benefit from the punishment of having their licenses revoked or by doing jail time? Will society benefit?
Every day that a dangerous driver is not driving is a benefit to society, is it not?
Would any ordinary person in this situation even be able to drive afterwards without traumatic flashbacks? Would they be likely to be at a high risk for repeat offenses?"
You may be overestimating the fraction of the population that is "ordinary people." Even if only a small fraction is irredeemable maniacs and unrepentant scofflaws, they can do a lot of damage, and perhaps more to the point, create a climate of fear for other road users that permanently discourages people from riding bikes. I mentioned upthread a reckless driver nearly running into me on my most recent ride—on that 40-mile ride, I observed only (!) two motorists who I considered a threat, out of the hundreds I encountered that day. The drivers who are a threat are more often inattentive than malicious.
Also, the incident described in the OP happened on a country road, not in city traffic. It's a very different set of parameters, and a lot of the remedies discussed in this thread would be inapplicable.
posted by adamrice at 7:19 AM on December 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
Every day that a dangerous driver is not driving is a benefit to society, is it not?
Would any ordinary person in this situation even be able to drive afterwards without traumatic flashbacks? Would they be likely to be at a high risk for repeat offenses?"
You may be overestimating the fraction of the population that is "ordinary people." Even if only a small fraction is irredeemable maniacs and unrepentant scofflaws, they can do a lot of damage, and perhaps more to the point, create a climate of fear for other road users that permanently discourages people from riding bikes. I mentioned upthread a reckless driver nearly running into me on my most recent ride—on that 40-mile ride, I observed only (!) two motorists who I considered a threat, out of the hundreds I encountered that day. The drivers who are a threat are more often inattentive than malicious.
Also, the incident described in the OP happened on a country road, not in city traffic. It's a very different set of parameters, and a lot of the remedies discussed in this thread would be inapplicable.
posted by adamrice at 7:19 AM on December 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
Many years ago in Phoenix, AZ I was parked next to a guy at a stoplight, the light turned green but there was still a pedestrian, an elderly woman pulling a handcart, crossing the street. The guy behind my next-lane neighbor started blasting the horn, not a quick "hey the light turned green, I don't know if you saw" kind of beep but absolutely leaning on it. The gentleman next to me got out of his car, holding a baseball bat, calmly walked to the car behind him and absolutely destroyed the windshield and driver side window of the honker's car, then walked back to his car and proceeded through the intersection.
I think about that hometown hero a lot.
posted by kzin602 at 7:29 AM on December 8, 2021 [24 favorites]
I think about that hometown hero a lot.
posted by kzin602 at 7:29 AM on December 8, 2021 [24 favorites]
I haven't been able to find much case law about DIY traffic calming measures. I live on a residential street, directly across from a playground, but the street is used a major thoroughfare because there was zero planning that went into the city's layout. It's 25 MPH, a posted playground zone, less than 1/4 mile from two elementary schools, and people blast down it at 50+ literally all day every day. 311 closes the tickets as being outside their jurisdiction. Ask me how much the cops care about traffic enforcement. So if public safety has been openly abandoned, how much trouble would a hypothetical citizen get into for taking pedestrian safety into his own hands? I'm not talking spike strips or anything, just portable speed bumps--you wouldn't notice one at 25 MPH, but at 50 it'll completely wreck your suspension, and probably cause you to become a more paranoid cautious driver in the future.
Asking for a friend.
posted by Mayor West at 7:43 AM on December 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
Asking for a friend.
posted by Mayor West at 7:43 AM on December 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
Mayor West: "I haven't been able to find much case law about DIY traffic calming measures."
I once lived on a residential street that was mostly very quiet, but was used as a cut-through by pizza delivery drivers. Some neighbors used pickaxes to dig potholes. They never faced consequences, the potholes were never filled. YMMV.
posted by adamrice at 8:02 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
I once lived on a residential street that was mostly very quiet, but was used as a cut-through by pizza delivery drivers. Some neighbors used pickaxes to dig potholes. They never faced consequences, the potholes were never filled. YMMV.
posted by adamrice at 8:02 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
As a longtime cyclist who has dozens of cyclist-friends and acquaintances (I don't know Andrew personally, but in our small world, it's probably only one degree of separation), pretty much everybody I know has had near close calls on a regular basis, and many have been hit by a car. (For me, it's been twice; thankfully not injured seriously.) A woman in South Jersey was struck and killed on a group ride just last weekend; the driver has not been charged or even issued a fucking summons.
I ride to work at least three days a week, and I ride only on the street, paths are an option in the city, but not once I'm out in NJ. I surmise that because there are a lot of cyclists in the area, that we are a regular presence, so that helps protect us, but I still feel like I have to look at every intersection and entrance as a hazard point. I ride with two front and two rear lights after sunset, and I want to believe like I am being super extra careful, but I know that drivers are more enabled by technology and bigger, faster cars and feel like they can do anything.
A friend retweeted a link a few days ago about about including experiences with being passed super close by large trucks part of commercial driver training in Brazil. Which many people chimed in should be part of all driver training. If you knew what it felt like to have a car pass inches from your hip or handlebar, you'd likely be way fucking more cautious.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 8:04 AM on December 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
I ride to work at least three days a week, and I ride only on the street, paths are an option in the city, but not once I'm out in NJ. I surmise that because there are a lot of cyclists in the area, that we are a regular presence, so that helps protect us, but I still feel like I have to look at every intersection and entrance as a hazard point. I ride with two front and two rear lights after sunset, and I want to believe like I am being super extra careful, but I know that drivers are more enabled by technology and bigger, faster cars and feel like they can do anything.
A friend retweeted a link a few days ago about about including experiences with being passed super close by large trucks part of commercial driver training in Brazil. Which many people chimed in should be part of all driver training. If you knew what it felt like to have a car pass inches from your hip or handlebar, you'd likely be way fucking more cautious.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 8:04 AM on December 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
To all the people in this thread that are talking about harsher penalties and more enforcement, etc., please remember: driving while black is still treated as a crime by many officers of the law.
Also, speed limits are not delivered by gods - they are pulled out of thin air. Penalize enough voters, and they'll vote to remove the cameras or increase the speed limits. That's yet another reason why design is more important than enforcement.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:39 AM on December 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
Also, speed limits are not delivered by gods - they are pulled out of thin air. Penalize enough voters, and they'll vote to remove the cameras or increase the speed limits. That's yet another reason why design is more important than enforcement.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:39 AM on December 8, 2021 [9 favorites]
Correct. Fantasizing about governors that would make people go 25 on I-80 is not going to get anything done. Designing streets to make it uncomfortable or difficult to speed does.
posted by tavella at 9:57 AM on December 8, 2021
posted by tavella at 9:57 AM on December 8, 2021
I probably will never leave my carless life in Manhattan for reasons related to the discussion around this account.
I had an event in California recently and I wound up staying at a place six miles away. In NYC, that would be a leisurely 45-minute bicycle trip.
In California, I had a car, therefore I would obviously cover that distance more quickly, but then I had to build in a buffer to allow for traffic and for finding parking. So the commute took me the same amount of time.
But then I was also paying for the car itself, insurance, gas, maintenance and parking.
And I was risking death covering those six miles in a way I wouldn't risk by cycling it.
On a bicycle path, I'm not contending with fellow commuters darting around me in two-ton blocks of steel going 75 miles an hour. I don't have to be wary of some idiot who's distracted by clipping his nails or watching TV while commuting.
And on top of that, the car needed a place to stay while I attended my event. So there are these massive wastes of space called parking lots that sit unused for the bulk of the day, becoming massive heat sinks.
But when they're needed, often there isn't enough space, so drivers wind up driving in circles around them, looking for someone to leave, wasting their own time, and spewing more pollutants into the air for no reason.
And the there's the issue of securing the car. This is basically a massive room you drag with you everywhere you go. In California, where car theft is rampant, you worry about not leaving anything in the car that would tempt thieves.
Even if you leave nothing in the car, there is still the possibility that someone might smash a window because they saw something shiny and potentially valuable inside.
This car-centric culture seems like a horrible way to live. There are all these costs, and to what benefit? Just because people don't want to sweat a little or be exposed to strangers. Both of those things are good for you. This "fuck you I got mine" mentality is going to be the death of us.
And yet, most of America, and most of the world as it takes after America, seems to be going this way. Few people are invested in changing it, as the article shows.
Is there any escape from this lifestyle in the U.S. aside from NYC? What are the options globally?
posted by Borborygmus at 10:09 AM on December 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
I had an event in California recently and I wound up staying at a place six miles away. In NYC, that would be a leisurely 45-minute bicycle trip.
In California, I had a car, therefore I would obviously cover that distance more quickly, but then I had to build in a buffer to allow for traffic and for finding parking. So the commute took me the same amount of time.
But then I was also paying for the car itself, insurance, gas, maintenance and parking.
And I was risking death covering those six miles in a way I wouldn't risk by cycling it.
On a bicycle path, I'm not contending with fellow commuters darting around me in two-ton blocks of steel going 75 miles an hour. I don't have to be wary of some idiot who's distracted by clipping his nails or watching TV while commuting.
And on top of that, the car needed a place to stay while I attended my event. So there are these massive wastes of space called parking lots that sit unused for the bulk of the day, becoming massive heat sinks.
But when they're needed, often there isn't enough space, so drivers wind up driving in circles around them, looking for someone to leave, wasting their own time, and spewing more pollutants into the air for no reason.
And the there's the issue of securing the car. This is basically a massive room you drag with you everywhere you go. In California, where car theft is rampant, you worry about not leaving anything in the car that would tempt thieves.
Even if you leave nothing in the car, there is still the possibility that someone might smash a window because they saw something shiny and potentially valuable inside.
This car-centric culture seems like a horrible way to live. There are all these costs, and to what benefit? Just because people don't want to sweat a little or be exposed to strangers. Both of those things are good for you. This "fuck you I got mine" mentality is going to be the death of us.
And yet, most of America, and most of the world as it takes after America, seems to be going this way. Few people are invested in changing it, as the article shows.
Is there any escape from this lifestyle in the U.S. aside from NYC? What are the options globally?
posted by Borborygmus at 10:09 AM on December 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
Rich Americans vacation in major cities in Asia and Europe, marvel at how easy it is to get everywhere without a car and on public transit, maybe even use a bike as transportation; then go home to their suburbs and do everything possible to prevent their own cities from making the same changes.
posted by meowzilla at 10:17 AM on December 8, 2021 [16 favorites]
posted by meowzilla at 10:17 AM on December 8, 2021 [16 favorites]
There are two interesting things about being a cyclist:
1) You don't really spend much time thinking about how you will die. You already pretty much know. The question is, will it be instantaneous, or will I linger in a coma, or spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair and die by aspirating my food, etc? This may not be true statistically but when it's happening to you in real time, numbers tend to go out the window.
2) If you're a white male in Europe or North America, for a few minutes or hours each day, you get to experience what it's like to be an un-person. If someone kills you, nobody will care -- you probably had it coming. If someone violates your rights, nobody will defend them. If you do everything perfectly and obey the law to the letter, it won't make a difference -- you have to be better than perfect. Congratulations, you now have an infinitesimal window of insight into the lives of racialized and marginalized people. The difference is, you can always just get off your bike. (But I won't, because that's not how these battles are won.)
posted by klanawa at 10:24 AM on December 8, 2021 [11 favorites]
1) You don't really spend much time thinking about how you will die. You already pretty much know. The question is, will it be instantaneous, or will I linger in a coma, or spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair and die by aspirating my food, etc? This may not be true statistically but when it's happening to you in real time, numbers tend to go out the window.
2) If you're a white male in Europe or North America, for a few minutes or hours each day, you get to experience what it's like to be an un-person. If someone kills you, nobody will care -- you probably had it coming. If someone violates your rights, nobody will defend them. If you do everything perfectly and obey the law to the letter, it won't make a difference -- you have to be better than perfect. Congratulations, you now have an infinitesimal window of insight into the lives of racialized and marginalized people. The difference is, you can always just get off your bike. (But I won't, because that's not how these battles are won.)
posted by klanawa at 10:24 AM on December 8, 2021 [11 favorites]
There was an article on Medium 7 years ago that I often go back to, which is along the lines of klanawa's second point.
posted by miguelcervantes at 10:31 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by miguelcervantes at 10:31 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
I don't know anything about the specific facts of this case, so I won't comment on it.
I will say that as a general matter, based on my experience working in "criminal justice", I am deeply skeptical that increasing prison sentences for drivers is a good response to the problem as a matter of policy. I would much prefer to see changes to roads and transportation systems that encourage people to drive cars less and increase protections for bicyclists and pedestrians.
posted by mikeand1 at 12:45 PM on December 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
I will say that as a general matter, based on my experience working in "criminal justice", I am deeply skeptical that increasing prison sentences for drivers is a good response to the problem as a matter of policy. I would much prefer to see changes to roads and transportation systems that encourage people to drive cars less and increase protections for bicyclists and pedestrians.
posted by mikeand1 at 12:45 PM on December 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
I will say that as a general matter, based on my experience working in "criminal justice", I am deeply skeptical that increasing prison sentences for drivers is a good response to the problem as a matter of policy.
Don't necessarily put them in prison, but absolutely take away their license, and don't be afraid to do that permanently.
posted by Dysk at 1:14 PM on December 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
Don't necessarily put them in prison, but absolutely take away their license, and don't be afraid to do that permanently.
posted by Dysk at 1:14 PM on December 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
I am deeply skeptical that increasing prison sentences for drivers is a good response to the problem as a matter of policy
So am I. Infrastructure change -- not just road design, but cities and the overall distribution of people on the landscape -- is necessary. But I want to know why people are this way. It's not just that people are negligent or oblivious. Why the hostility, the rage, the anti-social behaviour? What is it about cars that makes us behave this way, and how do we deal with that?
posted by klanawa at 1:31 PM on December 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
So am I. Infrastructure change -- not just road design, but cities and the overall distribution of people on the landscape -- is necessary. But I want to know why people are this way. It's not just that people are negligent or oblivious. Why the hostility, the rage, the anti-social behaviour? What is it about cars that makes us behave this way, and how do we deal with that?
posted by klanawa at 1:31 PM on December 8, 2021 [3 favorites]
My theory is that high concentrations of carbon dioxide make people anxious and angry, and concentrations inside a car with the cooling system set to recirculate air in the cabin can get very high, very quickly.
Which might explain a bit about why police are the way they are in America; they do spend a lot of time cooped up in cars.
posted by MrVisible at 1:45 PM on December 8, 2021
Which might explain a bit about why police are the way they are in America; they do spend a lot of time cooped up in cars.
posted by MrVisible at 1:45 PM on December 8, 2021
What is it about cars that makes us behave this way,
posted by klanawa at 3:31 PM on December 8
When I'm in my pickup it's very easy for my big gross ugly ego to become extended as far around me as the truck is; we're talking 3200 pounds of ego wanting what it wants, demanding what it wants. Same as how a person can be in Las Vegas playing a video game and feel nothing as the smart bombs he set loose on a wedding party kill people he's never met, whereas if he was at that wedding party with a bunch of bombs in his pockets he'd see 5 year old and 8 year old laughing children, he'd see a happy family celebrating a beautiful occasion, he'd want to join the party, and likely he'd be invited to do so.
Ego sucks.
posted by dancestoblue at 1:52 PM on December 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by klanawa at 3:31 PM on December 8
When I'm in my pickup it's very easy for my big gross ugly ego to become extended as far around me as the truck is; we're talking 3200 pounds of ego wanting what it wants, demanding what it wants. Same as how a person can be in Las Vegas playing a video game and feel nothing as the smart bombs he set loose on a wedding party kill people he's never met, whereas if he was at that wedding party with a bunch of bombs in his pockets he'd see 5 year old and 8 year old laughing children, he'd see a happy family celebrating a beautiful occasion, he'd want to join the party, and likely he'd be invited to do so.
Ego sucks.
posted by dancestoblue at 1:52 PM on December 8, 2021 [2 favorites]
What is it about cars that makes us behave this way, and how do we deal with that?
See I disagree that road-rage as a concept is particular to cars. People get similarly pissed anywhere there is significant pedestrian traffic and people have conflicting goals, even when a mass of them are walking. The stakes are higher in cars, but the attitude is the same with or without.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:02 PM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
See I disagree that road-rage as a concept is particular to cars. People get similarly pissed anywhere there is significant pedestrian traffic and people have conflicting goals, even when a mass of them are walking. The stakes are higher in cars, but the attitude is the same with or without.
posted by The_Vegetables at 3:02 PM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Writer Stephen King was walking on a road, and was hit by a car with an inattentive driver. At one point, I read an article or saw an interview or 2 in which he expressed a lot of anger.
Random, really damaging accidents happen all the time to all sorts of people. The US is in love with cars and guns and it's hella expensive, but the fossil fuel lobby and the gun lobby and the Right are going to keep making it worse.
posted by theora55 at 3:29 PM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Random, really damaging accidents happen all the time to all sorts of people. The US is in love with cars and guns and it's hella expensive, but the fossil fuel lobby and the gun lobby and the Right are going to keep making it worse.
posted by theora55 at 3:29 PM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
We got our first serious snow here in Kingston. I had to work at a COVID vaccine clinic this afternoon, so obviously I walked to work. Again, it's snowing, has been pretty heavily all day, and of course the roads are cleared but the sidewalks are a fucking mess. I am crossing at four way intersection, hoping that I don't fall or slip as I do, and as I am crossing within the lines of the intersection, I am nearly nailed by a young woman in an SUV. Despite it being daytime, despite me being VERY visible crossing the street as there are no other pedestrians, she decided to risk it? I don't know? She slammed on her brakes and did that GODDAMN infuriating little "oopsie my bad" half-wave and weak grin.
I do not want to die by being hit by a car because I guess you can't wait the ten seconds it takes me to cross?
posted by Kitteh at 4:50 PM on December 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
I do not want to die by being hit by a car because I guess you can't wait the ten seconds it takes me to cross?
posted by Kitteh at 4:50 PM on December 8, 2021 [4 favorites]
... You know, there might be something to combining "people identify their car as an extension of themselves" with "ok, carceral solutions probably won't help here, but we need *something*".
Probably-won't-work-but-humoring-it proposal:
You hit someone, your car is proportionally damaged. (Originally the thought was "injure someone, your car gets crunched", but then there's the whole "limited disincentive to leave someone alive" thing that's turned out poorly in the past, so that should probably be left as an upper threshold)
No worrying about *why* you hit someone, just a clear connection between outcome & response. It's not a replacement for better systems, but as a civil-proceedings addendum, it returns a bit of viscerality to what's otherwise way too fungible of circumstances.
posted by CrystalDave at 5:22 PM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Probably-won't-work-but-humoring-it proposal:
You hit someone, your car is proportionally damaged. (Originally the thought was "injure someone, your car gets crunched", but then there's the whole "limited disincentive to leave someone alive" thing that's turned out poorly in the past, so that should probably be left as an upper threshold)
No worrying about *why* you hit someone, just a clear connection between outcome & response. It's not a replacement for better systems, but as a civil-proceedings addendum, it returns a bit of viscerality to what's otherwise way too fungible of circumstances.
posted by CrystalDave at 5:22 PM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Utah has two kinds of drivers: the ones who will almost kill you in a crosswalk because they’re utterly agnostic to pedestrian existence; and the ones who will almost kill you in a crosswalk while staring you square in the eye.
posted by armeowda at 5:56 PM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by armeowda at 5:56 PM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Just as an fyi for someone desperate to live in a place with remarkably considerate drivers, with everybody but most particularly for pedestrians, I give you: Berkeley California.
I've only been there a few times, and perhaps it was more in the suburban part of town rather that on the main drag and/or close to the university. But walking from my friends house, upon approaching a road everybody stopped. And they didn't make like it was some big deal that needed my acknowledgement, they just did it because it was the right thing to do.
That's been ten years ago at least and still it's strong in my memory of Berkeley.
Now, to live there, it's going to cost you a million, billion dollars, and that's just for groceries.
I fantasize a small Canadian town, almost a city but no, it's a town that could be like the best of Berkeley, people playing CSN "Our House" on their stereo without a shred of irony, flannel shirts maybe or a wool sweater and nice, high quality hiking boots worn by people as they take a fresh, incredibly healthy blueberry pie over to the house of the nice, sweet old lady who sang in the church choir for decades and she's slowing some now but nobody would ever not think of her. As they walked the pie to her house, people stopped their cars, they all waved Canadianly at one another and everybody had health insurance and were happy.
posted by dancestoblue at 6:41 PM on December 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
I've only been there a few times, and perhaps it was more in the suburban part of town rather that on the main drag and/or close to the university. But walking from my friends house, upon approaching a road everybody stopped. And they didn't make like it was some big deal that needed my acknowledgement, they just did it because it was the right thing to do.
That's been ten years ago at least and still it's strong in my memory of Berkeley.
Now, to live there, it's going to cost you a million, billion dollars, and that's just for groceries.
I fantasize a small Canadian town, almost a city but no, it's a town that could be like the best of Berkeley, people playing CSN "Our House" on their stereo without a shred of irony, flannel shirts maybe or a wool sweater and nice, high quality hiking boots worn by people as they take a fresh, incredibly healthy blueberry pie over to the house of the nice, sweet old lady who sang in the church choir for decades and she's slowing some now but nobody would ever not think of her. As they walked the pie to her house, people stopped their cars, they all waved Canadianly at one another and everybody had health insurance and were happy.
posted by dancestoblue at 6:41 PM on December 8, 2021 [6 favorites]
The guy who hit him wasn’t old, impaired, disabled etc.. “Pled guilty to the reduced charges of careless driving, leaving the scene of an accident, and criminal attempt to leave the scene of an accident. He was sentenced to two years in prison, mandatory two years of parole, and restitution”
Really lenient sentence for an asshole.
posted by Ideefixe at 7:25 PM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
Really lenient sentence for an asshole.
posted by Ideefixe at 7:25 PM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]
In Davis, California the drivers are incredibly cautious about possible bicyclists and walkers. And yet the streets are so wide and straight that people claim they were laid out for farm machinery.
But in Davis the police enforce people-priority traffic laws, very reliably.
posted by clew at 8:50 PM on December 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
But in Davis the police enforce people-priority traffic laws, very reliably.
posted by clew at 8:50 PM on December 8, 2021 [5 favorites]
But in Davis the police enforce people-priority traffic laws, very reliably.
Maybe, but Davis' mode share of bike riders has fallen dramatically, so again, enforcement is not enough.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:59 AM on December 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
Maybe, but Davis' mode share of bike riders has fallen dramatically, so again, enforcement is not enough.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:59 AM on December 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
I disagree that road-rage as a concept is particular to cars. People get similarly pissed anywhere there is significant pedestrian traffic and people have conflicting goals, even when a mass of them are walking. The stakes are higher in cars, but the attitude is the same with or without.
Road rage is dramatically worse in cars not only because the stakes are higher, but because it allows people to amplify their power through a machine and feel like a god among lesser beings. Put a motorcycle among cyclists and you get the same.
A car also feeds road rage through anonymity.
When you're among other cars, you don't see anything about the drivers, they're just faceless machines, so you assume the worse. You may think someone driving erratically is just an idiot, but if you could see their face, maybe you'd see they're crying and give them some slack.
Other drivers are anonymous to you, but your anonymity also feeds bad behavior behind the wheel.
A car has you moving so quickly and so cocooned in your metal box that everything outside of you is just an obstacle. A pedestrian or a cyclist is just another annoyance like a pothole or a trash can tipped in your way.
People don't need to register as people to you, because you're interacting with them in fractions of a second. The slower you go, the more people register to you. Cyclists also treat pedestrians as obstacles, but not as harshly, because the exposure time is longer. Motorscooter riders are worse than cyclists because their exposure time is even shorter.
Public transportation is a loophole: You can still register people as people, but go faster than you would by cycle or by foot.
In Davis, California the drivers are incredibly cautious about possible bicyclists and walkers. And yet the streets are so wide and straight that people claim they were laid out for farm machinery.
Davis also has some amazing bicycle infrastructure. Hello American River Bike Trail!
posted by Borborygmus at 9:10 AM on December 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
Road rage is dramatically worse in cars not only because the stakes are higher, but because it allows people to amplify their power through a machine and feel like a god among lesser beings. Put a motorcycle among cyclists and you get the same.
A car also feeds road rage through anonymity.
When you're among other cars, you don't see anything about the drivers, they're just faceless machines, so you assume the worse. You may think someone driving erratically is just an idiot, but if you could see their face, maybe you'd see they're crying and give them some slack.
Other drivers are anonymous to you, but your anonymity also feeds bad behavior behind the wheel.
A car has you moving so quickly and so cocooned in your metal box that everything outside of you is just an obstacle. A pedestrian or a cyclist is just another annoyance like a pothole or a trash can tipped in your way.
People don't need to register as people to you, because you're interacting with them in fractions of a second. The slower you go, the more people register to you. Cyclists also treat pedestrians as obstacles, but not as harshly, because the exposure time is longer. Motorscooter riders are worse than cyclists because their exposure time is even shorter.
Public transportation is a loophole: You can still register people as people, but go faster than you would by cycle or by foot.
In Davis, California the drivers are incredibly cautious about possible bicyclists and walkers. And yet the streets are so wide and straight that people claim they were laid out for farm machinery.
Davis also has some amazing bicycle infrastructure. Hello American River Bike Trail!
posted by Borborygmus at 9:10 AM on December 9, 2021 [2 favorites]
Davis, CA was pressured heavily by the county in the early 90s to grow faster than they wanted. The planning for controlled growth and easily reachable grocery stores in East Davis fell apart a bit and the town simultaneously became a bedroom community for workers in Sacramento and Rancho Cordova. Before that most people commuted to work within the city/county. Although the causeway to Sacramento is bikeable it's not a pleasant ride. I'm pretty sure those factors were the beginning of the end for peak bicycle mode share. Even great infrastructure doesn't make most people eager for a 25-30 mile bike commute. It will always be a bike friendly city, but I'm not sure it'll ever hit 30% plus mode share again
posted by BrotherCaine at 10:07 AM on December 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by BrotherCaine at 10:07 AM on December 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
The YT channel Not Just Bikes has several very interesting videos on the subject, including The Wrong Way To Set Speed Limits.
posted by xedrik at 10:38 AM on December 9, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by xedrik at 10:38 AM on December 9, 2021 [5 favorites]
The_Vegetables, that article doesn't discuss bicycling getting more dangerous in Davis, so at the very least you're moving the goalposts from "can't improve cycling safety until the built environment changes". It also discusses, if you read to the end, the election of a pro-bicycling government official planning to reverse some of the recent pro-car changes. So a majority of the voting population even after the state-scale changes BrotherCaine explains are in favor of re-asserting bicycling norms.
Personally, the long distance attractive bike routes made way less difference to me than the ability to not be frightened when biking home on a bad day, tired, unbalanced by groceries, in the dark. Biking for fun needs long go-fast routes. Biking as a norm needs the boring stuff to be safe even if you're slow. And it was policing norms that ensured the latter.
posted by clew at 1:06 PM on December 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
Personally, the long distance attractive bike routes made way less difference to me than the ability to not be frightened when biking home on a bad day, tired, unbalanced by groceries, in the dark. Biking for fun needs long go-fast routes. Biking as a norm needs the boring stuff to be safe even if you're slow. And it was policing norms that ensured the latter.
posted by clew at 1:06 PM on December 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
If you absolutely insist that road design is the only way that this can ever be tackled meaningfully, then there's only really one quick-fix "patch it now" solution: speed bumps on every single street, except highways (and whatever your local equivalent of an A road/landevej is). Make it so that you still can go too fast down the street in your car - once. Then you'll need another car.
posted by Dysk at 8:58 PM on December 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 8:58 PM on December 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
Make it so that you still can go too fast down the street in your car - once. Then you'll need another car.
posted by Dysk at 10:58 PM on December 9
You do this and you will kill people on the way to the ER, even in ambulances, perhaps especially in ambulances. Every second counts if a person is bleeding out, or is dead from cardiac problems IE heart attack(s).
ER care gets better seemingly every second -- it's truly amazing -- and many people who've been dead are able to be brought back. Still, if my loved one is in that ambulance bleeding out or dead from heart attack I want it moving 147 mph, siren wailing, lights flashing, mowing down anyone/anything in its path.
If I'm a bicyclist in that same neighborhood I want The Speed Bumps From Hell on every street.
posted by dancestoblue at 9:30 PM on December 9, 2021
posted by Dysk at 10:58 PM on December 9
You do this and you will kill people on the way to the ER, even in ambulances, perhaps especially in ambulances. Every second counts if a person is bleeding out, or is dead from cardiac problems IE heart attack(s).
ER care gets better seemingly every second -- it's truly amazing -- and many people who've been dead are able to be brought back. Still, if my loved one is in that ambulance bleeding out or dead from heart attack I want it moving 147 mph, siren wailing, lights flashing, mowing down anyone/anything in its path.
If I'm a bicyclist in that same neighborhood I want The Speed Bumps From Hell on every street.
posted by dancestoblue at 9:30 PM on December 9, 2021
Narrow lanes with obstructions on the sides slow drivers pretty well too.
posted by BrotherCaine at 10:40 PM on December 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by BrotherCaine at 10:40 PM on December 9, 2021 [3 favorites]
You do this and you will kill people on the way to the ER, even in ambulances, perhaps especially in ambulances.
Depends on the type of speed bump. It's not like we haven't got emergency services vehicles in Britain, but we sure have a lot of speed bumps!
posted by Dysk at 1:09 AM on December 10, 2021
Depends on the type of speed bump. It's not like we haven't got emergency services vehicles in Britain, but we sure have a lot of speed bumps!
posted by Dysk at 1:09 AM on December 10, 2021
It's very doable. Nanaimo has adopted a continuous sidewalk/bike lane policy which creates a speed hump at most collector/small road intersections by raising the road keeping bike lanes and side walks level (rather than keeping roads level and forcing bikes and pedestrians to go up and down).
And the there's the issue of securing the car. This is basically a massive room you drag with you everywhere you go. In California, where car theft is rampant, you worry about not leaving anything in the car that would tempt thieves.
It's basically impossible to secure a bike. Cars have come a long way with things like cryptographic keys but bike locks are vulnerable to anyone with a $100 for an angle grinder and a couple minutes at worst.
So if public safety has been openly abandoned, how much trouble would a hypothetical citizen get into for taking pedestrian safety into his own hands?
Automated speed detecting / red light cameras are everywhere, I have to drive through 6 of them on my commute to work. You are automatically issued a fine if you exceed the speed limit. If you exceed it by 25kmph you immediately lose your license for 3 months, and it rapidly escalates from there.
I wish our major rural freeway had entrance/exit cameras (average speed or segment control) that automatically ticketed anyone whose average speed over the timed segment was in excess of the speed limit. Unpopular with people concerned with government surveillance of course but here in BC we already have/had cameras capturing everyone who crosses certain major toll bridges. I'd especially like these systems to be used in work zones where highway workers currently get plowed down by drivers every year.
posted by Mitheral at 8:53 PM on December 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
And the there's the issue of securing the car. This is basically a massive room you drag with you everywhere you go. In California, where car theft is rampant, you worry about not leaving anything in the car that would tempt thieves.
It's basically impossible to secure a bike. Cars have come a long way with things like cryptographic keys but bike locks are vulnerable to anyone with a $100 for an angle grinder and a couple minutes at worst.
So if public safety has been openly abandoned, how much trouble would a hypothetical citizen get into for taking pedestrian safety into his own hands?
Halifax man resorts to 'guerilla traffic calming' on crash-prone streetCrash Barrels are about $300 a piece and are easily filled with water via garden hose. I imagine a few filled up down the centre of a residential street would be pretty calming.
Automated speed detecting / red light cameras are everywhere, I have to drive through 6 of them on my commute to work. You are automatically issued a fine if you exceed the speed limit. If you exceed it by 25kmph you immediately lose your license for 3 months, and it rapidly escalates from there.
I wish our major rural freeway had entrance/exit cameras (average speed or segment control) that automatically ticketed anyone whose average speed over the timed segment was in excess of the speed limit. Unpopular with people concerned with government surveillance of course but here in BC we already have/had cameras capturing everyone who crosses certain major toll bridges. I'd especially like these systems to be used in work zones where highway workers currently get plowed down by drivers every year.
posted by Mitheral at 8:53 PM on December 10, 2021 [1 favorite]
Milwaukee man creates makeshift roundabout
As the state continues to fail us, perhaps we can make do with other means
posted by dis_integration at 6:02 PM on December 14, 2021
As the state continues to fail us, perhaps we can make do with other means
posted by dis_integration at 6:02 PM on December 14, 2021
If you can, uh, liberate some municipal barricades even better.
posted by Mitheral at 7:33 PM on December 14, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Mitheral at 7:33 PM on December 14, 2021 [1 favorite]
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On the other hand, the driver was operating in a system we have chosen to build and continue to choose to maintain that prioritizes cars and their drivers to the point of putting other road users in often mortal danger. It's entirely possible to build cities and suburbs where cars are not required to live and are not a menace to society, but we continually refuse despite the very clear benefits to everyone, including even the most self centered drivers.
posted by wierdo at 1:39 PM on December 7, 2021 [25 favorites]