It really could have been anyone.
April 2, 2018 7:00 AM   Subscribe

"Having killed two people and hit three others, Dorothy Bruns did not receive a summons. Had her car not been wrecked, she might have been allowed to drive home. A couple of weeks after the crash, we learned that she had reportedly hit another pedestrian in September and sped off. Paperwork that would have led to a deeper review had gone unfiled. Like Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland shooter, she was recognizably unfit to handle a dangerous machine, known and perhaps flagged by the authorities but not stopped, leading to violent, preventable death. And a lot of people seem to think of a driver’s license in near-purist Second Amendment terms: as a right that can be revoked under only the most extreme circumstances." What New York Should Learn From the Park Slope Crash That Killed Two Children.
posted by showbiz_liz (96 comments total) 30 users marked this as a favorite
 
I met a guy once who was hit by a driver after they had locked eyes. When he contacted the police after he got out of the hospital, he was told that he needed to have pressed charges at the scene. While he was unconscious. He later learned this particular driver had hit st least two other cyclists or pedestrians.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:12 AM on April 2, 2018 [42 favorites]


Murder is pretty much legal in NYC as long as they're a stranger and you hit them with a car. I'm waiting for someone to remake "Strangers on a Train" based on this.
posted by Ampersand692 at 7:14 AM on April 2, 2018 [42 favorites]


They really should just stop allowing private vehicles in most of Manhattan.

But I have to remember this article when I make my argument about how guns should at least be regulated more like cars.
posted by aspersioncast at 7:28 AM on April 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


They could call it Strangers on a Drivetrain.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:36 AM on April 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


An average of 16 pedestrians are killed each day by American drivers. Seriously, the modern USA is about the most callous society you could have created.

I can name about three people with this on their political agenda--not one of whom holds an office or has any influence or gets any visibility. It's not like we don't know how to make streets safe for pedestrians. It's not like we don't know how to discourage driving in dense urban areas. We just--as a culture--chose not to do it.
posted by crush at 8:00 AM on April 2, 2018 [19 favorites]


aspersioncast: Park Slope is Brooklyn, but the point remains. It's a dense, walkable, and in the case of Park Slope, largely residential neighborhood. Cars should be second-class vehicles, if not third-class, in a place like that. And in Manhattan, even more so.

I live in New York City, but specifically, Central Queens. I'm 10 minutes from the subway on foot, but far enough out that many people own cars. It's plenty walkable, but it's literal spitting distance from a couple neighborhoods that basically requires a car. (One of these neighborhoods is also heavily Orthodox Jewish, so there's the large family factor necessitating car ownership too.)

Car culture, despite the... well, considering the state of the MTA right now, borderline-adequate public transit... is still pretty ingrained in New York City. A lot of police, including traffic police, don't live in the denser neighborhoods of Brooklyn or Manhattan. They live in Staten Island or Outer Queens (Far Rockaway or Bayside), where transit infrastructure is almost non-existent and cars are essential. So, they're taking their car-first way of life and applying lax enforcement of traffic laws in areas where those laws need to be strict and unforgiving.
posted by SansPoint at 8:01 AM on April 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


After reading the article I still don’t understand why murder-by-car is essentially legal, or who is doing something about making it, you know, not legal.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:02 AM on April 2, 2018 [6 favorites]


Murder is pretty much legal in NYC as long as they're a stranger and you hit them with a car. I'm waiting for someone to remake "Strangers on a Train" based on this.

Would that this were only NYC. It is incredibly rare anywhere I've ever heard of for drivers to be appropriately prosecuted for killing cyclists or pedestrians. It's amazing that a city can sink so much money into trying to get people to bike while still being utterly indifferent to cyclists getting flattened by cars.

Around here, in MPLS, it is customary for the police to use cyclist behavior (eg, the cyclist wasn't wearing a helmet, maybe if they'd worn a helmet their massive crush injuries wouldn't have killed them!) to justify letting the driver off the hook. Sure, you were drunk and speeding and blew through a red light, but it's the cyclist's fault because she didn't wear a helmet, something which is recommended but not required. You broke the law, but it's her fault.

Also, what about the pedestrians who get killed, should they also be wearing helmets?
posted by Frowner at 8:05 AM on April 2, 2018 [38 favorites]


NYC cops are car people (see above). upstate NYers that make statewide laws are car people.

cyclists and pedestrians are 2nd class (if that) citizens in their eyes.

this is why.
posted by lalochezia at 8:06 AM on April 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


For reference, I am a cranky native and current New Yorker who wants to enforce positively draconian traffic laws against private vehicles and require cyclists to have goddamn licenses and actually obey traffic laws and wants all of these things hella enforced, because goddammit New York is a pedestrian city first and always has been.

Park Slope is my old neighborhood. Ninth Street is terrifying, albeit not quite as terrifying as the wormhole that appears at 4th, Atlantic, and Flatbush. But TFA is right: these death traps are everywhere, and traffic enforcement is nowhere.
posted by schadenfrau at 8:07 AM on April 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


We do not know of a single case of a cyclist fatality in which the driver was prosecuted, except for D.U.I. or hit-and-run” - Leah Shahum, the executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition
posted by veery at 8:12 AM on April 2, 2018 [20 favorites]


As Frowner says, it's everywhere. Hell, it's not even limited to pedestrians and cyclists. A childhood friend of mine killed by an elderly woman who ran a red light and t-boned her car, and the sole punishment the woman received was the ticket for running the red light. I don't even know if her license was eventually revoked.
posted by tavella at 8:15 AM on April 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


Treat guns like cars (mandatory training, registration and murder insurance).

Treat cars like guns (put motherfuckers in jail when they take a lazy potshot at me with their SUV for kicks).
posted by Vulgar Euphemism at 8:19 AM on April 2, 2018 [12 favorites]


After reading the article I still don’t understand why murder-by-car is essentially legal, or who is doing something about making it, you know, not legal.

Here's some stuff. Despite NYC’s Vision Zero Progress, Most Hit-and-Run Drivers Avoid Arrest: Advocates say that, over the years, insufficient investigative resources, a toxic culture of victim-blaming, and a loophole in state traffic law have allowed hit-and-run drivers to slip through the cracks.

Stats: Overall, police are only making arrests in about 1 percent of all hit-and-run crashes each year, a rate that has not budged since 2013. Summonses are issued in some of the cases involving only property damage, but still only in about 1 percent of such cases.

Last year, only 9 percent of hit-and-run drivers who injured someone in New York City were arrested, according to NYPD data.

Even in the most serious cases, the majority of hit-and-run drivers see no consequences. In 2017, only 24 of the 62 hit-and-runs that resulted in critical injury or death led to arrest.


This is a sadly typical example of the cops' behavior:

Dulcie Canton was biking through Bushwick when she was struck at the intersection of Wilson St and Bleeker Ave, on August 7, 2014. The driver never stopped.

She was hospitalized for three days with brain trauma and a broken shoulder at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center.

Hours after the crash, Canton’s friend collected evidence at the scene with Steve Vaccaro, one of New York’s best-known traffic lawyers.

Security footage and a piece of a side-view mirror allowed them to identify the vehicle’s license plate and model, and subsequently, the vehicle owner’s name and address. The next day, they spotted the Chevy Camaro near the scene of the crash.

The evidence was passed on to the 83rd precinct, but Vaccaro says that weeks went by before police followed up. He was told the detective assigned to the case was on vacation. Later on, Detective Tallarine repeatedly said he was busy solving a murder, Vaccaro said.

“They don’t see it as a crime,” said Canton, referring to the NYPD. “They see it as civil. Let them hash it out with the insurance and that’s it.”

Vaccaro and Canton voiced their frustration at a community policing event, but the NYPD shrugged off their concerns and accused them of hindering the investigation by talking to the press.

posted by showbiz_liz at 8:20 AM on April 2, 2018 [27 favorites]


schadenfrau: I draw the line at requiring bike licenses, but I’m not opposed to stronger sanctions for bikers who violate traffic laws. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to dodge some asshole who either isn’t in the bike lane while I’m crossing the street, _is_ in the bike lane and still not stopping while I try to cross the street, or is riding on the goddamned sidewalk like an asshole. I’m sorry, but if you’re older than 12, you don’t get to ride your bike on the sidewalk!

In any case, though, the car drivers should be the first priority. Deal with them, then we can deal with shitty bike riders.
posted by SansPoint at 8:20 AM on April 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


I was knocked off my bike by a car that rolled through a stop sign and kept going, slowly enough to not really damage me or my bike but fast enough for me to go up on their hood and down to the ground hard enough to crack my helmet. When the police arrived at the hospital to talk to me (precautionary trip to make sure I really wasn't injured), they wanted to know more about why I kicked the car that hit me (from the ground but apparently hard enough to dent it) than about what happened. They didn't seem particularly satisfied with my answer either...because it hit me!
posted by kokaku at 8:25 AM on April 2, 2018 [24 favorites]


I’ve pretty much settled on that ownin and driving a car is as immoral as owning an assault weapon- I know it’s necessary, I know it’s hard to avoid, I know our civilization is built around them and having access to them, but private cars are killing us and our planet. We should work in any way possible to reduce dependence on them.
posted by The Whelk at 8:26 AM on April 2, 2018 [24 favorites]


True story...Once I was at the BMV to renew my license. At the station next to me, a worker was trying to administer the eye test to a very elderly man, who was there with his equally elderly spouse. The man would fail the test, the worker would adjust the viewer, he'd take the test again, and he'd fail it. With his glasses on.

Eventually, the worker broke the news to the couple that she couldn't renew his license because he couldn't pass the eye test. The couple were obviously distressed over this, and the wife spoke up, saying, "But, I can't drive, and he has to go to get our prescriptions." The worker renewed his license.

I've had to take the keys to the car away from my mom, and...oh man...hell hath no fury. In the US, losing the ability to drive is very much akin to losing your freedom and autonomy, especially if you live in a car-centric locale *COUGH*indianapolis*COUGH*
posted by Thorzdad at 8:32 AM on April 2, 2018 [29 favorites]


In the US, losing the ability to drive is very much akin to losing your freedom and autonomy, especially if you live in a car-centric locale

That's the really infuriating thing about the fuckery in NYC (not just the driver impunity, but the refusal to really invest in our crumbling transit system). As a huge, dense city, we are perfectly positioned to be the vanguard of great, non-car-centric urban planning in the US, importing and adapting the best tried-and-true ideas from Europe and elsewhere. Instead we have years-long fights over removing individual parking spaces while our buses crawl along at 6mph and our subway literally catches on fire.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:48 AM on April 2, 2018 [30 favorites]


The ecological and infrastructure case for removing cars from NYC is that the less space devoted to cars there is there is the less aspault covering the ground there is, more green space and bioswales means less flooding - and more frequent and larger floods are coming, not in the future but now.
posted by The Whelk at 8:51 AM on April 2, 2018 [4 favorites]



In the US, losing the ability to drive is very much akin to losing your freedom and autonomy, especially if you live in a car-centric locale

This is true, and yet there's no particular reason why it needs to be true.


Well, the reason it is to true is because more than half of the US population literally cannot leave their homes to fetch milk without a driver's license. Changing this means revving up bulldozers.
posted by ocschwar at 9:14 AM on April 2, 2018 [15 favorites]


Which is all to say: all of this is somewhat moot now, because we've spent nearly a century building up a car-centric infrastructure, backed by laws that favor cars. We don't just need to change the law: we need to change how we build cities

I mean yeah, but haven’t a bunch of European cities been like, hey this isn’t working, let’s change a bunch of things to make stuff safer and friendlier for cyclists and public transit? And it’s worked? Like designating some roads for bikes etc.

It seems like it’s more a political problem, not an infrastructure problem.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:16 AM on April 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


It seems clear to me that "but the cyclists!" pearl-clutching is a derail.

It also seems clear to me that when you provide a disproportionate amount of road space to cars, when people doing far safer modes of transport (walking and cycling) have to share precious little space (and compete with cars and transit), that you do set up conflicts. but ped-cyclist conflicts are not a problem with bikes, they are a problem with people having ceded too much damn urban space to car movement and storage. it's basically that cartoon about the capitalist who takes 9 out of 10 cookies and tells the worker that the immigrant is trying to steal the worker's cookie. except, you know, replace with cars, peds, and cyclists.

it's also quite clear to me that bike regulation will be another way for the police to crack down on poor people and people of color.
posted by entropone at 9:17 AM on April 2, 2018 [38 favorites]


it's also quite clear to me that bike regulation will be another way for the police to crack down on poor people and people of color.

It very much already is.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:19 AM on April 2, 2018 [16 favorites]


schadenfrau: haven’t a bunch of European cities been like, hey this isn’t working, let’s change a bunch of things

Yes, but those cities were planned and built pre-car anyway.
posted by tzikeh at 9:21 AM on April 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


it's also quite clear to me that bike regulation will be another way for the police to crack down on poor people and people of color

This is true of literally every power given to the police. The problem isn’t the regulation. It’s the police. Which also seems to be the problem with the lack of enforcement against drivers and the vehicular-homicide-is-de-facto-legal state of affairs.

I’m 100% down with eliminating the NYPD as it currently exists and building something new and different in its place, but that does seem like a larger conversation.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:24 AM on April 2, 2018 [15 favorites]


As long as a bicyclist stays in the damn bike lane

'One of the reasons I am against dedicated bike infrastructure is exactly this attitude: Maybe, once we get motor vehicles ticketed and towed for being in bike lanes, and get bike lanes swept and maintained to the same standards that automobile lanes are, but right now bike lanes primarily exist to create unsafe situations for bicyclists:

Vehicles parked in the lanes mean we need to merge out into motor vehicle traffic regularly.

Obstacles in the bike lane, from broken glass and gravel to grates with gaps set parallel to the direction of travel, mean we have to either brake hard to a stop, or swerve out into traffic.

Since we've already established that we can't keep subsidizing automobiles in the ways that we have, shared infrastructure, but that prioritizes bicycle travel, is the only way to go.
posted by straw at 9:24 AM on April 2, 2018 [32 favorites]


For reference, I am a cranky native and current New Yorker who wants to enforce positively draconian traffic laws against private vehicles and require cyclists to have goddamn licenses and actually obey traffic laws and wants all of these things hella enforced, because goddammit New York is a pedestrian city first and always has been.

One hundred percent with you on the draconian traffic laws for both cars and bikes (and I'm a biker). But thanks to Il Rude, this isn't as much of a pedestrian city as it used to be. Giuliani was New York's Mayor for Long Island; he affirmatively worked to make the city less friendly to pedestrians and more friendly to cars -- for example, by putting up gates on Third and Fifth Avenues, among many other places, so that cars had the right of way over pedestrians. He did this so as to please his Repub out-of-city friends, who were, of course, his real constituents in his mind.

I know I can't blame Giuliani for all of it, but he's to blame for a lot of it.
posted by holborne at 9:27 AM on April 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


I know I can't blame Giuliani for all of it

I’m actually fine with this though.

That’s what’s so frustrating, as showbiz_liz said — of all American cities, New York is probably the best candidate for non-stupid transportation and city planning (the scars of Robert Moses not withstanding). AND YET.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:33 AM on April 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


I don't know how many mefites follow Bike Snob, but he's been gradually evolving from super-snarky bike blog to voice of reason regarding bikes in NYC and beyond. His blog can still be sophomoric, but he writes a cycling forecast for Transportation Alternatives that addresses pedestrian and cycling advocacy. It's preaching to the converted, but it's sensible. Even better, he's been writing a column for Outside Online that (judging by the angry responses it gets) reaches a much broader audience.
posted by Drab_Parts at 9:36 AM on April 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


After a year of working as a personal lines insurance business development analyst where my first task of the day was to email a listing of all the large claims (over $100K CDN) details and reserves from the previous day. With only about 5% of the Ontario auto insurance market there was not a single day without claims over $100K, which means that there was always a claim for someone who died or was crippled. I resolved to never to drive again mostly because I didn't want to ever have that guilt. It's closing in on 25 years now.

You don't have to participate in the Western world's ritual sacrifice.
posted by srboisvert at 9:40 AM on April 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


Mod note: A few things removed; would have done so sooner if a power outage hadn't borked my flag notification window. Please yes do not steer this into yet another "but bikes" thread, we have had and will have plenty of those already.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:45 AM on April 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


I live in a part of Astoria, Queens (largely a safe, middle-class area) where drivers use local residential streets to cut through the neighborhood and reach the Grand Central Parkway and points (Triboro Bridge, BQE) beyond. The average level of driver aggression here is extreme and the average level of driver competence is unreasonably low.

On Sunday I was almost struck when crossing in a crosswalk by a mid-size SUV with Texas plates that cut around the car in front of it to make an illegal left on red. Later that same day I watched a middle-aged man in a minivan nearly run over an elderly woman while turning through another crosswalk and failing to yield.

I've had dozens of run-ins with aggressive drivers in the few years that I've lived here. I've been hit by a car that was rolling backwards on a very gentle incline because the driver did not understand how to operate a vintage manual transmission without hill stop assistance. Throughout, I've had to endure the dangerous driving of probably uninsured assholes and their muffler deletes and revving, loud car audio systems, and endless honking at inevitably snarled traffic.

I love cars. I went to the auto show last Friday and spent ten minutes staring at a beautifully restored Miura SV.

I don't think most people that drive in NYC are fit to drive. They are largely too stupid, too ignorant, too unskilled, too self-centered, too financially irresponsible to maintain a car and insurance, or too impaired. This extends both to people that live here and those - I'm looking at you, Jersey and Long Island - who have never cared to master public transit and instead gun it around my neighborhood looking for rarely available public parking spaces.

I vote yes on congestion pricing, mass transit investment, permanent license revocation for dangerous driving, and impounding of vehicles used in dangerous driving. I vote yes on jail time for treating other peoples' lives like mere inconveniences because your car grants you a sense of power and level of bravado that you'd never be able to muster on foot.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 9:46 AM on April 2, 2018 [18 favorites]


Would that this were only NYC.

Yes, exactly. Here in DC, it is awful yet almost hilarious to watch the ease of comfortable, distracted drivers just gliding through intersections, especially during rush hour when they'll block the whole intersection and crosswalks. Selfishness, making it worse for everyone.

I'm a pedestrian most of the time, I cross when the light tells me I can (jaywalking tickets are real), and it's still really fucking dangerous because drivers just. don't. care. Most of the time they don't even notice (I've noticed an increase in cars going the wrong way down one way streets, too. Probably due to bad GPS directions).
posted by everybody had matching towels at 9:48 AM on April 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


One of the reasons terrorists have switched away from bombs to vehicular attacks is because as a society we have already cocked the gun and pointed it right at our heads. Most road design is incredibly unsafe for pedestrians even assuming the most benign intentions and competence of drivers.
posted by srboisvert at 9:49 AM on April 2, 2018 [14 favorites]


Here's the most recent DOT report, for perspective: in NYC in 2016, cars injured 10775 pedestrians and 4592 cyclists, and killed 148 pedestrians and 18 cyclists. Cyclists injured 311 pedestrians and killed none.
posted by nicwolff at 9:50 AM on April 2, 2018 [12 favorites]


For a long time I lived near NYC's Boulevard of Death, Queens Boulevard (in Forest Hills). Every day I had to cross at Continental Ave to get to the LIRR to go to work and it was terrifying, and I was pretty sprightly in my mid-30s. I have no idea how the elderly got across. I see from the NY Times that it has benefited from the Vision Zero campaign, which I'm glad to hear. It was terrible having to cross there every day.

I grew up in Northeastern Queens, near the Nassau County border--buses but no subways and completely car-oriented. I walked nearly everywhere growing up, and got bumped by cars several times, but fortunately not seriously hurt--once someone just rolled right into the crosswalk and hit me. Cars shouldn't be allowed in the denser pedestrian areas of any of the 5 boroughs.
posted by ceejaytee at 9:55 AM on April 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


I've been thinking a lot about this part of the article:

Dorothy Bruns had a record. Her car had recently blown through four red lights and been cited for four other violations for speeding. She had retained her driver’s license, it would appear, long after she should have. How? Because those violations were written by speed cameras, and they record and ticket license plates and thus auto registrations. They do not ticket the drivers of those cars — because the camera can’t recognize who’s behind the wheel — and Dorothy Bruns’s license remained unblemished by them. Those cameras are useful, but they are inconsistently deployed. Having killed two people and hit three others, Dorothy Bruns did not receive a summons. Had her car not been wrecked, she might have been allowed to drive home.

I used to work in a building at an intersection with red light cameras. It flashed dozens of times a day. It was so distracting at first, we eventually got used to it, but as a pedestrian who had to walk through the intersection, it was especially unnerving. It seems ridiculous that those tickets are not tied to the driver, but the car. I mean, I understand the limitation of the camera not being able to tell who is driving, but until drivers feel the consequences of their actions they're not going to stop blowing through red lights.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 10:24 AM on April 2, 2018 [6 favorites]


One thing that's made me rethink some of the excellent points made above has been getting a job in the trades where I drive a work vehicle from place to place all day. It's basically a giant toolbox, complete with multiple ladders, and even if I worked exclusively in the city (Boston) rather than all over the state I'd still need something like this to be able to do my job. There's just no other way I can think of to cart my equipment around.

When I do work in the city—Boston, Cambridge, Brookline, Somerville, etc.—it's really a lot more difficult to work out of a van. Just finding a place to park this thing (and it's just a little compact cargo van) can be a real challenge, and frequently I end up parking illegally because carrying a 32' extension ladder for two blocks in the middle of the city is just not happening. I'm not here because I want to be, I'm here because I have to be. This is my job.

If you're someone who commutes in and out of a city every day, look around sometime during your commute and see how many of the vehicles around you have some kind of tradesperson in them. It's definitely more than I noticed before I started driving one myself. These are the people that make things go, the people providing essential construction and maintenance services without which cities would quickly break down and catch fire.

So while I absolutely am in favor of prosecuting drivers who injure cyclists and pedestrians, and of reconfiguring our cities to make walking, biking, and mass transit the preferred options for residents and for people who commute to an office and back every day (and maybe if we did that I could find parking in Cambridge and there'd be less traffic, yay) it's worth keeping in mind that a lot of us don't really have a choice about driving a car, and there needs to be a way for us to get ourselves and our gear to wherever the job happens to be.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 10:26 AM on April 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


haven’t a bunch of European cities been like, hey this isn’t working, let’s change a bunch of things

Did you know that some of the loudest (and most irritating) critics of Vision Zero and similar initiatives in the US are other cycling activists, dating back decades? Google the term "vehicular cycling", and you'll find a movement full of people who think that bike lanes and physical barriers protecting cyclists are dumb and bad and wrong, and they have successfully shut down several civic attempts to make cycling safer:

"Back when Forester's ideas were first starting to spread in the United States, planners in Amsterdam and Copenhagen responded to a grassroots movement against the motor-vehicle takeover of their streets by building separate lanes for bikes, blissfully segregated from bus and auto traffic by a physical partition. The result wasn't just more people riding bikes, it was more people of different types riding bikes: not just the courageous and athletic who tended to embrace vehicular cycling, but children and the elderly. . . . Forester, meanwhile, continues to argue against separated bike lanes, saying it reduces cyclists to begging for scraps of infrastructure, reinforces perceptions of cycling as inferior, and fills the streets with poorly skilled cyclists. Indeed, some of the most vociferous opponents of bike lanes are vehicular cyclists, who say becoming part of traffic isn't as difficult as it's perceived to be."

That's right: they think that if a cyclist gets hit by a car, it is because the person on a bike is not doing a good enough job at blending into traffic. (No word on what they think about pedestrians, who presumably cannot be framed as "vehicles".)

Anyway, the figurehead of the movement, John Forester, likes organizing barrages of hate mail to publications that talk about the benefits of barriers to protect bike lanes, and his followers like to rally to prevent regional attempts to build bike-safe infrastructure. It is completely bizarre. Their power is waning as the evidence against them builds, but for YEARS they were a major force in preventing implementation of measures that we know make cities safer.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 10:39 AM on April 2, 2018 [16 favorites]


On December 1, 2017, directly in front of a police station near my house, I was struck in a crosswalk by an inattentive driver. The car hit my ankles and legs first and then I rode up over the hood of the car, smashing the passenger side windscreen with my elbow and taking the brunt of the impact from the passenger-side windscreen spar on my right ulna, which snapped.

I was then thrown forward thirty feet as she braked to a halt, landing on my head in the street and smashing my glasses. Remarkably, I did not lose consciousness at all and vividly remember the moments of impact. More remarkably, the only lasting injury I experienced was my broken arm - no TBI, no skull fracture. Hell, I didn't even get a black eye!

She stopped, a cop pulling out of the station saw what had happened and flipped his lights on, called an ambulance, and so forth. She eventually called me to anxiously apologize just after her court appearance, which I gather involved a fine. This is, let me note for clarity, in Seattle, not New York.

I felt this story was appropriate here for a few reasons.

One, it would appear my driver was cited and fined.

Two, scanning the thread, I did not note any first-person stories of car-pedestrian accidents.

Three, I am fortunate not to have died.

My younger sister Suzy was similarly struck, but while riding her bike, and at a four-way stop. She was thrown into the car's windscreen and shattered it with her head. She was not as fortunate as me, and after two weeks in intensive care she died, twenty-nine years ago this September.
posted by mwhybark at 10:43 AM on April 2, 2018 [31 favorites]


So this very morning, in both New Jersey and New York, a reasonably heavy block of wet snow landed with a thud right in the middle of morning rush hour. Road conditions were notably unsafe. I'd be shocked if there was not property damage done, and probably injuries as well. I was not alone white-knuckling it out there, and I would bet real money that I was not the only person doing so due to company management having a giant stick up their collective butt about allowing people to work remotely. It's not even just errand running that requires a car, but workplaces located where driving is the only option, and a labor-management inequity that allows a "risk your life or your job - pick one" policy.
posted by Karmakaze at 10:48 AM on April 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


So this very morning, in both New Jersey and New York, a reasonably heavy block of wet snow landed with a thud right in the middle of morning rush hour. Road conditions were notably unsafe. I'd be shocked if there was not property damage done, and probably injuries as well. I was not alone white-knuckling it out there, and I would bet real money that I was not the only person doing so due to company management having a giant stick up their collective butt about allowing people to work remotely. It's not even just errand running that requires a car, but workplaces located where driving is the only option, and a labor-management inequity that allows a "risk your life or your job - pick one" policy.

When I worked in Minnesota, there was a week a few years ago when temps were going down into the -30s (farenheit), and it would be windy. News stations were airing pieces on how long it would take for exposed skin to freeze. Stay inside, amirite folks?!

My workplace distributed a memo saying that offices were most definitely OPEN, everyone was expected to come to work, but please be safe and keep a winter safety kit in your car.

I took the memo to my boss and said, "I take the bus and don't want to die at the bus stop, so I'll be working from home."
posted by entropone at 10:53 AM on April 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


For a long time I lived near NYC's Boulevard of Death, Queens Boulevard (in Forest Hills). Every day I had to cross at Continental Ave to get to the LIRR to go to work and it was terrifying, and I was pretty sprightly in my mid-30s. I have no idea how the elderly got across. I see from the NY Times that it has benefited from the Vision Zero campaign, which I'm glad to hear. It was terrible having to cross there every day.

Lived in Forest Hills in the '80s. Queens Blvd was referred to as "the bowling alley where senior citizens are the pins."

No longer live in NYC, but victim-blaming is so much an ingrained thing in the midwest that I never mention to others at work about near misses where someone ran a stop sign or whatever and nearly clipped me while I was walking to/from work. There is always one person who wants to play CSI and go through the whole thing in excruciating detail to triumphantly "prove" I was the one who did something wrong.
posted by lagomorphius at 11:12 AM on April 2, 2018 [17 favorites]


ceejaytee: I live out in Briarwood, but I'm in Forest Hills a lot, as it's the closest neighborhood to me with, you know stuff. That intersection is a mess, no question. Of course, I used to live near Roosevelt Boulevard in Philadelphia, and made the crossing at Grant Avenue plenty of times.

It helps to be just an aggressive pedestrian.
posted by SansPoint at 11:17 AM on April 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


After reading the article I still don’t understand why murder-by-car is essentially legal, or who is doing something about making it, you know, not legal.

In my part of the world, it would be because anyone who wants to insure pedestrians and cyclists are not killed regularly is declared to be part of the War on the Car and to have a sinister “agenda.”
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:36 AM on April 2, 2018 [7 favorites]




There are many ways to drastically reduce road deaths that do not involve locking people up because they made a mistake that any of us could make. This is a structural problem that needs to be solved with science and infrastructure, not rage at drivers.

Speed cameras, stiff fines, speed bumps, chicans, road diets, and longer yellow lights are all proven methods that drastically reduce traffic fatalities. Unlike pining for quixotic solutions, like massive infrastructure spending to make the US More Like Enlightened Europe, these approaches are often politically feasible to implement.

There are also a bunch of technologies on the horizon, like in-vehicle enforcement, collision avoidance, external airbags, which could make driving safer still. Self-driving cars may also drastically reduce fatalities.

Driving has already become vastly safer over the past 30 years. Traffic fatalities per vehicle mile have fallen in the US by about 80% since 1970. That is mostly due to technological progress, with a soupçon of regulation. Sweden and Switzerland have half the fatality rate per vehicle mile as the US. That is due to regulation and vigorous enforcement.

More technology, more regulation, and well vetted road engineering methods are the solution to traffic safety. Not hating on drivers or locking them up or advocating for massive infrastructural change that will never happen.
posted by andrewpcone at 11:54 AM on April 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


In my part of the world, it would be because anyone who wants to insure pedestrians and cyclists are not killed regularly is declared to be part of the War on the Car and to have a sinister “agenda.”

Yes. Let’s by no means overlook the culture war shit, where Real Americans™ travel everywhere by car – or, better still, pickup truck or SUV.
posted by non canadian guy at 11:57 AM on April 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


There are many ways to drastically reduce road deaths that do not involve locking people up because they made a mistake that any of us could make. This is a structural problem that needs to be solved with science and infrastructure, not rage at drivers.

I don't think the article was proposing that. But surely taking away the licences of demonstrably dangerous drivers isn't "rage at drivers"?
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:58 AM on April 2, 2018 [13 favorites]


I don't think the article was proposing that. But surely taking away the licences of demonstrably dangerous drivers isn't "rage at drivers"?

True, but several people on this thread have clearly expressed rage at drivers, and even advocated for it.

Countries with low fatality rates suspend licenses more readily than ones without. So I would say that it's a good idea. However, I am leery of the focus on personal blame, which often distracts from structural solutions. The massive progress made in road safety so far has been achieved by technology and boring regulations. Suspension of dangerous drivers is a good idea too, but it is not close to a silver bullet.

If we make this a culture war thing or a personal responsibility thing, it will get in the way of the boring, incremental progress that has demonstrably made us safer, and could easily continue to do so.
posted by andrewpcone at 12:05 PM on April 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


Via crashnotaccident.com:
Before the labor movement, factory owners would say "it was an accident" when American workers were injured in unsafe conditions.

Before the movement to combat drunk driving, intoxicated drivers would say "it was an accident" when they crashed their cars.

Planes don’t have accidents. They crash. Cranes don’t have accidents. They collapse. And as a society, we expect answers and solutions.

Traffic crashes are fixable problems, caused by dangerous streets and unsafe drivers. They are not accidents. Let’s stop using the word "accident" today.
posted by fairmettle at 12:07 PM on April 2, 2018 [15 favorites]


They are not accidents.

No. Traffic deaths are mostly accidents, because they happen inadvertently, by people acting in good faith. Drunk driving, workplace injuries, and falling cranes are still accidents, and there is nothing wrong wtih calling them that.

Negligence that causes an accident can still be a culpable failure. I do not believe the word accident induces a release from moral culpability.

We should be focusing on regulations and technologies, not policing language under the theory that such activity can induce changes that actually save lives. The causality runs the other way. Airplane and workplace safety were achieved by regulation, lawsuits, and strikes, not telling people to use different words.
posted by andrewpcone at 12:15 PM on April 2, 2018 [12 favorites]


Driving may be safer--smashing into other cars certainly is--but living with cars is becoming more dangerous. Drivers kill--on average--16 pedestrians each day in the US. That does not seem particularly safe to me.

We don't require drivers to demonstrate on-going knowledge of the skills necessary to drive. When we change laws--Illinois recently changed the law (which is never enforced as far as I can tell) concerning crosswalks and when drivers may enter one--we don't require already licensed drivers to demonstrate any understanding of new laws or even new features (like back up cameras--I can't use one and would not try. When I borrow my dad's car, it confuses the fuck out of me). We don't even road test drivers regularly. I have lived in six different US jurisdictions since getting my first driver's license--I have never been road tested or written tested even once since I got that first license.

We don't hold drivers sufficiently responsible for their errors. Sure, it could probably happen to anyone, but the least vulnerable road user has the most responsibility and should be treated accordingly when something goes wrong. Especially when that something killed a human being.

There is a fuckton wrong with the US right now. Safer sidewalks, better crosswalks, roads that discourage speed and transportation policy that encourages transit should be no-brainers.
posted by crush at 12:43 PM on April 2, 2018 [10 favorites]


Drunk driving is not an accident. Driving while drunk is not an accident. A drunk driver didn't whoopsie daisy fall into the driver's seat and oopsie hit the gas. Driving drunk is a choice, and whatever happens once they get behind the wheel is not an accident.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 12:48 PM on April 2, 2018 [19 favorites]


Which is not to say that other traffic incidents are accidents. But calling drunk driving an accident is ridiculous.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 12:51 PM on April 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


No. Traffic deaths are mostly accidents, because they happen inadvertently, by people acting in good faith. Drunk driving, workplace injuries, and falling cranes are still accidents, and there is nothing wrong wtih calling them that.

In my experience as a driver, people choose not to follow basic rules of the road that everyone learns in drivers ed -- stuff like following two seconds behind, stopping far enough behind at a traffic light so you can see the tires of the car in front of you, not rustling around in your purse while the car is moving, etc. Part of the problem, I think, is that most people vastly overestimate their driving abilities, so they think those rules are just crutches for the bad drivers, which is a group that doesn't include them, of course. Viewed in that light, many car collisions aren't accidents at all in the sense that they couldn't have been avoided. A collision caused by following one second behind in pouring rain isn't just a simple "accident"; it happens because someone decided that good practices are for other people but not them.
posted by holborne at 1:07 PM on April 2, 2018 [28 favorites]


Did you know that some of the loudest (and most irritating) critics of Vision Zero and similar initiatives in the US are other cycling activists, dating back decades? Google the term "vehicular cycling", and you'll find a movement full of people who think that bike lanes and physical barriers protecting cyclists are dumb and bad and wrong, and they have successfully shut down several civic attempts to make cycling safer:

My own personal experience is that taking the whole lane and otherwise acting just like a car nets me far better treatment than I get when I don't or the complete indifference to my life that comes with being a pedestrian. However, I don't think that says anything against dedicated cycle infrastructure, only that if the law didn't treat the manslaughter of a bicyclist as no big deal it wouldn't be difficult to share with cars in less dense areas where that kind of investment is harder to make happen.
posted by wierdo at 1:08 PM on April 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


I live in a town where not having a car means doing anything is a full day effort. The bus system is inadequate in every way. We are near a large Army base, so a large percentage of the cars on the road are muscle cars or monster trucks, driven by 19 year old boys. I would no more ride a bicycle on these streets than jump off a bridge.

When our office building was under construction for two years, we had to park about a half mile away. I was nearly hit by cars while crossing driveways, and while crossing the street in a crosswalk with a walk light.

People are doing everything but driving behind the wheel these days. I never presume that someone sees me, notices me, or cares that I'm there. I treat them like large unpredictable animals, and proceed with caution. Having the right of way won't keep me out of a hospital or a morgue.

We've had a number of pedestrians killed in town in the past couple of years. No one is charged. Everyone goes out of their way to blame the victim for being in the road, crossing outside of a crosswalk, etc. The street I work on is 6 lanes, and the speed limit is 45 mph (so folks do about 50-60 mph). There is one crosswalk for over half a mile of road, right near the only local hospital. The city's message to anyone with the nerve to be in public without a car is, "Hurray for me and fuck you."
posted by corvikate at 1:10 PM on April 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


But calling drunk driving an accident is ridiculous.

And I didn't. Drunk driving is not an accident. Killing someone while driving drunk is a an accident. It is also culpable, and is widely recognized as such. Please don't strawman me.

Driving may be safer--smashing into other cars certainly is--but living with cars is becoming more dangerous.

It's more complicated than that. Pedestrian deaths declined significantly in the US 1993-2007 despite population growth. They have recently come back up, reversing the previous progress. The reasons for this are complicated and not well understood. Cell phone use is probably the culprit, but it's a hard thing to stop. Enforcement and punishment did not become more lax during the last few years, so that does not account for the increase in pedestrian deaths.

Anyway, pedestrian deaths are still much rarer than driver deaths, and driver deaths have declined in the past few decades, while pedestrian deaths have stayed much the same. "Living with cars" includes both driving and walking near them, and I do not value pedestrian lives more than driver lives. As such, I am comfortable saying that "living with cars" has, in fact, become much safer.

Car killing pedestrians remain a major cause of death, especially for young people, and that is a serious problem. I'm not saying it isn't. Better enforcement of traffic laws would probably help. Technology will probably help too. Proven means of reducing speed in pedestrian-rich areas will help even more.

I have not heard of convincing ways to reduce cell phone use while driving. There are some ideas, but they are not well studied, and do not sound like they'd do much to me. It is an important problem, and if someone has good ideas for solving it, I'd like to hear them.

I am not convinced that re-testing drivers after initial licensure would do much to reduce pedestrian deaths. If you have evidence to the contrary, I'd like to read it, but I'm guessing you won't find that. Nor am I convinced that harsher punishments for killing people with a car would do much. People really don't want to kill people with their cars—I doubt throwing them in jail would do much for that. It would, however, be yet another way to destroy lives and families and keep our prison population high, while personalizing a problem more clearly solvable by more humane means.
posted by andrewpcone at 1:11 PM on April 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


The city's message to anyone with the nerve to be in public without a car is, "Hurray for me and fuck you."

Or maybe it's "Car use is inevitable, more people here get around by driving than by walking or biking, and this is the option we've chosen." I don't know your town, and while I can imagine there is some contempt for pedestrians/hippies/poor people there, I doubt it is the prime mover in road design.
posted by andrewpcone at 1:18 PM on April 2, 2018


Anyway, pedestrian deaths are still much rarer than driver deaths...

The linked article is about New York City. From this NYTimes article, 101 pedestrians in New York City were killed by cars in 2017 versus 57 in vehicles (and 23 cyclists and 33 motorcyclists).
posted by Drab_Parts at 1:28 PM on April 2, 2018 [11 favorites]


Car use is inevitable

Uh...what? Car use is not inevitable. I mean, that's just such a bizarre thing to say I'm not even sure why you expect anyone to take you seriously after you say it.
posted by holborne at 1:30 PM on April 2, 2018 [15 favorites]


And if all you can imagine is "some contempt" for poor people, I'm afraid the kindest thing I can say to you is that your imagination needs some tuning.
posted by holborne at 1:36 PM on April 2, 2018 [8 favorites]


Uh...what? Car use is not inevitable. I mean, that's just such a bizarre thing to say I'm not even sure why you expect anyone to take you seriously after you say it.

Aaaaand I did not say that. I'm saying that is the viewpoint I suspect is behind that pedestrian unfriendly road design.
posted by andrewpcone at 1:39 PM on April 2, 2018


And I didn't. Drunk driving is not an accident. Killing someone while driving drunk is a an accident. It is also culpable, and is widely recognized as such. Please don't strawman me.

lol these are literally your words:

Drunk driving, workplace injuries, and falling cranes are still accidents, and there is nothing wrong wtih calling them that.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 1:39 PM on April 2, 2018 [10 favorites]


lol these are literally your words:

Drunk driving, workplace injuries, and falling cranes are still accidents, and there is nothing wrong wtih calling them that.


Ah true. I meant killing someone because you were driving drunk. Is that better?
posted by andrewpcone at 1:41 PM on April 2, 2018


People really don't want to kill people with their cars

Dorothy Bruns cared so little for killing people with her car that she drove in a massively dangerous way numerous times,and killed two kids for it. If you definitely don't want to kill someone by driving, and you are impaired for whatever reason, don't fucking drive.
posted by threetwentytwo at 1:41 PM on April 2, 2018 [25 favorites]


it's worth keeping in mind that a lot of us don't really have a choice about driving a car, and there needs to be a way for us to get ourselves and our gear to wherever the job happens to be.

This is a point that isn't made often enough - you talked about tradespeople, but I'm also thinking of private duty nurses and domestic workers. In all these examples, these are people whose jobs revolve taking care of properties and people that may not easily be transit-accessible. Even in big cities with good public transportation, it's pretty common for job postings for PSWs/CNAs/whatever your jurisdiction calls them to require reliable private transportation. As semi-skilled long-term care jobs experience massive growth, and as we try to help more seniors age in places that may not be super transit-friendly, this will only become more of an issue. For workers to stay employable, and for our loved ones to age with dignity and agency, someone needs to drive.

The lack of perspective around the spatial realities of (chiefly) working-class work is something that's made me not want to deal with active transportation categorically anti-car advocates for years now. I'm a walkable-neighbourhood-living transit-taking white-collar worker myself, but it doesn't mean I have any patience for the kinds of ideologues who may choose to not have any familiarity with life outside working a 9-5 downtown desk job.
posted by blerghamot at 1:47 PM on April 2, 2018 [6 favorites]


That sounds like an argument for more wide-ranging, 24-hour transit, not some sort of trump that means cars are inevitable. Of course some people are going to have to drive, but just because that's the case, it doesn't mean that they have to take priority in planning decisions.

ETA: Heh - I posted before the strikeout in the previous comment, which pretty much addresses my concerns.
posted by sagc at 1:49 PM on April 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


Mod note: A few comments removed, cool it a little please. andrewpcone, to be super clear: there's an expectation on MeFi (reiterated on the comment-editing page itself) that folks not edit for content after the fact. Do not do that; if necessary, post a follow up comment to clarify. In any case, you've stated your case and are now kind of digging in here and need to give the thread a pass at this point.
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:50 PM on April 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


The 2nd Amendment analogy seems to be even more apt than I thought, since a lot of people seem to be reading "car use should be more regulated and some people should not have cars" as "they're coming for my car in particular and also literally all cars."
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:54 PM on April 2, 2018 [14 favorites]


To be clear, when I said “throw motherfuckers in jail” I meant drivers who are drunk or aggressively swerving at, accelerating at, and otherwise deliberately endangering pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers, not simply anyone at fault in an accident. Drivers are never held accountable for this behavior, in part because our legal system makes intentionality really difficult to prove.
posted by Vulgar Euphemism at 2:52 PM on April 2, 2018


I’m sorry, but if you’re older than 12, you don’t get to ride your bike on the sidewalk!

Orrr you could make riding bicycles on the sidewalk legal.

(Note: In Washington state, it's 100% legal to ride a bike on the sidewalk. I think this is actually a very good measure for many jurisdictions, though it probably wouldn't work in NYC.)
posted by Quackles at 4:00 PM on April 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


Park Slope is Brooklyn

Barely. :)

posted by aspersioncast at 4:24 PM on April 2, 2018


I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to dodge some asshole who either isn’t in the bike lane while I’m crossing the street, _is_ in the bike lane and still not stopping while I try to cross the street, or is riding on the goddamned sidewalk like an asshole.

Cyclists ride on the sidewalks because cars on the street will kill them. A lot of unsafe and sometimes illegal cyclist behaviors were developed to avoid illegal and murderous behavior by cars. (And sometimes they're just assholes, but those are hard to identify in the crowd of people just trying to stay alive.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:28 PM on April 2, 2018 [18 favorites]


Orrr you could make riding bicycles on the sidewalk legal.

Orrrr you could have Complete Streets that separate cyclists (and sometimes rollerbladers) from pedestrians (and sometimes rollerbladers). I'm a sometimes-cyclist, so I'm sympathetic to defensive cycling, and yet I'm tired of having to deal with cyclists who bring their maladaptive safety strategies to mixed-use trails and make themselves a nuisance to pedestrians.
posted by blerghamot at 4:38 PM on April 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


Frankly, cyclists (especially urban cyclists) often find themselves in situations where there is no good option for where to be. The street may be full of fast-moving traffic, with only four or five feet between the moving cars and a line of parked ones any of which could fling open a door at any moment. Meanwhile, the nearby sidewalk (even if legal) is filled with pedestrians, to whom a cyclist is a nuisance at best and a menace at worst. Sometimes all the choices are bad ones.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:33 PM on April 2, 2018


I have said repeatedly that it’s messed up we give licenses out, usually at a young age and that’s it. You’re never tested again. And treating having a licence as a God given right is a huge problem.
posted by Kitteh at 5:35 PM on April 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


The way that so many people give the benefit of the doubt to drivers, even in cases as blatant as this, is exhausting and terrifying. Today someone said something to me about Bruns along the lines of, that was so sad, but it's not like it was the driver's fault, she has a medical condition.

I am involved with street safety professionally and I have been hit by a car as a pedestrian in Brooklyn (with the right of way, in the crosswalk) and I am just so tired of patiently and constantly explaining that:
-You can be hit by a car without doing anything "wrong" (walking outside of the crosswalk, crossing against the light -- not that those things are morally wrong, or even a bad idea in many cases, or historically -- see the history of jaywalking)
-If you are hit by a car and tell the police what happened, it is likely they will believe the driver and blame you (and the idea of them even ticketing the driver is laughably unlikely)
-Yes, cyclists can break laws but cars are staggeringly more dangerous, plus licensing and penalizing cyclists will disproportionately affect low-income people, people of color, and undocumented immigrants
-Asking drivers to share the road with cyclists and pedestrians is not a "war on cars," it's allowing many more people to use our shared space in a more efficient, healthy and environmentally friendly fashion
-Every time you park in a crosswalk or a bus stop or something you are making it harder for people, especially kids, the elderly, and people with disabilities, to get where they need to go safely (and efficiently)
-Every time you call a crash an "accident" you are implying drivers don't have responsibility for their behavior (I wince these days when I hear the word "accident" even in a non-car context)

I can't express how much I appreciate that many of you have made these points in the thread. Anyone wanna hang out over beers and yell about cars, you know where my Memail is.

(PS: The cars and guns analogy is a great one; here's one really good opinion piece from the Brooklyn Paper.)
posted by ferret branca at 5:44 PM on April 2, 2018 [24 favorites]


It seems ridiculous that those tickets are not tied to the driver, but the car. I mean, I understand the limitation of the camera not being able to tell who is driving, but until drivers feel the consequences of their actions they're not going to stop blowing through red lights.

In the Australian state I'm in the car registration is tied to the license of the person who registered it, so by default the ticket and demerit points go to them - I don't see why this could not also be done in America? You can only get "out" of the fine if you have someone else step in and declare they were the driver, and take the fine (minimum $300) and points deducted from their license.

For cars not registered to any specific license, the organization gets fined at 10x the regular rate unless they can show proof of who was driving the car at the time (it's a legal requirement to maintain signed drivers logs of pool cars)

This is pretty much the ultimate nanny state. I drive through 5-6 cameras on my way to work, each way, and they'll nab you for going as much as 5kmph over the limit, I've never paid a fine or taken a demerit in 10 years of driving here. I've had a friend ticketed and losing demerit points for failing to "indicate for 3 full seconds before initiating a lane change". Speed limits in the city are 40kmph, and I think that's about the limit of the complexity that we can handle - trying to turn across multiple lanes of pedestrians, cyclists, cars and trams is surprisingly difficult, because each is traveling at a different speed, so your eyes need to measure sometimes 8 different clear points to judge it's "safe" for you to cross (4 types in 2 directions)
posted by xdvesper at 5:54 PM on April 2, 2018 [9 favorites]


I have lived in six different US jurisdictions since getting my first driver's license--I have never been road tested or written tested even once since I got that first license.

Really?
I've had drivers licenses in 3 additional states since getting my first one and every time I've had to take a written test in order to trade for a new one.

Granted a 20 question multiple choice test isn't exactly comprehensive but I'm surprised not everywhere requires even that little.
posted by madajb at 5:54 PM on April 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


I know one of the families who lost a child in this accident. Its absolutely dreadful what they're going to be going through for the rest of their lives. I guess at least Dorothy Bruns feels moderately bad for murdering two children and ruining the lives of their families. She knew she had a medical condition that caused her to have seizures. She chose to get behind the wheel of. car anyways. Two people are dead. No charges yet. Just gross.
posted by Joey Michaels at 7:13 PM on April 2, 2018 [12 favorites]


"Frankly, cyclists (especially urban cyclists) often find themselves in situations where there is no good option for where to be."

Indeed this has been my go-to summary for the cyclist's dilemma for quite a while now: given flawed infrastructure, forced to choose among no good options, blamed for the choice.

Last October I was finally doored. There's a lot I could say about what happened, but for now I'll relate this part: waiting in the police office, trying to track down the collision report so I could file a claim against the driver, looking through the literature in the waiting room. One catches my eye, a pamphlet about car/bicycle collision dangers. Almost all the scenarios in there are situations where the driver's at fault; but all of them are just about telling cyclists how to ride better to avoid them.

I had to work hard to suppress my temper when the cop finally showed up. (He gave an excuse why they yet again didn't know where the report was, incidentally.)
posted by traveler_ at 8:09 PM on April 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


I'm in Portland, OR.

One time a driver blew through a stop sign and almost hit me. As I swerved around her I flipped her off. She flipped me off too.

Another time I came to a complete stop at a stop sign. The driver behind me honked their horn and sped around me to get through the stop sign.

Another driver blew through a stop sign and pulled out right in front of me. I honked my horn at him and he did that obnoxious thing where he slammed on his brakes directly in front of me multiple times so I was in danger of rear-ending him each time.

I know every region has its story of bad drivers. Ask me about commuting on 101 in the SF Bay Area or unfamiliarly driving on the left in England or about Massholes, but PDX drivers shock me every day with their disregard for stop signs and red lights.

Agggh, you almost got me started on my litany of complaints. Ending this comment now.
posted by bendy at 12:21 AM on April 3, 2018 [2 favorites]


I doubt throwing them in jail would do much for that. It would, however, be yet another way to destroy lives and families and keep our prison population high, while personalizing a problem more clearly solvable by more humane means.

It's entirely possible to have significant punishments that don't involve jail or other necessarily life ruining consequences for those situations where wanton recklessness or severe or repeated inebriation aren't involved. License suspension or restrictions where suspension presents an actual severe hardship, restitution, mandatory training, etc are all possible.

To a large degree drivers either intentionally disregard pedestrians with the right of way or ignore them entirely as irrelevant and that isn't OK. As long as they can ignore their responsibility with impunity they will continue to do so. At the moment there are literally no consequences except in a very few cases.
posted by wierdo at 12:59 AM on April 3, 2018 [8 favorites]


Traffic deaths are mostly accidents, because they happen inadvertently, by people acting in good faith.

Would you call Chernobyl an accident? The operators had fine intentions, but aside from the one fellow who pointed out the risk, knowingly increased the risk of an incident thinking the worst case consequences were not nearly as bad as they were.

Nobody thinks that using their cell phone or ignoring traffic laws will end up with them killing someone even though it is entirely foreseeable. They assume that the worst case is they crash and their insurance premium goes up. It's knowingly negligent. Despite that, I don't hold them fully responsible since it's largely an artifact of how the human brain is wired with regard to low probability (individually), high consequence events.

That's why draconian punishment isn't called for here and also why people advocating structural solutions are on the right side of the issue in my view. ;)
posted by wierdo at 1:50 AM on April 3, 2018 [2 favorites]


It's also why reliable self-driving/driver assistance tech can't come soon enough for me. Maybe it's because I've been mostly a pedestrian these past few years, but I'd rather we deploy it widely as soon as it is demonstrably better than human drivers, even if only by a small increment at first, simply because it's likely any approved implementation will have essentially zero chance of hitting me unless I'm being reckless, unlike the vast majority of human drivers, who seem not to see me, even in a crosswalk, unless it's accompanied by flashing lights or an empty cop car.

Even simple road diets are expensive enough it will likely take longer to renovate enough streets to make a difference outside of the densest/most pedestrianized areas than it will to have a usable self driving car.
posted by wierdo at 2:06 AM on April 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


it's worth keeping in mind that a lot of us don't really have a choice about driving a car, and there needs to be a way for us to get ourselves and our gear to wherever the job happens to be.

This is true. However, I don't think this is a point against conversations about ways to improve street safety, reduce car use, and address traffic. I think it's actually right in line:

When there are fewer cars on the road, when roads are safer for non-driving users, and when other options become better, safer transit options (when the buses aren't stuck behind one person doubleparking, or that fedex truck parked in the "bus-only" lane), then the people who NEED cars for their job, for their disability, for their unique circumstance - well, then they suddenly find a much safer and more road/street network to use.

A lot of people don't NEED to use cars, but do so because of comfort, or perceived efficiency. It would be great if there were fewer cars on the road so that these people could be better served by transit - which would then double up on the benefits by taking more cars off the streets.

And it's also worth noting that sometimes this point about people who need cars to get to work is sometimes framed as a class issue - but in NYC, the data pretty clearly show that car ownership and car use skews strongly toward people with higher incomes.
posted by entropone at 6:09 AM on April 3, 2018 [9 favorites]


Traffic deaths are mostly accidents, because they happen inadvertently, by people acting in good faith.

Good faith includes both not ignoring known risks and not assuming your personal risk-assessment is accurate. People who drive while drunk, while using a phone, while they have a medical condition that sometimes makes safe driving impossible, are not operating in good faith.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 9:22 AM on April 3, 2018 [9 favorites]


That's why draconian punishment isn't called for here and also why people advocating structural solutions are on the right side of the issue in my view. ;)

She had already hit and injured a pedestrian in the previous year. At best she knew she had a medical condition that made driving dangerous to others, and at worst she was a willfully bad driver who didn't give a fuck. I really doubt all *four* red light tickets she had in the last two years were caused by seizures, personally. And if they were she was as bad as any chronic drunk driver.

So I'm fine with her getting quite seriously punished *and* structural improvements that will result in people with similar records getting their licenses stripped before they get the chance to kill people.
posted by tavella at 2:16 PM on April 3, 2018 [13 favorites]


Driving a car is a privilege, not a right. One of the requirements for maintaining this privilege is operating within the road rules. If a driver breaks a rule then they should be held accountable. Strict enforcement of this would require more attention on the part of the car drivers. Drivers should be tested on a regular basis. Enforcement should be strict. It would make car driving more of a pain in the ass. This would be a good thing.

All cars should have a black box that monitors driving. This would be useful in collision investigation and for the purposes of insurance payment calculations. If a driver doesn't operate their vehicle within the road rules then they should expect punishment. Fines, penalty points and driving bans should be expected, as well as re-education. I am pretty sure that something could be done with driving simulators.

I do not have a black box in my car, despite the chance that my insurance payments could reduce if I had one. This is because I do not think that my driving is always within the speed limit, or the road rules. Being constantly monitored would be incredibly annoying, but I accept that it should not be the case. That's on me. It is not an accident that I drive over the speed limit on interstate highways, it is a choice I make. However, when I am on an urban street I adhere to the road rules and keep within the speed limit. That is because there are people around, pedestrians and cyclists, children, dogs, cats, babies in prams and all manner of other unexpected, squishy, alive, obstacles that I really don't want to hit.

Currently, killing a person with a car is almost a surefire way of getting off without appropriate punishment. That has to change. Generally, cars are polluting, dangerous, anti-social devices. All of these things need to be tackled.

Equating car driving with freedom is a marketing lie. A lie that resonates strongly with the tenets of individualism, so it is not surprising that it permeates our society. A lie that we all pay for.

Insurance should be required.
A driver's hands and feet should be in contact with the control surfaces of the vehicle at all times. That means not using a mobile phone, flipping through the mp3 selection, changing a CD or radio channel or talking on the phone. The way around this is to have steering wheel mounted controls or voice activation. Or to not do it. Driving is complicated enough without the addition of distracting stimuli.
Car manufacturers should be forced to create cars that are safer for pedestrians in the case of an impact occurring.
Statistics on car collisions and incidents should be published, with car manufacturers named.
Restrictions on car size and capacity should be enforced in urban areas, like the Kei car in Japan. Obviously, those with money will generally be able to buy their way out of this, but we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The - 'many of the vehicles around you have some kind of tradesperson'

Maybe such people could have some kind of ID that states their trade? There are plenty of vocations and trades that could require vehicle use, they should have priority in congested areas.
posted by asok at 5:58 AM on April 4, 2018 [5 favorites]


When the speed limit was 55 MPH (~88 KMH) nationwide, I asked why cars weren't engineered to be unable to go past that, or at least, unable to go much past that. The answers I got were "mumble-mumble fuel efficiency something,"and even if it somehow was a hassle and a fuel expense to set up an inhibitor, I couldn't see why it hadn't been done.

It took me many years to figure out that absolutely nobody expected the speed limit to actually be followed; instead, it was a number to use for pricing penalty tickets.I had friends tell me that 55 mph was the minimum speed on the freeway. (And that driving was a right; revoking it would be a violation of personal autonomy.)

Whatever the tech limits were in the 70s, we certainly now have the ability to put computer-powered inhibitors on cars: locks that won't go faster than 85 mph, ever, and potentially won't go faster than 35 in cities that have enacted a "safe driving" protocol - which could get them tax cuts/bonus money. (Not to mention the money they'd save by not having accidents.) But again, absolutely nobody is campaigning on "force people to drive in ways that don't kill non-drivers."

Safe driving has never been a priority in the US.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 11:32 AM on April 4, 2018 [4 favorites]


We should be focusing on regulations and technologies, not policing language under the theory that such activity can induce changes that actually save lives. The causality runs the other way. Airplane and workplace safety were achieved by regulation, lawsuits, and strikes, not telling people to use different words.

Words shape thoughts.
posted by fairmettle at 12:40 AM on April 5, 2018 [3 favorites]


There is a lot of discussion here about the enforcement situation and how bad it is. In the UK we're told that the jury system is the reason motorists keep getting away with murder, as jurors are easy to convince that this "totally understandable slip-up" could be them next!

But the thing that gets me is how DUIs are more likely to convict. This strikes me as the biggest problem: a motorist with full faculties makes decisions, and we excuse the lethal decisions because they're lucid? That just on the face of it strikes me as utterly backward, and I hate it. Why do we convict for bad decisions made at the beginning of a journey, but not at the end?
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 8:12 AM on April 6, 2018 [4 favorites]


Columbia Journalism Review on not blaming the victims when covering car crashes. The last section's about the New York article from the FPP.

In related news, I just heard back from the police about a complaint I made a couple weeks ago about yet another driver trying to run me off my own street. "In order for us to successfully cite this person you would need to be able to positively identify the driver, beyond a reasonable doubt, and you would also need a second witness that is not related to you that would be willing to testify in court." I appreciate the response, and the officer expressed sympathy, but what I'd really like is for them to make the owner of that car aware of what the law requires, and that it matters when they behave in ways that could easily result in injury or death.

Reporting on car crashes in ways that deflect responsibility from drivers encourages dangerous driving behavior. Imagine if every story about a crash included clear information about possible ways it could have been avoided, or about the duty of care required while driving, without assuming that this info's obvious (it's clearly not, or we wouldn't have so many dead.)

For example, for every TV or radio or print news piece about injury to or death of a person riding a bicycle, we could use the repetition of: "the state of Colorado requires drivers to give people riding bicycles a minimum of three feet passing distance, and permits drivers to cross a double yellow center line to do so, when it's safe. If it's not safe to pass, drivers must wait at a safe following distance until it is safe, without engaging in intimidating behavior such as honking or engine revving." That could stand to be edited down a bit (and of course should reflect local law), but Colorado doesn't require any sort of testing to issue a driver's license for anyone who moves here with a valid out-of-state license. Not even a multiple-choice-of-road-sign-pictures written test. Most people living in Colorado weren't born here: why assume any knowledge of local law?

I'd like to hear the same somber tone used for "the driver proceeded through a green light without checking to see that the person using a wheelchair had cleared the crosswalk" or "the intersection has been the site of ten serious crashes in the past three years with no plans for redesign" that TV news reporters use for "the driver failed a breathalyzer test." Fuck their automatic sympathies with drivers. Get on with afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. And nobody's more comfortable than people in a climate-controlled barcalounger on wheels, complete with a full-surround entertainment system.
posted by asperity at 10:57 AM on April 6, 2018 [11 favorites]


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