define street safety in a way that centers the most vulnerable groups

August 7, 2022 9:53 AM

Tamika L. Butler's 2017 keynote "I'm Not Your N*****: Can Vision Zero Work in a Racist Society?" for transportation safety conference Vision Zero Cities is a brutal indictment of "color blind" bike advocates and transportation planners who embraced increased police enforcement as a key element in Vision Zero's push for zero pedestrian fatalities. In the wake of 2020's worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, many bike and pedestrian safety advocates spoke of the need to drop police enforcement from traffic safety initiatives like Vision Zero. Title quote is from mobility justice organizers at the Untokening who argued for an inclusive and equitable understanding of public safety in a pandemic.

More recently urban planner Charles T. Brown (of Equitable Cities) gave the 2021 keynote "Safe Streets for All: Centering Racial Equity in the National Vision Zero Movement".

posted by spamandkimchi (35 comments total)

That finish from the Charles T Brown posting is spot on.

"We're not all in the same boat.

We're in the same storm

There is a huge difference" .

-----

This is such a fucking fraught and difficult issue (talk about intersectionality!). Look at the entitlement and built environment that enables speeding and unsafe driving, that directly kills tens of thousands of people in the USA - Black, POC and white - in car crashes, EVERY YEAR.

Think about that number in the context of other deaths caused by bad systems with bad actors.

The culture change around driving and changing the built environment will take decades. Meanwhile, speeding and unsafe driving will continue and thousands will die yearly. There HAS to be deterrence, and in our current system, that's cops for now. And that's taking into account the fact that the cops are often the speeding/unsafe driving lawbreakers here.
posted by lalochezia at 10:23 AM on August 7, 2022 [10 favorites]

The League of American Bicyclists got rid of the "Enforcement" E from the 5 Es in 2020. They're the folks who say "your city is a platinum/gold/silver bicycle city" so even though they don't go far enough, hopefully it will help with educating a lot of the cities who haven't gotten this memo at all yet.
posted by aniola at 10:23 AM on August 7, 2022 [6 favorites]

Bicycle/Race: Transportation, Culture, & Resistance by Adonia E. Lugo, PhD is a popular book on this subject, here is an hour-long interview between publisher and author.
posted by aniola at 10:45 AM on August 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Way ahead of you in San Francisco: ‘What exactly are they doing?’: 45 S.F. traffic cops issue just 10 citations combined a day. (Note, this apparent work stoppage has not been matched with some enforcement mechanism that is less likely to be harmful and/or discriminatory.)
posted by Nelson at 10:49 AM on August 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

People seem to hate hate hate camera enforcement of speed, red lights, and texting while driving. However, to my knowledge a traffic enforcement camera has never murdered anyone so I think it might be an improvement.
posted by ghharr at 10:50 AM on August 7, 2022 [38 favorites]

Traffic cameras often distribute funds in a way that creates perveree incentives like shortening yellow times. But they also don't discrimnate against the poor and POC and that just can't be allowed to stand. Not being able to avoid a ticket because they are white or rich or attractive or some combination of all three is percieved as a crazy injustice.
posted by Mitheral at 11:35 AM on August 7, 2022 [10 favorites]

I stopped riding my bike for the most part about two years ago. I've had one too many close calls and I can't enjoy a ride - it's constant scanning and hackles up looking in all directions for the next thing that might kill me. Ironically there are more bike lanes than ever in Austin but the lack of speeding enforcement or significant progress on Vision Zero doesn't make it feel any safer. This is the land of pickup trucks whose hoods stand taller than me when I'm seated on my road bike. At an intersection less than a quarter mile from my home, with dedicated wide bike lanes and a separate timed bike signal, a driver of an oversized pickup with tinted windows ran the red very very late without slowing until we were both halfway into the intersection, me with the green. He stopped less than five feet from me and if I had gone over his hood there would have been little chance of survival. I threw my bike down and started screaming at the top of my lungs, and he proceeded to roll down his windows and do the same, blaming me of course for having the audacity to cross an intersection with the right of way in something other than a car. I was memorizing the plate before he rolled down his windows and told me to get fucked and I saw he wasn't white. I didn't report it, and APD have all but stopped responding to anything but a serious crime in progress anyway. I wish we didn't ban red light cameras in TX and I believe he deserved a suspension of his license if there had been video, or have a mandatory speed governor or sensor in his vehicle without further threat of jail time or death at the hands of cops. Everyone has an absolute right to bodily autonomy and due process that does not escalate to police abuse or criminal charges except in the most extreme cases where there is actual damage and negligence is established by a jury, but no one has an absolute right to drive. I don't want more cops, I want speed governors and red light cameras absolutely everywhere and license suspension to be routine and swiftly and near automatically handed down. I simply do not buy for one moment that deterrents and consequences for people like the guy who almost killed me simply amount to racist gentrification.
posted by slow graffiti at 11:39 AM on August 7, 2022 [11 favorites]

I really dislike red light cameras. Like all fine-based punishments, the crime becomes legal if you're rich enough. I'd rather ban private ownership of motor vehicles.
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:17 PM on August 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

that's why the enforcement mechanism has to be license suspension not fines - the vast majority of dangerous drivers in Austin are middle aged white men wealthy enough to buy an F350 and I am convinced the only thing that will get through to them is taking away their ability to drive their truck, followed by permanent revoking for willful repeated violation of the suspension.
posted by slow graffiti at 12:25 PM on August 7, 2022 [12 favorites]

Connecting cars caught on red-light cameras to specific drivers requires investigative work. And cops aren't doing even the bare minimum on enforcing traffic safety as it is, so I don't think getting them to look into every red-light camera lawbreaker to figure out who was driving so as to dock the right drivers license is gonna work.

So, make it linked to the car. For private vehicles, no matter who is driving, the vehicle's owner is ticketed. After a certain number of tickets, the car is impounded. Wouldn't that incentivize owners to not allow unsafe drivers to use their vehicles?
posted by minervous at 12:37 PM on August 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

Or fines can be a fraction of annual income! Also not perfect, but let that not be the enemy of getting the US roads somewhat less lethal.
posted by clew at 12:37 PM on August 7, 2022 [6 favorites]

the crime becomes legal if you're rich enough.

Some places countries charge fines based on income - not only more if you're rich, but also less if you're poor. I know that this seems pretty impossible to implement in the US, but fine-based punishments aren't inherently just a pay-to-drive-fast system for rich folks.

I do think we need to have more regulations about the size a personal vehicle can be before special licensing or whatever kicks in. It's already out of control and it's only getting more and more ridiculous.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:41 PM on August 7, 2022 [11 favorites]

I tried to get the predominantly white complete streets volunteer group I was a part of to have conversations about who we center in our advocacy and the implications of our actions. It became clear that thinking in terms of race and access to power wasn't a priority. But when I asked out loud in a meeting where priorities for the year were being chosen and it didn't make the list, that didn't go so well either.

We live in a racist society, our built environment was created in a racist society to align with racist systems, there are no equitable solutions that do not take this into account. Especially if the cops or fines are involved. Automated anything, including speed cameras do not exist in a race-free context.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 12:49 PM on August 7, 2022 [16 favorites]

Another (overlapping) vulnerable group that doesn't get enough attention as it relates to bicycles is homeless/houseless people. People whose best available option is to live in tents on the bike paths.

For example, the parks department of the county of Sonoma recently closed a major arterial bike path for a while again literally "because of the encampments", which they claimed were unsafe (on the phone, maybe newspaper articles) They sent the message that they believe that people who live in tents are dangerous, even more dangerous than being on a street with cars.

They're not. They're just people.

The local bicycle coalition focused exclusively on the bicycling aspect, and compared the basic needs of homeless people to car lane obstructions. "If folks were to set up tents in the middle of a vehicle lane, they would immediately be removed." I will note that I saw zero tents set up on the path, which I continued to walk regularly while it was closed. All the tents were off the path to the side.

The appropriate analogy should have been: "If the Sonoma County Parks Department were to set up fences in the middle of a motor vehicle lane, they would immediately be removed." The coalition's update ignores the people living on the path altogether.

This is in a San Francisco Bay Area community. My right to travel should not come at the expense of someone else's right to rest. We've still got a long way to go.

But to end on a small happy note, the county legally wasn't allowed to do a sweep because there weren't any shelter beds, so I heard tell that a lot of people on the path got put up in hotel rooms for a month. It's not enough, but I hope it helps some of them be on a path to a place where they have more and better options again.
posted by aniola at 1:06 PM on August 7, 2022 [6 favorites]

My right to travel should not come at the expense of someone else's right to rest.

I am not willing to go that far. No one has a right to set up camp right in the middle of public infrastructure that impedes the use of other people and endangers their safety. This isn't some anti-homeless position; homeless people ride bikes too. We live in a society where we share public resources and sometimes that means dedicated use like a bike lane.

The problem here is San Francisco's continuing failure to effectively help homeless people and help them find somewhere better to live than a tent in a bike lane. That problem is much larger than bike lanes. (As for the bike lanes, I'd start first with enforcement against cars that block them, that feels like a much more pervasive and urgent problem.)

Back to the original post, not enforcing traffic laws is bad for everyone. BIPOC people get killed by speeders and red light runners too. According to this study Black and Latino people die in traffic accidents at a much greater rate than white people. And here pedestrian injuries are higher for Black and Hispanic and Multiracial, lower for white and AAPI. Pedestrian safety is also a racial justice issue.

Absolutely any enforcement has to be done with sensitivity to abuses by law enforcement. I'm a strong fan of the idea of not using armed police to do traffic enforcement in normal circumstances. And enforcement systems need to be monitored to ensure they are not unfairly targeting racial minorities; structural problems like the unfairness of fines or the unbalanced result of red light cameras need to be addressed. We do badly at that. That doesn't mean we should give up on traffic enforcement entirely.
posted by Nelson at 2:51 PM on August 7, 2022 [11 favorites]

Bicycles have always been a disruptive technology that faced pushback for racist, sexist classist, and homophobic reasons, and yet bicycle affinity groups also have a long history of racism and other forms of discrimination themselves.

Washington Post - American cycling has a racism problem [ Archive.ph link ]
posted by Chrysopoeia at 3:01 PM on August 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Nelson, The bicycle coalition is advocating for automatic traffic enforcement using cameras, not no enforcement at all.

Also all these tents that Sonoma County Parks said were dangerous weren't even on the path, but were on the side of it, per aniola, so your suggestion of public infrastructure being disrupted is mistaken, I think. You reference a bike lane, this was explicitly a bike path, I think you perhaps conflated the two and imagined the bike lane being filled?

More generally, I think discussions of rights so often assume the libertarian flaw of imagining all people as equally capable and empowered. When talking about groups like people who bike ride and people who are homeless, even though there is overlap, that does not mean both groups are equally empowered to change circumstances.
posted by Chrysopoeia at 3:19 PM on August 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

I think you perhaps conflated the two and imagined the bike lane being filled?

You are right, apologies for not reading more carefully.
posted by Nelson at 3:43 PM on August 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

Tamika and Charles are great! I have the pleasure of having Charles on my team for an NCHRP project.
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 3:54 PM on August 7, 2022

So, make it linked to the car. For private vehicles, no matter who is driving, the vehicle's owner is ticketed. After a certain number of tickets, the car is impounded. Wouldn't that incentivize owners to not allow unsafe drivers to use their vehicles?

I could also count those tickets normally towards license suspension, requiring the vehicle owner to submit a claim under penalty of perjury identifying the driver at the time. Unlike the government, the owner knows the culprit so it won’t take them any time to identify them.

There is one equity concern here: generations of policy working as intended means that many Americans would have trouble going to work, shopping, etc. without a car. I would have a process allowing them to keep driving by either having their car outfitted with a 25mph speed limiter or showing that they’ve sold it and replaced it with one of those street-legal low-speed electric vehicles . The vast majority of unsafe drivers never do anything which you couldn’t do at 25mph but the fear of losing their ability to go vroom vroom would be extremely motivational for exactly the ones who need it most.
posted by adamsc at 4:00 PM on August 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

the vast majority of unsafe drivers never do anything which you couldn’t do at 25mph

I think you might be underestimating the number of people who live in areas that are only accessible by high speed roads. It's not very safe to doot doot down these roads going 25mph.

Now, I'm not saying I think dangerous drivers shouldn't have their cars taken away. Just that I don't think this is a very safe or equitable alternative.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:36 PM on August 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

People seem to hate hate hate camera enforcement of speed, red lights, and texting while driving.

Oh, indeed. My hometown just set some up and I see the comments on the news stories where lots of self-declared law-and-order types* discuss ways to destroy them. They are very poorly calibrated, you see, and too quick on the draw. If the speed limit is 50, you will get ticketed if you are doing 46, I am told, or even 50.001. Where is the humanity, they cry?

Now, you might wonder how someone could know when they are doing 50.001. Surely no production car has a speedometer that precise. No, of course not. Speedometers are so poorly calibrated that no serious driver even looks at them. A good driver, you see, can tell his (and I do mean “his”) speed to three or four digits after the decimal place. Trusting your speedometer marks you as a rank amateur, not worthy of being heard. Did you know most speedometers will not even account for the gradual diminishment of your tires’ radius as the rubber is gradually worn off. Of course, a skilled driver takes this into account.

*Of course, law-and-order stans hate the criminal justice system — all lawyers lie with every breath, all judges are corrupt, anyone accused of a crime is obviously guilty and should be imprisoned for centuries (unless they are white, and then they were framed). In general, law-and-order means a rich mixture of weregild, vendetta, and sharia.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:40 PM on August 7, 2022 [14 favorites]

I really like this new generation of "Your speed is..." signs that have recently gone up. Some will have a large green "THANK YOU" if you're driving under the speed limit and a red "SLOW DOWN" if you've above it, but my favorite ones will just display a smiley face if you're obeying the law.

I do wonder why there aren't any punitive versions of that sign. Like maybe a version that will signal a red light and force drivers to stop if they exceed the posted speed limit by 5mph, but remain blinking yellow if a car is following the rules. I've read that some transit systems which operate by wayside signaling are designed to punish operators who go too fast by forcing them to stop before entering the next block, so why not automobiles? Go too fast, and there *will* be a red light. Go the speed limit and you can breeze right through.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:04 PM on August 7, 2022 [7 favorites]

I have the privilege of living in a country where the police rarely* kill people, and almost never due to traffic stops. I still see automatic enforcement working better - especially speed cameras that measure your speed on a stretch of road. They're set up on a motorway tunnel in my city and there hasn't been a serious accident there in a year, with everyone dropping speed promptly to 70% of the speed limit outside the tunnel. The cameras are signposted in advance and honestly there should be many more of them. And if you get a ticket as the owner of the car there's a bigger fine for not identifying the driver at the time than there is for even the biggest speeding infraction. There's also a novelisation in the works that will introduce outright confiscation of the car for heavy DUIs with a BAC over .015, or if you're not driving your own car you pay the equivalent value of the car you were driving.

* When Wrocław had a trifecta of police killings last summer it made national news for weeks, especially since while one was a gangster maybe resisting arrest, the others were a poor drunk immigrant and a mentally unwell guy during a safety check called in by family, both caught on camera as absolutely unreasonable cops drunk on their own power. Nonlethal brutality alas happens more often, especially since a lot of decent cops quit in the last seven years of a right-wing government that tries to be as fascist as it can get away with.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 12:34 AM on August 8, 2022 [7 favorites]

In my experience, the cops have been, on average, the most unsafe and inconsiderate drivers, with oil company truckers worthy of mention because of the higher likelihood of manslaughter when they are involved.

So I don't know how much enforcement could be happening, it s not like cops ticket themselves.
posted by eustatic at 7:00 AM on August 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

Many redlined neighbourhoods had giant arterial roads and highways carved through them, destroying communities and putting non-automobile users at great risk from drivers. All for the sake of getting wealthier white suburbanites across Those Areas faster and in comfort. Now these neighbourhoods suffer from higher rates of air and noise pollution in addition to regular traffic violence. Because the high speed roads are located in disinvested communities, it's common for more speeding to take place there than in richer, whiter neighbourhoods which are better able to advocate for human-centered design. So when placing a speeding camera, for example, you'd want to place it where the most dangerous speeding is occurring, but this means placing it disproportionately frequently in a vulnerable community, even if the speeders it catches tend to be whiter and wealthier than the actual residents.

Additionally, as others mentioned above, repeatedly issuing camera tickets doesn't do anything if you don't then use that information (who is getting ticketed most often) to take dangerous drivers off the road. Revoking a license is not enough - people will just drive without it. You have to start impounding/disabling vehicles and taking these people's weapons away from them.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 7:46 AM on August 8, 2022 [4 favorites]

In my experience, the cops have been, on average, the most unsafe and inconsiderate drivers,

Adding armed, skittish bullies to any situation is not going to improve it.
posted by mhoye at 7:50 AM on August 8, 2022 [4 favorites]

It's been really nice to see safer-streets advocates make this shift over the past bunch of years - it's been a long time coming, the realization that cops cannot help with street safety and in fact are significant barriers.

It's been a cruel irony in NYC to see police stations steal surrounding public space (converting playgrounds to parking lots, parking on sidewalks, etc), cover their license plates for both official and work vehicles so that they can park, speed, and run reds with impunity, immediately close complaints about illegal parking that might be about them (in my neighborhood, the cops park in the areas signed as "no parking - school bus drop off zone" meaning that the school busses have to drop kids off in actual traffic) , et cetera.

Automated enforcement and other safety resources need to be thoughtfully implemented so that they drive equitable outcomes not inequitable outcomes, but in a city where the average income of car-owning households is twice that of households that do not own cars, at the large scale, any punitive measures to drivers for the sake of the safety of the rest of us is a good step.
posted by entropone at 8:17 AM on August 8, 2022 [6 favorites]

However, to my knowledge a traffic enforcement camera has never murdered anyone so I think it might be an improvement.

many municipalities have a habit of also jailing people for being in debt to the local government due to fees like these which also leads some to being restricted from voting. this plus everything else illustrated above is pretty common knowledge, well-reported everywhere (eg 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12), which makes me think you'd have to have a kind of almost willful, stupendous ignorance that's altogether too common amongst our city councilmembers, aldermen, etc who are elected by folks who are as ignorant as they are
posted by paimapi at 8:26 AM on August 8, 2022 [4 favorites]

In my experience, the cops have been, on average, the most unsafe and inconsiderate drivers, with oil company truckers worthy of mention because of the higher likelihood of manslaughter when they are involved.

There’s been a big uptick in young children being run over and killed by vehicles in Chicago this spring and summer. About a year ago an off duty cop blew through a stop sign in a very quiet residential street where kids play and ran over and killed a 9 year old. The police statements are so telling “such a tragedy…he didn’t see him.” If you scroll down and look at the battering ram he was driving it’s no surprise he didn’t see him.
posted by Bunglegirl at 5:43 PM on August 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

> I do wonder why there aren't any punitive versions of that sign.

There are, in countries where Vision Zero is taken seriously. It's normal in Sweden to have (at high-risk pedestrian crossings) a speed-triggered reverse speed bump, where a small metal platform is quickly lowered for cars traveling too fast, making a dip which really rattles your suspension.

There are also really cool and cheap bus&truck-excepted speedbumps, where the road splits into curbed lanes (to stop you from swerving) and the speedbump is a pyramid in the middle of the lane. Truck axle wheels pass on either side of it. Perhaps this wouldn't work in North America since the giant-ass SUVs would be as wide as buses.

Finally there's a nice bus-only-filter with no moving parts (though it is fun to see the best-of bollard raising into rat-runner videos). There is a trench dug across the road, two metal grate decks spaced just perfectly for bus tires, and a handrail-type bar down the middle to high-center any prick who tries to sneak through. Ugly but effective design.
posted by anthill at 7:45 PM on August 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Connecting cars caught on red-light cameras to specific drivers requires investigative work. And cops aren't doing even the bare minimum on enforcing traffic safety as it is, so I don't think getting them to look into every red-light camera lawbreaker to figure out who was driving so as to dock the right drivers license is gonna work.

So, make it linked to the car. For private vehicles, no matter who is driving, the vehicle's owner is ticketed. After a certain number of tickets, the car is impounded. Wouldn't that incentivize owners to not allow unsafe drivers to use their vehicles?

This is how traffic enforcement works in the UK. I just realised that I've never really heard of anyone being "pulled over" by the police here, I'm sure it happens but that just isn't how traffic rules are generally enforced.

I assure you that if you drive your car in a bike or bus lane in London you will be caught and you will be fined. I know because I have made this mistake before in a bus lane that I thought was only restricted Monday to Friday (it turned out Saturday as well).

If you are the "registered keeper" of a vehicle, you get a Notice of Intended Prosecution mailed to you. If you weren't driving, you fill in who was and mail it back. I seem to recall that many American states have a point system like we do here. Surely that deals with the issue of fines being too low for wealthy people? Accumulate too many and you don't get to drive any more.
posted by atrazine at 3:38 AM on August 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

There are, in countries where Vision Zero is taken seriously. It's normal in Sweden to have (at high-risk pedestrian crossings) a speed-triggered reverse speed bump, where a small metal platform is quickly lowered for cars traveling too fast, making a dip which really rattles your suspension.

That's awesome.

We just got some pedestrian crossings where you hit a button and....some lights blink yellow. Cars are supposed to stop--but only if someone is present. If someone's already crossed, drivers are free to blow through without even stopping.

There are some similar crossings a few towns over that will activate a stop light. But then after a set period of time the steady red lights confusingly transition to alternating red (like a railroad crossing) and--I kid you not--the rules are that drivers only need to stop if someone is waiting to cross. What's the point?

It sucks that these attempts at improving safety for pedestrians still pay enormous deference to cars. Instead of just requiring cars to stop at a signal there are all sorts of loopholes baked into the system so as not to inconvenience drivers. They get to decide whether they have to stop and they can take off as soon as they decide it's safe.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:30 AM on August 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

I seem to recall that many American states have a point system like we do here. Surely that deals with the issue of fines being too low for wealthy people? Accumulate too many and you don't get to drive any more.

Ahahahahah absolutely not.

First of all, camera tickets, at least here in New York, don't count for points, because you can't "confront your accuser" and they can't prove you were driving. You can just continually rack them up. Second, there's basically no number of camera tickets that will trigger your car getting taken away from you provided you pay the fines. You can just keep getting speeding ticket after speeding ticket (some people here have hundreds in 2022 already) and as long as you don't accumulate enough of a debt to get booted, the city and state won't do a damn thing about it. Theoretically there is now a "reckless driver abatement act" that tells people like this to take a class and if you don't take it, only THEN can they finally seize your car.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 12:26 PM on August 9, 2022

I just want to point out that poor/BIPOC are much more likely to have a single car at the center of a large extended family, and so confiscating the car from the owner in the event of several violations is likely to impact several people who are not violating road rules. Additionally, upping enforcement and consequences is not helpful if you don’t have a replacement to private vehicle transport. Here in the south, you MUST have a car to get to work, and most ppl have multiple jobs. Buses come 1-2x/hr, at best. Almost all alternate transport solutions rn are aimed at helping the white middle class and rich at the expense of BIPOC and poor ppl.
posted by toodleydoodley at 9:19 AM on August 15, 2022 [1 favorite]