DC Pedestrian Safety

[Anonymous]

Drivers turning right are looking left. I always always always teach my kids to look and see and make eye contact with the driver turning right before walking into their path.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Drivers turning right are looking left. I always always always teach my kids to look and see and make eye contact with the driver turning right before walking into their path.

But you can't make eye contact with someone whose head is turned the other way...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Drivers turning right are looking left. I always always always teach my kids to look and see and make eye contact with the driver turning right before walking into their path.

But you can't make eye contact with someone whose head is turned the other way...

I agree drivers aren’t looking where they are going. My kids and I stay on the sidewalk if we can’t make eye contact.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:pretty gross how the bicyclist crowd always tries to exploit the death of people in accidents...

This is their go-to move. They blame cars for everything, try to make it seem like reckless drivers are omnipresent, etc.

Uh, are you saying they are not? I've lived here for 20 years as a pedestrian, have had a car for 5, and yes reckless drivers are omnipresent.

There were 34 traffic fatalities last year, according to the police department.

How many people drive every day in Washington D.C.? Probably close to a million people.

Not exactly omnipresent.

I work at home and I hear tires screech to a halt at least once per week -- and at 20 miles per hour, there should not be long screeching stops. Once a month that is followed by the sound of impact. It doenst need to be a fatality to be a huge problem.

Personally I blame DC's over reliance on traffic cameras. They no longer seem to police driving, and everyone knows where the cameras are, so people speed everywhere they aren't. Counterintuitive, perhaps, but that's what I see.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:pretty gross how the bicyclist crowd always tries to exploit the death of people in accidents...

This is their go-to move. They blame cars for everything, try to make it seem like reckless drivers are omnipresent, etc.

Uh, are you saying they are not? I've lived here for 20 years as a pedestrian, have had a car for 5, and yes reckless drivers are omnipresent.

There were 34 traffic fatalities last year, according to the police department.

How many people drive every day in Washington D.C.? Probably close to a million people.

Not exactly omnipresent.

I work at home and I hear tires screech to a halt at least once per week -- and at 20 miles per hour, there should not be long screeching stops. Once a month that is followed by the sound of impact. It doenst need to be a fatality to be a huge problem.

Personally I blame DC's over reliance on traffic cameras. They no longer seem to police driving, and everyone knows where the cameras are, so people speed everywhere they aren't. Counterintuitive, perhaps, but that's what I see.

You are partly right - it was stupid (and probably mostly laziness) that MPD ceased what little human enforcement they were doing when traffic cameras came along. Which means all infractions are civil and there is no prospect of losing your license or going to jail for traffic offenses.

Add to that the fact that non DC drivers figured out years ago they can just ignore the traffic citations so now they just act with impunity.

But that maybe changing - one of the things that came up at the hearing last week is that there are 500,000 cars in the DMV eligible for booting and towing but that DC has only been booting like 5 cars per day the last few years.

This past week there were photos all over twitter of booted cars on DC streets, something that hasn't been seen in any numbers in DC in 20 years so the Mayor in an election year may finally be embarrassed into making DPW do its actual job.

The city doesn't need to boot all 500,000 cars - when people start having to pay tens of thousands in fines to get their cars out word will spread and people will start to follow the rules a bit more.

But yeah stopping and cuffing people for particularly egregious offenses (which they do in VA) would be a big help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I'm sure you're super bummed that more people aren't dying in car accidents (it's so gross BTW how you try to exploit people's deaths for this dumb anti-car jihad that you have), but here's the data. You can look at the numbers yourself. Remember the denominator here. There's probably close to a million people driving cars each day in D.C.

https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/traffic-fatalities

I'd love for you to tell to Jessica Hart's face that DC traffic fatalities are extremely rare and that she should simply shut up. Of course you won't, not only are you a keyboard warrior but drivers are inherently cowards, protected by two tons of steel and local, state and federal governments that cater to their every whim.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know more about what has happened to the driver in accident that killed Nina Larson in Adams Morgan? For example, is the driver being charged?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: ... sometimes people are stupid or not paying attention and step into crosswalks, and in front of oncoming cars, at the last moment. My car doesnt go 30 mph to zero mph in one second. I've had to swerve into the other lane to avoid people in crosswalks being idiots.

If you see someone standing at the side of the road at the crosswalk, waiting to cross, don't you, as a matter of course, stop to let them cross?

[Anonymous]

In the last 24 hours, I have had 4 close calls as a pedestrian. I was almost hit FOUR times. All four times, I was in a crosswalk and had the walk signal. Then i get to work, as see this in PoP: a car overturned on 14th Street. This has to stop.

https://www.popville.com/2021/12/washington-dc-driving-dangerously/#disqus_thread

Does anyone know what, if any, charges are being brought in the Nina Larson death in Adams Morgan?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:pretty gross how the bicyclist crowd always tries to exploit the death of people in accidents...

This is their go-to move. They blame cars for everything, try to make it seem like reckless drivers are omnipresent, etc.

Uh, are you saying they are not? I've lived here for 20 years as a pedestrian, have had a car for 5, and yes reckless drivers are omnipresent.

There were 34 traffic fatalities last year, according to the police department.

How many people drive every day in Washington D.C.? Probably close to a million people.

Not exactly omnipresent.

I work at home and I hear tires screech to a halt at least once per week -- and at 20 miles per hour, there should not be long screeching stops. Once a month that is followed by the sound of impact. It doenst need to be a fatality to be a huge problem.

Personally I blame DC's over reliance on traffic cameras. They no longer seem to police driving, and everyone knows where the cameras are, so people speed everywhere they aren't. Counterintuitive, perhaps, but that's what I see.

I’ve lived in DC since 1998, before there were traffic cameras. MPD have always infrequently made traffic stops in most parts of the city, except Wards 7 & 8. In fact, when I first moved here the big scandal was Park Police were the primary imitator of traffic stops in NW DC and they were mainly just making pretextual stops of Black people. Thankfully Park Police are no longer broadly policing DC neighborhoods.

I’ve always juts presumed that MPD are less likely to pull people over in areas where there is no shoulder or space to safely pull over to effectuate a stop. Otherwise they are going to block all traffic on a street for 10 minutes just for a citation for not coming to a compete stop at a stop sign.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In the last 24 hours, I have had 4 close calls as a pedestrian. I was almost hit FOUR times. All four times, I was in a crosswalk and had the walk signal. Then i get to work, as see this in PoP: a car overturned on 14th Street. This has to stop.

https://www.popville.com/2021/12/washington-dc-driving-dangerously/#disqus_thread

Does anyone know what, if any, charges are being brought in the Nina Larson death in Adams Morgan?

LOL. I am going to guess that you are one of those people that just struts out into the street and expects that everyone has to stop for you. You also read POPVille so LOL there too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: ... sometimes people are stupid or not paying attention and step into crosswalks, and in front of oncoming cars, at the last moment. My car doesnt go 30 mph to zero mph in one second. I've had to swerve into the other lane to avoid people in crosswalks being idiots.

If you see someone standing at the side of the road at the crosswalk, waiting to cross, don't you, as a matter of course, stop to let them cross?

It depends if you can safely come to a stop or not without risking causing a chain reaction behind you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I'm sure you're super bummed that more people aren't dying in car accidents (it's so gross BTW how you try to exploit people's deaths for this dumb anti-car jihad that you have), but here's the data. You can look at the numbers yourself. Remember the denominator here. There's probably close to a million people driving cars each day in D.C.

https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/traffic-fatalities

I'd love for you to tell to Jessica Hart's face that DC traffic fatalities are extremely rare and that she should simply shut up. Of course you won't, not only are you a keyboard warrior but drivers are inherently cowards, protected by two tons of steel and local, state and federal governments that cater to their every whim.

Are you authorized to speak on her behalf?

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous
Are you authorized to speak on her behalf?

Pretty sure Jessica won't mind if I'm fighting for pedestrian safety instead of driver impunity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:LOL. I am going to guess that you are one of those people that just struts out into the street and expects that everyone has to stop for you. You also read POPVille so LOL there too.

News flash: That's the law. Nobody said you had to like it.