Anonymous wrote:DP. Something that happens to me, surprisingly frequently, is when a driver behind me gets impatient because I'm driving just below the speed limit, so they pass me at the first opportunity (often illegally), and then I end up right behind them at the red light. These speeding drivers are not getting anywhere any faster than I am.
One interesting thing about drivers like you is that you suddenly know how to accelerate rapidly and go above the speed limit when you realize that a light is about to change.
Anonymous wrote:DP. Something that happens to me, surprisingly frequently, is when a driver behind me gets impatient because I'm driving just below the speed limit, so they pass me at the first opportunity (often illegally), and then I end up right behind them at the red light. These speeding drivers are not getting anywhere any faster than I am.
One interesting thing about drivers like you is that you suddenly know how to accelerate rapidly and go above the speed limit when you realize that a light is about to change.
Whoever you might be talking about, it ain't me. It's also totally irrelevant to the thread.
Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.
How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?
This is a childish argument. Society needs to move and we try to keep people safe. To keep EVERYONE safe, we can't use cars and trucks... or bikes... or even horses. Society can't control people who cross the street wearing black at night. Society can't control everyone who drinks and drives. Society can't stop every idiot who speeds, etc. So, yes... in a society with many people and many making bad decisions, people are going to die in accidents.
Society can use street lighting. Society can use ignition interlocks. Society can use speed governors.
Umm… everything has a cost, including bad decisions. You are being ridiculous.
The issue here obviously isn't that Vision Zero is unattainable. It's that you're not interested in attaining it. You're fine with people being killed in car crashes. Well, everyone gets to have their own opinions, and that includes you.
Zero is obviously unattainable. But the more sophisticated question is what are the details on the 40 deaths, plus those prior years. You can't address a problem, assuming there is one, without more details here. If only a few happened at red lights, then red lights are not the issue.
That data is readily available, courtesy of the police. They say that in 2022, there were 35 traffic deaths in DC which is about the same it is every year. Despite the billions poured into bike stuff and the endless reengineering of roads, traffic deaths don't actually change very much each year, especially when you consider there's billions of trips taken each year.
Here's the causes in 2022:
12 deaths -- pedestrian error
9 deaths -- driver speeding
4 deaths -- driver drunk/stoned/impaired
4 deaths -- driver error
2 deaths -- bicycle error
2 deaths -- medical emergency
1 death -- scooter/atv/motorcycle error
1 death -- hit and run/unknown
Your idea here seems to be: people make mistakes, therefore we shouldn't do anything to reduce the number of car crashes that kill people.
No wonder you don't like Vision Zero, which is based on this idea: humans make mistakes, but those mistakes shouldn't come with the death penalty.
Almost half the deaths are the fault of pedestrians, cyclists and other nondrivers. Maybe start there.
It's also not a great idea to tell drunk and stoned drivers that there are free to do whatever they like (which is the message our reliance on traffic cameras sends to them). If you've ever known anyone with substance problems, they know exactly what they can get away with and they will not think twice about driving when they can barely stand up.
First of all, you're posting DC numbers, not Montgomery County numbers. Don't you have a thread about Connecticut Avenue bike lanes to post on?
Second of all, yes, starting there is the whole idea. Making sure that the streets are safe and convenient for pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers to use, and also making sure that even if pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers make a mistake, that mistake doesn't kill them. The great benefit of using this approach is that it actually makes streets safer for everybody, including drivers and passenger.
As a driver, I don't like the idea that it's ok for me to kill someone who was crossing when there was a don't walk sign, and most of my fellow human beings feel the same way.
This has a link to the MD state Vision Zero Dashboard which provides the following data.
45 traffic deaths in 2023, of which 14 pedestrians and 1 bicyclist.
Out of those deaths, actions at time of death were:
- 4 In Roadway Improperly
- 3 Dart Dash
- 3 Unknown
- 2 Fail to Obey Signal
- 2 No Improper Actions
- 1 Other
- 1 Wrong Way Walking or Riding
So nearly all of the time the cause of pedestrian or cyclist death is their own reckless behavior.
So 30 people killed in motor vehicles. Two-thirds of the people killed in car crashes in Montgomery County in 2023 were in motor vehicles. Let's talk about them first.
Then let's talk about why you think it's ok to kill pedestrians and bicyclists who were "in roadway improperly" or failed to obey a signal or whatever. The appropriate punishment for failing to obey a signal is a traffic citation, not death by driver.
DP. Of course it’s not ok to kill someone on a road. But your comparison of an accidental death to a punishment is ridiculous. I know that calling every road fatality a murder is one of Vision Zero’s favorite tropes, but it makes you sound like you lack capacity for critical reasoning.
You're going to need to decide for yourself whether you think it was accidental (nobody's fault, just something that happens) or the fault of the pedestrians or bicyclists for being reckless.
Assuming that you are the person that provided the link, I love that you like
like to cite the data but not actually scrutinize it and then change your time to focus on emotion when the data reveals information that contradicts your premise.
13 of the 15 fatalities that occurred when it was dark and 12 were on state highways. What can we do as a society when people are out in the middle of the road or crossing against signals or darting into traffic in the dark on a state highway? Not only can you not fix stupid you cannot engineer away stupid either.
This is why Vision Zero is a joke, because is dispassionate view of the data looking at accident causes should result in a policy focused on pedestrian and cyclist education and even enforcement in order to save them from themselves.
+1. We're going to throw a ton of money at this Vision Zero initiative, and my guess is that traffic deaths actually won't decrease one bit.
Vision Zero is feasible in urban areas, it is not feasible in suburban or rural areas. You just have too many cars going too fast.
It’s not feasible in urban areas when people don’t follow the rules.
So the whole thing about Vision Zero is that it prevents deaths and serious injuries even when people don't follow the rules.
The only way to eliminate deaths from people being stupid is if everyone stays home.
Stupid people being reckless are an eternal fact of human nature. Whatever you do, stupid people will inevitably defeat.
Education and enforcement are the only answer if are actually interested in savings lives and not pursuing an alternative agenda.
I mean, you're just plain wrong on this one. The US is an extreme outlier among wealthy countries, including Canada, for traffic deaths. But you have a right to your objectively incorrect opinion.
The US also has significantly higher levels of gun violence, inequality and poorer quality of education than peer countries. We are a country that produces many stupid people that do stupid things.
Just look at the numbers. 12 people are dead because they’re too stupid not to run into the middle of a state highway at night. That stuff is just not happening in other rich countries at the same level. Engineering is not going to stop stupid people from doing stupid things.
Vision Zero is inherently naive and anti-science.
Ah, so it isn't human nature, it's just that people in the US are uniquely stupid?
Engineering stops stupid people from doing stupid things all the time.
Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.
How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?
This is a childish argument. Society needs to move and we try to keep people safe. To keep EVERYONE safe, we can't use cars and trucks... or bikes... or even horses. Society can't control people who cross the street wearing black at night. Society can't control everyone who drinks and drives. Society can't stop every idiot who speeds, etc. So, yes... in a society with many people and many making bad decisions, people are going to die in accidents.
Society can use street lighting. Society can use ignition interlocks. Society can use speed governors.
Umm… everything has a cost, including bad decisions. You are being ridiculous.
The issue here obviously isn't that Vision Zero is unattainable. It's that you're not interested in attaining it. You're fine with people being killed in car crashes. Well, everyone gets to have their own opinions, and that includes you.
Zero is obviously unattainable. But the more sophisticated question is what are the details on the 40 deaths, plus those prior years. You can't address a problem, assuming there is one, without more details here. If only a few happened at red lights, then red lights are not the issue.
That data is readily available, courtesy of the police. They say that in 2022, there were 35 traffic deaths in DC which is about the same it is every year. Despite the billions poured into bike stuff and the endless reengineering of roads, traffic deaths don't actually change very much each year, especially when you consider there's billions of trips taken each year.
Here's the causes in 2022:
12 deaths -- pedestrian error
9 deaths -- driver speeding
4 deaths -- driver drunk/stoned/impaired
4 deaths -- driver error
2 deaths -- bicycle error
2 deaths -- medical emergency
1 death -- scooter/atv/motorcycle error
1 death -- hit and run/unknown
Your idea here seems to be: people make mistakes, therefore we shouldn't do anything to reduce the number of car crashes that kill people.
No wonder you don't like Vision Zero, which is based on this idea: humans make mistakes, but those mistakes shouldn't come with the death penalty.
Almost half the deaths are the fault of pedestrians, cyclists and other nondrivers. Maybe start there.
It's also not a great idea to tell drunk and stoned drivers that there are free to do whatever they like (which is the message our reliance on traffic cameras sends to them). If you've ever known anyone with substance problems, they know exactly what they can get away with and they will not think twice about driving when they can barely stand up.
First of all, you're posting DC numbers, not Montgomery County numbers. Don't you have a thread about Connecticut Avenue bike lanes to post on?
Second of all, yes, starting there is the whole idea. Making sure that the streets are safe and convenient for pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers to use, and also making sure that even if pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers make a mistake, that mistake doesn't kill them. The great benefit of using this approach is that it actually makes streets safer for everybody, including drivers and passenger.
As a driver, I don't like the idea that it's ok for me to kill someone who was crossing when there was a don't walk sign, and most of my fellow human beings feel the same way.
This has a link to the MD state Vision Zero Dashboard which provides the following data.
45 traffic deaths in 2023, of which 14 pedestrians and 1 bicyclist.
Out of those deaths, actions at time of death were:
- 4 In Roadway Improperly
- 3 Dart Dash
- 3 Unknown
- 2 Fail to Obey Signal
- 2 No Improper Actions
- 1 Other
- 1 Wrong Way Walking or Riding
So nearly all of the time the cause of pedestrian or cyclist death is their own reckless behavior.
So 30 people killed in motor vehicles. Two-thirds of the people killed in car crashes in Montgomery County in 2023 were in motor vehicles. Let's talk about them first.
Then let's talk about why you think it's ok to kill pedestrians and bicyclists who were "in roadway improperly" or failed to obey a signal or whatever. The appropriate punishment for failing to obey a signal is a traffic citation, not death by driver.
DP. Of course it’s not ok to kill someone on a road. But your comparison of an accidental death to a punishment is ridiculous. I know that calling every road fatality a murder is one of Vision Zero’s favorite tropes, but it makes you sound like you lack capacity for critical reasoning.
You're going to need to decide for yourself whether you think it was accidental (nobody's fault, just something that happens) or the fault of the pedestrians or bicyclists for being reckless.
Assuming that you are the person that provided the link, I love that you like
like to cite the data but not actually scrutinize it and then change your time to focus on emotion when the data reveals information that contradicts your premise.
13 of the 15 fatalities that occurred when it was dark and 12 were on state highways. What can we do as a society when people are out in the middle of the road or crossing against signals or darting into traffic in the dark on a state highway? Not only can you not fix stupid you cannot engineer away stupid either.
This is why Vision Zero is a joke, because is dispassionate view of the data looking at accident causes should result in a policy focused on pedestrian and cyclist education and even enforcement in order to save them from themselves.
+1. We're going to throw a ton of money at this Vision Zero initiative, and my guess is that traffic deaths actually won't decrease one bit.
Vision Zero is feasible in urban areas, it is not feasible in suburban or rural areas. You just have too many cars going too fast.
It’s not feasible in urban areas when people don’t follow the rules.
So the whole thing about Vision Zero is that it prevents deaths and serious injuries even when people don't follow the rules.
The only way to eliminate deaths from people being stupid is if everyone stays home.
Stupid people being reckless are an eternal fact of human nature. Whatever you do, stupid people will inevitably defeat.
Education and enforcement are the only answer if are actually interested in savings lives and not pursuing an alternative agenda.
I mean, you're just plain wrong on this one. The US is an extreme outlier among wealthy countries, including Canada, for traffic deaths. But you have a right to your objectively incorrect opinion.
The US also has significantly higher levels of gun violence, inequality and poorer quality of education than peer countries. We are a country that produces many stupid people that do stupid things.
Just look at the numbers. 12 people are dead because they’re too stupid not to run into the middle of a state highway at night. That stuff is just not happening in other rich countries at the same level. Engineering is not going to stop stupid people from doing stupid things.
Vision Zero is inherently naive and anti-science.
+1. It’s no wonder that so many people who run around screaming Vision Zero also run around screaming YIMBY. The two ideologies have a lot in common.
Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.
How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?
This is a childish argument. Society needs to move and we try to keep people safe. To keep EVERYONE safe, we can't use cars and trucks... or bikes... or even horses. Society can't control people who cross the street wearing black at night. Society can't control everyone who drinks and drives. Society can't stop every idiot who speeds, etc. So, yes... in a society with many people and many making bad decisions, people are going to die in accidents.
Society can use street lighting. Society can use ignition interlocks. Society can use speed governors.
Umm… everything has a cost, including bad decisions. You are being ridiculous.
The issue here obviously isn't that Vision Zero is unattainable. It's that you're not interested in attaining it. You're fine with people being killed in car crashes. Well, everyone gets to have their own opinions, and that includes you.
Zero is obviously unattainable. But the more sophisticated question is what are the details on the 40 deaths, plus those prior years. You can't address a problem, assuming there is one, without more details here. If only a few happened at red lights, then red lights are not the issue.
That data is readily available, courtesy of the police. They say that in 2022, there were 35 traffic deaths in DC which is about the same it is every year. Despite the billions poured into bike stuff and the endless reengineering of roads, traffic deaths don't actually change very much each year, especially when you consider there's billions of trips taken each year.
Here's the causes in 2022:
12 deaths -- pedestrian error
9 deaths -- driver speeding
4 deaths -- driver drunk/stoned/impaired
4 deaths -- driver error
2 deaths -- bicycle error
2 deaths -- medical emergency
1 death -- scooter/atv/motorcycle error
1 death -- hit and run/unknown
Your idea here seems to be: people make mistakes, therefore we shouldn't do anything to reduce the number of car crashes that kill people.
No wonder you don't like Vision Zero, which is based on this idea: humans make mistakes, but those mistakes shouldn't come with the death penalty.
Almost half the deaths are the fault of pedestrians, cyclists and other nondrivers. Maybe start there.
It's also not a great idea to tell drunk and stoned drivers that there are free to do whatever they like (which is the message our reliance on traffic cameras sends to them). If you've ever known anyone with substance problems, they know exactly what they can get away with and they will not think twice about driving when they can barely stand up.
First of all, you're posting DC numbers, not Montgomery County numbers. Don't you have a thread about Connecticut Avenue bike lanes to post on?
Second of all, yes, starting there is the whole idea. Making sure that the streets are safe and convenient for pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers to use, and also making sure that even if pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers make a mistake, that mistake doesn't kill them. The great benefit of using this approach is that it actually makes streets safer for everybody, including drivers and passenger.
As a driver, I don't like the idea that it's ok for me to kill someone who was crossing when there was a don't walk sign, and most of my fellow human beings feel the same way.
This has a link to the MD state Vision Zero Dashboard which provides the following data.
45 traffic deaths in 2023, of which 14 pedestrians and 1 bicyclist.
Out of those deaths, actions at time of death were:
- 4 In Roadway Improperly
- 3 Dart Dash
- 3 Unknown
- 2 Fail to Obey Signal
- 2 No Improper Actions
- 1 Other
- 1 Wrong Way Walking or Riding
So nearly all of the time the cause of pedestrian or cyclist death is their own reckless behavior.
So 30 people killed in motor vehicles. Two-thirds of the people killed in car crashes in Montgomery County in 2023 were in motor vehicles. Let's talk about them first.
Then let's talk about why you think it's ok to kill pedestrians and bicyclists who were "in roadway improperly" or failed to obey a signal or whatever. The appropriate punishment for failing to obey a signal is a traffic citation, not death by driver.
DP. Of course it’s not ok to kill someone on a road. But your comparison of an accidental death to a punishment is ridiculous. I know that calling every road fatality a murder is one of Vision Zero’s favorite tropes, but it makes you sound like you lack capacity for critical reasoning.
You're going to need to decide for yourself whether you think it was accidental (nobody's fault, just something that happens) or the fault of the pedestrians or bicyclists for being reckless.
Assuming that you are the person that provided the link, I love that you like
like to cite the data but not actually scrutinize it and then change your time to focus on emotion when the data reveals information that contradicts your premise.
13 of the 15 fatalities that occurred when it was dark and 12 were on state highways. What can we do as a society when people are out in the middle of the road or crossing against signals or darting into traffic in the dark on a state highway? Not only can you not fix stupid you cannot engineer away stupid either.
This is why Vision Zero is a joke, because is dispassionate view of the data looking at accident causes should result in a policy focused on pedestrian and cyclist education and even enforcement in order to save them from themselves.
+1. We're going to throw a ton of money at this Vision Zero initiative, and my guess is that traffic deaths actually won't decrease one bit.
Vision Zero is feasible in urban areas, it is not feasible in suburban or rural areas. You just have too many cars going too fast.
It’s not feasible in urban areas when people don’t follow the rules.
So the whole thing about Vision Zero is that it prevents deaths and serious injuries even when people don't follow the rules.
The other whole thing about Vision Zero is that it's complete bullshit. It doesnt work. Traffic calming is a myth. If you try to slow down someone in one area, they will just avoid that area or go a lot faster elsewhere because they now know no one is looking.
I see this in my own life. If there's a bunch of speed bumps on the road, I'm more likely to roll through a stop sign to make up the difference in time. It would be better if I completely stopped at the stop sign instead of temporarily going slowly in the middle of the street.
You're not going to retrain people to think that their normal 15 minute drive should now take 25 minutes. They will think it should be 15 minutes no matter what obstacles you throw up.
It actually does work, no matter how many personal anecdotes you might relate.
What’s going to happen is this will force more Beltway traffic or back road /neighorhood routes . Getting to Wheaton Mall from Blair shouldn’t take 30 minutes.
That's 3.5 miles. It takes about 11 minutes to go 3.5 miles at 20 mph. It sounds like you're not complaining about speed limits, you're complaining about other cars that are on the road when you're on the road. The University Boulevard corridor plan proposes to fix this by planning for good transportation alternatives, so people aren't forced to drive this short distance. For example, buses will run frequently in their own lanes, so they won't be stuck in car traffic. Also, it's easy to bike this distance in less than 30 minutes. Every driver who takes a bus or bikes instead of driving will represent one less car to get in your way when you're trying to drive.
But if you want to drive 40 mph down University Boulevard between the mall and Blair? Nope. University Boulevard is a road through a densely-populated area where lots of people are walking, riding the bus, biking, going to school.
Most people aren’t going to change their lifestyle catch the bus and bike if there’s free parking available. Comparing Moco to DC where free parking is limited isn’t fair. The bike lanes and increased transit buses will only cause more bottlenecks along with school buses, drivers, and pedestrians .
We're not talking about people changing their lifestyle. Do you consider driving everywhere for every trip to be your lifestyle? Here's what I do: when I'm going somewhere, I choose the transportation option that works for me. On some trips, at some times, driving works best for me. Other times, the bus or Metro work best. Other times, biking works best. Sometimes, walking works best! That's not my lifestyle, that's just me going places.
And with the University Boulevard corridor plan, the bus or biking or walking will work best for more people at more times. This is a good thing. Everyone will have more transportation choices, and you will have less car traffic to deal with.
DP. That's great, as long as we aren't making driving, which will still be the principal mode of transportation along the route for a variety of reasons, a much worse option than it is today. We should be seeking better options, not making the principal one worse until there's some insane calculus that forces people to change modes.
Which brings us back to the subject of this thread. Upzoning along University Blvd. Which, in the manners pursued by the Thrive advocates, principally benefits developer bottom lines at the expense of current residents, as had been discussed ad nauseam in other threads. The allusions to housing need, transportation mode planning, etc., are all just secondary window dressing.
Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.
How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?
This is a childish argument. Society needs to move and we try to keep people safe. To keep EVERYONE safe, we can't use cars and trucks... or bikes... or even horses. Society can't control people who cross the street wearing black at night. Society can't control everyone who drinks and drives. Society can't stop every idiot who speeds, etc. So, yes... in a society with many people and many making bad decisions, people are going to die in accidents.
Society can use street lighting. Society can use ignition interlocks. Society can use speed governors.
Umm… everything has a cost, including bad decisions. You are being ridiculous.
The issue here obviously isn't that Vision Zero is unattainable. It's that you're not interested in attaining it. You're fine with people being killed in car crashes. Well, everyone gets to have their own opinions, and that includes you.
Zero is obviously unattainable. But the more sophisticated question is what are the details on the 40 deaths, plus those prior years. You can't address a problem, assuming there is one, without more details here. If only a few happened at red lights, then red lights are not the issue.
That data is readily available, courtesy of the police. They say that in 2022, there were 35 traffic deaths in DC which is about the same it is every year. Despite the billions poured into bike stuff and the endless reengineering of roads, traffic deaths don't actually change very much each year, especially when you consider there's billions of trips taken each year.
Here's the causes in 2022:
12 deaths -- pedestrian error
9 deaths -- driver speeding
4 deaths -- driver drunk/stoned/impaired
4 deaths -- driver error
2 deaths -- bicycle error
2 deaths -- medical emergency
1 death -- scooter/atv/motorcycle error
1 death -- hit and run/unknown
Your idea here seems to be: people make mistakes, therefore we shouldn't do anything to reduce the number of car crashes that kill people.
No wonder you don't like Vision Zero, which is based on this idea: humans make mistakes, but those mistakes shouldn't come with the death penalty.
Almost half the deaths are the fault of pedestrians, cyclists and other nondrivers. Maybe start there.
It's also not a great idea to tell drunk and stoned drivers that there are free to do whatever they like (which is the message our reliance on traffic cameras sends to them). If you've ever known anyone with substance problems, they know exactly what they can get away with and they will not think twice about driving when they can barely stand up.
First of all, you're posting DC numbers, not Montgomery County numbers. Don't you have a thread about Connecticut Avenue bike lanes to post on?
Second of all, yes, starting there is the whole idea. Making sure that the streets are safe and convenient for pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers to use, and also making sure that even if pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers make a mistake, that mistake doesn't kill them. The great benefit of using this approach is that it actually makes streets safer for everybody, including drivers and passenger.
As a driver, I don't like the idea that it's ok for me to kill someone who was crossing when there was a don't walk sign, and most of my fellow human beings feel the same way.
This has a link to the MD state Vision Zero Dashboard which provides the following data.
45 traffic deaths in 2023, of which 14 pedestrians and 1 bicyclist.
Out of those deaths, actions at time of death were:
- 4 In Roadway Improperly
- 3 Dart Dash
- 3 Unknown
- 2 Fail to Obey Signal
- 2 No Improper Actions
- 1 Other
- 1 Wrong Way Walking or Riding
So nearly all of the time the cause of pedestrian or cyclist death is their own reckless behavior.
So 30 people killed in motor vehicles. Two-thirds of the people killed in car crashes in Montgomery County in 2023 were in motor vehicles. Let's talk about them first.
Then let's talk about why you think it's ok to kill pedestrians and bicyclists who were "in roadway improperly" or failed to obey a signal or whatever. The appropriate punishment for failing to obey a signal is a traffic citation, not death by driver.
DP. Of course it’s not ok to kill someone on a road. But your comparison of an accidental death to a punishment is ridiculous. I know that calling every road fatality a murder is one of Vision Zero’s favorite tropes, but it makes you sound like you lack capacity for critical reasoning.
You're going to need to decide for yourself whether you think it was accidental (nobody's fault, just something that happens) or the fault of the pedestrians or bicyclists for being reckless.
Assuming that you are the person that provided the link, I love that you like
like to cite the data but not actually scrutinize it and then change your time to focus on emotion when the data reveals information that contradicts your premise.
13 of the 15 fatalities that occurred when it was dark and 12 were on state highways. What can we do as a society when people are out in the middle of the road or crossing against signals or darting into traffic in the dark on a state highway? Not only can you not fix stupid you cannot engineer away stupid either.
This is why Vision Zero is a joke, because is dispassionate view of the data looking at accident causes should result in a policy focused on pedestrian and cyclist education and even enforcement in order to save them from themselves.
+1. We're going to throw a ton of money at this Vision Zero initiative, and my guess is that traffic deaths actually won't decrease one bit.
Vision Zero is feasible in urban areas, it is not feasible in suburban or rural areas. You just have too many cars going too fast.
It’s not feasible in urban areas when people don’t follow the rules.
So the whole thing about Vision Zero is that it prevents deaths and serious injuries even when people don't follow the rules.
The other whole thing about Vision Zero is that it's complete bullshit. It doesnt work. Traffic calming is a myth. If you try to slow down someone in one area, they will just avoid that area or go a lot faster elsewhere because they now know no one is looking.
I see this in my own life. If there's a bunch of speed bumps on the road, I'm more likely to roll through a stop sign to make up the difference in time. It would be better if I completely stopped at the stop sign instead of temporarily going slowly in the middle of the street.
You're not going to retrain people to think that their normal 15 minute drive should now take 25 minutes. They will think it should be 15 minutes no matter what obstacles you throw up.
It actually does work, no matter how many personal anecdotes you might relate.
What’s going to happen is this will force more Beltway traffic or back road /neighorhood routes . Getting to Wheaton Mall from Blair shouldn’t take 30 minutes.
That's 3.5 miles. It takes about 11 minutes to go 3.5 miles at 20 mph. It sounds like you're not complaining about speed limits, you're complaining about other cars that are on the road when you're on the road. The University Boulevard corridor plan proposes to fix this by planning for good transportation alternatives, so people aren't forced to drive this short distance. For example, buses will run frequently in their own lanes, so they won't be stuck in car traffic. Also, it's easy to bike this distance in less than 30 minutes. Every driver who takes a bus or bikes instead of driving will represent one less car to get in your way when you're trying to drive.
But if you want to drive 40 mph down University Boulevard between the mall and Blair? Nope. University Boulevard is a road through a densely-populated area where lots of people are walking, riding the bus, biking, going to school.
Most people aren’t going to change their lifestyle catch the bus and bike if there’s free parking available. Comparing Moco to DC where free parking is limited isn’t fair. The bike lanes and increased transit buses will only cause more bottlenecks along with school buses, drivers, and pedestrians .
We're not talking about people changing their lifestyle. Do you consider driving everywhere for every trip to be your lifestyle? Here's what I do: when I'm going somewhere, I choose the transportation option that works for me. On some trips, at some times, driving works best for me. Other times, the bus or Metro work best. Other times, biking works best. Sometimes, walking works best! That's not my lifestyle, that's just me going places.
And with the University Boulevard corridor plan, the bus or biking or walking will work best for more people at more times. This is a good thing. Everyone will have more transportation choices, and you will have less car traffic to deal with.
DP. That's great, as long as we aren't making driving, which will still be the principal mode of transportation along the route for a variety of reasons, a much worse option than it is today. We should be seeking better options, not making the principal one worse until there's some insane calculus that forces people to change modes.
Which brings us back to the subject of this thread. Upzoning along University Blvd. Which, in the manners pursued by the Thrive advocates, principally benefits developer bottom lines at the expense of current residents, as had been discussed ad nauseam in other threads. The allusions to housing need, transportation mode planning, etc., are all just secondary window dressing.
Faster, more frequent bus trips and safer, more comfortable bike trips are both better options. However, if you don't want to take the bus, or you don't want to bike, you don't have to.
The discussion so often has the proponents saying, "Here are changes that will make things better for lots of people!", but somehow what the opponents hear is, "Here are changes we are proposing for the express purpose of ruining your life!" I think you think a lot more about the proponents than the proponents ever think about you.
Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.
How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?
This is a childish argument. Society needs to move and we try to keep people safe. To keep EVERYONE safe, we can't use cars and trucks... or bikes... or even horses. Society can't control people who cross the street wearing black at night. Society can't control everyone who drinks and drives. Society can't stop every idiot who speeds, etc. So, yes... in a society with many people and many making bad decisions, people are going to die in accidents.
Society can use street lighting. Society can use ignition interlocks. Society can use speed governors.
Umm… everything has a cost, including bad decisions. You are being ridiculous.
The issue here obviously isn't that Vision Zero is unattainable. It's that you're not interested in attaining it. You're fine with people being killed in car crashes. Well, everyone gets to have their own opinions, and that includes you.
Zero is obviously unattainable. But the more sophisticated question is what are the details on the 40 deaths, plus those prior years. You can't address a problem, assuming there is one, without more details here. If only a few happened at red lights, then red lights are not the issue.
That data is readily available, courtesy of the police. They say that in 2022, there were 35 traffic deaths in DC which is about the same it is every year. Despite the billions poured into bike stuff and the endless reengineering of roads, traffic deaths don't actually change very much each year, especially when you consider there's billions of trips taken each year.
Here's the causes in 2022:
12 deaths -- pedestrian error
9 deaths -- driver speeding
4 deaths -- driver drunk/stoned/impaired
4 deaths -- driver error
2 deaths -- bicycle error
2 deaths -- medical emergency
1 death -- scooter/atv/motorcycle error
1 death -- hit and run/unknown
Your idea here seems to be: people make mistakes, therefore we shouldn't do anything to reduce the number of car crashes that kill people.
No wonder you don't like Vision Zero, which is based on this idea: humans make mistakes, but those mistakes shouldn't come with the death penalty.
It is bizarre Vision Zero even exists. There is literally no traffic enforcement in DC. Anyone can do anything, and no one cares. I see people on e-bikes blowing stop signs going 40mph. There are 12 year olds riding ATV down the center of major streets during rush hour. It's crazy.
You do not.
I saw someone the other day on an ebike/moped/scooter/whateverthey'recalled in a bicycle lane next to school going probably 40mph only inches from parents getting small children out of cars and then not even slow down for a stop sign.
At the risk of derailing the derail, there is a very interesting tendency that the faster one can go, the less consideration people give when using that mode of transportation. This seems true between categories and within. Pedestrians are more courteous than drivers for instance. People on regular CABI bikes are more courteous than lycranauts and they are in turn more courteous than people with E-bikes.
There seems to be something inherently anti-social about speed, especially when it is easily delivered.
We have a broken windows problem.
Everyone sees, on a daily basis, cyclists ignoring basically all traffic laws. Other people on two wheels see that and internalize that and think to themselves "if they can do it, so can I." Now we have people on ebikes and mopeds and things that look like they could be rounded up to motorcycles treating stop signs and traffic lights like they are optional.
Some of those things are really heavy and if you get hit by one, you could die. It's a dangerous situation but no one seems to care.
Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.
How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?
This is a childish argument. Society needs to move and we try to keep people safe. To keep EVERYONE safe, we can't use cars and trucks... or bikes... or even horses. Society can't control people who cross the street wearing black at night. Society can't control everyone who drinks and drives. Society can't stop every idiot who speeds, etc. So, yes... in a society with many people and many making bad decisions, people are going to die in accidents.
Society can use street lighting. Society can use ignition interlocks. Society can use speed governors.
Umm… everything has a cost, including bad decisions. You are being ridiculous.
The issue here obviously isn't that Vision Zero is unattainable. It's that you're not interested in attaining it. You're fine with people being killed in car crashes. Well, everyone gets to have their own opinions, and that includes you.
Zero is obviously unattainable. But the more sophisticated question is what are the details on the 40 deaths, plus those prior years. You can't address a problem, assuming there is one, without more details here. If only a few happened at red lights, then red lights are not the issue.
That data is readily available, courtesy of the police. They say that in 2022, there were 35 traffic deaths in DC which is about the same it is every year. Despite the billions poured into bike stuff and the endless reengineering of roads, traffic deaths don't actually change very much each year, especially when you consider there's billions of trips taken each year.
Here's the causes in 2022:
12 deaths -- pedestrian error
9 deaths -- driver speeding
4 deaths -- driver drunk/stoned/impaired
4 deaths -- driver error
2 deaths -- bicycle error
2 deaths -- medical emergency
1 death -- scooter/atv/motorcycle error
1 death -- hit and run/unknown
Your idea here seems to be: people make mistakes, therefore we shouldn't do anything to reduce the number of car crashes that kill people.
No wonder you don't like Vision Zero, which is based on this idea: humans make mistakes, but those mistakes shouldn't come with the death penalty.
Almost half the deaths are the fault of pedestrians, cyclists and other nondrivers. Maybe start there.
It's also not a great idea to tell drunk and stoned drivers that there are free to do whatever they like (which is the message our reliance on traffic cameras sends to them). If you've ever known anyone with substance problems, they know exactly what they can get away with and they will not think twice about driving when they can barely stand up.
First of all, you're posting DC numbers, not Montgomery County numbers. Don't you have a thread about Connecticut Avenue bike lanes to post on?
Second of all, yes, starting there is the whole idea. Making sure that the streets are safe and convenient for pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers to use, and also making sure that even if pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers make a mistake, that mistake doesn't kill them. The great benefit of using this approach is that it actually makes streets safer for everybody, including drivers and passenger.
As a driver, I don't like the idea that it's ok for me to kill someone who was crossing when there was a don't walk sign, and most of my fellow human beings feel the same way.
This has a link to the MD state Vision Zero Dashboard which provides the following data.
45 traffic deaths in 2023, of which 14 pedestrians and 1 bicyclist.
Out of those deaths, actions at time of death were:
- 4 In Roadway Improperly
- 3 Dart Dash
- 3 Unknown
- 2 Fail to Obey Signal
- 2 No Improper Actions
- 1 Other
- 1 Wrong Way Walking or Riding
So nearly all of the time the cause of pedestrian or cyclist death is their own reckless behavior.
So 30 people killed in motor vehicles. Two-thirds of the people killed in car crashes in Montgomery County in 2023 were in motor vehicles. Let's talk about them first.
Then let's talk about why you think it's ok to kill pedestrians and bicyclists who were "in roadway improperly" or failed to obey a signal or whatever. The appropriate punishment for failing to obey a signal is a traffic citation, not death by driver.
DP. Of course it’s not ok to kill someone on a road. But your comparison of an accidental death to a punishment is ridiculous. I know that calling every road fatality a murder is one of Vision Zero’s favorite tropes, but it makes you sound like you lack capacity for critical reasoning.
You're going to need to decide for yourself whether you think it was accidental (nobody's fault, just something that happens) or the fault of the pedestrians or bicyclists for being reckless.
Assuming that you are the person that provided the link, I love that you like
like to cite the data but not actually scrutinize it and then change your time to focus on emotion when the data reveals information that contradicts your premise.
13 of the 15 fatalities that occurred when it was dark and 12 were on state highways. What can we do as a society when people are out in the middle of the road or crossing against signals or darting into traffic in the dark on a state highway? Not only can you not fix stupid you cannot engineer away stupid either.
This is why Vision Zero is a joke, because is dispassionate view of the data looking at accident causes should result in a policy focused on pedestrian and cyclist education and even enforcement in order to save them from themselves.
+1. We're going to throw a ton of money at this Vision Zero initiative, and my guess is that traffic deaths actually won't decrease one bit.
Vision Zero is feasible in urban areas, it is not feasible in suburban or rural areas. You just have too many cars going too fast.
It’s not feasible in urban areas when people don’t follow the rules.
So the whole thing about Vision Zero is that it prevents deaths and serious injuries even when people don't follow the rules.
The only way to eliminate deaths from people being stupid is if everyone stays home.
Stupid people being reckless are an eternal fact of human nature. Whatever you do, stupid people will inevitably defeat.
Education and enforcement are the only answer if are actually interested in savings lives and not pursuing an alternative agenda.
I mean, you're just plain wrong on this one. The US is an extreme outlier among wealthy countries, including Canada, for traffic deaths. But you have a right to your objectively incorrect opinion.
The US also has significantly higher levels of gun violence, inequality and poorer quality of education than peer countries. We are a country that produces many stupid people that do stupid things.
Just look at the numbers. 12 people are dead because they’re too stupid not to run into the middle of a state highway at night. That stuff is just not happening in other rich countries at the same level. Engineering is not going to stop stupid people from doing stupid things.
Vision Zero is inherently naive and anti-science.
You say "too stupid not to run into the middle of a state highway at night," I say "cross Veirs Mill Road to catch a bus to go home after shopping in the early evening on the day after Christmas," potato potahto.
Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.
How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?
This is a childish argument. Society needs to move and we try to keep people safe. To keep EVERYONE safe, we can't use cars and trucks... or bikes... or even horses. Society can't control people who cross the street wearing black at night. Society can't control everyone who drinks and drives. Society can't stop every idiot who speeds, etc. So, yes... in a society with many people and many making bad decisions, people are going to die in accidents.
Society can use street lighting. Society can use ignition interlocks. Society can use speed governors.
Umm… everything has a cost, including bad decisions. You are being ridiculous.
The issue here obviously isn't that Vision Zero is unattainable. It's that you're not interested in attaining it. You're fine with people being killed in car crashes. Well, everyone gets to have their own opinions, and that includes you.
Zero is obviously unattainable. But the more sophisticated question is what are the details on the 40 deaths, plus those prior years. You can't address a problem, assuming there is one, without more details here. If only a few happened at red lights, then red lights are not the issue.
That data is readily available, courtesy of the police. They say that in 2022, there were 35 traffic deaths in DC which is about the same it is every year. Despite the billions poured into bike stuff and the endless reengineering of roads, traffic deaths don't actually change very much each year, especially when you consider there's billions of trips taken each year.
Here's the causes in 2022:
12 deaths -- pedestrian error
9 deaths -- driver speeding
4 deaths -- driver drunk/stoned/impaired
4 deaths -- driver error
2 deaths -- bicycle error
2 deaths -- medical emergency
1 death -- scooter/atv/motorcycle error
1 death -- hit and run/unknown
Your idea here seems to be: people make mistakes, therefore we shouldn't do anything to reduce the number of car crashes that kill people.
No wonder you don't like Vision Zero, which is based on this idea: humans make mistakes, but those mistakes shouldn't come with the death penalty.
Almost half the deaths are the fault of pedestrians, cyclists and other nondrivers. Maybe start there.
It's also not a great idea to tell drunk and stoned drivers that there are free to do whatever they like (which is the message our reliance on traffic cameras sends to them). If you've ever known anyone with substance problems, they know exactly what they can get away with and they will not think twice about driving when they can barely stand up.
First of all, you're posting DC numbers, not Montgomery County numbers. Don't you have a thread about Connecticut Avenue bike lanes to post on?
Second of all, yes, starting there is the whole idea. Making sure that the streets are safe and convenient for pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers to use, and also making sure that even if pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers make a mistake, that mistake doesn't kill them. The great benefit of using this approach is that it actually makes streets safer for everybody, including drivers and passenger.
As a driver, I don't like the idea that it's ok for me to kill someone who was crossing when there was a don't walk sign, and most of my fellow human beings feel the same way.
This has a link to the MD state Vision Zero Dashboard which provides the following data.
45 traffic deaths in 2023, of which 14 pedestrians and 1 bicyclist.
Out of those deaths, actions at time of death were:
- 4 In Roadway Improperly
- 3 Dart Dash
- 3 Unknown
- 2 Fail to Obey Signal
- 2 No Improper Actions
- 1 Other
- 1 Wrong Way Walking or Riding
So nearly all of the time the cause of pedestrian or cyclist death is their own reckless behavior.
So 30 people killed in motor vehicles. Two-thirds of the people killed in car crashes in Montgomery County in 2023 were in motor vehicles. Let's talk about them first.
Then let's talk about why you think it's ok to kill pedestrians and bicyclists who were "in roadway improperly" or failed to obey a signal or whatever. The appropriate punishment for failing to obey a signal is a traffic citation, not death by driver.
DP. Of course it’s not ok to kill someone on a road. But your comparison of an accidental death to a punishment is ridiculous. I know that calling every road fatality a murder is one of Vision Zero’s favorite tropes, but it makes you sound like you lack capacity for critical reasoning.
You're going to need to decide for yourself whether you think it was accidental (nobody's fault, just something that happens) or the fault of the pedestrians or bicyclists for being reckless.
Assuming that you are the person that provided the link, I love that you like
like to cite the data but not actually scrutinize it and then change your time to focus on emotion when the data reveals information that contradicts your premise.
13 of the 15 fatalities that occurred when it was dark and 12 were on state highways. What can we do as a society when people are out in the middle of the road or crossing against signals or darting into traffic in the dark on a state highway? Not only can you not fix stupid you cannot engineer away stupid either.
This is why Vision Zero is a joke, because is dispassionate view of the data looking at accident causes should result in a policy focused on pedestrian and cyclist education and even enforcement in order to save them from themselves.
+1. We're going to throw a ton of money at this Vision Zero initiative, and my guess is that traffic deaths actually won't decrease one bit.
Vision Zero is feasible in urban areas, it is not feasible in suburban or rural areas. You just have too many cars going too fast.
It’s not feasible in urban areas when people don’t follow the rules.
So the whole thing about Vision Zero is that it prevents deaths and serious injuries even when people don't follow the rules.
The other whole thing about Vision Zero is that it's complete bullshit. It doesnt work. Traffic calming is a myth. If you try to slow down someone in one area, they will just avoid that area or go a lot faster elsewhere because they now know no one is looking.
I see this in my own life. If there's a bunch of speed bumps on the road, I'm more likely to roll through a stop sign to make up the difference in time. It would be better if I completely stopped at the stop sign instead of temporarily going slowly in the middle of the street.
You're not going to retrain people to think that their normal 15 minute drive should now take 25 minutes. They will think it should be 15 minutes no matter what obstacles you throw up.
It actually does work, no matter how many personal anecdotes you might relate.
What’s going to happen is this will force more Beltway traffic or back road /neighorhood routes . Getting to Wheaton Mall from Blair shouldn’t take 30 minutes.
That's 3.5 miles. It takes about 11 minutes to go 3.5 miles at 20 mph. It sounds like you're not complaining about speed limits, you're complaining about other cars that are on the road when you're on the road. The University Boulevard corridor plan proposes to fix this by planning for good transportation alternatives, so people aren't forced to drive this short distance. For example, buses will run frequently in their own lanes, so they won't be stuck in car traffic. Also, it's easy to bike this distance in less than 30 minutes. Every driver who takes a bus or bikes instead of driving will represent one less car to get in your way when you're trying to drive.
But if you want to drive 40 mph down University Boulevard between the mall and Blair? Nope. University Boulevard is a road through a densely-populated area where lots of people are walking, riding the bus, biking, going to school.
Most people aren’t going to change their lifestyle catch the bus and bike if there’s free parking available. Comparing Moco to DC where free parking is limited isn’t fair. The bike lanes and increased transit buses will only cause more bottlenecks along with school buses, drivers, and pedestrians .
We're not talking about people changing their lifestyle. Do you consider driving everywhere for every trip to be your lifestyle? Here's what I do: when I'm going somewhere, I choose the transportation option that works for me. On some trips, at some times, driving works best for me. Other times, the bus or Metro work best. Other times, biking works best. Sometimes, walking works best! That's not my lifestyle, that's just me going places.
And with the University Boulevard corridor plan, the bus or biking or walking will work best for more people at more times. This is a good thing. Everyone will have more transportation choices, and you will have less car traffic to deal with.
DP. That's great, as long as we aren't making driving, which will still be the principal mode of transportation along the route for a variety of reasons, a much worse option than it is today. We should be seeking better options, not making the principal one worse until there's
some insane calculus that forces people to change modes.
Which brings us back to the subject of this thread. Upzoning along University Blvd. Which, in the manners pursued by the Thrive advocates, principally benefits developer bottom lines at the expense of current residents, as had been discussed ad nauseam in other threads. The allusions to housing need, transportation mode planning, etc., are all just secondary window dressing.
That is exactly what they are doing. They are deliberately trying to make driving as horrible as possible in order to force people to change their ways.
Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.
How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?
This is a childish argument. Society needs to move and we try to keep people safe. To keep EVERYONE safe, we can't use cars and trucks... or bikes... or even horses. Society can't control people who cross the street wearing black at night. Society can't control everyone who drinks and drives. Society can't stop every idiot who speeds, etc. So, yes... in a society with many people and many making bad decisions, people are going to die in accidents.
Society can use street lighting. Society can use ignition interlocks. Society can use speed governors.
Umm… everything has a cost, including bad decisions. You are being ridiculous.
The issue here obviously isn't that Vision Zero is unattainable. It's that you're not interested in attaining it. You're fine with people being killed in car crashes. Well, everyone gets to have their own opinions, and that includes you.
Zero is obviously unattainable. But the more sophisticated question is what are the details on the 40 deaths, plus those prior years. You can't address a problem, assuming there is one, without more details here. If only a few happened at red lights, then red lights are not the issue.
That data is readily available, courtesy of the police. They say that in 2022, there were 35 traffic deaths in DC which is about the same it is every year. Despite the billions poured into bike stuff and the endless reengineering of roads, traffic deaths don't actually change very much each year, especially when you consider there's billions of trips taken each year.
Here's the causes in 2022:
12 deaths -- pedestrian error
9 deaths -- driver speeding
4 deaths -- driver drunk/stoned/impaired
4 deaths -- driver error
2 deaths -- bicycle error
2 deaths -- medical emergency
1 death -- scooter/atv/motorcycle error
1 death -- hit and run/unknown
Your idea here seems to be: people make mistakes, therefore we shouldn't do anything to reduce the number of car crashes that kill people.
No wonder you don't like Vision Zero, which is based on this idea: humans make mistakes, but those mistakes shouldn't come with the death penalty.
Almost half the deaths are the fault of pedestrians, cyclists and other nondrivers. Maybe start there.
It's also not a great idea to tell drunk and stoned drivers that there are free to do whatever they like (which is the message our reliance on traffic cameras sends to them). If you've ever known anyone with substance problems, they know exactly what they can get away with and they will not think twice about driving when they can barely stand up.
First of all, you're posting DC numbers, not Montgomery County numbers. Don't you have a thread about Connecticut Avenue bike lanes to post on?
Second of all, yes, starting there is the whole idea. Making sure that the streets are safe and convenient for pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers to use, and also making sure that even if pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers make a mistake, that mistake doesn't kill them. The great benefit of using this approach is that it actually makes streets safer for everybody, including drivers and passenger.
As a driver, I don't like the idea that it's ok for me to kill someone who was crossing when there was a don't walk sign, and most of my fellow human beings feel the same way.
This has a link to the MD state Vision Zero Dashboard which provides the following data.
45 traffic deaths in 2023, of which 14 pedestrians and 1 bicyclist.
Out of those deaths, actions at time of death were:
- 4 In Roadway Improperly
- 3 Dart Dash
- 3 Unknown
- 2 Fail to Obey Signal
- 2 No Improper Actions
- 1 Other
- 1 Wrong Way Walking or Riding
So nearly all of the time the cause of pedestrian or cyclist death is their own reckless behavior.
So 30 people killed in motor vehicles. Two-thirds of the people killed in car crashes in Montgomery County in 2023 were in motor vehicles. Let's talk about them first.
Then let's talk about why you think it's ok to kill pedestrians and bicyclists who were "in roadway improperly" or failed to obey a signal or whatever. The appropriate punishment for failing to obey a signal is a traffic citation, not death by driver.
DP. Of course it’s not ok to kill someone on a road. But your comparison of an accidental death to a punishment is ridiculous. I know that calling every road fatality a murder is one of Vision Zero’s favorite tropes, but it makes you sound like you lack capacity for critical reasoning.
You're going to need to decide for yourself whether you think it was accidental (nobody's fault, just something that happens) or the fault of the pedestrians or bicyclists for being reckless.
Assuming that you are the person that provided the link, I love that you like
like to cite the data but not actually scrutinize it and then change your time to focus on emotion when the data reveals information that contradicts your premise.
13 of the 15 fatalities that occurred when it was dark and 12 were on state highways. What can we do as a society when people are out in the middle of the road or crossing against signals or darting into traffic in the dark on a state highway? Not only can you not fix stupid you cannot engineer away stupid either.
This is why Vision Zero is a joke, because is dispassionate view of the data looking at accident causes should result in a policy focused on pedestrian and cyclist education and even enforcement in order to save them from themselves.
+1. We're going to throw a ton of money at this Vision Zero initiative, and my guess is that traffic deaths actually won't decrease one bit.
Vision Zero is feasible in urban areas, it is not feasible in suburban or rural areas. You just have too many cars going too fast.
It’s not feasible in urban areas when people don’t follow the rules.
So the whole thing about Vision Zero is that it prevents deaths and serious injuries even when people don't follow the rules.
The only way to eliminate deaths from people being stupid is if everyone stays home.
Stupid people being reckless are an eternal fact of human nature. Whatever you do, stupid people will inevitably defeat.
Education and enforcement are the only answer if are actually interested in savings lives and not pursuing an alternative agenda.
I mean, you're just plain wrong on this one. The US is an extreme outlier among wealthy countries, including Canada, for traffic deaths. But you have a right to your objectively incorrect opinion.
The US also has significantly higher levels of gun violence, inequality and poorer quality of education than peer countries. We are a country that produces many stupid people that do stupid things.
Just look at the numbers. 12 people are dead because they’re too stupid not to run into the middle of a state highway at night. That stuff is just not happening in other rich countries at the same level. Engineering is not going to stop stupid people from doing stupid things.
Vision Zero is inherently naive and anti-science.
You say "too stupid not to run into the middle of a state highway at night," I say "cross Veirs Mill Road to catch a bus to go home after shopping in the early evening on the day after Christmas," potato potahto.
Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.
How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?
This is a childish argument. Society needs to move and we try to keep people safe. To keep EVERYONE safe, we can't use cars and trucks... or bikes... or even horses. Society can't control people who cross the street wearing black at night. Society can't control everyone who drinks and drives. Society can't stop every idiot who speeds, etc. So, yes... in a society with many people and many making bad decisions, people are going to die in accidents.
Society can use street lighting. Society can use ignition interlocks. Society can use speed governors.
Umm… everything has a cost, including bad decisions. You are being ridiculous.
The issue here obviously isn't that Vision Zero is unattainable. It's that you're not interested in attaining it. You're fine with people being killed in car crashes. Well, everyone gets to have their own opinions, and that includes you.
Zero is obviously unattainable. But the more sophisticated question is what are the details on the 40 deaths, plus those prior years. You can't address a problem, assuming there is one, without more details here. If only a few happened at red lights, then red lights are not the issue.
That data is readily available, courtesy of the police. They say that in 2022, there were 35 traffic deaths in DC which is about the same it is every year. Despite the billions poured into bike stuff and the endless reengineering of roads, traffic deaths don't actually change very much each year, especially when you consider there's billions of trips taken each year.
Here's the causes in 2022:
12 deaths -- pedestrian error
9 deaths -- driver speeding
4 deaths -- driver drunk/stoned/impaired
4 deaths -- driver error
2 deaths -- bicycle error
2 deaths -- medical emergency
1 death -- scooter/atv/motorcycle error
1 death -- hit and run/unknown
Your idea here seems to be: people make mistakes, therefore we shouldn't do anything to reduce the number of car crashes that kill people.
No wonder you don't like Vision Zero, which is based on this idea: humans make mistakes, but those mistakes shouldn't come with the death penalty.
Almost half the deaths are the fault of pedestrians, cyclists and other nondrivers. Maybe start there.
It's also not a great idea to tell drunk and stoned drivers that there are free to do whatever they like (which is the message our reliance on traffic cameras sends to them). If you've ever known anyone with substance problems, they know exactly what they can get away with and they will not think twice about driving when they can barely stand up.
First of all, you're posting DC numbers, not Montgomery County numbers. Don't you have a thread about Connecticut Avenue bike lanes to post on?
Second of all, yes, starting there is the whole idea. Making sure that the streets are safe and convenient for pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers to use, and also making sure that even if pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers make a mistake, that mistake doesn't kill them. The great benefit of using this approach is that it actually makes streets safer for everybody, including drivers and passenger.
As a driver, I don't like the idea that it's ok for me to kill someone who was crossing when there was a don't walk sign, and most of my fellow human beings feel the same way.
This has a link to the MD state Vision Zero Dashboard which provides the following data.
45 traffic deaths in 2023, of which 14 pedestrians and 1 bicyclist.
Out of those deaths, actions at time of death were:
- 4 In Roadway Improperly
- 3 Dart Dash
- 3 Unknown
- 2 Fail to Obey Signal
- 2 No Improper Actions
- 1 Other
- 1 Wrong Way Walking or Riding
So nearly all of the time the cause of pedestrian or cyclist death is their own reckless behavior.
So 30 people killed in motor vehicles. Two-thirds of the people killed in car crashes in Montgomery County in 2023 were in motor vehicles. Let's talk about them first.
Then let's talk about why you think it's ok to kill pedestrians and bicyclists who were "in roadway improperly" or failed to obey a signal or whatever. The appropriate punishment for failing to obey a signal is a traffic citation, not death by driver.
DP. Of course it’s not ok to kill someone on a road. But your comparison of an accidental death to a punishment is ridiculous. I know that calling every road fatality a murder is one of Vision Zero’s favorite tropes, but it makes you sound like you lack capacity for critical reasoning.
You're going to need to decide for yourself whether you think it was accidental (nobody's fault, just something that happens) or the fault of the pedestrians or bicyclists for being reckless.
Assuming that you are the person that provided the link, I love that you like
like to cite the data but not actually scrutinize it and then change your time to focus on emotion when the data reveals information that contradicts your premise.
13 of the 15 fatalities that occurred when it was dark and 12 were on state highways. What can we do as a society when people are out in the middle of the road or crossing against signals or darting into traffic in the dark on a state highway? Not only can you not fix stupid you cannot engineer away stupid either.
This is why Vision Zero is a joke, because is dispassionate view of the data looking at accident causes should result in a policy focused on pedestrian and cyclist education and even enforcement in order to save them from themselves.
+1. We're going to throw a ton of money at this Vision Zero initiative, and my guess is that traffic deaths actually won't decrease one bit.
Vision Zero is feasible in urban areas, it is not feasible in suburban or rural areas. You just have too many cars going too fast.
It’s not feasible in urban areas when people don’t follow the rules.
So the whole thing about Vision Zero is that it prevents deaths and serious injuries even when people don't follow the rules.
The other whole thing about Vision Zero is that it's complete bullshit. It doesnt work. Traffic calming is a myth. If you try to slow down someone in one area, they will just avoid that area or go a lot faster elsewhere because they now know no one is looking.
I see this in my own life. If there's a bunch of speed bumps on the road, I'm more likely to roll through a stop sign to make up the difference in time. It would be better if I completely stopped at the stop sign instead of temporarily going slowly in the middle of the street.
You're not going to retrain people to think that their normal 15 minute drive should now take 25 minutes. They will think it should be 15 minutes no matter what obstacles you throw up.
It actually does work, no matter how many personal anecdotes you might relate.
What’s going to happen is this will force more Beltway traffic or back road /neighorhood routes . Getting to Wheaton Mall from Blair shouldn’t take 30 minutes.
That's 3.5 miles. It takes about 11 minutes to go 3.5 miles at 20 mph. It sounds like you're not complaining about speed limits, you're complaining about other cars that are on the road when you're on the road. The University Boulevard corridor plan proposes to fix this by planning for good transportation alternatives, so people aren't forced to drive this short distance. For example, buses will run frequently in their own lanes, so they won't be stuck in car traffic. Also, it's easy to bike this distance in less than 30 minutes. Every driver who takes a bus or bikes instead of driving will represent one less car to get in your way when you're trying to drive.
But if you want to drive 40 mph down University Boulevard between the mall and Blair? Nope. University Boulevard is a road through a densely-populated area where lots of people are walking, riding the bus, biking, going to school.
Most people aren’t going to change their lifestyle catch the bus and bike if there’s free parking available. Comparing Moco to DC where free parking is limited isn’t fair. The bike lanes and increased transit buses will only cause more bottlenecks along with school buses, drivers, and pedestrians .
We're not talking about people changing their lifestyle. Do you consider driving everywhere for every trip to be your lifestyle? Here's what I do: when I'm going somewhere, I choose the transportation option that works for me. On some trips, at some times, driving works best for me. Other times, the bus or Metro work best. Other times, biking works best. Sometimes, walking works best! That's not my lifestyle, that's just me going places.
And with the University Boulevard corridor plan, the bus or biking or walking will work best for more people at more times. This is a good thing. Everyone will have more transportation choices, and you will have less car traffic to deal with.
DP. That's great, as long as we aren't making driving, which will still be the principal mode of transportation along the route for a variety of reasons, a much worse option than it is today. We should be seeking better options, not making the principal one worse until there's some insane calculus that forces people to change modes.
Which brings us back to the subject of this thread. Upzoning along University Blvd. Which, in the manners pursued by the Thrive advocates, principally benefits developer bottom lines at the expense of current residents, as had been discussed ad nauseam in other threads. The allusions to housing need, transportation mode planning, etc., are all just secondary window dressing.
Most likely outcome is not new investment in housing but bare minimum to convert the SFHs to MFH. It will be lowest common denominator slum quality, dilapidated housing from the get go. It will pretty much be equivalent to what’s on Flower Ave in Takoma Park expanded across more of the county.
Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.
How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?
This is a childish argument. Society needs to move and we try to keep people safe. To keep EVERYONE safe, we can't use cars and trucks... or bikes... or even horses. Society can't control people who cross the street wearing black at night. Society can't control everyone who drinks and drives. Society can't stop every idiot who speeds, etc. So, yes... in a society with many people and many making bad decisions, people are going to die in accidents.
Society can use street lighting. Society can use ignition interlocks. Society can use speed governors.
Umm… everything has a cost, including bad decisions. You are being ridiculous.
The issue here obviously isn't that Vision Zero is unattainable. It's that you're not interested in attaining it. You're fine with people being killed in car crashes. Well, everyone gets to have their own opinions, and that includes you.
Zero is obviously unattainable. But the more sophisticated question is what are the details on the 40 deaths, plus those prior years. You can't address a problem, assuming there is one, without more details here. If only a few happened at red lights, then red lights are not the issue.
That data is readily available, courtesy of the police. They say that in 2022, there were 35 traffic deaths in DC which is about the same it is every year. Despite the billions poured into bike stuff and the endless reengineering of roads, traffic deaths don't actually change very much each year, especially when you consider there's billions of trips taken each year.
Here's the causes in 2022:
12 deaths -- pedestrian error
9 deaths -- driver speeding
4 deaths -- driver drunk/stoned/impaired
4 deaths -- driver error
2 deaths -- bicycle error
2 deaths -- medical emergency
1 death -- scooter/atv/motorcycle error
1 death -- hit and run/unknown
Your idea here seems to be: people make mistakes, therefore we shouldn't do anything to reduce the number of car crashes that kill people.
No wonder you don't like Vision Zero, which is based on this idea: humans make mistakes, but those mistakes shouldn't come with the death penalty.
Almost half the deaths are the fault of pedestrians, cyclists and other nondrivers. Maybe start there.
It's also not a great idea to tell drunk and stoned drivers that there are free to do whatever they like (which is the message our reliance on traffic cameras sends to them). If you've ever known anyone with substance problems, they know exactly what they can get away with and they will not think twice about driving when they can barely stand up.
First of all, you're posting DC numbers, not Montgomery County numbers. Don't you have a thread about Connecticut Avenue bike lanes to post on?
Second of all, yes, starting there is the whole idea. Making sure that the streets are safe and convenient for pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers to use, and also making sure that even if pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers make a mistake, that mistake doesn't kill them. The great benefit of using this approach is that it actually makes streets safer for everybody, including drivers and passenger.
As a driver, I don't like the idea that it's ok for me to kill someone who was crossing when there was a don't walk sign, and most of my fellow human beings feel the same way.
This has a link to the MD state Vision Zero Dashboard which provides the following data.
45 traffic deaths in 2023, of which 14 pedestrians and 1 bicyclist.
Out of those deaths, actions at time of death were:
- 4 In Roadway Improperly
- 3 Dart Dash
- 3 Unknown
- 2 Fail to Obey Signal
- 2 No Improper Actions
- 1 Other
- 1 Wrong Way Walking or Riding
So nearly all of the time the cause of pedestrian or cyclist death is their own reckless behavior.
So 30 people killed in motor vehicles. Two-thirds of the people killed in car crashes in Montgomery County in 2023 were in motor vehicles. Let's talk about them first.
Then let's talk about why you think it's ok to kill pedestrians and bicyclists who were "in roadway improperly" or failed to obey a signal or whatever. The appropriate punishment for failing to obey a signal is a traffic citation, not death by driver.
DP. Of course it’s not ok to kill someone on a road. But your comparison of an accidental death to a punishment is ridiculous. I know that calling every road fatality a murder is one of Vision Zero’s favorite tropes, but it makes you sound like you lack capacity for critical reasoning.
You're going to need to decide for yourself whether you think it was accidental (nobody's fault, just something that happens) or the fault of the pedestrians or bicyclists for being reckless.
Assuming that you are the person that provided the link, I love that you like
like to cite the data but not actually scrutinize it and then change your time to focus on emotion when the data reveals information that contradicts your premise.
13 of the 15 fatalities that occurred when it was dark and 12 were on state highways. What can we do as a society when people are out in the middle of the road or crossing against signals or darting into traffic in the dark on a state highway? Not only can you not fix stupid you cannot engineer away stupid either.
This is why Vision Zero is a joke, because is dispassionate view of the data looking at accident causes should result in a policy focused on pedestrian and cyclist education and even enforcement in order to save them from themselves.
+1. We're going to throw a ton of money at this Vision Zero initiative, and my guess is that traffic deaths actually won't decrease one bit.
Vision Zero is feasible in urban areas, it is not feasible in suburban or rural areas. You just have too many cars going too fast.
It’s not feasible in urban areas when people don’t follow the rules.
So the whole thing about Vision Zero is that it prevents deaths and serious injuries even when people don't follow the rules.
The only way to eliminate deaths from people being stupid is if everyone stays home.
Stupid people being reckless are an eternal fact of human nature. Whatever you do, stupid people will inevitably defeat.
Education and enforcement are the only answer if are actually interested in savings lives and not pursuing an alternative agenda.
I mean, you're just plain wrong on this one. The US is an extreme outlier among wealthy countries, including Canada, for traffic deaths. But you have a right to your objectively incorrect opinion.
The US also has significantly higher levels of gun violence, inequality and poorer quality of education than peer countries. We are a country that produces many stupid people that do stupid things.
Just look at the numbers. 12 people are dead because they’re too stupid not to run into the middle of a state highway at night. That stuff is just not happening in other rich countries at the same level. Engineering is not going to stop stupid people from doing stupid things.
Vision Zero is inherently naive and anti-science.
You say "too stupid not to run into the middle of a state highway at night," I say "cross Veirs Mill Road to catch a bus to go home after shopping in the early evening on the day after Christmas," potato potahto.
Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.
How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?
This is a childish argument. Society needs to move and we try to keep people safe. To keep EVERYONE safe, we can't use cars and trucks... or bikes... or even horses. Society can't control people who cross the street wearing black at night. Society can't control everyone who drinks and drives. Society can't stop every idiot who speeds, etc. So, yes... in a society with many people and many making bad decisions, people are going to die in accidents.
Society can use street lighting. Society can use ignition interlocks. Society can use speed governors.
Umm… everything has a cost, including bad decisions. You are being ridiculous.
The issue here obviously isn't that Vision Zero is unattainable. It's that you're not interested in attaining it. You're fine with people being killed in car crashes. Well, everyone gets to have their own opinions, and that includes you.
Zero is obviously unattainable. But the more sophisticated question is what are the details on the 40 deaths, plus those prior years. You can't address a problem, assuming there is one, without more details here. If only a few happened at red lights, then red lights are not the issue.
That data is readily available, courtesy of the police. They say that in 2022, there were 35 traffic deaths in DC which is about the same it is every year. Despite the billions poured into bike stuff and the endless reengineering of roads, traffic deaths don't actually change very much each year, especially when you consider there's billions of trips taken each year.
Here's the causes in 2022:
12 deaths -- pedestrian error
9 deaths -- driver speeding
4 deaths -- driver drunk/stoned/impaired
4 deaths -- driver error
2 deaths -- bicycle error
2 deaths -- medical emergency
1 death -- scooter/atv/motorcycle error
1 death -- hit and run/unknown
Your idea here seems to be: people make mistakes, therefore we shouldn't do anything to reduce the number of car crashes that kill people.
No wonder you don't like Vision Zero, which is based on this idea: humans make mistakes, but those mistakes shouldn't come with the death penalty.
Almost half the deaths are the fault of pedestrians, cyclists and other nondrivers. Maybe start there.
It's also not a great idea to tell drunk and stoned drivers that there are free to do whatever they like (which is the message our reliance on traffic cameras sends to them). If you've ever known anyone with substance problems, they know exactly what they can get away with and they will not think twice about driving when they can barely stand up.
First of all, you're posting DC numbers, not Montgomery County numbers. Don't you have a thread about Connecticut Avenue bike lanes to post on?
Second of all, yes, starting there is the whole idea. Making sure that the streets are safe and convenient for pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers to use, and also making sure that even if pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers make a mistake, that mistake doesn't kill them. The great benefit of using this approach is that it actually makes streets safer for everybody, including drivers and passenger.
As a driver, I don't like the idea that it's ok for me to kill someone who was crossing when there was a don't walk sign, and most of my fellow human beings feel the same way.
This has a link to the MD state Vision Zero Dashboard which provides the following data.
45 traffic deaths in 2023, of which 14 pedestrians and 1 bicyclist.
Out of those deaths, actions at time of death were:
- 4 In Roadway Improperly
- 3 Dart Dash
- 3 Unknown
- 2 Fail to Obey Signal
- 2 No Improper Actions
- 1 Other
- 1 Wrong Way Walking or Riding
So nearly all of the time the cause of pedestrian or cyclist death is their own reckless behavior.
So 30 people killed in motor vehicles. Two-thirds of the people killed in car crashes in Montgomery County in 2023 were in motor vehicles. Let's talk about them first.
Then let's talk about why you think it's ok to kill pedestrians and bicyclists who were "in roadway improperly" or failed to obey a signal or whatever. The appropriate punishment for failing to obey a signal is a traffic citation, not death by driver.
DP. Of course it’s not ok to kill someone on a road. But your comparison of an accidental death to a punishment is ridiculous. I know that calling every road fatality a murder is one of Vision Zero’s favorite tropes, but it makes you sound like you lack capacity for critical reasoning.
You're going to need to decide for yourself whether you think it was accidental (nobody's fault, just something that happens) or the fault of the pedestrians or bicyclists for being reckless.
Assuming that you are the person that provided the link, I love that you like
like to cite the data but not actually scrutinize it and then change your time to focus on emotion when the data reveals information that contradicts your premise.
13 of the 15 fatalities that occurred when it was dark and 12 were on state highways. What can we do as a society when people are out in the middle of the road or crossing against signals or darting into traffic in the dark on a state highway? Not only can you not fix stupid you cannot engineer away stupid either.
This is why Vision Zero is a joke, because is dispassionate view of the data looking at accident causes should result in a policy focused on pedestrian and cyclist education and even enforcement in order to save them from themselves.
+1. We're going to throw a ton of money at this Vision Zero initiative, and my guess is that traffic deaths actually won't decrease one bit.
Vision Zero is feasible in urban areas, it is not feasible in suburban or rural areas. You just have too many cars going too fast.
It’s not feasible in urban areas when people don’t follow the rules.
So the whole thing about Vision Zero is that it prevents deaths and serious injuries even when people don't follow the rules.
The only way to eliminate deaths from people being stupid is if everyone stays home.
Stupid people being reckless are an eternal fact of human nature. Whatever you do, stupid people will inevitably defeat.
Education and enforcement are the only answer if are actually interested in savings lives and not pursuing an alternative agenda.
I mean, you're just plain wrong on this one. The US is an extreme outlier among wealthy countries, including Canada, for traffic deaths. But you have a right to your objectively incorrect opinion.
The US also has significantly higher levels of gun violence, inequality and poorer quality of education than peer countries. We are a country that produces many stupid people that do stupid things.
Just look at the numbers. 12 people are dead because they’re too stupid not to run into the middle of a state highway at night. That stuff is just not happening in other rich countries at the same level. Engineering is not going to stop stupid people from doing stupid things.
Vision Zero is inherently naive and anti-science.
You say "too stupid not to run into the middle of a state highway at night," I say "cross Veirs Mill Road to catch a bus to go home after shopping in the early evening on the day after Christmas," potato potahto.
Anonymous wrote:If they want to drop the missing middle rezoning proposal and just do this one maybe that is a reasonable compromise, but upzoning everything is a bad idea. Vision zero is idiotic and unrealistic though. The goal of reducing traffic fatalities attainable, but we need to balance operational concerns with safety improvements. The only way to achieve basically zero traffic deaths would be to reduce speed limit to 15 mph everywhere. Ridiculous policy goals like vision zero will harm society more than it helps.
How many deaths do you think it's worth for you to get somewhere 5 minutes faster in your car? How about 10 minutes faster in your car? Also, is it ok for people in your family to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash, or should car crash deaths and serious injuries be limited to people in other people's families?
This is a childish argument. Society needs to move and we try to keep people safe. To keep EVERYONE safe, we can't use cars and trucks... or bikes... or even horses. Society can't control people who cross the street wearing black at night. Society can't control everyone who drinks and drives. Society can't stop every idiot who speeds, etc. So, yes... in a society with many people and many making bad decisions, people are going to die in accidents.
Society can use street lighting. Society can use ignition interlocks. Society can use speed governors.
Umm… everything has a cost, including bad decisions. You are being ridiculous.
The issue here obviously isn't that Vision Zero is unattainable. It's that you're not interested in attaining it. You're fine with people being killed in car crashes. Well, everyone gets to have their own opinions, and that includes you.
Zero is obviously unattainable. But the more sophisticated question is what are the details on the 40 deaths, plus those prior years. You can't address a problem, assuming there is one, without more details here. If only a few happened at red lights, then red lights are not the issue.
That data is readily available, courtesy of the police. They say that in 2022, there were 35 traffic deaths in DC which is about the same it is every year. Despite the billions poured into bike stuff and the endless reengineering of roads, traffic deaths don't actually change very much each year, especially when you consider there's billions of trips taken each year.
Here's the causes in 2022:
12 deaths -- pedestrian error
9 deaths -- driver speeding
4 deaths -- driver drunk/stoned/impaired
4 deaths -- driver error
2 deaths -- bicycle error
2 deaths -- medical emergency
1 death -- scooter/atv/motorcycle error
1 death -- hit and run/unknown
Your idea here seems to be: people make mistakes, therefore we shouldn't do anything to reduce the number of car crashes that kill people.
No wonder you don't like Vision Zero, which is based on this idea: humans make mistakes, but those mistakes shouldn't come with the death penalty.
Almost half the deaths are the fault of pedestrians, cyclists and other nondrivers. Maybe start there.
It's also not a great idea to tell drunk and stoned drivers that there are free to do whatever they like (which is the message our reliance on traffic cameras sends to them). If you've ever known anyone with substance problems, they know exactly what they can get away with and they will not think twice about driving when they can barely stand up.
First of all, you're posting DC numbers, not Montgomery County numbers. Don't you have a thread about Connecticut Avenue bike lanes to post on?
Second of all, yes, starting there is the whole idea. Making sure that the streets are safe and convenient for pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers to use, and also making sure that even if pedestrians, bicyclists, and other non-drivers make a mistake, that mistake doesn't kill them. The great benefit of using this approach is that it actually makes streets safer for everybody, including drivers and passenger.
As a driver, I don't like the idea that it's ok for me to kill someone who was crossing when there was a don't walk sign, and most of my fellow human beings feel the same way.
This has a link to the MD state Vision Zero Dashboard which provides the following data.
45 traffic deaths in 2023, of which 14 pedestrians and 1 bicyclist.
Out of those deaths, actions at time of death were:
- 4 In Roadway Improperly
- 3 Dart Dash
- 3 Unknown
- 2 Fail to Obey Signal
- 2 No Improper Actions
- 1 Other
- 1 Wrong Way Walking or Riding
So nearly all of the time the cause of pedestrian or cyclist death is their own reckless behavior.
So 30 people killed in motor vehicles. Two-thirds of the people killed in car crashes in Montgomery County in 2023 were in motor vehicles. Let's talk about them first.
Then let's talk about why you think it's ok to kill pedestrians and bicyclists who were "in roadway improperly" or failed to obey a signal or whatever. The appropriate punishment for failing to obey a signal is a traffic citation, not death by driver.
DP. Of course it’s not ok to kill someone on a road. But your comparison of an accidental death to a punishment is ridiculous. I know that calling every road fatality a murder is one of Vision Zero’s favorite tropes, but it makes you sound like you lack capacity for critical reasoning.
You're going to need to decide for yourself whether you think it was accidental (nobody's fault, just something that happens) or the fault of the pedestrians or bicyclists for being reckless.
Assuming that you are the person that provided the link, I love that you like
like to cite the data but not actually scrutinize it and then change your time to focus on emotion when the data reveals information that contradicts your premise.
13 of the 15 fatalities that occurred when it was dark and 12 were on state highways. What can we do as a society when people are out in the middle of the road or crossing against signals or darting into traffic in the dark on a state highway? Not only can you not fix stupid you cannot engineer away stupid either.
This is why Vision Zero is a joke, because is dispassionate view of the data looking at accident causes should result in a policy focused on pedestrian and cyclist education and even enforcement in order to save them from themselves.
You can't fix stupid, but you can engineer systems so that stupid doesn't kill. We do it all the time for cars and drivers.
The number of people who die on the streets here is small and it is basically the same every single year. The year to year variations are not statistically significant which suggests that all the efforts made to reengineer roads doesnt make any difference whatsoever.
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