Reply to Why does the DC Council (Charles Allen) not want the MPD doing any traffic enforcement?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm confused why a thread about traffic enforcement turns into an argument about bikes. You're all just rich talking heads who don't even live in the areas of the city where traffic safety issues are a concern.

[/quote]

There is no part of DC where traffic safety is not a big concern.

MD drivers aren't magically transported downtown or to Capital Hill - they have to get thru Wards 3 and 4 and 6 to get there and there are equally dangerous everywhere.[/quote]

Actually looking at the map in this Post article, it's predominantly not ward 3, but all the anti traffic safety people who spend time complaining about bikes seem to live in ward 3. On a thread about general traffic safety which includes far, far, far more than just bikes, they literally cannot stop complaining about bikes of all things.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/02/23/dc-traffic-deaths-highest-record/

[img]https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-stat/graphics/ai2html/DCTRAFFICDEATHS_MAP_v5/FGHMTYXM5JCBNJMDA636RFRBFY/DCTRAFFICDEATHS_MAP_ai2html-medium.jpg?v=9[/img]

"The Southern Avenue corridor, which separates D.C. from Maryland’s Prince George’s County, accounted for nearly 1 in 5 traffic deaths in the city last year, The Post found. Among those killed were two pedestrians struck in the same block — one while crossing the street and the other a victim in a hit-and-run — about eight months apart.

Ward 3, which contains many of the city’s Whitest and wealthiest neighborhoods in upper Northwest, had no traffic deaths last year. Cases have often garnered more attention in wealthier areas, where advocates and residents are more vocal on social media, at vigils and during government hearings."

...

"Four of the five neighborhoods with the most deaths over the past eight years are home to majority-Black residents, according to The Post’s analysis, while at least 58 percent of victims citywide were Black — a number that’s likely higher because records in many cases don’t identify race or ethnicity.

By contrast, five majority-White and higher-income neighborhoods — Kent/Palisades, Chevy Chase, Barnaby Woods, Mt. Pleasant and Georgetown — had no traffic fatalities during the eight-year period. This analysis uses boundaries established by the D.C. Department of Health, which delineates 51 “statistical neighborhoods” for research purposes.

Wards 7 and 8, with a population that is about 90 percent Black, combined for 19 traffic-related deaths last year as Ward 3 had none. In the past eight years, Ward 3 recorded seven crash deaths, while wards 7 and 8 had 53 and 60, respectively."

[/quote]

Combined fatalities and accidents with both severe and minor injuries for both bicycles and pedestrians in 2022 give a good indication of the geographic pattern where traffic enforcement should be prioritized and it’s not what you are saying.

[img]https://i.ibb.co/ngY7YC5/EA43561-A-6-D58-4-FA2-9-D5-A-154-CA4-CEDF88.jpg[/img][/quote]

I think you were responding to me and I didn't say anything about where accidents and fatalities are happening so not sure why you responded with all of this data, date about which I am already very familiar.

I simply stated that people across DC are concerned about safety on their roads which I know because I attend public meetings across the city every week.  And people across the city are correct to be concerned about safety on their roads because there is crazy and dangerous driving everywhere.

Of course the crash charts you shared pretty closely correspond to traffic volumes and historically we've located high volume roads in poorer neighborhoods.  There is a common refrain that DC halted all freeways and built Metro instead but of course that is only partly true - the movement to stop the freeways only really got started when there were proposals for freeways in Wards 3 and 4 - the proposed freeways in Wards 7 & 8 sadly largely were built and the neighborhoods suffer for it today.

And you likely haven't been around long enough to know this but in Ward 3 at least many of the NIMBY's opposed to adding new housing in the Ward originally cut their teeth fighting freeways.[/quote]
The most accidents are where the city is the most dense and there is the greatest interface of different users: Wards 1, 2, 5 and 6.

It has nothing to do with race. However, these areas also have the least amount of camera enforcement, which is closely associated with race. However, this doesn’t stop people from claiming that they are actually trying to save BIPOC lives.

The reason Vision Zero is not working is that the white residents of DC in Wards 1, 2, 5 and 6 will not tolerate the carcereal enforcement policy that they want to push onto BIPOC on DC. That’s it.

[img]https://www.dcpolicycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/3-Camera-violations-by-residential-segregation.png[/img]

https://www.dcpolicycenter.org/publications/predominately-black-neighborhoods-in-d-c-bear-the-brunt-of-automated-traffic-enforcement/[/quote]

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