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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]pretty gross how the bicyclist crowd always tries to exploit the death of people in accidents...[/quote]

This is their go-to move. They blame cars for everything, try to make it seem like reckless drivers are omnipresent, etc. [/quote]
Uh, are you saying they are not? I've lived here for 20 years as a pedestrian, have had a car for 5, and yes reckless drivers are omnipresent.[/quote]

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

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

Not exactly omnipresent. [/quote]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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