Though how much and how fast we drive are key determinants of crash risk, driving everywhere, no matter how short the trip, and speeding, no matter how little time is saved, have been normalized.
#
23 February 2012
#
17 February 2012
Tell the City Council
From 2001 through 2011, seven pedestrians were killed in bike-ped accidents. For some perspective on just how miniscule that statistic is, Gothamist is reporting that in a twelve-hour period beginning on Saturday night, five people were killed in car accidents. Two of them were pedestrians hit by drivers who fled the scene.
#
13 February 2012
Road Danger Reduction Forum » Blaming bollards and trees – and why it’s important
Not only trees but stumps “as these can still be aggressive” (p. 541) should be removed, as well as fences since these are “a particularly aggressive form of man-made structure” (p. 544). Those people in the audience not members of the “road safety” community would laugh, while the highway engineers and other ”road safety” types would be unable to understand the laughter.
#
17:00
This issue is how – supposedly – trees, bollards and other inanimate objects are ‘dangerous’. It tells us much of what we need to know about the official view of ‘road safety’.
#
11 February 2012
DOT Shortens Pedestrian Crossings on Delancey, Doesn’t Touch Traffic
Half of all pedestrians hit on Delancey Street are struck while they have the walk signal, according to Benson.
Yet no where near this proportion of incidents leads to a criminal trial, where facts can be determined fairly. Is it not even potentially a crime in this city to drive vehicles over people following walk signals?
#
8:40
The Grave Threat of “Homegrown Terrorism”
Lindsey Graham: “Homegrown terrorism is a real threat. There are a lot of people being radicalized on the Internet”
Graham wraps all his paranoid anxieties, whether genuine or for the benefit of his owners, into such a tidy package.
#
9 February 2012
Today’s Headlines | Streetsblog New York City
This is really outrageous. DOT hired a corps of pedestrian safety managers in response to one politically motivated Daily News editorial about “pedestrian perdition” on the Manhattan Bridge, even though there had been no deaths, just the random complaint of an editor who got yelled at by a cyclist one day.
But a little girl died crossing the street and there’s no response to Silver and no pedestrian safety managers deployed to keep people alive? How tone deaf can the DOT be?
If the DOT wants to disprove the meme that it does not listen to the community, this is not helping.
Hiring those $80k / month “pedestrian safety managers” to loaf around on cycling paths that demonstrated no safety problem was a low point for the DOT, if not the human race generally.
#
7 February 2012
Road Danger Reduction Forum » Campaigns season for the safety of cyclists – but will they do any good? Part One — rdrf.org.uk — Readability
The brutal fact of the matter is that we have power a differential on the road. This involves some road users (basically the motorised ones) having massive potential lethality and some others (generally speaking, those walking and cycling) having a lot less. This is apart from the fact that the latter – referred to as “Vulnerable Road Users” because, like the vast majority of travellers in the world, they happen to be outside cars – are particularly vulnerable to the danger posed by the former.
#
12:00
safety on the road” can mean all kinds of things: from misguided and counterproductive fantasies through to getting the most vulnerable out of the way of the most dangerous.
#
10:20
The only problem with basing on a strategy on this “even-stevens” approach is that it is at best rubbish and at worst a recipe for continuing danger wrapped up with victim-blaming. It won’t work.
