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Are Washington’s [and Baltimore’s] drivers really the worst?

from Greater Greater Washington by David Alpert and Andrew Bossi

Allstate released a report yesterday ranking metropolitan areas by frequency of car collisions. The Washington region came out dead last, [and Baltimore came in next to last] spawning headlines like "DC has worst drivers in America."
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What’s wrong with jumping from crash frequencies to conclusion that Washington area drivers are the nation’s worst? It puts the blame or credit all on the drivers, rather than the road designers, licensing authorities, and police enforcing the laws. It also treats all crashes from minor fender bender to fatality the same.
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Allstate ranked areas based on the average time between claims per driver. If we adjust these numbers to equalize vehicle miles traveled per capita, then Maryland comes out with the fewest collisions. So this story could easily have also borne the headline, "Maryland drivers the best in the nation." Are they the best or among the worst? We don’t really know enough to say.
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[B’ Spokes: Wait, what? Whether we live in sprawl or a dense urban environment we all do the same day to day stuff. So what if Maryland spends and extra 20 miles (or whatever) per day doing the same stuff everyone else does with fewer miles and that makes us safer?

Vehicle miles traveled is really just a scam to justify expressways, nothing against expressways but they don’t make other streets safer, they just let us travel farther and that’s about it. It comes down to doing day to day things that everyone else does and for Washington and Baltimore that means a higher frequency of crashes.

Note: WABA is using this for a call for safer streets:

"We have no interest in assigning blame here. But being the worst in the nation is a rather strong indication of a problem, and we are asking Mayor Gray to raise the priority of roadway safety and start working toward a solution."

https://www.waba.org/blog/2011/09/how-will-district-respond-to-worst-drivers-report/ ]
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Technologies Conspicuously Absent from Sci-Fi Movies

From Cracked.com By:David Christopher Bell

#6. Every Post-Apocalyptic Film — Bicycles (Seriously)

imageGetty

We’ve seen it in The Road, Terminator Salvation, Dawn of the Dead, Book of Eli, The Walking Dead, Mad Max, Falling Skies and many, many others. One of the main problems of living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland is that the survivors have to be constantly on the move, because otherwise it would just be two hours of watching people slowly die.

Whether they’re trying to reach some sort of fabled vestige of civilization, looking for resources or simply trying not to be eaten by zombies, the survivors are always moving from point A to point B, and that means either walking over insane stretches of possibly radioactive desolation or fighting other people for gas. That’s just the way it is, though, because if the whole world has gone to shit, how else are you gonna get around?

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Of course.

So What’s Missing?

How about grabbing a bike? In most of these films, there always seems to be a gap between having a vehicle and gas and being shit out of luck, as if no other possibility existed.

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“If only there were some sort of middle ground between cars and easily spooked animals!”

Why don’t they ride bikes? Did all the zombies eat them? Did the nukes somehow specifically target bicycles but miss all the cars? Bikes are cheap, fast and easy to maintain, plus they require no fuel and they’re freaking everywhere — literally the only reason we can think of for why they are never used in these films is that they would look kinda ridiculous.

image Getty
Bikes: Worse than being eaten by a zombie.

In The Road and Book of Eli, the protagonists spend pretty much the whole movie walking across hostile territory and never so much as consider looking for some bikes. It’s like they never even existed. And before you tell us that Eli wouldn’t be able to ride a bike due to his condition — if you can aim a bow and arrow and win a machete fight, you can ride a damn bike.

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There’s blind and then there’s Daredevil blind.

Not only are bikes considerably faster than walking — the average human walking speed is roughly 3 mph, and the same effort applied on a bike is 15 mph — but they are also much more discreet than cars. In Terminator Salvation, the characters can rarely get into vehicles without attracting giant murder robots, which you’d think would at least make them consider building some bicycles out of Terminator scrap parts.

In The Walking Dead, the Dawn of the Dead remake and pretty much every zombie film ever, the protagonists use motorized vehicles to get around, and they inevitably break down, leaving the characters to run. Again, there is no situation in which traveling by bike or at least keeping one strapped to the roof of the car wouldn’t be beneficial.

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“Yes. This is absolutely the best plan for this situation.”

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Charges Expected in Natasha Pettigrew Case

from TheWashCycle by Jim Titus
Sources close to the investigation of the death of Natasha Pettigrew say that the State’s Attorney will seek an indictment for fleeing the scene of an accident in which a death occurred. Given the lack of witnesses willing to testify, there is insufficient evidence for manslaughter. No other details are available at this time.
Ms. Pettigrew was the Green Party candidate for US Senate last year, until she was struck by an SUV while riding south on Largo Road (MD-202) near Prince Georges County Community College, early in the morning of September 19, 2011. The driver stopped briefly and then proceeded home to Upper Marlboro, dragging Ms. Pettegrew’s bike all the way, later telling police she thought she hit a deer. Initial statements by the state police implied that the police believed the driver and blamed Ms. Pettigrew for the crash, for not wearing reflective clothing. Reporters and Ms. Pettigrew’s mother soon found reflective clothing that she had been wearing at the scene of the crash.
A memorial bike ride for is planned for September 17.
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Is AA cracking down on cyclists and letting speeding motorists off the hook?

I saw this posted on Facebook: "Passed two AA County bike police, again, radar gun in hand, presumably ticketing speeding bicyclists on the trail. What about speeding motorists? More of them then us."

If you have been ticketed please let us know.

I’ll note the data I have (from 2006) shows Anne Arundel County being very lax in giving motorist speeding tickets unless they are going 20 mph over the speed limit, I wounder if they’ll do the same for cyclists?

It’s also worth noting that comparing the last crash data publicly available; bike crashes are down from 88 to 80 while car crashes are up from 8427 to 8995. I certainly hope AA is cracking down on drivers with equal vigor.
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Effect of 20 mph traffic speed zones on road injuries in London, 1986-2006

Abstract
Objective To quantify the effect of the introduction of 20 mph (32 km an hour) traffic speed zones on road collisions, injuries, and fatalities in London.
Design Observational study based on analysis of geographically coded police data on road casualties, 1986-2006. Analyses were made of longitudinal changes in counts of road injuries within each of 119 029 road segments with at least one casualty with conditional fixed effects Poisson models. Estimates of the effect of introducing 20 mph zones on casualties within those zones and in adjacent areas were adjusted for the underlying downward trend in traffic casualties.
Setting London.
Main outcome measures All casualties from road collisions; those killed and seriously injured (KSI).
Results The introduction of 20 mph zones was associated with a 41.9% (95% confidence interval 36.0% to 47.8%) reduction in road casualties, after adjustment for underlying time trends. The percentage reduction was greatest in younger children and greater for the category of killed or seriously injured casualties than for minor injuries. There was no evidence of casualty migration to areas adjacent to 20 mph zones, where casualties also fell slightly by an average of 8.0% (4.4% to 11.5%).
Conclusions 20 mph zones are effective measures for reducing road injuries and deaths.
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PLACEMAKING: HOW TO ENGAGE YOUR TRANSPORTATION AGENCY (Part 3)

by Mark Plotz (highlights)
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The implied threat of being sued for building anything other than the same old incomplete street, is a tool deployed far & wide by DOTs to shutdown discussion and give cover for eliminating crosswalks (might encourage pedestrians to cross a dangerous road); paved shoulders and sharrows/bike lanes (might encourage bicyclists to use the public roadways); and sidewalks (might encourage pedestrians to walk in the auto recovery zones). When confronted with the ‘L’ word, take a deep breath (and recognize that lawyers aren’t born with kung-fu grips, so they’re not so scary); stand your ground; then consider Gary’s translation of what is really happening:
"I watched this happen many times during my career at NJDOT. What I began to learn, however, was that most of the transportation professionals who cited liability had never been sued or even consulted with an attorney."
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Lastly, when faced with the liability argument, it is entirely appropriate to ask: "What’s the cost of maintaining the status quo?" The purpose of starting the conversation about roadway design is to ensure the needs and safety of all anticipated users will not be overlooked and can be reasonably met. Removing a crosswalk or leaving a shoulder out of a design will not prevent pedestrians from crossing the road or a bicyclist from riding to work in a transit-deficient area. The story that follows explains the aftermath of what happens when transportation planners and engineers design roads for cars, then look the other way.
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Name that speed

Excerpts from New Urban Network – The Source for Urban Planning, Walkable Communities & Smart Growth by Charles Marohn

Driving across the Irish countryside, I was impressed and — as an engineer trained in the United States — actually quite stunned by how they handled the transition from country road to town street. Driving along the highway at a high speed, I would be channeled into a traffic calming section — a roundabout with a small radius or a dramatic lane narrowing was most common — and find myself suddenly in town driving at a very low speed.

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To prove the point, today I’m going to present photos of Highway 61 all taken within the city limits of Grand Marais. I have cropped each image to reveal only the highway, removing all of the adjacent land use. Your challenge is to go through and identify the speed limit for each section. You have three to choose from: 55, 40, and 30 mph.

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