enforcement of cars speeding, red light running, etc, and whether it is effective to curb reckless driving is talked about a lot on here.
last week transportation alternatives of nyc released a study on the very subject.
if anything, it adds some ammo to return to someone who says that cyclists are always breaking the law.
i've been in too many meetings where conversations plunge to people ranting about cyclists breaking the law, as if drivers never do. we've gotten good at deflecting it, but it's still annoying.
some interesting factoids:
- A driver could fail to yield (the number two cause of crashes in NYC) every single day and get ticketed only once every 1,589 years.
- While the number of traffic fatalities caused by drivers failing to yield rose 26 percent between 2005 and 2007, the number of summonses issued for failing to yield decreased 12 percent during that period.
just some food for thought: http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/07/14/ta-report-reckless-driving-casualties-rising-as-nypd-enforcement-lags/
This is great and all, but cyclists still aren't going to get respect from drivers when there are those among us like the guy I saw yesterday riding the wrong way up Fifth between the two lanes of traffic heading from the Birmingham bridge towards Oakland.
On a positive note - he was wearing a helmet.
it would be a shame to ruin our good name
I think enforcement would go a very long way in making our streets safer for absolutely everyone. If it meant that I wouldn't run the occasional stop sigh or red light in order to make my street safer for kids to ride their bikes, I'm all for it.
And speaking of lax enforcement. This morning, sitting at the red light at Friendship and Negley, I watched a driver run the red light by cutting around three cars in front of him. There was a police officer sitting in her car waiting for the light to turn green. She did not pull the driver over. What, exactly, does it take?
There just aren't enough police out there to deal with it all. In Edgewood motorists generally do drive slowly and respectfully because the Edgewood police enforce the simple stop and yield laws.
I wonder if something else completely could help, and this is something I have been thinking a lot about lately. What if when you renewed your drivers license you had to take the written exam again? That would get you up to date on all the new laws, and prove that you know what the laws actually are. It's crazy to me that you take the test once when you are 16 and that's it for the rest of your life!
The ONLY way to make the streets safe is to design them with safety in mind, rather than maximizing the flow of automobiles. Simple really.
Drivers know it is unsafe to run lights, speed, roll through stops, tailgate and threaten people with their cars. But it is done anyway, because the system makes people believe (at least subconsciously) their right not to be impeded in any way trumps all else.
I saw this awesome video of a red light in the Netherlands, I believe. It was combined with a retractable bollard in the road, so when the light turned red, the road was obstructed.
i think you just made every U.S. lawyer's head explode
Do we have "Traffic Enforcement Agents" in Pittsburgh?
I'm pretty sure that pittsburgh's municipal code allows parking enforcement to issue citations for motor vehicle violations, as well.
