CdwJava writes:
And I don't believe in "ghosts and tarot cards", I do believe in accident reports and fatality reports.
As do I. They are the basis for much of the statistical database about our traffic safety system, stuff such as GES and FARS. In other words, my stats come from you and your brethren.
And I believe that cars do not need to be speeding down residential streets at breakneck speeds ... apparently you do.
Not at all and I’ve never suggested otherwise. Speeds must always be appropriate for the place and time.
And if not, what is your alternative since you do not seem to agree with enforcing the laws regarding speed. If no enforcement, then what?
Speed must be set scientifically. PERIOD. If the engineers say a particular road should be posted at 50 mph then it gets posted at 50 mph, not the 30-35 mph that politicians will use. If the 85th percentile for an urban street – an arterial, not a collector or even a feeder – is 48 mph, that road is posted at 55 mph, rounded up to the next 5 mph increment and with a 5 mph enforcement tolerance, just like the engineers say right now. If a 95th percentile road – rural highways and interstate-grade roadways – is measured at 88 mph, the road is posted at 95 mph, rounded up to the next 5 mph increment and with a 5 mph enforcement tolerance.
These speeds already exist and the safety performance is already the best in automotive history. The ONLY thing lagging behind is the law itself and that is for political and economic reasons not safety. By creating reasonable speed limits, LEOs can concentrate on identifying and isolating bad driving and dangerous drivers. Who is more dangerous, the guy running 90 mph in the Bimmer across Wyoming or the sleep-deprived guy running 55 mph in his truck? Who is more dangerous, the guy running the 85th percentile but 12 mph over the limit or the guy who is suicidal and trying to cover up his suicide as a car crash? Speed too fast for conditions only accounts for about 4-8% of all fatal crashes (NHTSA with additional analysis by Michigan State Univ., Cal State Irvine, Texas Transportation Research Center, and me) but speeding accounts for about 2/3 of all enforcement effort as measured by citations issued. You tell me this is not a waste of resources.
Why is this so? Speeding is easy to spot because it takes place over long periods of time and is susceptible to easy, quick and remote measurement, while impairment – alcohol, chemical, sleep-deprivation, or emotional – does not manifest itself over long periods or in easy to identify behavior. Some of it is not even illegal, despite being far more dangerous than speeding.
Since you feel that traffic enforcement is so worthless, pray tell what SHOULD be done to keep our streets from becoming killing zones?
Excellent question. The obvious start is to use the scientific knowledge that we already possess. Set speed limits rationally as above. Because speed is easy to enforce and the other transgressions such as impeding are difficult, enforcement has concentrated on the easy at the expense of the effective. However, that is why we hire professionals. Concentrate on those dangerous drivers that I outlined supra. Do away with all quotas. Do away with all speed measuring devices, freeing up room in the patrol vehicle and forcing attention to other truly dangerous behavior. The goals of enforcement must be to enhance the flow of traffic through a given point rather than diminish the effectiveness of divided highways, elimination of at-grade intersections, reflective materials, collapsible barriers, etc., as well as to assure that we don’t bump into each other Technology is making us safer and allowing speeds – and therefore efficacy – to rise. Right now, enforcement is just getting in the way of that progress
What happens when speed limits change? Recent in-depth studies indicate that for each 5 mph increment in the limit, the actual driving speeds – the 85th percentile in most cases – rises by 0.5 mph, and this only within an effective range. In other words, if the limit went from 100 mph to 150 mph, we would not expect to see an increase of [(150 – 100) * (0.5/5)] or a 5 mph increment. What happens when limits drop? Essentially nothing. The people do not change their behavior in direct response to a limit change absent changes in any other conditions. What all that means is that drivers already are preventing roadways from becoming “killing zones.”
We should also remove all incentive to cite for profit by taking all traffic fines from whatever jurisdiction generated and sending the money to a public corporation that funds scholarships to our state universities. That way, the economic disincentive to misbehave remains for the driver and the economic incentive to cite is removed for all the New Romes and Waldos of the world. They would simply go out of the traffic control business.
And as far as the money ... (sigh) ... Okay let me be absolutely clear for the umpteenth time - I have no clue what other states do with the money they collect from speeding or traffic enforcement. In California, local government does not receive enough money from traffic fines to pay for the cost of the enforcement ... nowhere even close! It costs my city more for me to write and process the ticket then we will ever see from any fine it might generate. So out here it is not about the money - at least on a local level.
I agree to a large extent. LAPD does not expend great energy or resources on traffic patrol and DOES concentrate on keeping traffic moving. The Chippies are not psycho-sexually obsessed with speed control, again concentrating on keeping the traffic flowing. This is as it should be. The rest of the nation does not learn from the California example, however. Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, and Florida are psychotic about it, as are multiple thousands of little villages and counties. And, remember, their ticket costs as much and carries the same legal weight as does yours. Somebody, somewhere is getting the benefit of all that cash changing hands from drivers to municipalities. We’re talking about an estimated $100 + billion a year, probably even as much as $200 billion. Not to mention the billions in insurance surcharges. Why do you think GEICO et al give away radar units? The economics of a single radar unit would astound you. We simply don’t know the stats because the jurisdictions go to great lengths to cover them up or obscure them within transfers to sub jurisdictions, such as with Texas DPS. The profit effect cannot be minimized.
