BIKE: Today's AAS Rant

[rcbaker]

Stuart, I certainly hope you aren't suggesting that the RealEstatesman would 
sink to reporting the lives and deaths of the rich and the poor differently, as is 
the norm for newspapers practically everywhere else.

Probably they did want to make a point that driving while cell yakking is as 
dangerous as it it is known to be from the various studies, and so they played 
that angle. If an editorial suggesting that conclusion appears shortly, then you 
know that's probably the case.

In fact, road dangers seem to be highly politicized, with the legal presumption 
that there are no such things as dangerous roads, just because when the road 
was built thirty years ago, it met AASHTO code for cars and trucks. The reality 
is that the roads are becoming more dangerous due to increasing congestion at 
high speeds combined with commuting drivers largely focused on trip speed. 

If you look in the DPS accident statistics, they are focused primarily on alcohol 
as the one identifiable cause of traffic accidents, with the rest being an unsolved  
mystery. I think the bureaucracies benefit from arrest and removal of drunk 
drivers, while they do not benefit from slowing or calming the traffic on 
congested roads or in rebuilding them to safer standards. Capital Metro likewise 
never saves the lives of passengers who might otherwise die in car wrecks, etc. 

There are no such thing as problems due to diminished abilities of elderly 
drivers, due to the political clout of the AARP probably (like a certain confused 
driver I know who was reported to the police driving lost in Pflugerville after 
hitting somebody). You can go perhaps five or six years without getting your 
license renewed even after the age of ninety. Teenagers driving fast with their 
peers are likewise quite dangerous, but nobody knows a way to handle that 
one.

-- Roger in Texas, where roads are the pure distilled essence of politics


 

On 13 Mar 2004 at 21:11, Stuart Werbner wrote:

> The point I was attempting to make was this:
> 
> If a young, white, up-and-comer living in the fast lane, so to speak,
> dies in a crash, then the local media is likely to investigate the
> individual and the circumstances.
> 
> If it is some poor minority (or maybe just plain poor) that is reduced
> to trying to save some legwork by crossing a freeway on foot, then
> little or no attention is paid by the local media.
> 
> Simple as that.
> 
> My prediction is that we will have some more laws restricting cell
> phone usage in motor vehicles as a result before we have even one more
> safe crossing of even one local highway installed.
> 
>      __o
>    _`\<,_
>   (*)/ (*)
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Stuart Werbner
> Annuit Coeptis
>