Some day, coronavirus isolation will end and Atlantans will return to the roads. And the Atlanta City Council has a surprise for you drivers: Most streets in the city will have a 25 mph speed limit.When our council woman briefed the neighborhood association on this a couple or three months ago, it was a general discussion, no specific plan. Now it is, courtesy of backroom agreements, no public review and no discussion, law. It is astounding to me how junior politicians give no acknowledgement to the basics of legislation.
It’s called Vision Zero, a scheme created in the late 1990s in Sweden with the goal of squeezing roads and slowing down traffic so that no one gets killed. Hence the Zero.
The effort passed last week in a virtual City Council meeting on a consent agenda, a vote where routine and non-controversial items are lumped together and passed without discussion. The effort is “non-controversial,” I suppose, because most of the public doesn’t yet know about it.
“People will notice when they start driving on streets that they remember were 35 mph and are now 25,” said Councilman Howard Shook. “That’s when the light bulbs will go off.”
Yeah, blue flashing lights.
At the time of the neighborhood association, after the five minute thumbnail presentation in which the focus was on bringing traffic fatality rates to zero, I asked the most basic of questions. This looks like a large effort that will cost a lot and have significant consequences. How many people are killed in Atlanta each year from traffic? She didn't know. Wants to get it to zero but doesn't know where we are starting from. Jeesh.
On top of which there is a lot of implied zealotry and totalitarianism in that goal. We want to reduce error rates to zero, workplace accidents to zero, murders to zero. There are a lot of things we want to reduce to zero. But as in all human systems there are trade-offs. The first reduction of 50% is often relatively cheap and easy. The next tranche of 30% is harder and more expensive. By the time you get to the last 10% of reduction, every increment is costing an exorbitant amount - no matter what goal you are pursuing.
And what about some practicalities. Atlanta already is 20-30% below its police staffing and much of the policing is ineffective (evidenced by dramatically rising property crimes when state and national numbers are declining.) If we can't enforce the current speed limit of 35, how are we going to enforce 25?
The effort is laudable: If you slow down cars you can save lives. A graphic put together by the city said nine out of 10 pedestrians survive being hit by a car at 20 mph, but it drops to five out of 10 at 30 mph.The goal of saving lives is laudable. Deploying cherry picked data in a one-sided debate, and passed in virtual secret is not laudable. There is probably an argument to be made for 25mph limits in select residential neighborhoods. But make the argument in a public forum with public engagement. Don't slip it through without debate and real argument. That is the sort of petty totalitarianism that brings all cities into disrepute.
That seems a bit high compared to most other literature I found. For instance, a study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety said, “The average risk of death for a pedestrian reaches 10% at an impact speed of 23 mph, 25% at 32 mph.
”But the city wanted to win an argument, so it picked the best data available. Still, the point remains — slower is better if you’re to be struck by a vehicle.
And in this case in a very real way. Whether the goal of reducing to zero is achieved or not, there are simple and direct consequences. The city council is choosing to make it more expensive (fines) and less convenient (slower traffic) to live in the city in order to pursue a fantasy policy unlikely to yield significant benefits. All pain and no gain. No wonder they passed it in secret.
The Vision Zero effort has been put into effect in 40-some cities across the U.S., mostly in the Northeast, Florida and on the Left Coast.Hooray for Torpy, one of the few journalists to collect facts and examine arguments.
Proponents say Atlanta roads are dangerous, with 73 people killed last year, 40 in vehicles, 22 pedestrians, seven on motorcycles, three on scooters and one bicyclist, according to city of Atlanta figures. Seattle, they point out, averages about 20 traffic deaths from all modes of accidents.
Does Vision Zero work? The theory behind it (the physics of impact) is indisputable. But among the many questions is, what are the nature of deaths and how many of the 73 deaths would have been averted by reduced speed.
Impossible to know because politicians, not being critical thinkers, did not ask the empirical questions that stood in the way of signaling their virtue.
As an example, the three scooter deaths, and likely the bicyclist death, were not attributable to speed but to slow speed collisions when making turns. In one instance, the bus driver turning right did not observe the scooter coming up to her right and simply ran over him. At, likely, five miles per hour.
So the real question is "Of the 73 deaths, how many are attributable primarily to vehicle speed?" We don't know. More specifically, how many of those deaths involving high speeds occurred in areas where the vehicle speed was in excess of the posted speed? If someone is struck and killed while driving at 45 in a 35mph zone, the issue is not posted speed, the issue is speed enforcement. Since Atlanta does not enforce many laws at all, particularly speeding except as an ancillary charge to a more serious incident, then changing speed limits is not going to change speed deaths.
A further effort to put some facts to critical issues. From Pedsafe:
Vehicle speeds are a major contributing factor in crashes of all types. According to the National Pedestrian Crash Report from 2008, the largest percentage of pedestrian fatalities, roughly 32 percent occurred on roads with speed limits of 50 miles per hour or greater, using data from 1997 to 2005. Roads with speeds of 30 to 39 and 40 to 49 accounted for 29.1 percent and 24.5 percent of all pedestrian fatalities, respectively.7 Speed has serious consequences when a pedestrian is involved. A pedestrian hit at 64.4 km/h (40 mi/h) has an 85 percent chance of being killed; at 48.3 km/h (30 mi/h), the likelihood goes down to 45 percent, while at 32.2 km/h (20 mi/h), the fatality rate is only 5 percent.10 Faster speeds increase the likelihood of a pedestrian being hit. At higher speeds, motorists are less likely to see a pedestrian, and are even less likely to be able to stop in time to avoid hitting one.This is at best suggestive rather than dispositive. If most pedestrian deaths occur in urban environments, then the above information extends. 86% of all pedestrian deaths occur where the vehicle is traveling above 30mph. 61% occur where the vehicle was traveling above 40mph. There are not many roads in Atlanta posted above 40mph and there is no indication that those highways are going to be speed reduced. That implies that 61% of the 73 deaths will not be affected by the reduction from 35 to 25. Therefore, only about 28 of the 73 deaths occurred where a speed change might make a difference (if enforced).
So now we are talking about reducing the number of deaths from 28 (not 73) to zero. And of those, we know anecdotally that at least some of them were crush deaths owing to pedestrian or driver inattention and not due to speed. How many?
We know the three scooter deaths (i.e. 10%) were crush deaths from inattention. Some portion of the remaining 25 will likely have been crush deaths but it is indeterminate.
We do know that motorcycle deaths are 12% of Georgia's vehicle deaths. Motorcycle gangs are notorious for their antics on Atlanta road. Also notorious is the policy by the police of not policing infractions.
I am really ball-parking it at this point but let's reduce the traffic deaths of 25 by another 12% for unenforced motorcycle accidents; reduce it another 10% for additional non-scooter crush deaths. Now we are down to 20 deaths. A final factor to consider is road rage deaths. NHSTA estimates Road Rage to be a factor in 66% of traffic deaths. At this point the data is so weak as to be meaningless. A quick scan though of headlines returns three headlines of deaths which occurred owing to deliberate confrontations between drivers and pedestrians/bicyclists/motorcyclists. Two of them involved guns. So maybe take the number down another five.
At this point we are dealing with 15 deaths which might be averted by the speed change that was passed. This is very much back of the napkin. Maybe it is 40, maybe it is 10. It is certainly south of 73. Who knows? Certainly not City Council, as they did not ask.
We do know that 33% of pedestrian fatalities involve inebriated pedestrians. Most occur in cities, at night, and at non-intersection locations. In other words, some goodly portion of the 73 deaths involve factors (crossing at proper crossing points, remaining sober, and crossing in well lit areas) under the control of pedestrians and not of drivers.
So will reducing the speed limit from 35 to 25mph in a City which is markedly under-policed and which elects not to enforce the speed limits they already have lead to a reduction in the 73 deaths which currently occur? Probably. Certainly not to zero. I would guess once we rule out the other factors, perhaps there might be 25 deaths in zones of 25-35 and where slower vehicle traffic speeds might possibly be a factor.
Back to Torpy.
During an Atlanta transportation committee hearing on March 11, a tearful Councilwoman Jennifer Ide said this cause was “personal” because she knew Alexia Hyneman, a 14-year-old girl who was hit while riding a bike on Monroe Drive near Grady High School. The girl has become the face of the effort and her father addressed the City Council that day, along with biking, running, walking and transit advocates.This is incoherent on the part of Ide. In the case she is referring to, the little girl darted out into traffic at a cross-walk and was struck and killed. The driver was not held responsible. Monroe is already a 30mph zone.
It is a tragedy the young girl was killed. But her death was not related to traffic speed per se. And Ide's inclination to cast this in terms of emotion rather than reality is an example of the wisdom of John Adam's point that we are (or aspire to be) a nation of laws, not men. Usually this is taken to mean that the law is foundation and actions cannot be taken based on personal whim. It was part of the checks and balances design. Ide admits she is doing this because it is personal. She is upset by the tragic death of a young girl she knew. But that is not how we make laws. We make laws for the benefit of everyone, not out of the emotional anguish of a single politician.
Our goal is to make decisions in a considered fashion based on the facts as understood and a weighing of the trade-offs and probabilities - that is how you make good laws. Or you can be emotional and pass legislation based on personal political emotionalism without consideration of the facts, without debate, without looking at trade-offs. Without thinking.
Ide is championing rule by emotion and not by thinking. It is her prerogative but I want none of it. And all the others apparently went along. Changing the lives and living conditions for tens of thousands without consideration of second order effects and apparently primarily to appear morally good.
“It’s beyond time for us to do something,” Ide said. “We personally don’t care if people’s commute takes five, 10, 15 minutes longer.”OK. No founding father here. Now she is speaking in the imperious voice of the third person ruler - "We". She wants what she wants and citizens be damned. I'll pass this in the dark of night without debate or consideration or facts.
Enough of those bothersome law-abiding citizens who have jobs to get to, whose cars are broken into nightly without any policing, who watch as motorcycle gangs speed down main thoroughfares, scraping and damaging cars and without police enforcement, whose cost of commuting will go up and whose daily life will be that much more degraded by taking longer to get anywhere.
And without likely any result.
From What Happens When a City Tries to End Traffic Deaths by Laura Bliss, David Montgomery, and Matthew Gerring.
In 2012, Chicago ventured where no other big U.S. city had. Under then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the city set a mission of eliminating traffic fatalities and injuries in 10 years. The city didn’t mention “Vision Zero” by name, but its ambitious goal took inspiration from that road safety policy platform enacted 15 years prior in Sweden, leading to one of the lowest national traffic mortality rates in the world.I guess it is too much to expect our City Councillors to bother doing even a five minute google search on the most rudimentary facts and experience.
The basic logic of Vision Zero is that any traffic collision that results in death or serious injury—whether for a pedestrian, cyclist, motorist, or any other road user—isn’t an unavoidable “accident,” but a tragedy that could be prevented through smarter engineering, education, and enforcement.
Seven years later, dozens of U.S. cities have hopped on the Vision Zero bandwagon, pledging to stop traffic fatalities in ambitious time frames. They’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the process, rebuilding streets to calm traffic and reduce driving, lobbying for speed limit reductions, launching public awareness campaigns, and retraining police departments.
Yet while some places have managed to bend their traffic fatality curves, others have struggled to budge a transportation status quo that prioritizes the ease of driving over the safety of other people on the road. Since 2013, the numbers of deaths among U.S. pedestrians and cyclists have risen by nearly 30 percent and 14 percent respectively, nationwide.
That pattern is shared in several cities wearing the Vision Zero mantle, according to a CityLab analysis of traffic fatalities in five major cities that were among the first in the U.S. to establish Vision Zero targets. Three of the cities, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., have seen fatalities rise or remain relatively flat. Two others, San Francisco and New York City, have made headway towards zero, but are seeing pedestrian and cyclist fatalities creep up more recently.
Most of these cities have fatality rates below the national average, and it’s possible to see substantial, non-linear changes in the total number of fatalities from year to year. But based on their rate of change to date, none of these five cities are on pace to reach zero traffic fatalities for decades, let alone by their ten-year targets.
I am not opposed to changing the speed limit but I think it is important that we follow the law and due process, that we base decisions on a full consideration of all the facts, that we take into consideration second-order effects, that we at least benchmark whether a preferred policy has actually delivered anywhere else, and that we involve the residents of the city in an open and informative debate.
Passing a faddish idea with a lot of costs which will likely degrade quality of life, not achieve its stated objectives and push the City ever closer to fiscal peril and drive voter revulsion higher and trust in politicians lower is not a good thing.
But that is the norm for Altanta City Council, a circus of corruption and inconsideration. A few years ago they enthusiastically voted a couple of hundred million dollars to build a trolley downtown with promises of ridiculously high ridership, a boost to the downtown economy, that it would pay for itself from fares, etc. Of course it took an unexpected number of years to build. Many small businesses went bankrupt while access to their businesses was closed and the streets were torn up. And to what end? The city subsidizes the operator while the trolleys circle around empty of passengers even though there is no fare. Lots emotional enthusiasm for simplistic ideas and a deep reluctance to think and research and make hard trade-off decisions.
CityLab's graphs are well worth a look. Pre and post-Vision Zero implementations don't show much more than statistical noise. Sometimes up, sometimes down, sometimes flat, but on average up just a bit. Bad governance does tend to bring bad outcomes.
CityLab is a left-leaning publication generally enthusiastic for every urban planning fad which comes down the pike. If even CityLab is ambivalent about Vision Zero, then every regular citizen ought to be concerned about their quality of life, governmental representation, and ought to hold on to their wallet. And still look both ways when they cross the street.
We want good government. We need good government. What we get is childish emotionalism, imperiousness, disdain for citizens, disregard for due process, absence of accountability and incapacity to think logically, rationally, and empirically. The urban political machines always regard any opposition to their actions as the product of right-wing nationalism, racism, etc. In reality, most the populace don't oppose government at all. They oppose incompetence and corruption.
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