Yeah, you’re right, it’s too hard. Probably should just quit trying so hard and accept what we’re given. Because the path of least resistance is pretty much always the best choice.
You’ve mentioned visiting Detroit before. Do you really think living in Detroit is at all desirable for the vast majority of people who work in Detroit?
I disagree with you on that. I think the reason there weren’t more accidents is because locals knew that was the driving pattern and adjusted accordingly.
Totally agree with you there!
Oh well I’m convinced.
(ring ring)
“Sir, it’s the NHTSA calling, with statistics.”
“TELL THEM I’M NOT HERE! la la la la”
1 Like
Your current avatar pic notwithstanding.
1 Like
Heh. That’ll buff out.
I was trying to suggest the same thing chgoliz did here:
Makes me wonder how this worked:
2 Likes
My kids are well trained:
Red mean stop
Green means go,
Yellow means slow down.
Purple means get out and dance
Blue means party!
(I added purple, but they came up with blue all on their own. My wife thinks it should refer to KMart, but that’s just ridiculous!)
Reminds me of an old taxi joke that I can’t find online, except in this debased Irish-brother version:
Geordie is in Dublin on Business and takes a Taxi from the Airport to his Hotel in the City Centre. As they come out of the Airport, the Taxi driver shoots through a red light. “Driver, you could have killed us, you jumped that red light!” shouts Geordie. “Ah te be sure, my brother and me, we do that all the time” says the cabbie. A mile down the road and the Taxi driver shoots over another red light. “Driver, that was another red light!” Screams Geordie. “Ah to be sure its nothing at all my brother and me, we do it all the time.” They get to the next traffic light. Its green, the Taxi driver stops ! " Driver, its a green light ! Why the hell have you stopped ?" says Geordie. “Ah to be sure, " Says the Taxi Driver, " my Brother, he might be coming the other way …”
While I don’t think I support “dirty tricks” to increase the cost of driving, I am… sad that my taxes go to keeping the price of gasoline (and corn) low. I’d much rather subsidize public transportation and healthy food. And I’d much rather have a one-hour commute by light rail or bus than my daily 30-60 minutes by car. At least I could read or something.
3 Likes
A gallon of milk costs more than a gallon of gas. We are subsidizing food, but not for the people you’d probably prefer seeing receive the subsidy.
Back OT, I’ve heard that red-light cameras are illegal here in Michigan, but haven’t gone digging to confirm. From what I’ve read about San Diego in particular, is that the city changed times on several lights, but didn’t inform the camera operating company which resulted in hundreds of tickets being issued to people traveling through intersections on green. The whole thing just sounds scummy, and the potential for deliberate abuse is just too high. There’s ample corruption to be found in municipal governance as it is without adding fraudulent revenue generation to the mix. (That’s a ‘perk’ reserved solely for PD until the day civil asset forfeiture is abolished.)
No idea what happened here, I had hit reply to @anon67050589.
That’s well-known: it was absolutely awful!
It is stating that 77,000 tickets were generated by the 0.1 second difference. In Cary, NC, at one intersection a 0.1 second decrease to the yellow increased red light running by 50%.
The traffic engineering definition of a yellow light is exactly what you see in Starman.
Start reading at the bottom of the 1st column on page 756: http://redlightrobber.com/red/links_pdf/Transportation-And-Traffic-Engineering-Handbook-1982.pdf
The formulas you see in this book have been used since 1965.
A lot of the intersections with the red light cameras also have countdown timers for the crosswalks that can be seen as you approach the intersection. You know that when it hits 1 that the light will turn yellow. Just sayin’
Send that guy to Chicago? 
No, you don’t understand. It isn’t just “hard” - it is physically impossible given our infrastructure and economy. You’re framing the problem as if individuals are just “too lazy” to move closer to their jobs and bike to work, when the reality is that there is no practical way to do this.
People can’t live where there aren’t houses, can’t work where their jobs aren’t located, and can’t shop in places that lack stores. And that is exactly the problem - we don’t have enough houses, jobs, and shops built in the proper places for people to move closer to their work and commute via bicycle.
Outside of large cities with good civic engineering and urban planning (and most cities lack these qualities), the conditions simply do not exist to allow for what you are suggesting. Even if people wanted to live closer to their work - and many do - the logistics, economics, and even basic physics of where the heck you’re going to fit all those people becomes staggering very, very quickly.
Given unlimited resources, unlimited flexibility, and a century or so to do it in, we might be able to overhaul our basic national infrastructure, rebuilding cities and even rural areas to be well laid out, ensuring that everyone has all their needed amenities within biking distance - while also managing practical problems like traffic flow, waste flow, and influx of fresh goods into these population centers.
But given the realities of the current world? No, I’m afraid it’s simply not happening.
The solution to our mass scale societal and engineering problems does not lie in individual motivation, nor in smug condescension and self superiority.
5 Likes
Came in for this. Leaving happy. Glad others remember too. 
First off, I think I’ve ridden my bike once in the past three weeks. So I’m not exactly looking at this through a car-vs.-bike frame. (I had planned to ride over to the next county on Monday since I had the day off, but got caught up hacking CSS instead.)
But yes, I realize it’s a big change that is not feasible for everyone to “participate” in equally. The same could be said of all big societal changes thought, couldn’t it?
And ya know, I was gonna type up this really long response about market forces and voting with your wallet, and the pebbles and the avalanche, and all sorts of stuff about being the change you want to see in the world, but frankly, I would just be reiterating things you probably already know. And more importantly, I just don’t have time today. I have some really difficult work to finish before I walk home.
So just do what you feel is right.
If you accidentally click on another “reply” the headline “replying to” target is changed, while the post is not visible modified.
Yes, I’ve made use of that function in the past. That’s not what happened here, though. I only clicked on chgoliz’s “reply” button, and none others.
Local stoplight practices vary widely, and some of them don’t work together. Back when I lived in New Jersey, I had some friends who’d moved there from Dallas and nearly got killed until they learned the customs. In New Jersey, a red light means that only three or four more cars can turn left (if you’re at an intersection that uses a stoplight for left turns, and doesn’t have a left-arrow or a jug-handle, which is for turning left, from the right-hand lane.) In Dallas, the custom is that you stop on the yellow, and by the time the light turns green, you want to be in the middle of the intersection going at warp speed. If you try that in New Jersey, you’ll get hit by the left-turners.
Then there’s Boston, where acknowledging that you saw what another driver was doing means he’s got the right of way, and acknowledging that there’s a stoplight would mean letting some highway department idiot tell you what to do, and either one of those would be as ridiculous as using your turn signal.
1 Like
