Re: dead body -- I have read of such things before but this never ceases to shock. I believe it was in Reader's Digest that I read a story of a man who stopped to help an injured motorist (or pedestrian?) while passing drivers screamed, "Get that crap off the road!" This goes beyond windshield perspective.

by Matthias on Nov 6, 2009 10:01 am  

Ah, that screaming driver was probably pissed off from all the scofflaw cyclists and jaywalking pedestrians, what with their overblown sense of entitlement.

And as a final straw, this "driver human" is trying to enjoy the freedom of easy motoring on the roads that *he* paid for, and suddenly there's a policemen stopping traffic just so some entitled, scofflaw dead body can get a free ride to the morgue.

Damn right, I'd be yelling too!!!

by ibc on Nov 6, 2009 10:33 am  

Yet another way that auto-dependence has damaged our civilization. Car-dependent suburbia truly is the Matrix.

by Cavan on Nov 6, 2009 10:36 am  

Another case of "life imitates the Simpsons". From the episode where Marge gets an SUV and gets stuck behind a funeral procession: "Come on, come on, get that corpse off the road! The streets are for the living!"

by cminus on Nov 6, 2009 10:46 am  

I used one of those online sign generators to throw this together a couple months ago:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisisbossi/3943281742/

As for the ped collision... first: it's 30 MPH and the Acura RSX skidded off the road after colliding with a pedestrian. All indications point to speeding. Second, while I'd certainly suspect speeding first & foremost, sight distance here is by no means hindered: I frequently observe peds not looking both ways before crossing; there does have to be some responsibility on the pedestrian to watch out for themselves, as well.

I'm curious if the officer made any distinction between a legal crosswalk versus a marked crosswalk. Where sidewalk approaches the roadway, as it does at the shopping center, it forms a legal crosswalk even if unmarked. Of course, regardless of whether it's marked or not -- pedestrian laws are regularly flaunted by the motoring masses.

by Bossi on Nov 6, 2009 11:43 am  

Oops, my mental thesaurus had a glitch... I didn't mean to say "flaunted", rather "disregarded". I could swear there's some other f-word synonym for "disregarded", but can't quite recall the right word.

by Bossi on Nov 6, 2009 11:45 am  

I understand the cops shutting down a road to save *living* people.

Shutting down a road for multiple hours so they can bureaucratically document the circumstances of a fatality: not so much.

by Jake on Nov 6, 2009 12:19 pm  

Bossi: The word you are looking for is 'flouted'.

by David Alpert on Nov 6, 2009 12:34 pm  

Correction:

Voters said no to a streetcar proposal in Cincinnati.

by Zac on Nov 6, 2009 12:50 pm  

Oh wait, you guys mentioned that. My bad, heh.

by Zac on Nov 6, 2009 12:51 pm  

Yes, that's it! Thanks, David! Over the years my vocabulary has diminished such that I can remember words exist, but can't quite remember what they are. :)

@Jake-
One of the things that got me into working in transportation is specifically the number of friends I have lost to car crashes. I appreciate the intensive efforts police make to ensure that they identify each and every circumstance which contributed to the crash. Per my link above: the worstened day of every commuter is nothing compared to the worstened day of every family member, friend, and acquaintance of the person who died that day.

by Bossi on Nov 6, 2009 1:10 pm  

Wow Jake @ 12:19. It's not bureaucracy that requires accident documentation. It's justice. How else are the police supposed to submit evidence to the court in the event of a manslaughter trial, or vehicular homicide? You didn't really think that one through did you?

by crin on Nov 6, 2009 1:13 pm  

So now we have a new graduate student apartment complex in College Park that will offer a bike trail to campus, and a shuttle bus to campus, but because it offers parking for all of its residents its a bad thing suddenly?

Graduate students tend to be older, many have children, who need to be driven to soccer practice, or school activities, or to the mall, etc. In addition, College Park doesn't even have a grocery store. So a car is really a necessity if you are going to live anything more then a pizza-and beer lifestyle (and most grad students are beyond that).

Finally, what if these graduate have field work? (interviews, trips to the UM Envionmental Station in Solomons, etc?) When I was a grad student I drove all over the state interviewing subjects for my dissertation. If I didn't have a car (and a place to park it) I would have been toast.

by metronic on Nov 6, 2009 1:45 pm  

@Zac - You worded that wrong. Issue 9 in Cincinnati would have required a vote before any money could be spent by the city for the planning, acquisition of ROW, or Construction of Passenger Rail Facilities. This is the issue they voted down. Had it passed, it would have been catastrophic.

by TraderJake on Nov 6, 2009 2:38 pm  

It would be nice if the quarter of us who actually like modern or postmodern architecture could get an affordable modernist or postmodernist home instead of being stuck with the classicism the majority will accept.

Of course, it would also be nice if the tenth or so of us who tend not to have sex with the opposite sex could have the same kind of legitimacy in our home life in a non-aesthetic sense as well, but that would assume that this was a society that supports minority groups and diverse interests.

by J.D. Hammond on Nov 6, 2009 5:08 pm  

dont worry jd hammond, there are many like myself that like classical architecture but get stuck with cheap untrained pseudo classicism that the majority accept. prob 99% of contemporary 'classical' architecture is incorrectly done or poorly executed hence why it looks so bad. there are only a small handful of architects today who have studied it and know it. my guess is that even if classical isnt your taste, that you would at least prefer the well done classical to the half assed classical.

on your second point, not my thing but i wholeheartedly support your desire for legitimacy and for public acceptance of it.

by joe on Nov 7, 2009 4:26 am  

Joe,
I read a quote in a article somewhere (I think it was someone from ICA&CA) that was something like "the biggest threat to classical architecture isn't modernism, but bad classicists".

by spookiness on Nov 7, 2009 4:12 pm  

I wouldn't say there's a threat to classicism (traditionalist styles) if seventy five percent of the market will accept even shoddy classicism. Imagine if it where first rate classicism? but one shouldn't be greedy. The fact of the matter is that the majority of every style's execution has always been second rate compared to the first rate work, so that will never change. The difference is mediocre classicism will still produce a decent urban fabric because of the underlying compositional principles of all those buildings gives the streetscape a coherance that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Unfortunatley the same can't be said of your run of the mill modernism.

See K street vs. 15th & H street. K street is a hall of mirrors with each building reflecting the neighbors rendition of the glass and steel grid on which a facade should of actually been designed on, rather than modifiying the rythem of the grid and calling it a day for the whole facade (don't forget to slap on a zooty entry). 15th & H has a plethora of traditional styles such as moderne, beaux-arts, deco, and high victorian, just to name a few, but they all posess some rendition of the traditional urban fabric building with a base, shaft, and capital making them all harmonize. It can even support a few glass and steel cubes if diversity is your thing;).

by Thayer-D on Nov 8, 2009 3:21 am