Posts about Distracted Driving

Belgian group Responsible Young Drivers organized the stunt. Somehow they apparently managed to make some new drivers think they were going for a real driving test. The examiner claimed that a new law requires them to demonstrate they can text while driving to pass the test. Several insist it's impossible; one says he feels "like an idiot who can't drive" and "will stop driving" if the law goes into effect.

Video from Responsible Young Drivers via the Oregonian.

The revolutionary app allows texting drivers to "see" bicyclists and pedestrians in their path, and promises to significantly cut down on incidents of drivers hitting these other road users.

Greenbelt Mayor Pro Tem Emmett Jordan, Dr. Allen Lim of Skratch Labs and author of the The Feed Zone cookbook, and cyclocross superstar Tim Johnson all shared their thoughts for the video. The product demos were done in conjunction with Tim Johnson's Ride on Washington and sponsored by Proteus Bicycles in College Park.

Our current Breakfast Link editors are looking to move on from curating the links each day. Meanwhile, many of our contributors now use Twitter, and can submit or curate items through that service.

We decided to try creating a links post collaboratively, by building the post from tweets contributors and readers sent in to a new Twitter account, @GGWashTips, plus some from our regular tip queue. This is the result.

Have a tip for the tweets? Tweet it to @GGWashTips.

Want to edit the Breakfast Links in either the old style or this one? Email us at info@ggwash.org.

Fairfax Supervisor Cathy Hudgins, the current WMATA Board chair, came to Richmond to testify against the bill. She said that Northern Virginia governments are willing to give the state government some involvement in WMATA governance, but not at the expense of diminishing their own role. She asked the legislature to let the current process of discussion and negotiation within the WMATA Board and NVTC continue to a resolution.

None of the senators brought up the fact that Governor McDonnell has still sent no letter to Congress about the $150 million capital appropriation for needed repairs that's on the chopping block, but that's a great argument against writing it into law that he must get power over WMATA.

Chairman Charles Colgan (D-Manassas) was the only Democrat to support the bill; four of the five Republicans, none from Northern Virginia, also voted for it, and two were not present.

NVTC can still give a seat to Drake if they choose; the benefit of having NVTC decide to do it instead of the legislature mandating it is that NVTC could reverse course if the governor decides to cut back on the already-meager state financial support.

The Senate panel also killed the two "anti-livability" bills, which would essentially override regional transportation planning and enshrine six-Beltways booster Bob Chase's own transportation priorities into law.

They would have required VDOT to rank projects (HB1998) and prioritize funding (HB1999) based on just two factors: what moves traffic faster, and what aids evacuation in case of a disaster.

The evacuation argument is a common canard used to push road-building, but the fact is that no realistic amount of roads will let everyone in the DC region drive at the same time. As Senator Mary Margaret Whipple (D-Arlington) pointed out, DC's own disaster plans recognize that, and don't call for mass evacuation.

Fairfax, Arlington, and Alexandria representatives lobbied against HB1999, arguing that these transportation priorities should instead come from the existing processes through regional bodies that already make these decisions. The panel agreed on a party-line vote despite pressure from groups like the Price William Chamber of Commerce and the Apartment and Office Building Association.

Responding to questions from Senator Edward Houck (D-Spotsylvania), Finance Committee staff judged that HB1998 would have cost up to $5 million, and so no senator even made a motion to pass that bill.

News out of the legislature wasn't as good for bicycling, as the House rejected a number of bicycle bills including one to give Charlottesville permission to put contraflow bicycle lanes on one-way streets where the traffic and police departments feel it's appropriate.

The bill to require passing cyclists with three feet of space also died, as did a number of bills to limit cell phone use while driving.

GHSA gave the Examiner a statement actually claiming that Michelle Obama's initiatives to get more people outside walking and exercising could be a cause of the deaths. Not only is that ridiculous, it's misleading: even if more people walking has led to an increase, more people walking will lead to safer conditions generally.

If more people are walking, the rate number of crashes may rise simply because of numbers, but the actual crash rate, any person's chance of being hit or killed, is lower. More pedestrians get hit every year in New York than in Miami, but it's far more dangerous to be a pedestrian in Miami; it's just that so many more people are walking in New York. More get hit in downtown DC than elsewhere in the city, but walking is riskier in many of those other areas.

The press release also ignores the report's recommendations that government do more to design safer roads. Perhaps that's not a surprise since the organization comprises state highway safety officials who have done little to even admit to, let alone address, their governments' complicity in these pedestrian deaths.

In his writeup of the report, the Post's Ashley Halsey III buys into Betkey's narrative wholesale. He talks about how many fatalities in Prince George's and Fairfax counties, in particular, involve crossings at night, away from crosswalks.

But missing in this discussion is the question of why people are trying to cross dark roads where there are no crosswalks. In many busy areas of those counties, there are shopping centers along multi-lane arterials with poor lighting and long distances without crosswalks. If someone on foot wants to get to one of those stores and isn't in a car, they have few alternatives. The pedestrian could be more careful, but also the government could be putting in better streetlights, crosswalks, and traffic signals.

To frame his piece, Halsey cites a fatality in Landover which did involve a signalized crosswalk. According to the article, the pedestrian signal was flashing the red "don't walk" hand icon, during which time three teenagers ran across the road. A driver hit and killed 15-year-old Wayne Cuffy. Halsey's piece is dripping with accusations against Cuffy:

It is the kind of risk teenagers take: darting across six lanes of traffic, paying no mind to the flashing sign warning pedestrians to await the green light. Wayne Cuffy and his buddies bolted across Landover Road on their way to the mall Tuesday night, a mistake that cost the 15-year-old his life when he stepped in front of a Ford Expedition at Dodge Park Road. ... It was dark, and rush hour was winding down when they dashed into traffic toward the mall. Cuffy was struck just after he left the curb.

But wait. The signal was flashing the red hand. That means the traffic light was red for cross traffic. For the driver to hit Cuffy, the driver had to have run the red light (added: or made a turn without yielding).

Yet there's absolutely no mention of this fact in Halsey's article. Who's really at fault: a teenager who hurries to get across the road before the light changes, but while cross traffic has still got the red light, or the driver who hits him despite the red light?

Other state officials did acknowledge these issues, like this statement in the report from North Carolina:

Rapid urbanization, a weakened economy, and growing numbers of vulnerable populations (including older pedestrians and socio-economically disadvantaged groups) without other transportation options have challenged the State to keep up with issues specific to pedestrian safety and mobility.

Or from Nevada:

Like many other places in the southwest, the road network in Clark County consists of arterials that are designed as six lanes with intersections jumping to eight lanes. In urban area that bisects freeways or beltways, intersection can be as large as 12 lanes! Streets are flat with wide lanes that are comfortable for speed and there are few places marked for pedestrians to cross the street. On major arterial streets the norm is to have nowhere for up to a mile stretch for pedestrians to safely cross the street.

Betkey seems to ignore this serious problem in his own state. It's too bad the safety heads from North Carolina or Clark County, Nevada aren't the ones running GHSA, and that the safety official in such an urbanized state is blind to the other serious factors behind pedestrian safety besides

If you live in Maryland, please email Betkey, his boss Neil Pedersen, and Transportation Secretary Beverley Swaim-Staley and express your disappointment that your safety official is ignoring serious road design issues. Ask them to prioritize fixing dangerous roadways in Prince George's and elsewhere in the state that give pedestrians no safe opportunity to cross streets.

It's easy to blame iPods or Michelle Obama, but more important to work to make the roadway network actually usable by pedestrians. That's the real way to improve both the numbers of people walking and their safety.

Update: GHSA is disavowing the Obama quote to Dave Jamieson of TBD, but the Examiner reporter, Scott McCabe, insists they suggested it.

The Post survey also revealed that residents generally feel positively about Metro despite the recent mishaps and constant negative press coverage, sometimes warranted, sometimes not. 80% of Metrorail users and 70% of Metrobus users see their systems positively.

Rail users gave high marks for reliability (75%), comfort (78%), value (72%), and even safety (67%) (question 7). Some of these have declined since 2005, with reliability taking the greatest hit from 87% to 75%; "convenience to your home" and "going to the places that you want to go" increased by one (probably statistically insignificant) point.

Metro is also back to regularly breaking ridership records, recording its second highest ridership day on Friday, beating out the previous #2 record-holder, set the day before. And today is Opening Day for baseball.

Will these results shift the tenor of press coverage? Metro's harshest critics don't seem moved, like Unsuck DC Metro who Tweeted, "April Fools' was last week, guys."

Finally, the poll has sobering news on distracted driving, which U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood calls "an epidemic." 80% of drivers reported frequently seeing others not paying attention on the road, with 61% saying they see it "very often" (question 17). 80% also say they see others driving aggressively.

Of course, few people believe that they are the problem, though some actually do admit to it: 16% say they "very" or "somewhat" often don't pay enough attention, and 12% say they drive aggressively (question 18). But many more admit to certain behaviors that fairly clearly involve not paying attention some of the time: In stop-and-go traffic, 54% say they talk on the phone, 42% say they eat, 23% say they email, text or use the Web, and 14% of women say they put on make-up (question 19).

Large majorities agree it should be illegal to read (92%) and send (94%) text messages and talk on handheld cell phones (76%) while driving (questions 20-23), but 68% still feel it should be legal to talk on a hands-free device despite highway safety groups saying it's just as dangerous.

Update: Added mention of Transportation for America survey.