Enforcement - Greater Greater Washington

Police ticket U turns on Penn

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:47:00 EDT

Bill Walsh caught a cab driver on video making an illegal U-turn across the Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes... and then an FBI police officer put on his siren and pulled over the driver for the violation.

Comment

Bike thief contronted, laughs

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:53:00 EDT

by David Alpert

A resident found her stolen bike on Craigslist and tried to confront the bike thief, but he just laughed and pedaled away; he said he's a Howard student and "career thief." The police still didn't take any action. (City Paper)

Comment

Cyclists are special and do have their own rules

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:03:00 EDT

by David Cranor

Sarah Goodyear of the Atlantic has an article for Bike to Work Week entitled "Cyclists Aren't 'Special', and They Shouldn't Play by Their Own Rules." The thesis seems to be that now that cycling is mainstream, cyclists need to behave better.

Photo by Richard Masoner / Cyclelicious on Flickr.

I would argue that whether or not cycling is mainstream you need to ride safely and courteously. In fact, an increase or decrease in cycling mode share shouldn't change the way you ride one iota.

Goodyear is asking cyclists to become footdroppers and thinks that more enforcement of cycling laws is what is needed for cycling to "get to the next level." I disagree which is easy to do since Goodyear offers no evidence, no data and no defense of her position. It appears to be 100% emotion-based opinion.

When I look at great cycling cities in Europe it doesn't appear to me that there is some point where increased enforcement is needed to keep growth going. Growth is fueled by better designed streets, laws that protect cyclists, and increasing the costs of driving. If anything, what I've read about Amsterdam and Copenhagen is that they don't tolerate the kinds of bad driving that are considered normal here. I don't read about ticketing blitzes.

She makes the point that many cyclists are rude or ride dangerously and that she'd like to see such behavior ticketed. I have no problem with ticketing dangerous behavior - though if we're really going to focus on the MOST dangerous behavior, that will rarely mean ticketing cyclists. And if law enforcement were to blitz cyclsits, it would likely not be for their most dangerous behavior (riding at night without lights or too fast on the sidewalk or against traffic) but rather not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign during a charity ride or at some out-of-the way intersection.

Writing about wrong-way cycling she adds,

It makes all of us look terrible and it's a real hazard. Same goes for blowing through a stop sign or red light, or blocking the crosswalk when you're impatiently waiting for the light to change. Not to mention shouting at pedestrians to get out of the way when they are crossing legally. I saw someone yell at an old lady the other day.

I again assert that few cyclists actually "blow through" stop signs and lights. Yes, cyclists run them - even Goodyear - but not blowing through them.

She sees herself as an ambassador. But does anyone see themselves as a pedestrian ambassador when walking or as a driving ambassador when driving? No. Biking is not foreign, and maybe to "get to the next level" we need to stop presenting it as though it is. It is funny that she sees it this way, that she has to behave hyper-legally and as a role model only to follow it up with.

You're going to have to give up your identity as a special person who does some special activity known as cycling.
You're not so special any longer.

Ok, if I'm not so special any longer, then how come I have to behave differently - squeaky clean - than everyone else?

I agree that cyclists should be safe and courteous (because I think EVERYONE should be), but not that they need to be hyper-legal in the hope that it will soothe everyone else. Because it won't. And it won't take cycling to the next level.

What will help is changing the law where it currently doesn't make sense, such as with the Idaho Stop - exactly the kind of "Special Treatment" and "own rules" that Goodyear seems to be arguing against. What will help is treating cycling as special by creating special facilities to help them get around - like bi-directional cycletracks on one-way streets or cycle-tracks. What will help is bike sharing, on street bike parking, unique zoning regulations related to bike parking, special commuter benefits for bike commuters, etc...

We're going to have to treat cyclists better and let them play by their own rules if we want to "get ot the next level."

Is it fair if bikers get benefits when motorists don't? Nope. You know what else isn't fair? Everything. Deal with it.

Cross-posted at the WashCycle.

364 comments

Pedestrian "sting" finds frequent driver lawlessness

Thu, 09 May 2013 14:41:00 EDT

by Ben Ross

So many drivers don't yield to pedestrians that catching them is "like shooting fish in a barrel," a surprised Montgomery County police officer remarked Wednesday. The police ticketed 72 violators in 2½ hours—one every two minutes—at a single crosswalk on Veirs Mill Road.

Photo by Montgomery County police.

The operation, a first for the county, was advertised as a sting. But it was not very covert. The police announced in advance that their plainclothes officers would ticket between 11 am and 3 pm while wearing brightly-colored outfits.

Capt. Thomas Didone, head of the police traffic enforcement division, explained the reasoning behind the "sting" to the Patch. "Officers would typically attempt to enforce that kind of law by driving around a high-traffic area and looking for drivers not following the rules," he said. "That's not very efficient."

Inefficiency is the least of the problems with this style of law enforcement. Police who drive all day don't understand the reality of walking on the county's roadways. When you get out of the squad car and join the thousands who cross Veirs Mill every day (it's among the county's busiest bus corridors), you suddenly learn that "it's kind of scary."

All of this raises the question: in an increasingly urbanized county, where is the cop on the beat? Downtown Bethesda throngs with people on weekend evenings, and the police sit in parked squad cars behind rolled-up windows. If they were on foot, they would have plenty to do—especially in the late evening when drivers often zoom through the emptying streets.

Foot patrols succeeded in calming downtown Silver Spring after a series of brawls in 2010. But they ended once the brawls went away.

Street fighting is hardly Montgomery County's biggest law enforcement problem. Driver violations of pedestrian rights are ubiquitous, and they do far more harm. There are as many pedestrian deaths per year in the county as homicides.

Where people walk, we need police on foot. Not just on a few not-so-secret "stings"—Capt. Didone said these operations will continue only through the end of the month—and not just in response to occasional outbreaks of crime.

Police should be walking every day, in Aspen Hill and Germantown as well as Bethesda and Silver Spring, protecting the rights of pedestrians as a routine element of law enforcement. Drivers need to understand that they can be ticketed any time they break the law, not just between 11:00 and 3:00 during the month of May.

102 comments

A driver ran a red light, hit me, and fled

Mon, 06 May 2013 10:14:00 EDT

by Ryan Sigworth

On Wednesday, a driver on Massachusetts Avenue hit me while making an illegal and dangerous turn onto 9th Street NW. I was bicycling east on Massachusetts Avenue, waiting to cross 9th Street on the south side crosswalk. The driver fled the scene.

The intersection. Photo by thisisbossi on Flickr.

I travel this area frequently, and know this is a dangerous intersection because it includes a right red arrow to allow pedestrians to cross 9th Street safely even while other through lanes get a green light. Many drivers nevertheless illegally turn right when the light turns green for people continuing straight.

I have asked the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) and Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) on multiple occasions to add enforcement here, but have never witnessed any.

I have seen this behavior numerous times before at this spot, so I am ready for it. However, this time the first car, a black Chevy Suburban waiting to turn right, remained stopped. But the driver second in line could not stand for this, changed lanes to the left, then drove around the Suburban to make the right turn.

I saw this coming from the corner of my field of vision, but it was too late. The driver cut in front of me, clipping my front tire with the rear corner of his car. It was a grazing blow, but enough to knock me off the bike.

The driver left the scene, never bothering to stop. Fortunately, my spill was fairly minor and I was able to continue to Union Station with little injury. However, if I had been a few seconds faster, I would have been more squarely in his path and would likely be in the hospital.

Without enforcement, lawlessness runs rampant

There was no police officer to witness the incident. Police can't be be everywhere and catch everything. However, I've also seen MPD simply ignore dangerous infractions by drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians occurring directly in front of them.

Last weekend, while riding in the 15th Street cycletrack, a driver illegally turned left against the protected left turn signal at 15th and U Street NW, right behind my wife and me. By coincidence, a MPD patrol unit was directly behind this illegally turning driver but did nothing.

On the same trip, my wife and I witnessed two illegal U-turns on Pennsylvania Avenue right in front of police cars and officers stationed along the street for the marathon. At the time, there were lots of pedestrians and cyclists around but they refused to enforce against illegal driving right in front of them.

This is even more frustrating because this episode occurred during the regional Street Smart campaign, an annual campaign to raise safety awareness and increase enforcement. Mayor Vincent Gray stood with MPD Chief Cathy Lanier to announce DC's part of the program a week ago, alongside advocacy groups such as WABA. The Pennsylvania Avenue cycle track was supposed to be an area targeted for enforcement during this campaign.

Drivers are not the only problem. Cyclists and pedestrians also contribute when they ride down one-way bike lanes in the wrong direction, run out in front of cyclists and drivers without bothering to look, and more.

The roads, bike lanes, and sidewalks all function as a transportation system and users interact with this system according to a set of laws. When these laws go unenforced for long periods of time it creates a broken system of lawlessness.

Mayor Vincent Gray has called for a 25% mode share for walking and cycling by 2032. To reach this goal, sustained and consistent traffic enforcement will become pivotal. The city doesn't need any more public safety campaigns, advertisements, lip service, and promises. We need results.

120 comments

Who's blocking L Street today, and what can we do?

Thu, 02 May 2013 13:53:00 EDT

by Jay Corbalis

Who's blocking the L Street bike lane today? A delivery driver, most likely. That's the conclusion I've reached after 4 months of chronicling obstructions in the city's newest bike lane.

Photos by the author.

I started the blog, "Who's Blocking the L St. Bike Lane Today?" on a whim after the lane (technically a cycle track) opened. Since then, readers have submitted a steady stream of pictures showing vehicles blocking the lane, on top of the pictures I've taken myself.

While I do use the lane frequently (and thus have a personal stake in it being unobstructed), I don't view this as an exercise in vigilantism. My goal is to highlight larger trends, not to shame or mock individual drivers.

While swerving around a parked car into moving traffic on a bike can be dangerous, I realize there are many greater evils in the world and on the road, and am weary of perpetuating the perception of, broadly, the hysterically entitled cyclist by fixating on what is a ultimately a minor inconvenience in most instances. That said, the L Street bike lane is supposed to facilitate bicycling, not parking, and blocking the lane is, at least nominally, illegal. When the lane is blocked, it doesn't serve its purpose.

Who IS blocking the L Street bike lane today?

Overall, very few people actually "park" in the L St. bike lane. The majority of vehicles blocking the lane are delivery trucks supplying the many offices and stores that line the stretch. Looking just at the 156 photos on the site to date, 60% have been of delivery vehicles, while 30% are personal vehicles, and 10% belong to police.

Based on my observations, the median length of time for vehicles blocking the lane is 1-3 minutes. That's long enough to run in to a building, drop something off, and return. However, it's not uncommon for a delivery driver to treat the lane as a loading dock for loading and unloading large shipments, a process which generally takes 10-20 minutes.

Obviously, this is not a comprehensive sample. Because I took many of the pictures, they tend to over-represent weekday, daytime activity, and concentrate on the 1700 block of L. Still, they should provide some insight into the patterns of usage that have developed so far along the lane, as well as a starting point for potential solutions.

What can we do?

Deliveries, and delivery vehicles, are an increasing necessity in today's economy, and accommodating their activity will be an ongoing challenge as cities continue to densify and pursue more multi-modal streetscapes. This is especially true in central business districts like the Golden Triangle, where businesses and office workers (myself included) rely on quick and affordable deliveries engendered by the online economy.

While it may be tempting to vilify the individual delivery drivers, many of whom work long hours under tight deadlines, as you veer around them on your bike, doing so ignores the larger enforcement, policy and design pressures that shape the situation on L Street.

Enforcement: Willfully running a solid red light is universally taboo in America, and a pressure that is strong enough to dissuade drivers from doing it. Today the societal taboo is clearly not as strong against blocking bike lanes, but targeted enforcement can help change perceptions.

In all of my observation I have only seen one ticket issued to someone blocking a bike lane. Indeed, police cars are often guilty of the offense themselves, and not while on official business. Most of the photos I've taken myself of police cars blocking the bike lanes have occurred while the driver was visiting Robeks, a fruit smoothie store on the block.

Just as the MPD has engaged in enforcement campaigns targeted at drivers who fail to yield and pedestrian inattention, we need an enforcement campaign aimed at bike lane blocking on L Street.

Even though the actual penalties may not serve as a deterrent (many delivery companies simply write them off as a cost of doing business), an enforcement campaign can start to change attitudes about the practice and encourage delivery drivers to use dedicated loading zones or the service alleys that connect many larger buildings on L Street.

Design: The blocking problem is not nearly so great on the 15th Street cycle track. This may partly result from there being fewer blocks where the lane runs past commercial streets. Also on 15th, parking serves as a buffer between the 15th Street lane and the active roadway. Not only does that offer an alternative for delivery drivers and others, it creates a physical barrier of parked vehicles, impeding easy access in a way that the plastic pylons cannot.

Before the L Street Lane was installed, Mike Goodno, Bicycle Program Specialist at the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) said that a similar arrangement would not be possible on L, as it would limit the street to one through lane outside rush hour.

One option could be to relocate the current parking from the south side to the north side, between the bike lane and the active roadway. Currently, parking and loading is permitted in the southernmost lane outside of rush hour; during rush our, the lane becomes a third through lane, though obstructions in this lane often remain throughout rush hour, leaving two effective through lanes in most cases.

Goodno says that is a possibility, and in fact DDOT is planning to have (full-time) parking next to the forthcoming lane on many blocks of M Street. However, Goodno noted, there could not be parking next to the left turn lanes, or for some distance before the start of the "mixing zones," where drivers merge into the bike lane to turn left. That would substantially reduce the amount of parking on L Street.

Alternatively, DDOT has floated the idea of installing a curb along the L St. lane to prevent vehicle incursions, though so far there has been no activity. Likewise, Goodno said they are considering adding more posts, which today appear every 20 feet.

Policy: Most blocks of L Street now combine some dedicated loading zones and short-term metered parking along the south side of the street. In my observation, the loading zones are nearly always occupied with delivery vehicles, suggesting that drivers are willing to use them provided they can find a space. Likewise, the metered parking on the street is consistently occupied as well, typically by passenger vehicles.

The difference, of course, is that those drivers have the option of parking off-street in one of the numerous commercial garages in the area, while delivery vehicles cannot. Though it would almost certainly draw criticism from some quarters, the city could convert existing metered parking along L Street to loading-only lanes, giving delivery drivers more legal options to park. If and when performance parking comes to the Golden Triangle, it could also ensure that spaces are more likely open for delivery drivers.

My experience watching the L Street bike lane has not revealed an existential struggle amongst warring factions for turf on one of downtowns busiest arteries. Rather, I've seen drivers, bikers, delivery guys, cops, and pedestrians (who, lest we forget, are often one in the same) working to coexist in a new multi-modal reality that they all generally accept, even if they're all still getting used to it.

183 comments

Traffic cameras are popular

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:37:00 EDT

by David Alpert

87% of DC residents support red light cameras and 76% support speed cameras, a study found. 59% of people who'd gotten tickets said they deserved them. John Townsend seems unusually subdued. (Examiner)

Comment

Instead of tickets, turn lights red for speeders

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:51:00 EDT

by Ben Ross

Opponents of speed cameras often insist that they don't want drivers to speed—what they object to is the revenue-raising function of the cameras and their invasion of privacy. There may be a way to give these critics what they say they want, at least on some roads, while curbing excess speed more effectively.

Photo from FHWA.

How about wiring radars to turn the next traffic light red whenever a speeder passes? Instead of getting a ticket in the mail, a speeder would just get a red light. With the right settings, this would slow down all speeders—including those who speed by less than 12 mph.

Traffic safety experts I spoke with could not point me to any experience with such a system, so it will take trial and error to work out the bugs and optimize the design.

Speeders' behavior is more likely to change if they understand why they got the red light, but if drivers get that message too soon, they might speed up more to beat the light instead.

If a light turns green and then a speeder fairly quickly shows up, turning it red again, there might be pedestrians in the parallel crosswalk. They'll need time to finish crossing, which would mean a 4-way red period. However, these will have to be minimal so that drivers are not overly tempted to run red lights.

And how would this work on multi-lane roads when one speeder might stop traffic for many other law-abiding drivers? Signals always give some unnecessary red intervals—they can't perfectly match changing traffic volumes through the day—but the red lights shouldn't excessively interfere with vehicle movement. The first experiments should probably be on narrow roads with relatively light auto traffic.

There shouldn't be legal obstacles. Radar-actuated traffic signals are approved by the Federal Highway Administration, and state laws that limit the placement of speed cameras do not apply to them. Some cities (including DC on parts of 16th Street) already limit speed with traffic signals by synchronizing closely-spaced lights so that drivers who exceed the limit hit a red.

How and where might this strategy work best? And will objections to automated speed limit enforcement diminish when the radar system no longer raises revenue from drivers?

44 comments

MoCo ped enforcement to target drivers, too

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 08:48:00 EDT

by Peter James

Montgomery police, whose past pedestrian enforcement has not targeted drivers, plan to enforce against drivers' failure to yield in this year's campaign. (Ben Ross)

Comment

Pedestrian safety slogan exhorts but does not educate (Apr 6, 2012)
Is ped enforcement campaign "blaming the victim"? (Jan 30, 2013)
To reduce enforcement errors, MPD wants traffic division (Mar 17, 2011)
Is this pedestrian safety or just pedestrian removal? (Jan 10, 2012)
Montgomery police blame victims for pedestrian deaths (Feb 22, 2013)

Walk safe in Fairfax

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 08:27:00 EDT

by Steven Yates

In time for spring, Fairfax County Police have started stepping up pedestrian safety enforcement. Police will ticket drivers who fail to stop for pedestrians and fine pedestrians who don't use the crosswalk. (WTOP)

Comment

Who got tickets?

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 09:55:00 EDT

by David Alpert

Who got the city's free tickets for NCAA Sweet 16 games? (NBC4) ... Who got over 60 speeding tickets in Montgomery or Prince George's? (NBC4)

Comment

Gray will maintain most lower traffic camera fines

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:28:00 EDT

by David Alpert

In the budget released today, Mayor Gray has allocated money to keep many traffic camera fines, which DC recently lowered, from automatically rising again. He will also propose raising fines a tiny bit for moderate speeding and considerably for major speeding.

Photo by Gerard :-[ on Flickr.

Last year, Councilmembers Tommy Wells, Mary Cheh, and Marion Barry introduced a bill to lower fines for speeding up to 20 mph over the limit, for blocking the box, turning right on red without stopping, and other violations. This responded to public sentiment that fines were too high and that camera tickets were an unfair cash cow for the District.

The original bill reduced fines to $50 for speeding up to 20 mph but left high fines ($200-250) for more speeding, on the logic that such egregious speeding is really reckless and clearly intentional. Phil Mendelson, however, pushed to modify the bill to use a linear scale instead of one with a sudden jump.

To lower the fines cost money, and the Council didn't find enough money to lower all speed fines. Instead, the fine for speeding 11-15 mph over the limit only dropped from $100 to $92. It would have made more sense to use the limited funds to drop the lower-speed fines first instead of the higher-speed ones, but that's not what happened.

They also only allocated money in the current fiscal year. Unless this budget said otherwise, the fines would have automatically jumped back up on October 1. Mayor Gray indeed allocated money to keep many of the lower fines, including ones for infractions besides speeding.

However, the administration proposes to set the fine for 11-15 mph and 16-20 mph over both at $100, said budget director Eric Goulet, and also raise the fine for speeding over 20 mph to ~~$250~~ $200 and over 25 mph to $300. This is actually the same fine schedule Gray previously proposed when the Council was debating lowering fines.

Fines for running red lights did not go down in the last bill. That's in part because AAA's John Townsend actually argued in the task force for maintaining higher red light fines, though he's since started spewing press releases complaining about them, despite his earlier stance.

Here is a table of the old fines, what Cheh and Wells proposed, what passed in the final bill both as the authorized level and the actual level that got funding, and what Gray is proposing for 2014.

Offense	2012	Cheh/ Wells	Auth. 2013	Funded 2013	Gray 2014
Speeding 1-10 mph (not enforced)	$75	$50	$50	$50	$50
Speeding 11-15 mph	$125	$50	$75	$92	$100
Speeding 16-20 mph	$150	$50	$100	$100	$100
Speeding 21-25 mph	$200	$200	$150	$150	$200
Speeding 26-30 mph	$250	$250	$250	$250	$300

Running red light	$150	$150	$150	$150	$150
Blocking the box	$100	$50	$50	$50	$50
Not stopping at stop sign	$100	$50	$50	$50	$50
Not yielding to pedestrian in crosswalk	$250	$50	$75	$75	$75
Not stopping before right on red	$100	$50	$50	$50	$50
Right on red when prohibited	$100	$50	$50	$50	$50

The Budget Support Act is not yet available, so all of the information here is based on my conversation with Goulet, and I am checking to confirm their proposal for the never-enforced 1-10 mph violation and whether not yielding to a pedestrian is $50 or $75. I will update the post when that is available. Update: After talking to Goulet, I have updated the table and added a row for speeding 26-30 mph, whose fine will be rising from $250 to $300 as well.

I originally pushed for even lower fines from cameras, on the logic that the fine should just be high enough to deter speeding or other behaviors, and that it could buy peace. Unfortunately, we really don't have good evidence about what deters speeding. Also, AAA has stepped up the pace of camera complaints and attack press releases, so it's become clear that there's no partner for peace over there.

Therefore, Gray's proposal is a reasonable position. It keeps some of the formerly most egregious fines down and should deter some of the most reckless behavior.

It's not waging any kind of "war on drivers," but if AAA is going to claim there is one even after DC leaders make a good faith effort to address the group's concerns, DC may as well prioritize making neighborhoods safe for residents by adding cameras and maintaining fines.

73 comments

Pay up, Maryland drivers

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 08:28:00 EDT

by David Alpert

Maryland drivers owe ~~$101~~ $41 million in unpaid DC tickets. Virginians, by comparison, only owe $19 million. (DCist)

Comment

Arlington formally offers Fair Share for Metro; Maryland delinquency continues (Apr 26, 2010)
Maryland and Virginia trade places (Dec 19, 2008)
Taxes lowest for DC residents and car-free Virginians (Feb 22, 2011)
Are Maryland drivers the "devil incarnate"? (Jun 12, 2008)
Ticketing of cars in public space reaches Capitol Hill (Apr 27, 2009)

Townsend watch

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 08:28:00 EDT

by David Alpert

A driver got a ticket for driving 2 mph UNDER the speed limit on I-95. AAA's John Townsend reasonably points out that's insane. (NBC) ... Townsend confusingly whines about parking tickets, saying parking should be free, but also that it's too hard to find a place to park. Making parking less free fixes that problem, John. (DCist)

Comment

Task force tries to make peace over cameras; AAA doesn't (Aug 29, 2012)
Successful speed cameras require fair speed limits (May 21, 2012)
Then and Now: The Townsend Mansion (Jul 6, 2009)
Gray slightly tweaks camera fines to stave off larger change (Nov 2, 2012)
Not his father's parking philosophy: Graham suggests meter hikes (Nov 12, 2008)

AAA vs. safe driving

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 08:40:00 EDT

by David Alpert

AAA's John Townsend is now complaining about parking tickets, and rather than condemning dangerous U-turns across Pennsylvania Avenue, Lon Anderson complaints about cyclists. (WJLA, Examiner)

Comment

Should DDOT remove Penn. Ave. pylons to aid plowing? (Nov 17, 2011)
Bus driver experiences "windshield perspective" (Aug 5, 2009)
Examiner prints incendiary anti-bike cover (Sep 13, 2012)
CFA says no poles, paint on Pennsylvania Avenue (Mar 22, 2010)
Traffic counting and parking: I'm quoted in the press (Aug 12, 2008)

Is ped enforcement campaign "blaming the victim"?

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 11:46:00 EDT

by David Alpert

District agencies are running a much-needed, but brief, sting operation today to enforce the laws against making U-turns across the Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes. Meanwhile, a number of readers have written in with worries that a pedestrian enforcement campaign is targeting the wrong people for the wrong behavior.

Reader @Akido37 tweeted this photograph, of a bus shelter ad the District Department of Transportation and Metropolitan Police Department have posted near Farragut Square warning pedestrians about a stepped-up enforcement campaign. He wrote, "Talk about blaming the victim."

Certainly, pedestrians can do a lot to make themselves more safe, or take more risks. Walking while texting or reading emails removes one line of defense against a driver hitting a pedestrian.

On the other hand, pedestrians can suffer even when they do nothing wrong, but a driver's attention lapses for moment. Some readers feel MPD is not doing enough about far more unsafe driver actions. Reader David Joseph wrote:

I walk this intersection twice a day and without fail drivers make illegal turns, pull into the crosswalk, or otherwise endanger pedestrians. I recently asked an MPD officer who was giving warnings to pedestrians why they werent talking to drivers who are the real danger. His answer was simply that they were given orders to talk to pedestrians and issue tickets for jay walking, and he was following those orders.

Ben Ross said in an email:

I work at that intersection, and the pedestrian signals there forbid pedestrians to make crossings that are absolutely safe. You are told not to cross the turn lane on westbound 17th between the traffic island and the Red Line entrance even when traffic in the lane you are crossing has a red light. You can only cross when the main part of K Street has a red light, which comes 32 seconds later. Obviously, no one waits to cross the turn lane when the cars are stopped in front of them.

In a similar vein, during a past enforcement campaign police stopped people crossing the one-lane side roadway of Connecticut Avenue at Q Street, where the main road passes under in an underpass. While not lawful, there are plenty of times when there are no cars approaching, or even a bus at the bus stop blocking the road entirely. It doesn't advance safety to ticket people for crossing at these times.

Everyone should follow laws. The ideal solution to these problems would be to redesign the intersection to better accommodate pedestrians' own needs and not forbid doing things that aren't really dangerous. However, we're not realistically going to change most of these intersections anytime soon.

With driver speeding, especially with the latest speed camera bill, we've made a decision to tolerate a certain amount of unlawful speeding (10 mph over the limit), and recently cut down on penalties for those who speed more. Mayor Gray also raised speed limits in a few places where many drivers, perhaps rightly at least in some cases, argued they were too low.

The District needs to focus on the most unsafe behavior. Sometimes, that's pedestrian behavior, but more often it's not. Do you think this campaign is blaming the victim? Or does it attack a real safety problem, and some people just don't want to follow the law?

76 comments

Speed kills. Traffic cameras save lives. (Mar 27, 2012)
To reduce enforcement errors, MPD wants traffic division (Mar 17, 2011)
Don't start dancing yet, Georgetown: Barnes Dance not always the answer (May 12, 2010)
Let's talk about enforcement (Apr 28, 2009)
Enforce bicycle laws, but the right laws (Jan 16, 2009)

Can we get more proportionality in criminal justice?

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 10:28:00 EDT

by David Alpert

I was heartbroken to read that Aaron Swartz, a 26-year-old Internet freedom activist, author of RSS, and Reddit cofounder, killed himself on Friday. I'd met Aaron a few times; on April 6, 2009, he emailed me to ask about books he should read on city policy issues.

Photo by okfn on Flickr.

Aaron clearly suffered from depression, but his family, law professor Lawrence Lessig, and many others are also criticizing prosecutors in the Boston US Attorney's office who hounded Aaron with multiple felony charges after he downloaded large numbers of academic articles at MIT, but never distributed them.

Aaron, and many others, find a major injustice in the the way academic journals pay authors nothing for articles but then charge large amounts of money for online access to the journals. That doesn't justify lawbreaking, but his also wasn't a transgression that merits multiple felony counts and jail time.

In a post entitled "Prosecutor as bully," Lessig wrote:

If what the government alleged was true ... then what [Aaron] did was wrong. ... But all this shows is that if the government proved its case, some punishment was appropriate. So what was that appropriate punishment? ... Our government continued to push as if it had caught the 9/11 terrorists red-handed. ...
From the beginning, the government worked as hard as it could to characterize what Aaron did in the most extreme and absurd way. ... I get wrong. But I also get proportionality. And if you don't get both, you don't deserve to have the power of the United States government behind you.
For remember, we live in a world where the architects of the financial crisis regularly dine at the White House—and where even those brought to "justice" never even have to admit any wrongdoing, let alone be labeled "felons."

Our local criminal justice system also has plenty of examples of proportionality failures.

Drivers who behave recklessly and kill pedestrians and cyclists usually face little punishment unless they are drunk or flee. When a driver was caught on tape assaulting a cyclist, authorities didn't press charges. After police worked hard to investigate a driver who was allegedly on his cell phone when he hit and killed a senior crossing the street, prosecutors brought charges, but a grand jury refused to indict.

Meanwhile, our punishments for some transgressions often go far beyond what's appropriate or what is necessary to stop crime, like suspending students for taking their prescription medication without proper paperwork or a 6-year-old for making a gun shape with a hand.

Even for violent crimes, which we absolutely must vehemently combat, prison terms often far exceed what's necessary or effective. In his most recent column, David Brooks wrote:

If you want to deter crime, it seems that you'd want to lengthen prison sentences so that criminals would face steeper costs for breaking the law. In fact, a mountain of research shows that increases in prison terms have done nothing to deter crime. Criminals, like the rest of us, aren't much influenced by things they might have to experience far in the future.

Instead, it's more effective to fight lawbreaking by adding actual enforcement, so that more perpetrators get caught and punished. In the lingo of the field, you want to increase certainty rather than severity.

Based on this logic, our local government just passed a bill to relieve punitive burdens on drivers who speed. It made sense not to charge punitively high fees on speeders, since the primary objective must be safety rather than revenue. (Unfortunately, Phil Mendelson, who never participated in the task force that pored over research and debated options, then rewrote or deleted most of the key provisions in the bill that would increase certainty, and added new sections that will reduce safety in other ways.)

Now we've applied the certainty-over-severity analysis, or at least the less-severity half, to an area of crime that has a politically powerful constituency—drivers—behind it. Will the council now do the same for other areas of our criminal justice?

Unlike speeding, injustices in the way we prosecute drug laws or the "school to prison pipeline" disproportionately affect poorer and minority communities that have less political clout. The families who suffer from over-incarceration are less likely to be the ones having lunch with a councilmember than the business leader who might complain about some speeding tickets.

Will Wells try to fix laws that over-punish some people to little end, and under-punish others who today don't face any consequences for serious transgressions? Will the rest of the council agree to such measures?

It's not possible to devise a perfectly fair criminal justice system. Some people will get away with serious malfeasance while others suffer excessively. What we can do, both nationally by recalibrating our response to journal article downloading versus financial fraud, or locally in our response to speeding versus shooting transgendered people, is push for more proportionality where possible. There's a lot of work to do.

40 comments

Lower camera fines? Sure, once we have more cameras (Feb 22, 2012)
What is the right level for speed camera fines? (Aug 2, 2012)
Gray slightly tweaks camera fines to stave off larger change (Nov 2, 2012)
DC Council bill would lower traffic camera fines (Oct 16, 2012)
Petula Dvorak puts a few minutes' convenience over Montgomery residents' lives (Nov 5, 2010)

Who's blocking the L Street bike lane today?

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 10:32:00 EDT

by David Alpert

Ever since the L Street bike lane opened (and while DDOT was building it), for-hire sedans, delivery trucks, and other vehicles have consistently parked in the lane, despite signs, bollards, and new loading zones across the street or around the corner to serve buildings' loading needs.

Photos from "Who's Blocking the L St. Bike Lane Today?" on Tumblr.

Jay Corbalis created a Tumblr, Who's Blocking the L St. Bike Lane Today? to collect photographs of these scofflaws. This is a great way to raise consciousness of how often it's happening.

If you ride down the lane and encounter a blocker, take a picture of your own! You can submit them directly to be included on the site.

83 comments

Should trucks double park in bike lane or next to it? (Jan 7, 2011)
Block the lane moving out, block the lane moving in (Nov 12, 2009)
Time, vigilance will work out the bugs in the 15th Street lane (Nov 16, 2009)
Let's talk about enforcement (Apr 28, 2009)
Replace bulk parking ticket discount with sensible curb management policy (Apr 3, 2009)