It has been increasingly common to refrain from blaming traffic violence on drivers, and instead to point to transportation infrastructure which encourages drivers to speed and to act in such a way as to create crashes. There is truth in this, and equity to some degree. But I think the pendulum has swung too far in that direction, and it is time to bring back driver responsibility.

We have invested trillions of dollars to create a transportation system that kills and mains countless people, with an emphasis on harming people who walk and bicycle. This was not an ‘accident’. Traffic engineers knew that their roadway designs would kill people, but absolved themselves of responsibility by pointing to the ‘standards’, which promote these designs, but are based on nothing but speculation and bias. It is always easier to blame crashes on driver behavior than to design safe roadways. Well, here we are. It will cost trillions to fix. We don’t have that money. That is not to say we should not be fixing what we can, with a priority on those designs and locations that have killed the most people, or seem most likely to.

But there are two very, very common driver behaviors which are not really an infrastructure problem. Red light running, and failure to yield to walkers in the crosswalk, both of which I’ve written about before. See ‘how to stop red light running‘ and the list of other posts there, and ‘Yield to walkers? Nah.‘.

Could we move signals to upstream instead of downstream of intersections? Yes, but that is very unlikely in a transportation profession that values tradition over observation and innovation. Could we install raised crosswalks (also known as continuous sidewalks) or raised intersections to let drivers know that they are guests on the roadway, not the hegemony. Yes, and that would cost a lot of money.

Let me say up front that I am not in favor of in-person law enforcement of traffic law. However, we have an epidemic of traffic violence, perpetrated by drivers, which could be greatly reduced with a limited and guardrailed period of enforcement. Automated enforcement of red light running will come to City of Sacramento, probably within five years, and to the entire county, probably within 10 years, but a lot of people are going to be killed and severely injured in the meanwhile. Would law enforcement use this as a pretext for racial and income bias? Yes, they will. It is in their nature. But I want to save lives. Police could write hundreds of tickets a day to red light runners. No, it isn’t about citation income, it is about saving lives.

Automated enforcement of failure by drivers to yield to walkers in the crosswalk is even further away, and may never happen. Nothing short of direct law enforcement may correct this problem. Again, police could write hundreds of tickets a day on failure to yield.

It is not just traffic violence, death and injury, that is the problem. It is that both of these driver behaviors intimidate people who would like to walk and bicycle from doing so. People stay home, or drive instead, or go ahead and walk and bicycle, but live in fear. Of course this is the desired outcome for politicians who support a cars-first transportation system, and oppression of those who don’t participate in the automative paradigm whether by choice or necessity. People who walk and bicycle are truly second-class citizens in our society, and many of them are further so due to racism, income bias, age, and disability.

As you will notice from past posts, I’m not a supporter of the police, and most particularly, not CHP. But police in the City of Sacramento could be forced to actually do something useful. The police work for the Chief, the Chief works for the City Manager, and the City Manager works for the City Council. The council could direct the police to pay attention to traffic violence. If the City Manager doesn’t support, fire her. If the Chief doesn’t support, fire her. And on down the line. The police spend almost all their time responding to things after they’ve gone wrong. Though they give lip service to community policing, prevention is a tiny part of what they do. And so with traffic violence. They respond to crashes, when they could be preventing crashes through targeted enforcement. They document the carnage, and almost alway blame it on the person walking and bicycling, though that is rarely the case. CHP is harder to rein in. It is an agency largely out of the control of the rest of state government. It goes its own way, ignoring laws it doesn’t like, interpreting laws to absolve drivers, and putting its thumb on corrective legislation by encouraging the windshield bias of our governor.