Buttiwhatever is at it again…
While ignoring a cornucopia of crises in his two-plus years as Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg has found a supposed crisis that he will address, and it sounds a lot like his previously trotted-out theory that bridges are a tool of racism.
Speaking with Al Sharpton on MSNBC, Buttigieg declared “we’ve got a crisis when it comes to roadway fatalities in America” before making his usual pivot to frame the problem as one of race.
Full article, HERE.
Didn’t Buttboy take the money that was supposed to go for road improvements to add bike lanes in place of actual road construction???
And this is a rather interesting ‘heat map’ of the areas of the US with the highest fatality rates…
Funny how most of those are democratic enclaves…
Referenced from HERE, from a DOT study just released last month.
One other question I’ve always wanted somebody in power to answer is why, IF autos and trucks pollute so badly, are there trees and grass growing by any heavily travelled roadway? Shouldn’t the trees and grass be dead/dying for hundred of feet either side of these roads???
The map: I live in the Orlando/Walt Disney World (I won’t go WDW) area and you wouldn’t believe the crap tourists pull when driving. I’ve TWICE seen a car stopped in the right lane of 3 45mph travel lanes, with a map or paper unfolded. Darting right turns from the left lane across three lanes of traffic. Stopped, more like parked, in the turn lane discussing whatever forever. Driving 20mpg in a 50mph zone as they look around for something. Rear-enders not uncommon, probably because they are all looking out the side windows for whatever. I’d love to know how much my insurance rates are linked to tourist-caused accidents.
As with many other things, lax enforcement brings more problems. Don’t go after shoplifters, there will be more shoplifting. Quit going after traffic violators, traffic crashes (and the number of traffic deaths) rise.
The nearest bigger city to me had amazing success in reducing intersection crashes with red light cameras. They have 10 and every year they figure out the 10 worst intersections by number of crashes for the past 12 months and move them accordingly. Some intersections see a 50% reduction in crashes.
Red light cameras are all about ticket revenue.
What the city does is make the yellow light “on” time shorter than normal, thus causing cars to end up crossing the line after it changes to red. One of the unintended (maybe?) results is more rear end collisions as drivers slam on the brakes as soon as the light changes, surprising following drivers. More accidents, which reinforces the spread of cameras.
If these moron eco-nuts would plant more trees that would reduce the carbon dioxide and increase the oxygen in the atmosphere. Did any of these so called scientists pass science class and biology in High School? The were probably either sleeping or playing with their phones in class.
Took our four lane road and made it 3 lanes (one a center turn) and added two bike paths that no one uses as part of a state wide “contiguous bicycle path”.
Maybe 5 people have used that.
Bike Lanes are part of an overall strategy of “traffic calming” which is intended to create more, lower-speed accidents in return for fewer, high-speed and potentially fatal accidents. Ironically, bike lanes increase the number of bicyclist fatalities especially when cars are parked beside the road.
Butt-face could tell you without technically lying that bike lanes do reduce fatalities…for part of the population that use the roads.
If you step back and look at “traffic calming” at a macro scale, it is clear that the traffic planners are making driving less desirable, especially for older drivers. They are designing to make us non-drivers.
I recall one person summing it up as “Traffic Calming” is really “Driver Enraging.”
I agree. My cynical self thinks “traffic calming” is a dandy excuse for the ineptness of traffic planners.
Around here, normal intersections are being replaced with roundabouts.
“traffic planners are making driving less desirable”
Said roundabouts are having trees added to their centers to obscure the view of oncoming traffic so as to force drivers to slow down and drive “more cautiously”. Strike that, “more dangerously”. Less time to react to traffic makes us safer? Hell, I’m gonna stop looking both ways before I cross the street! Madness, I tells ya, madness!
Roundabouts.
On the air pollution near roads front, not that they aren’t overstating the risk, but people and plants do breathe differently.
All- Thanks for the comments, and the good points y’all make.
It should be possible to murder someone with a self driving car. You would expect more such killings in such places as other killings are ignored by law enforcement at political direction.
It should be possible to deliberately misclassify other causes of deaths as automobile related, at political direction.
Drug use should directly lead to automobile fatalities. Drug use should correlate to areas where politicians have conspired to see that anti drug laws are not enforced.
There is a completed or in progress UN document being circulated. I’m told that it attempts to decriminalize pedophilia. I’m also told that it attempts to declare that drug abuse is a protected human right, and that attempts to criminalize drug abuse are violations of human rights. I’m told that there are US collaborators in drafting this document.
Fundamentally, the deaths that Democrats are attempting to persuade us with are ultimately Democrat related deaths. They are not ‘firearms related deaths’ they are Democrat kleptocracy related deaths. They are not ‘automobile related deaths’, they are Democrat related deaths. The ‘mass shootings’ are heavily Democrat related deaths. There are Democrat related deaths from gang violence. Most spree shootings are also Democrat related, because they have their fingerprints all over attempts to raise children with federal bureaucracy, and federal bureaucracy is inherently bad at raising people to be sane.
The appeals to some physical object scapegoat, A) distract from the Democrats B) are intended to rob us of freedom, and make us helpless to resist tyranny, and helpless to resist mass murder.
If mass murder was not their goal or an important means, they would never have hit upon ‘nitrogen’ bans. Most of environmentalism now looks like an effort to eliminate the surplus to adequate food supplies that have left most populations not inclined to roll the dice on letting the communists commit mass murder.
There are of course fancy scholars who make a living asserting that all potentially discriminatory behavior is necessarily about race. Those scholars are a crock. Those scholars saw poor black neighborhoods being burned down, and cheered. Their lack of endorsement for burning down their own fancy campus offices is pretty clear evidence that they are not treating poor blacks in the way that the scholars personally wish to be treated.
Forgot the major takeaway.
Democrats are misattributing the cause, and then trying to use big government to fix the things that they blame.
If you only list ‘the problem is the Democrats’ as your differences with the Democrats, this implies that you believe that if the Democrats were banned or criminalized, that the problem would go away.
The Democrats are not only simply incorrect about one aspect. They are incorrect about many many aspects.
In this case, if you restricted Democrats, or criminalized being a Democrat, the Democrats could simply change their political affiliation to some affiliation that is still lawful, and continue on their merry way causing more trouble.
Now, it can be argued that the Democrat Party is already criminal conspiracy, and that under the laws as written, Democrats can be jailed or executed for the crimes of the conspiracy.
However, part of the problems reaching this level of severity involves registered Republicans actively collaborating with Democrats in violations of trust, and in violations of law.
It is extremely unlikely that the underlying problem can be addressed by a single simple remedy of changing the law. The appeal to Big Government answers should thus be refused, probably with prejudice.