"We’ll know we’re making progress when we stop blaming children and their parents for winding up underneath pickup trucks."

Our increasingly cloistered and clueless "local" newspaper's answers to questions about the way it misrepresents driver-inflicted collisions with non-automotive street users betray an indifference to the value of real-world thinking.

The city compounds the issue by blithely painting sharrow symbols on pavement and declaring victory, or as Orwell might note, merely masking their abject concession of defeat with meaningless words and symbols.

If we wish to make streets safe for all users, then drivers must be slowed, inconvenienced and in many instances awakened. Full stop.

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Guilty Until Proven Helmeted, by Eben Weiss (Outside)

When a driver hits a cyclist—even a child on a bike—the victim is almost always the one who gets blamed, unless they're wearing a helmet

When it comes to automotive violence and mayhem, we’ve become more desensitized than a perineum after a Gran Fondo on a maladjusted saddle, as is apparent from the way we report on incidents in which someone in a car drives into someone on a bike.

News stories about drivers who hit cyclists often implicitly absolve the driver and blame the victim. First, there’s almost always a lack of agency coupled with the passive voice: it’s never “a driver hit a cyclist.” Instead, it’s usually something like “a cyclist was hit by a car.” (Yet you never read about how a shooting victim “collided with a bullet.” Go figure.) Then there’s generally some insinuation that it must have been the victim’s fault, often along the lines of “It’s unclear whether the victim was wearing a helmet.” And despite a big push to change this, it’s also fairly typical to refer to the collision as an “accident,” even before anybody knows what really happened; in journalism, the oxymoronic “police are still investigating the accident” is reserved almost exclusively to incidents involving cars.

It’s not just reporters who write this way, either. When it comes to drivers hurting or killing people on bikes, this kind of unconscious victim-blaming permeates every aspect of our discourse ...

The conclusion.

Yet it’s essential to hack away at the gigantic blind spot that allows us to see the actual problem, which is people driving into other people with their cars. We’ve got a long way to go in that regard. But we’ll know we’re making progress when we stop blaming children and their parents for winding up underneath pickup trucks.

If the pickup truck killed the boy, then charge it. Charge SOMETHING or SOMEONE.

Three times, the newspaper of record stated that a pickup truck struck a boy. Italics have been added.

Texas Boy Killed by Truck as His School Held a Walkout on Guns, by Christina Caron (New York Times)

Photo credit: An 11-year-old boy died after being struck by a pickup truck as he tried to cross a busy highway in El Paso on Friday, the same day that his school and others nationwide held walkouts to protest gun violence.

An 11-year-old boy in El Paso died on Friday after getting hit by a pickup truck while his school held a walkout to protest gun violence.

“Obviously everybody’s in a state of shock,” Xavier De La Torre, the superintendent of the Ysleta Independent School District, said at a news conference on Friday.

The boy, Jonathan Benko, and a group of about 12 to 15 other students from Parkland Middle School in El Paso decided not to participate in the walkout, and instead left the campus to visit a park on the other side of Loop 375, a busy highway that surrounds parts of the city, officials said.

Jonathan, a sixth grader and the last one to try to cross, was struck by a Ford F-150 pickup truck, Officer Darrel Petry, a spokesman for the El Paso Police Department, said on Saturday. He was transported to the University Medical Center of El Paso, where he died.

All that, and only then did the driver belatedly enter the story.

None of the other children were injured, Officer Petry said. The driver of the truck, who stayed on the scene, was uninjured. He was not charged, the police said.

Granted, it's important to know whether this was one of those newfangled driverless pickup trucks -- and it wasn't -- but moreover, given that the pickup truck hit the boy, why not charge the pickup truck, or not ... seeing as we seldom charge the driver?

Or do we always lede by blaming the vehicle so there's a reason not to think about the driver's role? Except, of course, the authorities would have gone after the driver full bore had he been drunk, as opposed to sober.

It's all very confusing.

Couldn't we just charge drivers who kill people?

Isn't that important?

This means you: "STOP FUCKING DRIVING YOUR CAR AT PEOPLE."

This insightful comment to a fine rant clarifies the problem of bad design affecting outcomes. Perhaps Larry Summers can elucidate, assuming Dear Leader permits "truthful dialogue" within city limits.

"This is largely a problem of bad design of North American intersections, compounded by MUTCD and its Canadian equivalent. Cut to Germany (and many other places), where traffic lights are aligned between the stop line and the crosswalk. There are no traffic signals on the opposite side of the intersection (though in places like the UK, there will be two lights at the stop line, on either side of the nearside, and one light on the far side). This forces drivers to stop before the crosswalk and makes it almost impossible for drivers to see the light if they pull forward. North American roadway design is dangerous in its neglect for the safety of pedestrians."

We already know what Pat McLaughlin would say: "Can't they just drive like everyone else who matters?"

Meanwhile, the author is Canadian, and the problem is universal.

STOP FUCKING DRIVING YOUR CAR AT PEOPLE, by Jonathan McLeod (Steps from the Canal)

Often when I’m crossing a street–on my bike or walking or walking with my small children–a driver will be slowly driving at me. They’ll be creeping past the stop line and into the crosswalk, hoping to go through right after I clear their fender. Make no mistake, I’ll have the right of way. They’ll be waiting at a stop sign or looking to turn right on a red.

A lot of you do this, and here’s the thing; I don’t care how nice you are out of your car, how caring, how altruistic, how thoughtful; when you do this, when you creep towards a vulnerable road user–especially young children–you’re being an asshole.

Stop it. It’s rude. It’s threatening. It’s selfish. It’s intimidating. It’s fucking dangerous.

Recently, a New York driver did this. And she killed a one-year-old and three-year-old, and sent a pregnant woman to the hospital. From the story:

The woman told officers that she was creeping up a bit at the intersection in anticipation of the red light changing and then accidentally hit the accelerator, according to the Post report, which cited information from sources.

Make no mistake about it, this woman is a murderer, if the word is to mean anything at all. She intentionally drove her car at people, then “accidentally” accelerated at them.

Because New York authorities take things so seriously, they let the killer go ...

Driver jailed for three years for ramming cyclist, though nowhere near here -- but that's okay, because bikes will win in the end ... nowhere near here.

Wait -- is this a glimmer amid the riverbank anchor's mud?

Here's a refreshing headline, one seen about as often in metro Louisville as unicorns in plaid.

Driver jailed for three years for ramming cyclist in north London, by Kevin Rawlinson (The Guardian)

Justine Henshaw-Bryan, 25, used ‘car as a weapon’ after Damien Doughty confronted her about using phone while driving

A motorist who used her car to chase a cyclist and ram him into a tree after an argument over her use of a mobile phone at the wheel has been jailed for three years.

Damien Doughty suffered serious injuries after the incident in north London in February last year. Justine Henshaw-Bryan, who is now pregnant and due to give birth in November, claimed her boyfriend had grabbed the wheel.

But the judge told her she had used the car “as a weapon” to injure the cyclist and could have killed him.

“Those who are unable to control their temper while driving and feel that cyclists are fair game must be dealt with severely,” Judge Gregory Perrins told her as he passed sentence on Wednesday.

He said she must have been aware of the risk her driving presented to him. “This was a calculated attempt to run him over and use your car as a weapon. It would have been obvious that to do so would have carried significant risk of injury.”

Similar instances of driver abuse in our vicinity rarely make it as far as a judge given that the non-enforcement culture habitually absolves drivers of responsibility.

But hey, don't get mad.

Get even.

The case for bicycles' inevitable triumph over cars, by Matt McFarland (CNN)

Bikes, long an underdog on streets, will rule the roads eventually.

That's the conclusion of Horace Dediu, a prominent analyst of disruptive technologies, who has spent the past three and a half years researching the future of transportation.

Transportation is arguably the hottest frontier in the tech world. Innovators in Silicon Valley and beyond are spending billions to build flying cars and self-driving trucks. Tesla CEO Elon Musk talks of digging costly 30-level tunnel networks for cars. Google cofounder Sergey Brin reportedly has a giant airship.
But as Dediu sees it, a familiar, unglamorous technology will own the future: the bicycle. And the big loser will be cars.

"Bikes have a tremendous disruptive advantage over cars. Bikes will eat cars," Dediu told CNNTech, referencing investor Marc Andreessen's seminal 2011 argument that software-driven businesses are dominating the world.

Let's throw a bone to the roundabout haters.

I offer this perspective without extraneous comment, save for the observation that there isn't very much meat on the bone.

The Other Side of Roundabouts: More Crashes, by John Metcalfe (CityLab)

Traffic circles are great at preventing fatal wrecks. But what can be done about the crashes they do provoke?

Roundabouts are easy to love. They’re elegant in design, reduce traffic deaths compared to traditional intersections, and can support some gnarly public art.

But Americans hate them anyway, and one reason may be becoming clearer: While roundabouts are great at preventing serious crashes, they may bring on more non-fatal wrecks, to believe the latest in traffic-circle research coming from the fecund roundabout reserve of Wisconsin.

Past monitoring of 30 of the state’s 300-plus roundabouts revealed these particular intersections, which used to be traffic-signal controlled, experienced a 38 percent drop in car deaths and injuries. At the same time the total number of crashes jumped 12 percent. These additional accidents caused mainly property damage, and are thought to be a result of confused or unprepared drivers trying to navigate the unfamiliar roadway design.

"Car-centric policy dominates our legal system and the way police conduct business. And it's not holding people truly responsible."

Lest those of us who aren't employed by the city of New Albany forget:

ON THE AVENUES: For New Albany’s Person of the Year, the timeless words of Mother Jones: “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.”

I'd accuse City Hall of forgetting about Chloe Allen, although I'd hate to intrude on the image-burnishing and self-referential promotion that fills the languid days for Mayor Gahan's minions.

Yes, I'd accuse City Hall of forgetting about Chloe Allen, but let's be fair. The minions wouldn't even know who I was referring to.

That's how completely out of touch they are.

It's not just an accident, by Nathaniel M. Hood (Strong Towns)

Car-centric policy dominates our legal system and the way police conduct business. And it's not holding people truly responsible.

Hood tells of a horrible and inexcusable "accident" that took place on a shared use path where autos are not even supposed to be.

You guessed it. No charges.

It goes beyond not investigating something that so clearly should have been investigated. More often than not, reckless drivers do not lose their license and stay on the road. And, when a collision does occur and it’s not investigated, insurance laws can make it difficult to prove damage in a civil suit without charges and the dollar amount on damages can be capped.

This is the system we've created; one that favors drivers at nearly every level. It's unfortunate that car culture dominates our system and law enforcement so much that it doesn't hold people responsible. And until it truly does, we're not going to see as much progress as we need. Changes to laws and public mindset must happen in tandem with changes to the design of our streets. We need to reorient our understanding of transportation to value the safety and rights of pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users just as much as drivers.

The top comment to this post reinforces a point we've made previously -- again and again.

With apologies to those who know that I harp on this here and elsewhere, I need to continue pointing out that part of this problem is linguistic. Law enforcement officers automaticaly assign agency to vehicles, which cannot be prosecuted, instead of drivers who can. A car did this, a truck did that. How glorious it must be to operate machines that offer such speed, power, and control, and know that your blunders, no matter how deadly, will always be attributed to the vehicle.

The media then dutifully follow suit. Reporters, who are trained to avoid passive voice, can get very huffy when you challenge them to change "A pedestrian was struck and killed by an SUV" to "A SUV driver struck and killed a pedestrian." They seem to think that active voice wording implies malicious intent or opens them up to a libel suit.

If this premature exoneration annoys you as much as it annoys me, I invite you to start calling it out with the hashtag #DriverNotCar.