It's the design, stupid: Months too late, but now the city will deploy speed radar detector signs on Spring Street, so as to collect information fundamentally flawed by the mere presence of the detectors.

All the way back on June 22, the Green Mouse observed the inexplicable.

Neighborhood inequality? On the placid street where Caesar lives, traffic must be moving too fast. Someone fetch a traffic engineer!

Back down here in the flood plain, City Hall's two-way grid design changed nothing apart from direction; the new street design continues to produce traffic speeds that are unsafe -- people actually die from it and not a soul employed by the city will address this fact -- and now we erect speed radar detector signs as some sort of compensation, presumably in the hope that the sight of these detectors will itself reduce speeds enough to declare victory ... or give another contract to HWC.

I'll repeat again: every bit of this is perfectly obvious to anyone who spends 15 minutes on foot or riding a bicycle in the vicinity of Spring Street. And yet something this simple continues to elude the professional monetization class in this city.

Why's it so hard for them to admit they're wrong?

Radar detector signs going up on Spring Street in New Albany, by Chris Morris (Collected Sermons of Tom May)

NEW ALBANY — Motorists soon will notice something a little different along Spring Street.

Radar detector signs, similar to the ones on McDonald Lane, are scheduled to be installed the first week of December. There will be six signs, three in each direction spaced along Spring from Vincennes Street to State Street.

City Engineer Larry Summers said the signs will tell drivers how fast they are traveling, and well as collect data on speeds through particular areas of the street.

While the street conversion from one-way to two-way traffic last year slowed traffic, residents along Spring still say other measures need to be taken to keep motorists from exceeding the speed limit. Following the death of skateboarder Matthew Brewer, who was struck by a minivan at Spring and Ninth streets in August, residents came before the New Albany Board of Public Works & Safety pleading that something be done to make the street safer.

Read the official conclusion of the Breakwater fire investigation.

Also at the newspaper, where the rebuild is confirmed.

Investigators: The Breakwater fire caused by HVAC installer error ... rebuilding to start next month, by Elizabeth DePompei

A Flaherty and Collins spokesperson could not be reached by phone or email by press time. It's unclear whether any action will be taken against the HVAC installation company or employee.

ON THE AVENUES: Breaking up is hard to do. Just ask the Reichstag.

The Cosmopolitan: Turns out The Breakwater isn't the first fire at a Flaherty & Collins development under construction.

ASK THE BORED: They're busy panicking after the Great Break Wind Fire, so we celebrate the guy who first patented a self-propelled street sweeper.

Monday's best social media comment about the Breakwater fire.

The Breakwater fire: Luckily there were no injuries, but are we REALLY sure the deity favors subsidized luxury?

There has been a fire this morning at the Breakwater luxury apartments. No injuries, and I swear it wasn't me.

Hello. They're crashes. Don’t call them accidents anymore. Thank you.

Janette Sadik-Khan, author of Street Fight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution, tweeted a link to this article.

It's no "accident" that we've excused crashes for decades. Our word choices matter – let's adopt the language of life.

"Roadway fatalities are soaring at a rate not seen in 50 years, resulting from crashes, collisions and other incidents caused by drivers."

Words indeed matter, as when my council representative imagines he belongs to a "progressive" political party.

It’s No Accident: Advocates Want to Speak of Car ‘Crashes’ Instead, by Matt Richtel (New York Times)

Roadway fatalities are soaring at a rate not seen in 50 years, resulting from crashes, collisions and other incidents caused by drivers.

Just don’t call them accidents anymore.

That is the position of a growing number of safety advocates, including grass-roots groups, federal officials and state and local leaders across the country. They are campaigning to change a 100-year-old mentality that they say trivializes the single most common cause of traffic incidents: human error.

“When you use the word ‘accident,’ it’s like, ‘God made it happen,’ ” Mark Rosekind, the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said at a driver safety conference this month at the Harvard School of Public Health.

“In our society,” he added, “language can be everything.”

Almost all crashes stem from driver behavior like drinking, distracted driving and other risky activity. About 6 percent are caused by vehicle malfunctions, weather and other factors.