Just another driver "flipping" over the beauty of the East Main Street Project median.

Copied from a post at the Nextdoor web site.

The daytime view.

This is the fourth such wreck I can recall; there may have been others. I looked around on local media and could find no coverage of this one, so kudos to the citizen journalist at Nextdoor.

It is a matter of genuine curiosity for me as to why so many drivers bounce off the median eastbound at the starting point of beautification. I'd guess the drag strip speeds coming out of the stop light at Pearl, given that the city refuses to calm the section of Main Street between Pearl and 5th.

Maybe someone will ask during the CNU 27 tour on June 14. I seem to recall Speck speaking against medians.

Gahan, Rosenbarger set to go full frontal Pinocchio about their urbanism credentials when the Congress for the New Urbanism 27 meets in Louisville June 11-15.

The ways most states and cities set speed limits? A study shows "how these standard practices may actually lead to more speeding-related fatalities and injuries."

Jeeebus, what a week. I believe there are a substantial number of people locally who are willing to assert that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east -- to give up their first born to the French Foreign Legion and eat durian fruit on their toast for breakfast -- just so long as they can avoid admitting that I'm right about something.

This is priceless, and it pleases me to no end.

But enough of that.

Let's talk about how speed kills. The report in question deals strictly with passenger vehicles, but the correlations with other road users are clear. Here are two excerpts.

NTSB RELEASES FULL REPORT ON SPEEDING-RELATED CRASH STUDY, by Nimotalai Azeez (Smart Growth America)

The safe system approach introduced in the report considers the vulnerability of all road users. How will the recommendations make streets safer for people like you who commute by bike, and those who walk, bicycle, use transit, and drive?

We can’t talk about speeding without talking about people who walk, bike or use transit, younger and older road users, and people with disabilities. The safe system approach, discussed in the report, incorporates the needs of all road users, especially vulnerable ones. Although this report focuses on passenger vehicles, some recommendations apply to all road users by ensuring that appropriate speeds are maintained and enforced.

How does the study treat the influence of road design on traffic crashes?

The report focuses on countermeasures that are considered less widely accepted. But it is important to note that [changing] road design to address speed-related crashes is not yet widely implemented, even if it is generally accepted as good practice. Some jurisdictions are already addressing speed-related crashes using road design, by using Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data related to infrastructure and other data-driven measures. Some states, as I have seen firsthand, are already including speed as an emphasis area in their Strategic Highway Safety Plans (SHSP). Some jurisdictions are using design manuals with features that enhance compliance for lower speed limits rather than simply lowering speed limits.

ASK THE BORED: If bicycles should be on the street, not the sidewalk, then why has the two-way grid plan been stripped of most cycling safety measures?

Yesterday we surveyed the scandal-plagued Gahan administration's Tour de Sharrow.

Grid Control, Vol. 15: Dooring enhancement perfectly epitomizes Deaf Gahan's "biking last" approach to grid modernization.

As noted previously (and often) in this space, a sharrow symbol might as well be the Mark of Blithering Idiot on Jeff Gahan's forehead, and my old friend K, a veteran cyclist, offers this excellent comment on the utter uselessness of the concept.

What few know about the "smash cyclist here" sharrow is that it's purpose is to remind motorists that they are potentially sharing the roadway with bicyclists, thereby theoretically making for safer cycling. So, sharrows are painted in the center of a roadway where they are obvious to motorists.

Sharrows do not delineate a bike lane. The great misfortune in the sharrow strategy is that the sharrow has the luring appearance of granting center-of-the-roadway, or "cycle here", safe cycling rights to unwitting bicyclists. Nothing improves cycling safety more than this combination; a busy roadway, a couple of doses of cognitive chaos, and the subliminal message of motorists repeatedly running over painted images of cyclists.

Ironically, at the Board of Public Works and Safety meeting last week (July 11), a member of the public returned to a favored topic, riffing on a previous appearance described here:

ASK THE BORED: "Design Is Better Than Enforcement To Make Cities Safer For Everyone."

Mr. Peterson's point, as offered last week as well as an October 2016 letter to the News and Tribune, is that we can have arterial streets designed for moving traffic at unsafe (and altogether anti-social) speeds, then easily reduce these speeds through constant enforcement -- though we wouldn't want to be a speed trap, would we? In other news, I can have my cake and eat it, too. Yet again, for the umpteenth thousandth time ...

Design Is Better Than Enforcement To Make Cities Safer For Everyone, by Charlie Sorrel (fastcoexist)

As an aside, it's never been clear to me which section of Jeff Speck's Downtown Street Network Proposal concedes a higher rate of vehicular accidents, as Peterson alleges. I've just now searched the word "accident(s)" in the proposal, and found the word used four times, each in a context of accident reduction, not increase.

Reading incomprehension is a civic institution, so let's leave it aside and proceed to one of Peterson's better recent points, though it takes a while to get there, and he may well have inadvertently stumbled on truth from a collection of flawed premises.

Take note: Warren Nash now has agreed that education about bicycle behavior is a good thing, and that bicycles should be on the street, not the sidewalk.

Note also that Nash just approved, and is implementing, a street grid plan that negates the majority of Speck's measures to make bicycle riding on the street (not the sidewalk) ... safer.

Me thinks that Nash speaks with a forked tongue. Unfortunately, this practice also is a civic institution in New Gahania. K gets the coda, too:

Speaking of cognitive chaos, the complete dismissal of Speck's ideal bicycling concept (protected bike paths, see attached picture) from two-way street implementation defies logic, at least from where I sit a couple of hundred miles from there.

If I had the opportunity, I'd be knocking on the doors of City Hall seeking a cogent explanation for the omission of protected bike lanes in favor of a MUCH MORE DANGEROUS concept that will see less use. Other than the notion that protected bike lanes initially might have an eccentric appearance to some, I can't imagine why protected bike paths were abandoned. Sure there could be a few fogyish complaints from residents, but those complaints have no merit once two-way implementation is a given. Perhaps the cognitive deficiency is mine in this case. Is there an explanation for choosing the less ideal and more dangerous while expending virtually the same resources for implementation?

There's an explanation, K: City Hall's minions neither bike, nor walk. They drive. What they have not personally experienced, they cannot fathom.

Welcome to New Gahania.

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As an addendum, NA Confidential has been unable to confirm whether New Albany Mayor Jeff M. Gahan or anyone working in the city's administration is under federal investigation or indictment for corruption, bribery or racketeering. It is standard policy of the U.S. Justice Department to refuse to confirm or deny the existence or non-existence of investigations or subjects of investigations. A similar policy exists at the F.B.I.

"Lorry driver who killed four while using phone jailed for 10 years."

I'm just going to leave this here.

Lorry driver who killed four while using phone jailed for 10 years, by (The Guardian)

Tomasz Kroker was scrolling through music on his mobile when he hit car carrying woman and three children

A lorry driver who killed a woman and three children when his vehicle ploughed into their stationary car while he was scrolling through music on his mobile phone has been jailed for 10 years.

Tracy Houghton, 45, her sons, Ethan, 13, Josh, 11, and stepdaughter, Aimee, 11, died instantly when Tomasz Kroker drove his lorry into their car at 50mph. Their car was shunted underneath the back of a heavy goods vehicle and crushed to a third of its size.

An hour earlier, Kroker, 30, had signed a declaration to his employer promising he would not use his phone at the wheel.

Main Street median is spurned as John Rosenbarger's urn is burned on the return -- yet again.

Importantly, there were no injuries.

At around 9:00 p.m. tonight, a driver eastbound on Main where the beautification project begins rammed into the signature concrete Rosenbarger Ashtray, which was destroyed. The vehicle came to rest at the curb, where two cars previously have been totaled while parked after being struck by ricocheting cars, as NAC's correspondent believes this is the fifth such wreck since the median was installed.

For the record, here's what an effective road diet is supposed to look like. We're doing it now on Spring between Vincennes and Beharrell, and with much fanfare as to the safety benefits. We didn't do it on Main, where we substituted appearances for fundamentals.

There's a lesson somewhere therein, though it isn't clear whether there'll ever be sufficient municipal IQ to learn it.

#gahansafe

They're not car "accidents. They're car "crashes."

The gist is changing the way we use language, so as to change the way we view reality.

Families for Safe Streets has launched a campaign to get people to say “crash” instead of “accident.” They want to emphasize that many, if not most, traffic fatalities are preventable—not inevitable occurrences.

It would help. It also would be beneficial for our process of issuing drivers licenses to require prospective drivers to walk a few blocks in this or any other city, just so it can be seen how badly we drive. I don't exclude myself from this assessment; I've had my share of lapses. Perhaps it's of less significance in the countryside, where the odds of causing harm to another are less.

But here in the city, speed and recklessness kill. Can we be honest about it with the language we use? And, shouldn't we harness better design to discourage the likelihood of crashes, accidents, and general auto-borne mayhem?

Why We Say 'Car Accident,' and Why We Need to Stop: The term suggests fatal crashes are inevitable and beyond our control—they're not, by Sarah Goodyear (City Lab)

... Most people in the United States are compelled by the design of the places where they live to drive nearly everywhere. They are locked into a system where the car is a required tool for fully enfranchised citizenship—the only sensible and convenient way to get to work, to the store, to the doctor’s office, to school.

Anyone who has driven more than a few thousand miles in his or her lifetime has had the unnerving experience of a near miss. Get going fast enough, which is precisely what cars enable you to do, and even a momentary lapse of attention can have you drifting onto the shoulder, or making an unsafe turn. Drive hour after hour, day after day, year after year, and the potential for error mounts.

On some level, we all know that driving is a dangerous activity, probably the most dangerous thing that the average person does in a lifetime. We know that every time we turn the key in the ignition, we are powering up a machine that gives us a stupendous and potentially deadly power. But most of us are in no position to choose another mode of transportation. Most of us must accept the responsibility of piloting that machine as the baseline price of admission to America.

Road Kill 1: "Despite improvements, driving in America remains extraordinarily dangerous."

From the article.

"Roads get wider and busier and less friendly to pedestrians. And all of the development based around cars, like big sprawling shopping malls. Everything seems to be designed for the benefit of the automobile and not the benefit of the human being." -- Bill Bryson

Not to mention it being hazardous to one's health.

Traffic accidents: Road kill ... Despite improvements, driving in America remains extraordinarily dangerous (The Economist)

 ... Drunk-driving is just one of the perils of American roads. In 2014 some 32,675 people were killed in traffic accidents. In 2013, the latest year for which detailed data are available, some 2.3m were injured—or one in 100 licensed drivers. These numbers are better than a few decades ago, but still far worse than in any other developed country. For every billion miles Americans drive, roughly 11 people are killed. If American roads were as safe per-mile-driven as Ireland’s, the number of lives saved each year would be equivalent to preventing all the murders in the country.

In most of the rich world, far fewer people die in road accidents these days; cars are much safer than they were, with crumple zones, airbags, anti-locking brakes and adaptive cruise control. Use of seatbelts is widespread. But compared with other countries, America has not improved much. And in some ways things have been getting worse. For example, between 2009 and 2013 pedestrian deaths jumped by 15% as the economy recovered. In Britain, over the same period, the number fell by a fifth.

Many states are as safe to drive in as Europe: New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts all have low accident rates, for example. But in rural, sparsely-populated areas, where people drive long distances on long empty roads, the death rates can be shocking. In Wyoming in 2014, 131 people were killed in fatal crashes—a traffic-accident death rate higher than in most of sub-Saharan Africa. According to the Wyoming Highway Patrol, many deaths involve drivers who refuse to wear seatbelts.

Lots of Tiger Trucks idling on 13th Street this morning.

Yes, it's a fluke -- the second wreck this week alone of an 18-wheeler on a nearby interstate during rush hour. Two days ago, it was the westbound ramp to I-64 at 4:00 p.m. This morning, it's I-65 southbound, and so the easy GPS-inspired diversion through New Albany commences, and Spring Street is packed ... because it's the only street running one direction toward the next interstate over.

But in fact, it's just a more extreme example of the way our city's convenient pass-through streets are used every single day. We simply cannot build genuine human value as a city if our only value to the outside world is a way to get from one side to the other, irrespective of the people living in between.

Yes, in this morning's case, it is a fluke. But at some point, can we please learn something?

"It's Safer to Walk and Bike Where More People Walk and Bike."

Attentive drivers?

You'd be surprised how much more often one takes notice of inattentive drivers while walking. In New Albany, the one-way arterial street grid encourages driver inattentiveness.

It needs changing, as soon as possible. We'll take care of that, beginning January 1.

Why It's Safer to Walk and Bike Where More People Walk and Bike: Drivers pay more attention, by Eric Jaffe (City Lab)

 ... In other words, he concluded, cars are less likely to strike walkers and cyclists where there are more walkers and cyclists. That’s not to say fewer total people get injured in these places; on the contrary, the data suggested that a place where walking or cycling doubled would result in a third more pedestrian or rider injuries. But the risk of injury in these same places would fall 34 percent. And the flip side holds true, too. If the number of walkers and cyclists halved, fewer total injuries occur, but the risk of injury goes up 52 percent.

Jacobsen calls the result “unexpected.” His analysis can’t explain for sure why there’s safety in numbers, but he offers a theory: drivers become more attentive when there’s a lot of bikes and pedestrians around. (The same expectation of driver caution guides the “shared streets” movement.)

Failed suicide bungler strikes Elsby Building, thereby reaffirming one-way street safety.

Cars race past the Elsby Building on New Albany's outmoded one-way street grid, because that's the way we've done it for 50 years, and we're too provincial to contemplate change.

A radical monster pickup truck advocacy sect member incensed by rumors that Spring Street might some day be restored to two way traffic attempted to destroy the Elsby Building on Monday afternoon. The outcome was foiled when his illegally obtained novelty lighter failed to ignite on impact with his cigarette, causing his cell phone to fall to the floorboard, and his vehicle to strike and break a plate glass window.

Afterward, the city engineer was to have verified the Elsby Building's continued structural viability, except that New Albany doesn't have a city engineer, and all the usual piecework temps were busy with the East Main Street Project's non-bicycle lanes. So they sent the dogcatcher instead.

"Looks good to me."

City Hall later released a statement:

"Citizens wishing to donate to the Elsby broken glass clean-up should make all checks out to the Dixiecratic Democratic Party."

It was the second such attack in a year's time. In 2013, less than two blocks away, a nearsighted driver rammed his vehicle into an architect's window, only to discover that it wasn't the public art project he hated so damned much.

"What a relief that we're an unwalkable city and he was only going 55 mph," commented John Rosenbarger, New Albany's Rasputin of Redevelopment. "If people would have been crowding the sidewalk like in Madrid, someone might have gotten killed. All the more reason to institute a system of one-way arterial streets downtown, leading to roundabouts and some street calming somewhere else in the outskirts of the city. It's what they do in other places we can't ever hope to become, but as long as we accomplish 5% of the work each year, that's 20 years guaranteed employment."

From his hospital bed, the suicide bumbler said, "The streets that God made one way, let no wussy hybrid driver tear asunder -- not to mention those stupid fucking pedestrians too poor to drive."

"Bail, Caesar!"