Thank you to everyone who participated in the “Are You a Courteous Driver?” quiz during the NMA’s September Driver Courtesy Month. We had nearly 2500 respondents participate from across the US and Canada. New Jersey and California led with the number of respondents, respectively.

Thank you also for taking the time to test your courteous driving knowledge. We hope you take away at least one simple rule from this experience: Drive like you want others to drive. It may not seem like much, but that mindset is needed to change our driving culture to a more courteous one. How you act behind the steering wheel can rub off on other drivers you interact with and even your passengers.

We are pleased to announce the winners of the “Are You a Courteous Driver?” sweepstakes. They are:

• Chrissy Chiaravalloti of West Collingsworth Heights, New Jersey
  
• Adrianna Chirelli of Howell, New Jersey
  
• Greg Jabin of Del Mar, California
• Curtis Lockhart of Mesa, Arizona
• Michael Spence of Ruidoso, New Mexico
• C D Tavares of Morristown, Arizona 

To find out which prizes they won, check out the Driver Courtesy Month Sweepstakes 2021 page. While there, look at the questions with the answers from the quiz and find out how you ranked against others. Here is a sample of the first two questions:

_________________________________________

The NMA Driver Education Committee is planning to promote Driver Courtesy Month every September. Next year, we hope to introduce some fun visual elements that will be available for your use to send to family and friends and the local media.

If you have ideas for marketing Driver Courtesy Month, don’t hesitate to contact the National Office at nma@motorists.org.

Stay tuned and stay safe out there by driving courteously everywhere you go.

The post Driver Courtesy Month—How did you Rank on the “Are You a Courteous Driver?” Quiz: NMA Weekly E-Newsletter #667 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Many of us still drive older cars in our daily lives out of necessity. The average on-road vehicle age is currently over 12 years, while the average cost of a new vehicle hovers near $40,000. The microchip shortage has even pushed the price of some used cars and trucks close to their original price right off the lot.

Classic cars are older, but they belong to a different class of owner: sometimes an investor and many times an enthusiast who wants to restore the automobile to its former glory. Usually, classic cars are driven on weekends and special occasions, not as a daily commuter.

In many ways, the fate of both—cars that are just plain old and classic cars—is intertwined.

With both automakers and the federal government pushing electric vehicles as the future, what will become of classic and older Internal-combustion-engine (ICE) powered vehicles? The legislatures of California and New York recently passed bills that ban the sale of ICE cars by 2035. Some California communities are not allowing new gas stations to be built.

Ford announced in April 2020 that it wanted the government to again sponsor a cash-for-clunkers program to help keep people shopping for cars during the pandemic, at least before the chip shortage disrupted the supply of new vehicles. The Car Allowance Rebate System (Cash-for-Clunkers) was enacted during the 2008-09 recession to stimulate new-car sales. Owners of road-worthy vehicles not older than 25 years and with EPA-rated fuel efficiencies of less than 18 miles per gallon cars were given the incentive to trade their ‘clunkers’ for cash. Some dubbed the program “I Hate the Poor Act of 2009.” This program not only junked many vehicles that were still quite operable, but also made car ownership a difficult proposition for some do-it-yourselfers and for-profit specialists. It was government-influenced gentrification of vehicle ownership.

Many classic car enthusiasts were dismayed by how many potentially rare, collectible vehicles were destroyed during the first cash-for-clunkers program. Online networks were full of posts bemoaning the great cars headed to the scrap heap. The program also created a shortage of good used vehicles in the US.

Used vehicles are an absolute necessity for many people who hope to escape poverty. Mass transit is nonexistent in many places, and without a trustworthy car, many low-income people cannot keep a job. Even affordable vehicles are challenging to maintain these days due to the expense for anyone working or lower middle class. Vehicle complexity and restrictive right-to-repair regulations make cost-effective, do-it-yourself car maintenance difficult even for the most mechanically inclined.

Ever-more-complex car technology, restrictive public policies, and a growing bias against ICE vehicles are all challenges owners of classic and weathered cars face.

Another factor is the lack of interest shown by younger generations to work on their own cars. The average age of the classic vehicle hobbyist is now 55. As fewer enthusiasts take up the mantle, support services for classic cars and older ICEs will become scarcer, further accelerating the electric generation of vehicles.

The Cash for Clunkers Program floodgates have now opened with a twist. California’s Bay Area recently announced that a revised program will offer $9,500 to trade a gasoline-engined car for an EV.

The post Classic and Old Cars at the Cusp of the Electric Generation: NMA Weekly E-Newsletter #666 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

By Christopher M. DiPrima, NMA Board Member

Editor’s Note: In Part 1, Chris detailed two major causes of induced demand and explained why the overall supply vs. demand effects are manageable. Here he takes on some of the arguments which cite induced demand as a rationale against increasing highway capacity.

Having established the relationship between new capacity, demand, and land use, there is yet more ground on which to challenge induced demand as a critique of adding new capacity.

One benefit of increasing capacity is that more people are able to get where they want to go, when they want to go there.

As documented in Part 1, not all new capacity is consumed after it is built. However, if we assume for the sake of argument that 100% of the new capacity is eventually used, and that in the long term, travel speeds return to pre-expansion baselines, more people are traveling at that slow speed

Each freeway lane can typically carry up to around 1,200 vehicles per hour before it starts to exhibit congestion, and flow rates in heavy congestion tend to sit at over 2,000 vehicles per lane per hour. This means that even if all of the new capacity is absorbed by new trips, over 2,000 more people are served by the expanded road. This is a net social benefit, which is independent of travel-time improvement

The addition of freeway lane-miles tends to decrease traffic on parallel roads and increase traffic on perpendicular ones.

This relationship has been known since the Detroit and Chicago Area Transportation Studies (DATS and CATS) of the 1950s. It should also be obvious to anyone who lives in a region served by freeways. In those regions, the parallel surface streets tend to see a decrease in traffic volume, but the perpendicular streets which connect to freeway interchanges see an increase.

Therefore, a key benefit of adding lane capacity to one route is a proportionate decrease in traffic on a parallel route. This is the fundamental purpose of bypass roads: They carry through traffic on purpose-built roads, leaving parallel local streets to serve local traffic. In rural areas, these bypass roads have caused significant damage to local businesses and communities – one need only look at the decaying remnants of Route 66 as an example. But in urban and suburban areas, these freeway bypasses of local town centers provide significant benefits, as those town centers would be gridlocked without them.

Hayward, California is an excellent example of a city center plagued by the results of an unintentional gap in the freeway system, with its Foothill and Mission Boulevards becoming honorary freeways at rush hour, pushing locals out. There are many examples of the same outcome in other regions, especially in areas where expense, local opposition, or other factors created gaps in the originally planned freeway system.

The planning horizon for transportation projects are not infinite.

It is true that new freeway capacity cannot solve problems for which it was not designed. Most of our urban-area freeways were designed in the 1950s with a 30-year planning horizon, so we are now more than 40 years past the intended lifespans of the original freeway system. In that time, we have added 100 million Americans.

Additionally, in the 1950s, it was assumed that most families would only have a single worker. The mass introduction of women into the workplace alone practically doubled the 1950s-era predicted traffic volumes. The extra congestion generated by those new trips hardly seems like a bad tradeoff, nor is it an indictment of the concept of automobility. Quite the contrary.

As an aside, there is often an argument made that implementing high-speed rail along congested corridors will alleviate congestion on freeways. With few exceptions, this is simply false. By connecting a region more closely, trips will be induced between the cities via the exact mechanisms described in Part 1 of this e-newsletter. (Again, I would suggest this is a good thing – more people get to experience more places!) While a proportion of these trips will be served by high-speed rail, even more of the increase in demand will be picked up by other modes, including the personal car. High-speed rail has many of its own advantages, but it is not a direct substitute for freeway lane-miles.

Another study by Bignazzi and Figliozzi compares the environmental effects of capacity-based (adding lanes) and demand-based (reducing demand) strategies for improving congestion, and that ends up being a lecture unto itself about how certain strategies in certain places under certain conditions produce different results. But that is a topic for another day.

Induced demand is a real phenomenon which should be considered when adding capacity to any transportation network. I conclude with a paragraph from Cervero’s “Roads and Decision Making,” one of the articles cited in Part 1:

“Over the last several decades and in many corners of America, claims of induced demand have stopped highway projects in their tracks. This is wrong-headed. Highway investment decisions should be based on a full accounting of costs and benefits over the service life of a facility. Induced-demand studies have told us only that some benefits of new or expanded highways get eroded over time. This is important to know, for it gives us a handle on the numerator of the benefit/cost ratio. However, induced-demand studies say nothing about other benefits conferred by highways—e.g., increased economic productivity or satisfaction of one’s preference for suburban living.”

The post A Primer on Induced Demand, Part 2: NMA E-Newsletter #665 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

By Christopher M. DiPrima, NMA Board Member

Editor’s Note: We touched on induced demand—the theory that as highway capacity increases, demand does also, thereby creating a never-ending need for more capacity—in NMA E-Newsletter #599 last year. In light of the current infrastructure negotiations in Washington, and the ongoing effort to reshape urban land use by decommissioning freeways, we asked Chris, who has a Masters degree in City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania, to provide a more detailed look at the topic that he says is “ripe for myth-busting.”

While the concept of induced demand has been understood for decades, if not centuries, the seminal work in induced demand was conducted by Mark Hansen and Robert Cervero of the University of California. In their initial papers, they studied the results of lane-mile additions on freeways in California, finding that over the course of around a decade, most of the capacity added by various freeway construction projects ends up being used up, sapping the rush hour travel time benefits of the new capacity.

Cervero later published an excellent short summary on induced demand, entitled “Are Induced Travel Studies Inducing Bad Investments?” Written for a broad audience, this is a great starting point to explain the underlying relationships between new highway capacity and travel times, and bust some myths. In Figures 2 and 3 of that article, Cervero illustrates the relationships between capacity, land use, and travel time. There are a few key observations:

Twenty percent of added capacity is preserved over a six to eight-year period.

This is crucial. Twenty percent may not sound like a lot, but even a one to two percent difference in the volume-to-capacity ratio on freeways can have a huge impact because traffic congestion is a “threshold effect.” In other words, traffic congestion does not increase linearly with traffic, but rather exhibits an S-curve. We know this to be true intuitively: You can add a lot of traffic to an empty road without any change on travel speeds, but a few additional cars during rush hour can grind an entire freeway to a halt. That is why rush hour traffic is often noticeably better in the summer. Even though a very small proportion of the traveling public are on vacation in any one summer week, that small reduction in demand has a huge effect on congestion.

In short, a 20% capacity preservation after the better part of a decade is a huge success story, not a failure.

The most prevalent induced-demand behavior is “behavioral shift.”

Behavioral shift means that when people are confronted with new highway capacity, i.e., their travel time is reduced, they respond by traveling more. People might go and try out a new restaurant or see a friend on the opposite side of town which would have been prohibitively distant before the capacity was added. I would argue that this is a net societal benefit since it gives more people the opportunity to do more things.

In the most extreme case, people might move to the outskirts of an urban area because it has become more convenient to commute into the urban core. This is the typical argument wielded against adding capacity: that it will cause urban sprawl. While this is theoretically true, it is facile to suggest that people make a choice as important is their housing location as a reaction to a freeway expansion. People in the U.S. have generally been become less mobile over time, and the purely transactional economic argument of “less travel time = sprawl” ignores the many social variables which go into one’s choice of housing.

One of the other sources of behavioral shift is a change in the demand pattern over the course of a day. If peak hour travel times improve, people who would have waited until after rush hour to take a discretionary trip instead decide to take it during rush hour. Again, I would consider this to be a net benefit, with more people traveling when they want rather than waiting for rush hour to end.

The next-most prevalent induced-demand behavior is “land use shift.”

This pattern is most easily explained by example, where an outlet mall sprouts around a new freeway interchange. This should not be a surprise because it is often part of the reason why new capacity is added: to increase the value of the surrounding land. This is exactly the same reason why developers in the late 1800s built streetcars: they built the loss-leading mass transit system to increase the value of their own land. It is also for exactly this reason why transit systems in the 1800s are wildly inefficient by modern standards – they followed the paths that the developers chose, often in direct competition with neighboring developers. To this day, the New York City subway system operates as a legacy of the competing IRT, IND, and BMT systems.

Personally, I interpret both forms of induced demand to be parts of the same story. Just like it is a choice to up-zone the area around a freeway interchange for commercial use, it is a choice to build housing on the periphery of a region because the freeway provides access. If we believe that we can limit freeway expansion, then we should be equally capable of limiting urban sprawl without using congestion as a weapon. Indeed, the green belt development limits first put into organized practice by disciples of Ebenezer Howard’s “garden city” movement predate freeways by almost 50 years.

The bottom line is that while induced demand is real under certain conditions, it is neither infinite, uncontrollable, nor inevitable.

Part 2 of A Primer on Induced Demand will appear in next week’s NMA E-Newsletter.

The post A Primer on Induced Demand, Part 1: NMA E-Newsletter #664 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

President Biden announced earlier this year that he wanted 50 percent of all cars sold in 2030 to be electric. But is that practical? Car-buying decisions by consumers are just one piece of the puzzle.

According to the US Department of Energy, the nation has over 43,000 public charging stations with about 105,000 individual outlets. Approximately 5,000 of these are direct-current fast (Level 3) chargers. Biden wants to have a total of 500,000 chargers online by 2030. The Brattle Group estimates that the US will require 1.25 million public charging outlets to support a projected 20 million electric vehicles (EVs) by 2030. The cost to provide that capacity is projected to be $30 to $50 billion.

The charger designation dictates the cost. The higher the level, the quicker the charge, and, of course, the more expensive the charging station installation.

Automakers continue to promise that someday it will take as little as 10 minutes to charge an EV to about 80 percent capacity. Level 1 and 2 chargers, including home units, generally require four to twelve hours to charge an EV battery fully.

More electric vehicles need to be on the road to support such an expansion of charging capabilities successfully. Kind of like a chicken and egg situation—which comes first?

That’s not an easy task either since it will require a mix of public-private partnerships that involve local governments, businesses, utility companies, and automakers, along with an emerging group of EV charging companies. The logistics of constructing an EV charging network are not as simple as putting in a gas station on every corner.

A YouTube video from a few years ago illustrated just how difficult it is actually to charge your EV if away from your home charger. Convenient and efficient EV charging is a must if Americans are going to embrace the technology.

The Hill recently had an opinion piece called Right Ways and Wrong Ways to Electrify America. This paragraph stood out:

“We must move both fast and smart in this EV revolution. There are some major potholes that we must swerve around in this Indy 500 speedway towards making America all-electric.”

The overriding issue in the electric vehicle discussion is whether consumers will flock to EVs just because the government mandates it?

Currently, only 2.1 percent of the roughly 17 million vehicles sold each year in the US are all-electric. In 2020, EV sales dropped by more than 3 percent from 2018. One in five California EV car owners has already gone back to an internal combustion engine.

Electric vehicle technology must continue to advance for the hearts and minds of the car-buying public to follow, mandate or no mandate.

The post Charging Ahead with Electric Vehicles: NMA E-Newsletter #663 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Layered levels of taxation are nothing new to motorists. The gas tax, road tolls, congestion pricing, registration fees, and even wheel taxes are commonplace. Congress is looking at us hungrily again as being ripe for the picking as it debates the final details of desperately needed transportation infrastructure funding.

The idea is not new. In fact, the NMA has editorialized against the mileage-based road user fee many times in the past, more commonly known today as a vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) tax. The concept has never entirely gone away, and now it is mentioned prominently in both the House and Senate infrastructure packages.

The $3.5 trillion House “Invest in America” plan would require the Comptroller General of the United States to “carry out a study on the impact of equity issues associated with per-mile user fee funding systems on the surface transportation system.”

The Senate bipartisan bill, with a $1.2 trillion budget currently, is even bolder. The title of Section 13001 of the bill gives it away: Strategic Innovation for Revenue Collection. It would direct the U.S. Transportation Secretary to “establish a program to test the feasibility of a road usage fee and other user-based alternative revenue mechanisms . . . to help maintain the long-term solvency of the Highway Trust Fund, through pilot projects at the State, local and regional level.” One of the stated objectives is “to consider, to the greatest extent practicable, the potential for revenue collection along a network of alternative funding stations.”

In other words, if 13001 is part of the infrastructure plan signed into law, the X painted on the backs—really the wallets—of motorists by the government will become an even more enticing target.

It is going to take all of us contacting the members of the House and Senate Transportation & Infrastructure Committees to get their attention on this issue. Here are the committee rosters and contact information:

Senate Transportation & Infrastructure Subcommittee

House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee

After the following NMA email detailing our concern about VMT programs was sent to the legislative directors of each of those members, an aide for Congresswoman Michelle Steel (CA-48) responded by saying that his boss was in full agreement with the NMA position. She submitted an amendment to H.R. 3684 that would strike all VMT language from the House bill. Unfortunately, House leadership designated the bill as a closed rule not subject to amendments. Nevertheless, the NMA has made a connection with Rep. Steel, a potential ally on other motorist issues from the country’s most populous state.

NMA August 30th/31st Email to Senate and House Top T&I Aides
H.R. 3684 Infrastructure Bills: Concerns of the Motoring Public, Part 4 – Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) Tax

Dear Dixon,

Section 13001 of the infrastructure bill would provide $125 million in funding for pilot programs to explore methods of levying road-usage taxes on drivers. The VMT (vehicle miles traveled) tax has been bandied about for many years as a replacement for the established per-gallon gas tax, or even as an add-on tax to the revenue already collected at the gas pump.

We urge Senator Inhofe to oppose the funding of VMT pilot programs. It is telling that the arguments supporting our recommendation are as applicable now as they were a few years ago when the following NMA op-ed was published by The Ripon Society think-tank in its February 2015 Forum. The editorial takes 2 to 3 minutes to read, and it sums up why a properly adjusted gas tax is a more efficient and equitable (and less intrusive) system of charging drivers for the maintenance and improvements of our nation’s roads and bridges.

The Mileage-Based User Fee: At what cost?
By Gary Biller, NMA President

     Rarely is a problem best solved by adding layers of complexity to an existing process, particularly a budgetary process. Such is the proposal to supplement or replace the fuel tax with a mileage-based user fee to pull the Federal Highway Trust Fund back from the teetering edge of insolvency.

     The real problem with the Trust Fund is how the money is being spent, more so than with how it is being collected from road users. While the nation’s roads and bridges decline further into disrepair, those who constitute the Washington D.C. political establishment continue to fiddle. 

     In the 2007 report, “Paying at the Pump: Gasoline Taxes in America,” Jonathan Williams (then of the Tax Foundation) wrote, “. . . current federal highway legislation authorized over 6,000 earmarks from the Highway Trust Fund. Some of these went to legitimate transportation programs, but others were earmarked for items such as the infamous ‘Bridge to Nowhere.’ Today, gasoline tax revenue is spend on everything from public education and museums to graffiti removal and parking garages.”

      At about the same time, the Transportation Review Board noted in its “Special Report 285” that, two years earlier, the federal government collected $107 billion in highway user fees, with the majority being generated from gas tax revenue. The TRB reported that only $85 billion of that total was devoted to highway spending.

      The Trust Fund allocation process is little better today. Any discussion about the effectiveness of the fuel tax vs. a mileage-based user fee needs to start there, because any revenue collection method will be saddled with the same systemic problem. If only our legislators had the political will and self-discipline to limit the incessant earmarking of transportation funds for non-highway projects.

      That being said, the fuel tax is the simplest, most equitable method of charging motorists for the maintenance of our highway infrastructure. Heavier, less fuel-efficient vehicles contribute more to road wear and tear than do smaller passenger vehicles and motorcycles, but by virtue of higher fuel consumption their owners also pay more toward the Trust Fund.

      A mileage-based user fee requires tracking of actual vehicle miles traveled. Recording the mileage is an added data collection step, either through periodic odometer inspections or by a much more intrusive GPS-based tracking system that monitors the whereabouts of each vehicle at all times. The GPS method opens the door for creative traffic management schemes such as charging drivers more per mile when they are navigating through congested traffic zones. Urban planning by way of social engineering. No thank you.

      Whether the mileage-based fee is determined by reading odometers or through uploaded tracking information, it does not apportion cost based on the road maintenance caused by specific vehicles that is a hallmark of the fuel tax. Instead, the tax per vehicle mile would ostensibly be the same for an 18-wheel tractor-trailer as it would for a motorcycle; all this at the cost of introducing a new revenue collection system (and requisite overhead) to monitor and collect road user fees based on the distance vs. time profile of each vehicle.

      Critics of the fuel tax point to electric cars and gas/electric hybrids as not consuming enough fuel to contribute their fair share to the Trust Fund. Through late 2014, 3.8 million plug-in electric and hybrid vehicles have been sold in the U.S. since introduction. That constitutes only 1.5 percent of the nation’s motorized traffic today. [Note: Seven years later in 2021 that number is just slightly over 2 percent.] These vehicles are not part of the Trust Fund’s solvency issues and likely won’t be for several more years. If need be, owners of electric vehicles can be charged an assessment based on average miles traveled to make their contribution to the Trust Fund more equitable.

      Index the federal fuel tax to inflation if you must. (The last adjustment to the per-gallon tax was over 20 years ago.) But do not take the existing and inherently fair method of charging drivers for highway use by vehicle fuel consumption and complicate it with a mileage-based user fee that adds new levels of cost, bureaucracy, and privacy concerns.

A primary concern of motorists, besides the tracking implications of VMT tax collection systems, is that government will see a lucrative new revenue stream to tack on top of the existing fuel tax. Double taxation would unfairly burden motorists, many of whom already struggle with the necessity of driving to maintain employment and make ends meet for their families.

Please ask Senator Inhofe to give careful consideration to the inherent problems associated with a vehicle-miles-traveled tax initiative. The funding of VMT pilot programs as proposed in the infrastructure bill should be opposed on behalf of all motorists who already pay their fair share for maintaining surface transportation systems.

Thank you,

Gary Biller
President/CEO

National Motorists Association
Empowering drivers since 1982!

The post Infrastructure Urgency, Part 3: NMA E-Newsletter #662 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

The sausage-making is in full swing as opposing parties in Washington wrestle the Senate’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and the House’s $3.5 trillion version to the ground. In Infrastructure Urgency, Part 1, NMA E-Newsletter #659, we shared the first two in a series of NMA emails directed to members of the Transportation & Infrastructure Committees from both chambers. We urged them to strike proposed funding for anti-motorist Vision Zero programs and anti-engineering speed limit reductions.

While the likelihood of our advocacy efforts swaying the opinions of most legislators remains to be seen, the responses received so far are helping us identify pro-driver champions with whom we can work.

The same is true of subsequent rounds of personalized NMA messages sent to the T&I Committee members recently. View our Automated Enforcement email to Capitol Hill below. In next week’s newsletter, look for our criticism of the proposed pilot programs for implementing new mileage-based road user taxes and a very interesting reply from a member of Congress.

NMA August 23rd/24th Email to Senate and House Top T&I Aides
H.R. 3684 Infrastructure Bills: Concerns of the Motoring Public, Part 3 – Automated Enforcement

Dear Richard,

The real question with automated enforcement is whether the public wants the federal government to fund automated ticketing programs that include a profit motive for cities and camera vendors. For-profit photo enforcement has been the trigger for a long list of prosecuted corruption and fraud.

As noted in Parts 1 and 2 of this email series from the National Motorists Association, a nonprofit driver advocacy organization, the funding of Vision Zero programs to the tune of $1 billion through 2026 will signal the federal government’s tacit approval to restrict driving beyond established norms while simultaneously increasing enforcement efforts. The net effects, particularly when automated enforcement is part of the equation, are increased non-compliance with traffic laws by safe drivers, higher ticketing rates, and increased distrust between communities and law enforcement.

There are also a number of constitutional objections to automated enforcement, not the least of which is that the cameras don’t positively identify the driver in an alleged violation, so the ticket is automatically issued to the registered owner of the vehicle. The owner may or may not have been behind the wheel at the time of the incident. This becomes “guilty until proven innocent,” which can be difficult to defend against, even if truly innocent.

There is nothing more detrimental to public trust than enforcement methods that place or are perceived to place profit motives over fairness and safety. But the revenue extracted from automated enforcement programs comes close because, over the past 17 years, as this crime line so aptly illustrates, more than seven dozen prosecuted instances of fraud and corruption have been instigated by operators of red-light and speed camera programs. A sampling of some notable lowlights follows my sign-off below.

If federal funding of automated enforcement is to be done, it must be on the basis of break-even operation. With discord between the police and community continuing to simmer, tickets by camera — especially those that line the pockets of others — is a recipe for creating an even wider societal divide. And, this should be no surprise, when camera programs are forced to relinquish profits and are no longer money-makers, history shows that the hardware is typically removed in due time. That wouldn’t be so if safety was the primary motivation for automated enforcement.

One more question related to something you live with every day in DC. Do Senator Merkley’s constituents really want this type of command-and-control enforcement in their own cities? Based on the regular feedback we get from motorists, the answer is more likely than not, “Not in my backyard.”

The NMA, a nonprofit organization representing the nation’s motorists, encourages Senator Merkley to oppose the federal funding of automated enforcement directly or through Vision Zero programs.

Thank you for your consideration,

Gary Biller
President/CEO

National Motorists Association
Empowering drivers since 1982

Automated Enforcement Crime Line (abridged)

March 2013
Scandal hits Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, when councilman reveals that Redflex had paid a 3.2 percent cut of the firm’s profit on each ticket issued to lobbyist Bryan Wagner, a former New Orleans city councilman, who in turn shared the funds with the wife of District Judge Robert Murphy.

2014 Redflex (camera vendor) bribery scandal in Chicago and Ohio
A Federal Bureau of Investigation into the practices of Redflex Traffic Systems revealed that the firm delivered bribes to politicians in Chicago, Illinois, and Columbus, and Cincinnati, Ohio. The company admitted its US operation lied to public officials. The firm’s executive vice president admitted that bribes were also issued in other states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington.

Karen Finley, former head of US operations for Redflex, was charged with nine counts of mail fraud, three counts of wire fraud, three counts of bribery, and one count of conspiracy to use bribes to win and expand a lucrative red-light camera contract with Chicago, Illinois. She was found guilty, fined $2 million, and served time in federal prison until 2018.

Chicago transportation official John Bills was convicted of accepting $2 million in Redflex bribes in return for his help in ensuring Redflex won the lucrative red-light camera contract. He received extra money every time a new red-light camera was installed.

Redflex contractor Martin O’Malley admitted that he helped deliver $2 million in bribes to the Chicago, Illinois official in charge of the red-light camera program.

Redflex executive vice president Aaron M. Rosenberg was convicted of orchestrating the bribery program, but he avoided jail time because he turned evidence against his former colleagues. In 2018 he lost a bid to collect a reward for cooperating with authorities.

Redflex lobbyist John P. Raphael was convicted in 2016 of soliciting bribes from Redflex for distribution to politicians in Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio. Because he refused to turn on those politicians, they escaped being charged with accepting the bribes.

December 2017
Pennsylvania Auditor General issues report exposing corruption in the Philadelphia red-light camera program, including self-dealing by the officials in charge of the cameras.

2018 Dallas, TX Bus Camera Scandal
The Federal Bureau of Investigation exposed a massive corruption scandal involving school bus stop arm cameras in Dallas. Read the FBI’s account of the takedown here.

Then Dallas County Schools superintendent was convicted for taking $3 million in kickbacks from Leonard in return for signing the school bus ticketing camera contract that ultimately caused the dissolution of Dallas County Schools.

May 2019
Whistleblower exposes corruption in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania red-light camera program, including rigged audits and contract bidding irregularities.

January 2020
Illinois Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Martin A. Sandoval enters a guilty plea to the charge of accepting bribes from SafeSpeed in return for his work in killing legislation that would have banned or limited the use of automated ticketing machines.

The post Infrastructure Urgency, Part 2: NMA E-Newsletter #661 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Welcome to Driver Courtesy Month!

This month-long educational program promotes the idea that we should all be courteous drivers. We can all pursue the Golden Rule of Driving—drive like you want others to drive.

Along with the NMA’s largest media campaign in recent years, we are supporting Driver Courtesy Month with information on the NMA’s flagship website, Motorists.org, a social media campaign, and content in a variety of sources such as NMA e-newsletters like this and our Driving in America blog.

The NMA has also prepared an online quiz entitled Are You a Courtesy Driver? Complete the quiz by the end of September to become eligible for one of six great prizes. After you take the quiz, send this link to your family and friends to encourage their participation: /courtesyquiz-n/

Can you answer these three quiz questions?

• On a limited-access highway, when do you move back into the right lane?
• What should you do when you come upon slower traffic?
• When an aggressive driver comes up behind you, what do you do?

All quiz questions are multiple-choice except one, which every NMA member should already know.

This year, the NMA Board formed a special projects committee comprised of President Gary Biller, Board Member Chris DiPrima, and Communications Director Shelia Dunn. They have been working on several other educational projects that we’ll be announcing in the future. Every September, though, Driver Courtesy Month will become the centerpiece of NMA educational efforts.

But what is driver courtesy?

As mentioned before, it’s the golden rule of driving and encompasses many aspects that teens might learn in driving school. More mature drivers should know from vast experience. All have been unwritten rules of the road in the past and now many are the law.

• Lane courtesy—drive right, pass left
• Use your turn signal
• Drive a steady speed on the highway
• Don’t tailgate
• Pay attention at stoplights—don’t multitask
• Don’t text and drive
• Use the zipper merge
• Pull over and move over for emergency vehicles
• Turn down bright lights when another vehicle approaches
• Use fog lights only when there’s fog
• Park between the lines
• Yield to the right at four-way stops
• Control your urge to road rage
• Don’t double park
• Thank other road users who helped you with a friendly wave

If you have other examples of driver courtesy, please send them to us at nma@motorists.org.

In early October, we will write another newsletter to cap off the results of Driver Courtesy Month and would like to include your ideas.

While we are highlighting September as Driver Courtesy Month, being thoughtful to other drivers and road users must be a 24/7 mindset by all if we are to improve safety and enhance the driving culture. Thank you for your support!

The post Driver Courtesy Month—an Educational Program for Motorists: NMA E-Newsletter #660 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Two weeks ago, the NMA launched an information campaign directed at the top aides of U.S. Congressional members who sit on either the Senate or House Transportation & Infrastructure (T&I) Committees. One single-topic email is sent per week on issues contained within the massive proposed legislation to fund an upgrade of the nation’s transportation-ish infrastructure. (We’re not fans of the “-ish” affectation, but the scope of the proposals goes beyond roads, bridges, tunnels and transit systems.)

What we really aren’t fans of are the infrastructure recommendations that are onerous to drivers. Below are examples of the first two NMA emails, personalized and sent to the staffers. We will be following with three or four more emails in the next few weeks on topics such as automated enforcement, funding of a mileage-based (vehicle-miles-traveled) road user fee pilot program, support for standardizing in-cabin driver monitoring systems, and one that never goes away, the federal funding of state-run high-visibility traffic enforcement campaigns that are measured by tickets issued rather than safety metrics.

We’ll share those emails with you, too, in future e-newsletters. If motorists are going to move the needle on any of these issues, it’s going to require the help of you and others in reaching out to the T&I Committee members with shared concerns.

Here are the current committee memberships along with linked contact information:

Senate Transportation & Infrastructure Subcommittee

House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee

The staffer response we have received so far to the NMA emails shown below has mostly been a routine polite recognition of the issue along with a promise to share our concerns with the legislator. One legislative aide observed that for as long as her boss has been on the T&I Committee, she has never heard a negative word about Vision Zero. That remark is very telling, and is also why we linked stories of eleven major North American cities with VZ programs either ineffective or outright failing despite massive public funding. The question is whether she, and more importantly, her boss, will read those accounts with some degree of alarm.

We know the messages struck a chord with the legislative director of a U.S. Representative, who wrote, “Thank you so much for flagging this. My boss completely agrees with the sentiments you outlined below regarding Vision Zero. Let me know if you have time this week to discuss the issue and potential paths forward on pushing back on this madness.” That is precisely the kind of response upon which we will be building.

NMA August 9^th/10^th Email to Senate and House Top T&I Aides
H.R. 3684 Infrastructure Bills: Concerns of the Motoring Public,
Part 1 – Vision Zero

Dear Kara,

Congress appears to be getting ready to approve a $1 billion investment in Vision Zero and Safe Streets state programs over the next five years. Is that really the right thing to do with taxpayer money when time-after-time these programs have failed to meet expectations despite having hundreds of millions of dollars pumped into them already? Traffic safety improvements can and should be made, not by pursuing an unrealistic “zero traffic fatalities at all costs” approach, but by providing funding for more robust driver education programs across the country that include advanced-skills training, and for the safety training of other road users such as bicyclists. That would be a billion dollars much more effectively spent toward lowering roadway accident and fatality rates.

Please encourage Senator Whitehouse, as a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee, to give the proposed appropriation for Vision Zero programs a critical review, especially with the abysmal track record of previous VZ efforts.

Some recent, high-profile examples of those expensive failures:

Austin, TX
Austin, TX traffic fatalities nearly triple in January (Feb 2020)

Chicago, IL
Several years into a ten-year “Vision Zero” target, some cities that took on a radical safety challenge are seeing traffic fatalities go up (Nov 2019)

Los Angeles, CA
Los Angeles’ Vision Zero Plan is Not Working…Yet (Feb 2020)

New York, New York
Vision Zero Sputters As NYC Traffic Deaths Reach Highest Level of De Blasio Era (Oct 2020)

Philadelphia, PA
As traffic deaths spike, Philly reveals updated Vision Zero action plan (Nov 2020)

Portland, OR
City of Portland dissolves Vision Zero task force (Feb 2021)

San Francisco, CA
City Performance Scorecard (Dec 2020)

San Jose, CA
With traffic deaths on the rise, San Jose renews focus on safety (Jul 2020)

Seattle, WA
24 Deaths in 2020 Show Seattle Still Falling Woefully Short of Vision Zero Pledge (Feb 2021)

Toronto, Ontario
Why Toronto’s approach to Vision Zero isn’t making streets safer (Oct 2019)

Washington, DC
D.C. traffic deaths rise during pandemic, impeding plans for zero-death goal (Oct 2020)

The National Motorists Association is a nonprofit coalition of concerned motorists. The voting bloc of licensed drivers in the United States is nearly 250 million strong. There are a number of aspects of the infrastructure bills that deserve particular scrutiny. We will be highlighting some of them in a short series of email messages to the members of the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee over the next few weeks. If you have any questions about the issues from a motorist’s perspective, please feel free to contact me.

Thank you for your consideration, and for the attention Senator Whitehouse will give to these important issues for motorists and taxpayers.

Kind regards,

Gary Biller
President/CEO

National Motorists Association
Empowering drivers since 1982
Email:           gary@motorists.org
Telephone: 608-849-6000
1001 Arboretum Dr, Ste 120, Waunakee, WI 53597

NMA August 16^th/17^th Email to Senate and House Top T&I Aides
H.R. 3684 Infrastructure Bills: Concerns of the Motoring Public,
Part 2 – Speed Limits

Dear John,

Two key elements of Vision Zero will open the door for local authorities to lower speed limits without regard for current engineering standards and significantly expand the use of photo enforcement—speed cameras, in particular—to monitor compliance under the threat of significant penalties.

Part 1, sent last week, illustrated the ineffectiveness, at great cost, of Vision Zero programs in major cities around the country. This email addresses the safety and community-trust ramifications of arbitrarily lowering speed limits to reduce traffic fatalities. Please forward this information to Representative LaMalfa for consideration when reviewing the bipartisan “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act” and the parallel “INVEST in America Act” package.

State Departments of Transportation (DOT) understand the essential need to post viable speed limits based on typical safe driving behaviors. The Iowa DOT is not unique in affirming publicly, “When a good speed limit is set based on data-driven decision-making, drivers adapt, and less enforcement is needed. Sometimes we are asked to reduce speed limits in hopes of preventing crashes, but in most cases, lower speed limits aren’t the solution. When a speed limit is set too low without supporting data, we see more variability in speeds. This creates conflicts and makes assessing the speed of other drivers difficult to determine.”

In fact, the seminal study on speed limit changes, the Federal Highway Administration’s publication, FHWA-RD-97-084, Effects of Raising and Lowering Speed Limits on Selected Roadway Sections, by Martin R. Parker & Associates, shows no safety benefits for (and often adverse effects resulting from) limits posted below established traffic speed patterns.

By funding Vision Zero programs with $1 billion over the next five years, Congress will be giving the green light to eliminating the current requirement to gathering speed-study data as a necessary component of speed limit determination. Posted speed limits will be based on the individual decisions of engineers (or administrators) in thousands of different jurisdictions across the country.

The word “uniform” is prominent in established standards set by the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices and the Uniform Vehicle Code for a reason. Without a coherent, engineering-based national standard for setting speed limits, drivers can drive safely but become unwitting violators as they travel from one community to the next. Do we want drivers focused more with eyes down on their speedometers or with eyes up on the road?

Traffic enforcement has a long history of being applied inequitably, as many of today’s headlines too often make clear. Funding Vision Zero programs will promote the lowering of speed limits by default, not by engineering methodology, and encourage the proliferation of automated enforcement cameras. The federal government would be paving the way for drivers, particularly those from low-income and marginalized communities, to become vulnerable to higher ticketing rates. This is at a time when trust between the police and community must be strengthened, not damaged further.

The NMA encourages Rep. LaMalfa to vote against the federal funding of ineffective and wasteful Vision Zero programs.

Thank you for your consideration,

Gary Biller
President/CEO

National Motorists Association
Empowering drivers since 1982
Email:           gary@motorists.org
Telephone: 608-849-6000
1001 Arboretum Dr, Ste 120, Waunakee, WI 53597

The post Infrastructure Urgency, Part 1: NMA E-Newsletter #659 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Much is happening on the national stage in recent weeks that will have a tremendous impact on motorists for years to come. The laborious, and politically charged, process of negotiating two infrastructure bills has resulted in more than 4200 pages of legislation with plenty of anti-driving provisions contained within.

The other shockwave was caused by President Biden’s executive order to have automakers produce electric vehicles as 40 to 50 percent of their new car production by 2030. Media outlets wanted the motorists’ reaction to the Biden announcement so they contacted the NMA for a policy statement. This was our release to the national press:

NMA Statement on President Biden’s Executive Order on Electric Vehicles
and Vehicle Standard Emissions

August 5, 2021

The National Motorists Association believes it’s unrealistic to require 40 to 50 percent of all new vehicle sales to be zero-emissions electric by 2030. Currently, only 2.1 percent of the roughly 17 million vehicles sold each year in the U.S. are all-electric. In 2020, EV sales dropped by more than 3 percent from 2018. Not every car buyer is enthused by EVs. They will not answer the needs of many drivers who make long trips or who live in extreme climates.

Will the Biden Administration and subsequent presidents commit to technological advances over the next 15 to 20 years that will ease the concern of consumers who, to this point, are not risking their transportation needs to all-electric vehicles? Automakers may support the Biden goal, but sellers need buyers.

Concerns of climate change are the driving force behind the non-binding Biden executive order. Yet, concerns remain about the environmental impact of the lithium-ion batteries that currently power EVs. The cost-benefit effect on the environment of mining lithium in much greater quantities for the auto industry and what to do with the toxic waste from the disposal of used batteries needs further analysis. 

An EV battery typically requires replacement every ten years, and today costs about $5,500. That is just one factor why U.S. consumers have not been very enthusiastic about buying EVs.

The 50 percent goal, even with the backing of major automakers, will require significant advances in technology and a selling job to the general public that the benefits of switching to EVs over the next 20 years outweigh the costs to them, to the economy, and the environment.

Those technological advances should also be applied to internal combustion engine designs. Set emission standards that are consistent across the country and that make sense. Produce vehicles, whether EV or ICE-powered, that meet those requirements and then let car buyers decide which option is best for their needs.

~~~

As of this writing, the wrangling over infrastructure priorities and spending continues between Republicans and Democrats. There is little reason to believe much will have changed by the time you read this.

In concert with the NMA’s government relations representative in Washington, the NMA is sending out a series of personalized, single-issue emails to the top aides of each congressperson who sits on either the Senate or House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee. We must get their attention on the key items in the infrastructure packages that will affect motorists adversely for years, if not generations, to come.

We will report on those NMA policy messages, and reaction to them from legislators or their staffs, starting with next week’s NMA e-newsletter.

The post Seismic Shifts: NMA E-Newsletter #658 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

We need truckers—these men and women crisscross the country to bring goods to shelves everywhere, and without them, our economic engine would grind to a halt. Commercial truck driving is not an easy profession, but in 29 states, it is the most common.

Finding a place to park has become one of the biggest problems truck drivers currently face, and that is a safety problem for everyone on the road. Lack of available parking space ranks number three on the American Transportation Research Institute’s Top Industry Issues report.

The issue is not just about having enough parking spaces. Drivers have primary hour limits (or Hours of Service-HOS Rules) for property-carrying vehicles. They’re called the 14-hour limit and the 60/70 limit.

Under the first HOS rule, drivers cannot be on duty for more than 14 hours, can’t drive for more than 11 of those hours, and only eight of those hours may be driven consecutively. When truckers come on duty, they must have had ten consecutive hours off duty. The second HOS rule states that if drivers work over a period of seven consecutive days, they can only be on duty for a maximum of 60 hours over that period. If drivers work eight consecutive days, they can only be on duty for a maximum of 70 hours. Parking is critical to make those rules work.

Even though OOIDA (Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association) has been highlighting this parking shortage for more than a decade, parking capacity remains a significant problem in every corner of the US. The Federal Highway Administration’s National Coalition on Truck Parking found that parking shortages exist at all times of the day, week, and year. The situation is more acute overnight and on weekdays. Major freight corridors and large urban areas present the direst of situations.

OOIDA’s Director of Legislative Affairs Bryce Mongeon explains how this impacts individual trucks and even other motorists:

“If you have a driver who is tired or wants to take a break or they are coming up on a federally mandated rest break, they need a safe place to park. Because of the shortage, if they can’t find a parking space, they are put into a no-win situation and have to decide, ‘Do I pull over and park on the highway shoulder? Do I pull over and take a break? Do I keep driving while possibly fatigued in violation of hours of service rules to find a legal parking spot?’ Obviously, that is stressful for truck drivers, but, more broadly, we are talking to Congress about how this is a safety issue for everyone on the road. If there are trucks parked illegally on the shoulder, that’s a hazard for other motorists.”

The FHWA claims there are about 313,000 highway truck-parking spots nationally: 40,000 at public rest areas and 273,000 at private truck stops. Currently, not many new spaces are coming online. Between 2014 and 2019, truck parking capacity has only increased six and eleven percent for public and private venues respectively.

This is such an issue that Congress plans to help alleviate some of the problem. In the House’s multiyear highway policy bill, some representatives want to fund a $1 billion grant program to help expand facilities for truck drivers nationwide. Specifically, the US Department of Transportation would be required to provide $250 million each year between 2023 and 2026 for truck-parking programs around the country. These would be safe rest areas for commercial drivers.

American Trucking Associations VP of Highway Operations Darrin Roth told American Trucker in December 2020 that most states don’t intend to increase capacity. He said the same is true with 79 percent of private providers. Roth noted:

“Whereas 38 percent of truck tonnage is in 32 urban areas, just 8.5 percent of truck parking spaces are in those areas. This is likely because land in large urban areas is scarce and expensive, and NIMBYism has likely prevented truck stops from being able to locate or expand in these areas. It’s critical to drivers that they are able to stay in locations where they’re making deliveries (primarily large urban areas) to maximize efficiency.”

Minneapolis is a prime example of the parking shortage and the problems that cities have with big truck parking on the street. On July 23, 2021, the city council voted to ban trucks over 6,000 pounds from street parking. Residents and businesses have complained that large trucks parked on the street obstruct signage and fire hydrants. The trucks are noisy, emit noxious fumes, and encroach on travel lanes and, of course, reduce parking availability for businesses and residents.

A truck parking ban is indeed a problem for owner-operators. Both OOIDA and the Minnesota Trucking Association have voiced strong opposition to the proposed parking restrictions. MTA President John Hausladen told Transport Topics that the measure provides no meaningful city resources to address the need for adequate truck parking. He added:

“The Minnesota Trucking Association is extremely disappointed with the action of the Minneapolis City Council today. We should be looking for ways to provide more safe parking for truck drivers, instead of pursuing a policy that would diminish an essential industry and do real economic harm to the city.”

Adequate parking is just one of the issues that truckers face—yet another infrastructure problem that the US needs to fix.

The post You Have Trouble Parking? At Least, You’re Not a Trucker: NMA E-Newsletter #657 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Let’s face it—most of us dislike loud motorcycles or vehicles revving up next to us at an intersection, blowing by us on an interstate, or disrupting the solitude of our neighborhoods. But to use automated devices to catch people who are exceedingly noisy seems to push us deeper into the world of Big Brother than we should ever go. Unfortunately, the anti-car folks are using loud vehicles as an excuse to advance their agenda.

New York State Senator Andrew Gounardes recently introduced two bills to fight loud vehicles. The first is S9009, the SLEEP Act (Stop Loud and Excessive Exhaust Pollution). This bill would increase the punishment for noise limit violations and streamline the process for officers to enforce noise limit law. Currently, the penalty for violations attributed to after-market muffler and exhaust systems is up to $150. Gounardes wants to increase that amount to $1,000.

The New York criterion for a violation was described only as excessive or unusual noise that was left to the officer’s discretion. Under the bill, the noise limit would be defined as 95 decibels for motorcycles and 60 for cars. Here is a reference point—a vacuum cleaner within 10 feet has a noise level of approximately 70 decibels. If the SLEEP Act becomes law, it would also require that all police vehicles be equipped with sound level meters.

The second bill, NY Senate Bill S6057, asks for noise-monitoring cameras to be implemented in New York City. Similar to speed cameras, the devices would capture photo and video footage of vehicles that exceed the noise limits outlined by the NYC Noise Control Code.

Westchester County, New York, has already decided to do a trial run with these microphone-enhanced cameras. In July, the Westchester Board of Legislators approved a $125,000 noise camera pilot program located along the Bronx River Parkway. The county would not be able to issue any tickets during the six to nine-month program since S6057 hasn’t been passed by the state legislature in Albany yet.

Where this all gets insane is through the overwrought rhetoric spewed by the anti-car crowd. Here are some snippets from a recent opinion piece on the Streetsblog NYC website:

“Loud driving is destructive recreation that glorifies fossil-fuel consumption.”

“Promoting car culture by letting loud drivers do what they want normalizes driving for another generation of impressionable New Yorkers. It mocks our climate goals.”

“Deliberate, fossil-fueled noise is a growing public-health threat demanding a multifaceted, whole-of-government solution.”

“As with Vision Zero, better engineering of our public spaces is the most important part of confronting loud driving. The opportunity to speed is an opportunity to make noise. Engineering solutions to speeding—road diets, narrowed lanes, automated enforcement, and more—will also quiet traffic.”

“Law enforcement should focus on the loud-driving profiteers, from carmakers to gas stations.”

We would laugh if the people behind those thoughts weren’t so dead serious about canceling car culture.

The acoustic cameras are currently being tested in the United Kingdom. In 2016, the British government enacted a law to limit new cars to no more than 74 decibels. The targets of the regulation are mostly older cars and modified motorcycles. At issue, though, is whether these type of cameras can identify one vehicle’s noise emissions from another’s and single out cars from other possible sources of sound.

The website DriveTribe has a funny take on noise cameras that only a Brit might appreciate. Meanwhile, UK Transport Secretary Chris Grayling remarked that the acoustic cameras could help the already stretched thin police officers enforce noise regulations on ‘boy racers in souped-up vehicles.’

The mission creep of automated enforcement is impressive, and not in a good way.

The post Presenting the Next Automated Traffic Enforcement Device—the Noise Camera: NMA E-Newsletter #656 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

While we have warned about the Vision Zero and Complete Streets mission to force people out of their cars in many previous writings, that goal has not been stated in starker terms than those used by the Shared Mobility Principles For Livable Cities. Its mission, published by an international coalition of over 150 agencies, organizations, NGOs, and advocacy groups, establishes no less an objective than reshaping urban existence.

One of those mobility principles:

We Prioritize People Over Vehicles: The mobility of people and not vehicles shall be in the center of transportation planning and decision-making. Cities shall prioritize walking, cycling, public transport and other efficient shared mobility, as well as their interconnectivity. Cities shall discourage the use of cars, single-passenger taxis, and other oversized vehicles transporting one person.

And this:

We Support The Shared And Efficient Use Of Vehicles, Lanes, Curbs, and Land: Transportation and land use planning and policies should minimize the street and parking space used per person and maximize the use of each vehicle. We discourage overbuilding and oversized vehicles and infrastructure, as well as the oversupply of parking.

It is no coincidence that the concept for Shared Mobility Principles For Livable Cities was developed by the cofounder of Zipcar, and that Uber and Lyft are enthusiastic supporters of these initiatives. In fact, see if you can spot a trend among these other service providers that actively support limiting the people’s mobility options:

Carpool World – carpooling platform
Circuit – electric micro-transit service
ClearRoad – road usage pricing interface
Coord – transit technology platform
Digital Habitats Corp – digital cities developer
Dollaride – network of Dollar vans
Downtowner – transport service
Greenspot EV – electric vehicle sharing service
Hugo – transportation service provide for schools
Institute for Community MicroMobility – micromobility-focused advisor to cities
Koloni – bike-sharing service
Lumenus – technologically enhanced clothes & gear
Luum – commute technology platform
MeterFeeder – parking prediction and payment platform
Moove – transit technology platform
Organic Transit – vehicle company
Quint – dockless mobility technology
Rodify – transit information technology
SHARE Mobility – microtransit service provider
Spin – dockless bike-sharing service
Stae – data management technology platform
Transit Screen – transit information technology
Transit X – micro-guideway public transit provider
Trillium Transit – transit information technology
Upshift – car-sharing service

That’s the corporate side. Special interest groups in the fold include AmericaWalks, California Bicycle Coalition, Circulate San Diego, DC Sustainable Transportation, LivableStreets Alliance, Oregon Environmental Council, Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group, Seamless Bay Area, SharedStreets, Team Better Block, and Urbanism Next Center.

Lest you think we are exaggerating the whole reshaping of city living thing, here’s another Shared Mobility principle:

We Plan Our Cities And Their Mobility Together: The way our cities are built determines mobility needs and how they can be met. Development, urban design and public spaces, building and zoning regulations, parking requirements, and other land use policies shall incentivize compact, accessible, livable, and sustainable cities.

As Jay Beeber, Executive Director of Safer Streets L.A. and NMA Senior Research Analyst, observed, “This is a perfect example of how the authoritarian collectivists are working hand in hand with crony corporate elites to undermine the public’s right to freely travel using our preferred mode of transportation, the personal automobile, which for the vast majority of Americans is the fastest and most convenient way to get around.”

It must also be noted that this effort to dictate our urban way of life isn’t just about mega-metropolitan centers like New York City and Chicago, or other high-density urban populations. Small and mid-sized cities are in the sights of the elites Jay mentioned who believe they know what is best for everyone else. That which is not now “urban,” they want to make urban and dense, with a plan to do so by taking over our land-use policies.

On that cheerful note, you can find more about Shared Mobility Principles For Livable Cities here. In addition to helping us spread the word to the greater public of the initiative to force us into a society of restricted urban freedoms, you might think twice about supporting any of the service providers listed above, including Zipcar, Uber and Lyft.

The post The Effort to Dictate How We Live: NMA E-Newsletter #655 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

“Allowing the police to wield this power unchecked is anathema to the values enshrined in our Fourth Amendment,” wrote Fourth Circuit US Court of Appeals Chief Judge Roger Gregory in late June. The case, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department, involved the use of aerial surveillance that continuously tracked and monitored the activities of citizens across most of Baltimore.

The captured images were then stored so that police could, without the use of a warrant, track the movements of suspected criminals over time.

The surveillance began in 2016 when the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) announced that it planned to fight crime with a program called Aerial Investigation Research (AIR). The cameras attached to three small planes would record ground movements of individuals as the pilots crisscrossed the city during daylight hours. The program was quickly discontinued due to the public outcry over the egregious violations of privacy.

After the appointment of a new police chief, the program was revived in April 2020 for a six-month trial. Under the new AIR program, cameras in the sky again monitored movements in the city. This time the information gathered was integrated with a network of 800 other surveillance systems including automated license plate readers on the streets. Facial recognition technology was also added.

The community activist group, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, filed a lawsuit against Baltimore that same month, requesting a preliminary injunction to prevent BDP from using the reconfigured AIR program. The group sued the city on the grounds that aerial tracking of the movements of its members without a court order was unconstitutional.

The district court denied the motion. The AIR program continued its trial run until October 2020, when the 180-day trial was over. By that time, AIR had accumulated nearly 6.7 million images for police review. The BPD deleted all but 14 percent of the images (950,000) that it felt were the minimum amount necessary to support 200 cases being prosecuted at the time. Baltimore suspended the program in February 2021, hoping to get the case declared moot to avoid a ruling. The Fourth Circuit Court, however, determined that the debate over the use of aerial surveillance constituted a ‘live controversy.’ The majority of judges then granted an injunction against using any footage obtained under the auspices of the aerial surveillance.

David Rocah, senior attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, said about the decision, “Essentially what the court is saying that all of this data is the fruit of the poisonous tree.”

Overall, concerns about aerial surveillance intensified in 2021 after the public discovered that the Department of Homeland Security used aerial drones to spy on George Floyd protestors. Among groups that signed amicus briefs supporting the Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle included the Brennan Center of Justice, Electronic Frontier Foundation, FreedomWorks Foundation, NAACP, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and The Rutherford Institute. The plaintiff argued that the tracking of over half a million people per day plus the collection of data is a severe infringement on the rights of assembly, free speech, and privacy protected under the First Amendment.

In an online post, John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, wrote, “By subjecting Americans to surveillance without their knowledge or compliance and then storing the data for later use, the government has erected the ultimate suspect society. In such an environment, there is no such thing as innocent until proven guilty.”

ACLU’s David Rocah also stated, “Here we have a rare instance where the law is grappling with the technology prior to its widespread deployment.” He added, “Calling this a virtual time machine is not an exaggeration. I think it was extraordinarily important that we are able to get the courts to grapple with this at the outset.” Rocah stated that the Fourth Circuit ruling should warn off other cities from flying such spy planes.

The majority opinion drew heavily from the 2018 Supreme Court decision, Carpenter v. the United States. That case focused on the warrantless tracking of people via cellphone. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the Carpenter ruling, “A person does not surrender all Fourth Amendment protection by venturing into the public sphere.”

Fourth Circuit Court Justice Roger Gregory stated for the majority opinion in the  Baltimore ruling, Carpenter solidified the line between short-term tracking of public movements—akin to what law enforcement could do prior to the digital age—and prolonged tracking that can reveal intimate details through habits and patterns.” He continued, “The latter form of surveillance invades the reasonable expectation of privacy that individuals have in the whole of their movements and therefore requires a warrant.”

The city of Baltimore is now considering what to do next.

The Fourth Amendment is beautiful in its simplicity and powerful in the fundamental protections it provides to the citizenry. The courts must continue to uphold these words as the Founding Fathers intended:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The post Fourth Amendment Wins in the Baltimore Plane Surveillance Case: NMA E-Newsletter #654 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Editor’s Note: The following content, reprinted in three parts over this and the previous two NMA e-newsletters, is presented with permission from Randal O’Toole’s The Antiplanner, a blog whose tagline describes its point of view: “Dedicated to the sunset of government planning.” O’Toole is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute who specializes in land-use and transportation issues. Read Part 1 HERE and Part 2 HERE. 

While we don’t have a beef with all urban planners, among their ranks are those who believe in reimagining communities as self-contained ecosystems where most of life’s essentials are within walking, bicycling, or public transit distance. The net effect, which causes Vision Zero proponents to swoon, would be the virtual elimination of car ownership and driving in urban settings. 

We share this material in its entirety in three installments because it presents in fascinating detail how history has shown that pod-based, high-density community development is a seriously flawed concept. Individual mobility, and the freedom of choice associated with it, is a fundamental right. If we don’t stay vigilant, that right will be planned out of existence.   

________________________________ 

1000 Friends of Density

In 1988, the Oregon Department of Transportation wanted to build a new freeway connecting Interstate 5 to the heart of Washington County, west of Portland, to serve the new high-tech industries settling in the county. The freeway would allow people, raw materials, and finished products to move between California and Washington County’s Silicon Forest without going through the congestion of downtown Portland.

Earlier in the decade, Portland had drawn an urban-growth boundary around itself, requiring that almost all new housing and other development in the region occur within the boundary. State regulations required this and boundaries for other major cities. The rules also required every city (or, in the case of Portland, the metropolitan government that oversaw the boundary for Portland and 23 of its suburbs) to review their area’s housing needs every five years and expand its boundary so that there would always be a 20-year supply of land for new homes.

In 1989, a group called 1000 Friends of Oregon, which had appointed itself as the land-use watchdog overseeing how cities and counties implemented the state’s land-use rules, wasn’t happy with the proposed new freeway. Most of it would be outside of Portland’s growth boundary, and 1000 Friends feared that the boundary would be expanded to allow housing in that area. Of course, with so many new jobs in Washington County, this would actually have been a logical place to expand the boundary.

1000 Friends commissioned a lengthy study called Land Use, Transportation, Air Quality (LUTRAQ), which purported to find that meeting the region’s housing needs with higher-density housing within the boundary would result in less driving-related air pollution than expanding the boundary to allow low-density housing.

In fact, as University of Southern California planning Professor Genevieve Giuliano showed, LUTRAQ revealed that density and land-use policy had almost no impact on transportation outcomes. LUTRAQ’s computer models found that planners could only influence transportation by requiring every shopping mall, office park, and other development to impose stiff parking changes, something that had never been done.

Center Commons, a transit-oriented development in Portland. Planners provided fewer parking spaces than apartments, so residents illegally park their cars in a fire lane or on the sidewalk. 

One of the authors of LUTRAQ was an architect named Peter Calthorpe, who had been influenced by The Death and Life of Great American Cities. He promoted what he called traditional neighborhood design, “traditional,” meaning before cars, meaning mid-rise and single-family homes on small lots so that more people would be within walking distance of a grocery store or transit stop. (In fact, mid-rise housing had been built in the United States from roughly 1870 to 1910, so it could hardly be called “traditional.”)

In 1991, Calthorpe and other like-minded architects and planners met at Yosemite National Park’s Ahwahnee Hotel, where they wrote “principles” for city development. These principles included density, walkability, mixed uses, and surrounding cities with greenbelts that would be permanently protected from development. They called their movement the New Urbanism.

Beaver Creek, a mid-rise development in the Portland suburb of Beaverton. The ground floor is supposed to be shops, but all are vacant because planners didn’t provide any parking for them. Eventually, they were converted to apartments.

While discarding Le Corbusier’s high rises, the New Urbanists kept his authoritarianism. All new development, they said, should follow their principles, and existing low-density suburbs should be redeveloped to meet those principles as well.

In 1993, the Oregon legislature modified land-use laws to allow Portland and other cities to meet their future housing goals by rezoning existing neighborhoods to higher densities, thus reducing the need to expand growth boundaries.

In 1995, Metro, Portland’s regional planning agency, adopted a plan that set a target of reducing the share of households living in single-family homes from 65 percent in 1990 to 41 percent by 2040. The plan called for rezoning dozens of single-family neighborhoods along with numerous transit corridors for multifamily housing to meet this target.

Portland-area planners decided to build mid-rise, mixed-use apartments throughout the region. This proved one of Joel Garreau’s “laws,” which was that “government planners . . . have self-evidently preposterous ideas about how human nature works in the real world.” Mid-rise residential buildings made no economic sense, so Portland decided it would have to subsidize them.

Subsidies included up to two decades of property tax waivers, tax-increment financing, low-income housing tax credits, sales of public land at below-market prices, and direct grants to developers from such sources as the Federal Transit Administration. Many of these grants went through Portland’s transit agency, Tri-Met, and the fact that Tri-Met’s CEO, Tom Walsh, had a family-owned business, Walsh Construction, that specialized in building subsidized mid-rise developments didn’t seem to bother anyone. Portland also relaxed the fire code, allowing lower-cost construction, creating serious fire hazards in the future.

Beaverton Round, another mid-rise development centered around a light-rail station. Two developers went bankrupt trying to make this work with the limited parking approved by planners. Finally, a developer convinced the city to allow a parking garage, and today most residents drive to work just like everywhere else in the Portland area.

Other cities that have attempted densification, including Denver, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Seattle, have also subsidized many of their mid-rise projects. Some cities, such as San Jose, have used urban-growth boundaries to make housing so expensive that developers will build mid-rise housing without subsidies, but even then, there is resistance.

For example, in 2014, San Jose zoned land near its downtown area and commuter train station for mid-rise, mixed-use housing. For years, the land sat undeveloped until Google agreed to build offices, retail, and housing in the area, but only if the city rezoned to allow high rises.

City planners presenting the idea to the city council endorsed the lifting of height limits, saying it would allow more housing and produce more tax revenues for the city. So much for planners rejecting Le Corbusier’s high rises.

Not surprisingly, mid-rises and other densification in the Portland area haven’t had the effects on transportation that Calthorpe and other density advocates predicted. Studies by the Cascade Policy Institute found that people living in mid-rise developments in transit corridors were not significantly more likely to take transit to work than anyone else in the Portland area.

Per capita driving in the Portland area increased by 11 percent between 1990 and 2019.

Per capita transit ridership also increased, but by only 6 percent.

Moreover, for five years before the pandemic, driving had been increasing, but transit was declining. Portland developments also revealed that when planners limit parking (who needs parking when they live next to a light-rail line?), residents park on the sidewalk or other illegal places. At the same time, ground-floor shops fail or are never rented.

Learning the Lessons

While urban planners say they have learned the lessons of the failures of 1950s urban renewal projects, they haven’t. They are still advocating for density. They are using even more authoritarian methods to force that density on unwilling urban residents. While they may say they prefer mid-rises, they readily support high rises, such as in San Jose and Portland’s South Waterfront development.

Planners who once took their ideas from a Swiss architect who was something of a nutcase now take their ideas from a New York City journalist who was something of a nutcase whose primary credential was that she lived in an obsolete high-density neighborhood in the nation’s highest-density major city.

Yet, said the executive director of the Congress for the New Urbanism in 2000, “there’s no question that [Jane Jacobs’s] work is the leaping-off point for our whole movement,” which planners now apply to towns, small cities, and suburbs as well as the few great cities that are left across the country.

Most Americans wanted to live in single-family homes before the pandemic, and the coronavirus has probably increased that desire. Cities that continue to subsidize and promote mid-rise housing while discouraging single-family housing are imposing miseries on their residents in the form of unaffordable and lower-quality housing, traffic congestion, and higher taxes needed to fund the new infrastructure to support the higher-density housing. Jane Jacobs’ mid-rise mania should be stopped now before it can do any more damage.

The post Jane Jacobs and the Mid-Rise Mania Part 3: NMA E-Newsletter #653 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Editor’s Note: The following content, reprinted in three parts — last week’s Part 1, this week’s Part 2, and Part 3 next week, is presented with permission from Randal O’Toole’s The Antiplanner, a blog whose tagline describes its point of view: “Dedicated to the sunset of government planning.” O’Toole is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute who specializes in land-use and transportation issues. Read Part 1 HERE. 

While we don’t have a beef with all urban planners, among their ranks are those who believe in reimagining communities as self-contained ecosystems where most of life’s essentials are within walking, bicycling, or public transit distance. The net effect, which causes Vision Zero proponents to swoon, would be the virtual elimination of car ownership and driving in urban settings.

 We share this material in its entirety in three installments because it presents in fascinating detail how history has shown that pod-based, high-density community development is a seriously flawed concept. Individual mobility, and the freedom of choice associated with it, is a fundamental right. If we don’t stay vigilant, that right will be planned out of existence.  

 ________________________________

 Enter Jane Jacobs

Slum clearance hit a roadblock when New York City planners attempted to replace part of Greenwich Village, a typical pre-1900 mid-rise neighborhood, with a freeway. Among the residents who fought this plan was Jane Jacobs, a journalist who wrote for Architectural Forum magazine. She ended up writing The Death and Life of Great American Cities, a book whose opening sentence was, “This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding.”

Jane Jacobs in 1961 during the campaign to save Greenwich Village. Photo by Phil Stanziola.

Jacobs correctly argued that city planners did not really understand how cities worked. Their preoccupations with high-rises, based on Le Corbusier’s fantasies, simply made no sense in an age when single-family homes were less costly and easily accessed with affordable automobiles. Urban planning, she said, was a “pseudoscience” that had not yet “broken with the specious comfort of wishes, familiar superstitions, oversimplifications, and symbols.”

Unfortunately, Jacobs was equally convinced that she did understand how cities worked. She argued that great cities required four conditions: mixed uses, short blocks, a mix of old and new buildings, and a dense concentration of residents and workers. Greenwich Village looked like this, so she imagined that was the only way residents of great cities should live.

Greenwich Village mixes low-rise, much of which was built before 1860, mid-rise, much of which was built between 1870 and 1900, and high-rise, much of which was built after 1890. Photo by Iris Dai.

She admitted that her principles didn’t apply to “what goes on in towns, or little cities, or in the suburbs.” Jacobs didn’t like suburbs, calling them “city-destroying” entities. In reality, her ideas were just as wrong as the urban planners’. She understood something about how her neighborhood worked, but she failed to realize that her neighborhood was just a remnant of a building pattern that hadn’t made sense since 1900.

Jacobs’ Real Goal

Although Jacobs said that her goal was to set for new principles of urban planning, in reality, she was just a NIMBY or, to be more accurate, NIMN (not in my neighborhood). Urban renewal laws required planners to show that a neighborhood was blighted before taking properties by eminent domain, so she focused on showing that her neighborhood wasn’t blighted. Maybe it wasn’t, but it also wasn’t the way most Americans wanted to live.

One of the charges, for example, was that slums were high-crime areas. Rather than present data showing that her neighborhood didn’t have high crime, Jacobs came up with a new planning principle she called “eyes on the street.” Supposedly, the operators of ground-level shops and residents sitting on their front porches (because their apartments were too small to entertain guests) would watch the streets and intimidate potential criminals.

Soon after The Death and Life was published, it became apparent that the high-rise apartments that many cities built to house the low-income families who had been displaced by mid-rise clearance were tragic failures. Due to high crime, some proved to be so unlivable that they were demolished a mere 17 years after they were built. This lent credibility to Jacobs’ argument that planners didn’t know what they were doing but didn’t prove that Jacobs’ ideas were any better.

In 1973, some planners wrote a book called Compact City, arguing that density was the solution to the nation’s energy crisis. The authors suggested that such a compact city could be achieved either through Le Corbusier’s high rises or Jacobs’ mid-rises. The Death and Life became required reading in many urban planning schools, and soon planners and architects were rejecting high rises but promoting mid-rises.

After her book was published, Jacobs became something of a chameleon, equally comfortable trashing planners when talking with libertarians as she was trashing the suburbs, where most Americans chose to live, when talking with urban planners and density advocates. This made her popular among people of all political persuasions, some of whom continue to take her “principles” as gospel.

A typical street of mid-rise apartments with ground-floor shops in Greenwich Village. Thanks to Jane Jacobs, this has become the model for transit-oriented developments nationwide. Photo by J.S. Clark.

However, a book reviewer who saw through her was Herbert Gans, a sociologist. He had spent a year living in a mid-rise neighborhood of Boston and another year living in a suburban Levittown, writing books about both experiences. Gans’ review of Death and Life noted that Jacobs was attracted to Greenwich Village’s “lively streets,” which were a result of the small apartments that forced most people to entertain outdoors.

Suburbanites were just as lively but did their entertainment indoors or in backyards, where they were less visible. He also understood, which Jacobs apparently did not, that the buildings in Greenwich Village “were built for a style of life which is going out of fashion with the large majority of Americans who are free to choose their place of residence.” As a result, Gans said, her fundamental assumptions and principles were largely wrong.

Another critic, though more indirectly, was an architect named Oscar Newman, who wondered why the low-income high-rises built in the 1950s suffered from high crime rates when nearby single-family neighborhoods occupied by people in the same socioeconomic class were relatively crime-free. He carefully compared architectural features with crime rates on tens of thousands of city blocks and concluded that private yards and private entrances were the key to minimizing crime, not eyes on the street, which he called “an unsupported hypothesis.” Newman called his conclusions “defensible space,” and as it turned out, most of his findings—for example, that cul de sacs reduced crime while alleys enabled more crime—were exactly the opposite of what Jacobs and her followers advocated.

In Part 3, Randal discusses the New Urbanism in Portland, Oregon.

The post Jane Jacobs and the Mid-Rise Mania Part 2: NMA E-Newsletter #652 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

by Randal O’Toole, from The Antiplanner blog

Editor’s Note: The following content, reprinted in three parts over this and the following two NMA e-newsletters, is presented with permission from Randal O’Toole’s The Antiplanner, a blog whose tagline describes its point of view: “Dedicated to the sunset of government planning.” O’Toole is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute who specializes in land-use and transportation issues.

 While we don’t have a beef with all urban planners, among their ranks are those who believe in reimagining communities as self-contained ecosystems where most of life’s essentials are within walking, bicycling, or public transit distance. The net effect, which causes Vision Zero proponents to swoon, would be the virtual elimination of car ownership and driving in urban settings.

 We share this material in its entirety in three installments because it presents in fascinating detail how history has shown that pod-based, high-density community development is a seriously flawed concept. Individual mobility, and the freedom of choice associated with it, is a fundamental right. If we don’t stay vigilant, that right will be planned out of existence.  

The next time you travel through a city, see if you can find many four-, five-, or six-story buildings. Chances are, nearly all of the buildings you see will be either low rise (three stories or less) or high-rise (seven stories or more). If you do find any mid-rise, four- to six-story buildings, chances are they were either built before 1910, after 1990, or built by the government.

Before 1890, most people traveled around cities on foot. Only the wealthy could afford a horse and carriage or to live in the suburbs and enter the city on a steam-powered commuter train. Many cities had horsecars—rail cars pulled by horses—but they were no faster than walking and too expensive for most working-class people to use daily.

Most urban jobs were in factories. Most factories were located in transportation hubs where the factories could easily access raw materials and quickly ship their finished products.

Single-family homes were not particularly expensive. a Chicago homebuilder named Samuel Gross sold them for under $500, or about $15,000 in today’s dollars—but building enough single-family homes for all factory workers in major cities would mean that some of those workers would have to walk long distances to and from work.

Mid-Rise Before 1900

The alternative was mid-rise apartments. Unlike high rises, mid-rises did not require expensive construction methods and could be built with wood and bricks (“sticks and bricks”). Some residents had to climb four or even five flights of stairs to get to their apartments, but that would have been easier than walking an extra mile or two.

As documented in an 1890 photo book, How the Other Half Lives, the living conditions in these apartments could be pretty bad. Many were built with only two toilets per floor, with the intention that each floor would have four separate three- or four-room apartments. But sometimes, families crowded into these buildings so that each room would house a single family, meaning a dozen or more families might share two toilets.

The floorplan of a typical New York City mid-rise apartment building of 1890. Notice that the public hallway extends deep into the apartments so they can be subdivided into smaller apartments.

These crowded conditions weren’t found everywhere, and no doubt many mid-rises had, as intended, one toilet per two families or even one toilet per family. Still, quarters were small and noisy, privacy was minimal, and sanitation was questionable.

In 1892, the high-speed electric elevator was perfected by Frank Sprague, the same man who perfected the electric streetcar in 1888 and electric rapid transit, also in 1892. Rapid transit and streetcars made it possible for more people to live in single-family homes, and elevators made people less willing to live in multi-story, walk-up apartments without an elevator.

Also, in the 1890s, fire departments began to question the construction of wooden mid-rise buildings. Although wood was a strong enough material to support five-story buildings, those buildings could easily become fire traps, with a fire on one floor sweeping into the higher floors and trapping people from escape. Soon, fire codes were written to require concrete floors as fire barriers, and the extra weight of the concrete meant that mid-rise buildings required more steel. Add that to the cost of elevators, and developers stopped constructing mid-rise buildings.

The Economic Problem with Mid-Rise

Journalist Joel Garreau explains this in his 1992 book, Edge City. In a chapter called “The Laws” or “How We Live,” he explained that a number of land-use principles, or rules of thumb, that developers have come to understand based on long experience with housing and building markets. One of those laws is that Americans are willing to climb or descend, at most, one flight of stairs. This means a three-story building is feasible if the second story is near the ground level so that people only have to go up or down one flight.

“Since elevators and escalators demand rigid and heavy support structures, buildings that require them are more easily built of concrete and steel than Sticks and Bricks, thereby substantially increasing the cost,” says Garreau. That means that “residential structures either have to be less than three stories above the main entrance, for you to build them without elevators, or they have to be high-rise. Once you start building a residential structure of concrete and steel to accommodate an elevator, your costs kick into so much higher an orbit that you have to build vastly more dwelling units per acre to make any money.”

As a result, for nearly a hundred years, very few mid-rise buildings were constructed in this country, and most of them were built by the government—for example, the Pentagon, which is five stories tall.

As more single-family suburbs were built, accessed by first streetcars and then the mass-produced automobile, the mid-rise buildings built before 1900 began to empty out. Less crowded conditions were good, but the buildings were also seen as less desirable to live in than single-family homes. Rents were low, building upkeep was sometimes poor, and the buildings were also considered fire hazards.

What to Do with Older Mid-Rises

People called these buildings “slums,” and urban planners argued that individual property owners would not be willing to improve or replace them with more modern buildings because adjacent slums would bring down the value of any improvements by so much that it wouldn’t be worth the cost. A 1954 Supreme Court decision unanimously ruled that if a neighborhood was blighted, a city could use eminent domain to acquire all of the properties in the neighborhood, tear them down, and encourage redevelopment. This endorsed an urban renewal boom that had begun when Congress passed the Housing Act of 1949.

In the meantime, a Swiss architect named Le Corbusier had argued that high-rises provided the optimal housing in a city. Planning historian Peter Hall called Corbusier “the Rasputin of the tale” of urban planning because, where earlier planners were democratically oriented and tried to build cities that people wanted to live in, Corbu and his followers believed that they knew how people should live. The people should just accept what they were given (although he himself never lived in a high rise).

Inspired by Corbusier, urban planners of the 1950s saw their job as replacing mid-rise slums with high-rise apartments. After 1956, when the funds for building apartments weren’t available, they were willing to direct interstate highway funds to clear slums and build highways through the former neighborhoods.

Today, because many residents of these mid-rise buildings were black, many people consider slum clearance programs racist. They weren’t, really. What was racist were the many other government and private policies that kept blacks poor and thus made them some of the last residents of these sometimes overcrowded tenements. The real question was whether government action was really needed to clear out blighted slums or whether private gentrification would have done the job as the buildings emptied out. I suspect the latter, but it’s too late to do anything about it now.

In Part 2, Randal discusses the influence of NYC journalist Jane Jacobs on urban planning.

The post Jane Jacobs and the Mid-Rise Mania Part 1: NMA E-Newsletter #651 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

When will Ohio municipalities ever learn? The Ohio Supreme Court has been working overtime on automated enforcement cases brought by motorists against cities and townships across the state. Justice would be better served if the state prohibited ticket cameras altogether. The difficulty is that the larger cities in Ohio have home-rule authority, i.e., they set their own regulations within the parameters of state and federal laws. Also, smaller towns seem emboldened to defy state law and previous court rulings.

The Village of Brice (population 80 in 2019) lies in Franklin County on the southwest side of the Columbus Metropolitan area. The Ohio Supreme Court recently ruled that the village operated a speed camera program citing drivers for nearly two years without sending the violations through the county municipal court. Brice ignored a previous state court ruling and subsequent amendment to the state’s revised code, effective 2019, that gave city courts “exclusive jurisdiction” over all civil traffic fines. This Ohio doctrine is called the “Toledo Regulations” because Toledo allowed a third-party vendor to mail tickets and collect the fines—the same as Brice.

Motorist and newly minted lawyer Alexander Maxwell received a speed camera ticket in Brice. He was instructed to mail his check for the fine to an address in Hamilton, OH, where it would be processed by BlueLine Solutions, Brice’s ticket camera vendor. The city receives 60 percent of all ticket fines collected (BlueLine Solutions receives the rest), which in 2018 constituted nearly three-quarters of the village’s $171,611 total income. Maxwell filed his lawsuit in January 2021 with the Ohio Supreme Court requesting a writ of prohibition to stop Brice from continuing to issue photo tickets in violation of the “Toledo Regulations.”

Brice has been in hot water with motorists since 2015, when a class action was filed against the village for similar reasons. That case remains active.

The lawyer who won the earlier Toledo case, Andrew Mayle, said he was amazed that Brice keeps issuing tickets and fining motorists in a blatant violation of state law and the state Supreme Court ruling. He added, “The fact that they continue to do so is a scam.”

Speaking of Toledo: Officials had planned to resume using both speed and red-light cameras this spring but are still waiting for an all-clear ruling from the state Supreme Court. Last June, the judges ruled unanimously that Toledo’s appeals process violated state law by circumventing the municipal court’s exclusive jurisdiction over such appeals.

Toledo immediately shut down its program after the 2020 ruling, determined to fix the issue. Under a revised ordinance passed by the city council in December 2020, vehicle owners who are mailed tickets can now only appeal through the Toledo Municipal Court rather than a hearing officer. The stakes are high. In 2019, the city snagged $6.7 million in camera revenue.

In April, the Ohio Supreme Court agreed to hear a case on an appeal filed by the cities of Dayton and East Cleveland plus Newburgh Heights, a Cleveland suburb in Cuyahoga County. House Bill 62 took effect in July 2019 and was the state lawmakers’ latest attempt to clamp down on the use of cameras. It reduced municipalities’ Local Government Fund allocations by the amount of money cities raised from automated cameras. It also prohibited the use of administrative hearing officers instead of municipal courts to hear appeals for fines.

Due to the passage of HB62, Dayton stopped using their fixed-site cameras in mid-2019 and quickly filed the suit. Toledo, however, continued to operate its cameras and could be in danger of having to refund any fines collected from July 2019 and forward. Ohio Supreme Court judges are expected to decide in the case whether the General Assembly can withhold Local Government Funds from cities equal to the amount cities rake in from cameras.

One of the dumbest and greediest money grabs involved a work zone camera that was left on a month after construction was completed on a highway near the city of Girard in Trumbull County. Approximately 7,700 motorists received speed camera tickets after a faster speed limit was restored between December 7, 2017, and January 7, 2018. The camera company has agreed to pay out $175,000 (roughly $120,000 after court fees). Each person who received the $100 fine will likely see a $20 refund from the camera company. The city of Girard, however, has not relented.

Former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann said recently, “Girard, you know, they made a mistake. Everybody acknowledges they made a mistake. They simply should’ve said they were sorry and sent everybody their hundred dollars back, and everybody could’ve gone on with their lives. Instead, you know, the city of Girard is fighting tooth and nail.”

In April, the Ohio Supreme Court accepted the village of New Miami speed camera case. In a split decision, the judges accepted jurisdiction over the appeal filed by a group of about 33,000 motorists who took the tiny village (population close to 2,400) to court in 2013 over an alleged unmanned (and unconstitutional) speed camera program. The claimants are asking for $3.5 million—the total amount of fines accrued—in the case.

The claimants’ attorney Josh Engel stated that the decision to take the case signals that the high court is ready to tackle the critical question of due process. He added that the justices usually tackle more technical issues like home rule authority or jurisdiction, as demonstrated by the cases cited above.

The common thread through each of these legal challenges is the focus on cash rather than public safety by the cities employing the ticket camera programs. While it is unlikely Ohio will ban automated enforcement entirely, its court system will continue hearing from disgruntled drivers until municipalities like Brice, Toledo, Dayton, East Cleveland, Newburgh Heights, Girard, and New Miami learn that they are not above the law.

The post Speed Camera Games Played for Profits in Ohio: NMA E-Newsletter #650 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

By Gary Witzenburg, Automotive Senior Writer and Contributing Editor, President of the North American Car, Truck, and Utility of the Year, and NMA Member.

Editor’s Note: HOUR Detroit Magazine has graciously permitted the NMA to publish this piece, which initially appeared in a slightly different version on its pages. Please read Part 1 from last week’s newsletter. 

Missions and Issues

“Automated vehicles’ potential to save lives and reduce injuries is rooted in one critical and tragic fact: 94 percent of serious crashes are due to human error,” contends the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). “Automated vehicles have the potential to remove human error from the crash equation, which will help protect drivers and passengers as well as bicyclists and pedestrians.”

Another mission will be to provide much-needed mobility for the aged and disabled, though ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft are already serving many Americans. “Roads filled with automated vehicles could also cooperate to smooth traffic flow and reduce traffic congestion,” NHTSA continues. “With automated vehicles, the time and money spent commuting could be put to better use. In many places across the country, employment or independent living rests on the ability to drive. Automated vehicles could extend that kind of freedom to millions more.”

But major hurdles lie ahead.

To be as safe as envisioned, AVs will need to see, understand, analyze, and react to everything around them through a complex system of sensors, radar, LiDAR (radar-like, using laser light), and visual and thermal cameras.

All that will add a lot of cost.

And how effective will those systems be in darkness and nasty weather? When dirt covers their lenses? When snow blankets lane markers and road edges?

“Inclement weather is a challenge,” says GM engineer Jason Fischer, “We are working with suppliers on advanced cleaning systems that will help us solve those problems.” Ford’s John Rich says, “All varieties of weather are being tested, and there will be a learning curve with capability expansion over time.”

Will AVs be programmed to protect their occupants at the expense of others? Which way will they dodge if they can’t stop to avoid a sudden pedestrian hit when the alternative may be an oncoming vehicle, a tree, a lake, or a cliff? “We have to make these vehicles better than humans,” Rich says, “constantly alert with better reflexes and better ability to avoid an accident. They may never be perfect, but if they are considerably better than humans, we almost have a moral imperative to put them on the road because we will be saving lives.”

And when someone inevitably is hurt or killed despite everyone’s best intentions and preventions, who will be liable? The vehicle’s owner? Its manufacturer? The software programmer? The town or city where the incident occurs? All of the above?

“Initially, the lawyers will sue everyone involved,” says Carla Bailo, CEO of the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) in Ann Arbor. “As these cases are settled and precedent established, it will become more clear. The automakers and others must have the utmost confidence in the safety of these systems.”

And will AVs be rolling roadblocks obeying all (often too slow) posted speed limits while everyone else swarms around them at 5-10 mph faster? Will they hold up traffic waiting for openings at non-stoplight intersections while streams of human-driven vehicles take advantage of their excessive caution?

“The vehicles are programmed to obey the law,” Rich points out. “We won’t be able to speed or do a lot of things you see human drivers doing today.”

Partial Autonomy

So that scenario of Level 5 “Full Automation” for privately owned vehicles looks to be a long way off…if ever. “Level 4 is essentially here now,” CAR’s Bailo points out. “Level 5 is later pending many other non-technical parameters such as regulation, public policy, legal and insurance.”

And no current AV is intended for private ownership.

“They will be able to move goods and people in a controlled environment,” Rich says, “but you will not be able to go out and buy one. They are difficult to manage and will require professional service to run.”

The good news is that Level 2 “Partial Automation” is available today.

Many new vehicles, even at very affordable prices, offer Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), which adjusts speed to maintain a set gap behind the vehicle ahead, and Lane Keeping Assist (LKA), which keeps your vehicle in its lane; and that combo allows hands-off cruising for a few seconds where road edges and lane markers are clearly visible to their cameras.

Some systems work better than others; you must pay full attention and be ready to take control at any time. The system will tell you when to take the wheel, and it will shut off if you don’t. One of the best we’ve tried is Cadillac’s Super Cruise, available on some models now and expanding to more, which will soon add an auto-lane-change feature. GM says its ultimate Super Cruise vision is hands-off driving capability 95 percent of the time on “enabled” (precisely GPS mapped) roads.

What we envision in the not-too-distant future is a potentially worrisome mix of driverless AVs sharing the roads with a large majority of human-driven cars and trucks. The AVs will be capable of communicating vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) with each other and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) to avoid conflicts. Still, they will have to monitor everything around them continually and make assumptions (as alert drivers do) about other vehicles’ expected behavior.

Will you trust a vehicle with no driver (or controls) to shuttle you around, or will you prefer a human-driven Uber, Lyft, or taxi? Or to continue piloting those trips behind your own wheel? If you are not yet AV ready, you may be when your own capabilities someday diminish.

What the Analysts Say

“The development of autonomous vehicles continues to move forward steadily, though several automakers slowed their development in early 2020 and some commercialization targets were delayed. While there remains tremendous promise for the technology to ease congestion and contribute to reducing accidents, getting to the point where they are a fixture in the automotive landscape remains on the horizon. However, in 2021 and 2022, we expect to see deployments increase in limited situations. Waymo, GM, and Ford are among those most aggressive in this space in the US, along with the Aptiv-Hyundai joint venture Motional.”

Stephanie Brinley, principal analyst, Automotive, IHS Markit

“Autonomous technology continues its march from test phase to widely-embraced, mainstream functionality. But the variety of circumstances facing a computer-controlled vehicle have proven far more difficult to address, delaying the 2020 arrival of self-driving cars that many were predicting as recently as 2018. Major obstacles include changing weather conditions and the impact they have on sensors, a standardized, functional communication network between cars (V2V) and infrastructure (V2X), and ensuring security against computer hackers. These hurdles will eventually be overcome, but we’re likely looking at 2025 or later before the average citizen can leverage autonomous vehicle technology on a wide scale. Look for the limited test zones in cities like Austin, Phoenix, and Miami to slowly spread across more metro areas as well as controlled environments, such as college and corporate campuses.”

Karl Brauer, executive analyst, iSeeCars.com

“The industry’s thinking about autonomous vehicles has evolved and focused on commercial fleets [and] delivery vehicles. AVs in the commercial vehicle space are like a laboratory experiment that will allow the opportunity to make sure the technology works and the gathering of data to glean insights about patterns of behavior of the users. The commercial vehicle business is lucrative. Automakers know how many orders they have and thus how many they need to produce versus the individual retail business that is unpredictable.

Michelle Krebs, executive analyst, AutoTrader

“Automakers have very ambitious plans to incorporate autonomous driving features into their vehicles. Most of this is a technology push rather than a consumer pull. Our data show that less than 10 percent of vehicle buyers want a fully autonomous vehicle. About 30 percent would consider some level of autonomy. Today’s ADAS [Advanced Driver Assistance Systems] are the first step that many drivers are experiencing on the road to autonomy. Adaptive cruise control with stop-and-go and lane-centering systems sometimes lets people drive for a short time, hands-free.

When we talk about Level 4 and Level 5 autonomy, the pandemic needs to be factored in. Car sharing, which was a cornerstone of some autonomous plans, looks more problematic now. How does a driver know the vehicle is clean and sanitary?

George Peterson, president, AutoPacific

“Autonomous cars that can drive anywhere and that you can buy at a dealership will not be available this decade. Maybe next decade. Tesla claims otherwise with its Full Self Driving, but it’s up to them to prove it since it’s been delayed multiple times. That said, 2020 is really the year of autonomous vehicles. They’re on the streets and running now. The technology is available, and it works. It’s expensive, but the cost is coming down fast. For now, AVs are relegated to geofenced areas that have been 3D mapped, but those fence posts keep moving. Waymo is covering a 50-square mile area in Phoenix that will soon expand to 100-square miles. For now, AVs make the most sense for fleets. They can run their vehicles almost continuously and amortize the cost of the AV equipment more easily.”

John McElroy, host, AutolineTV

“The best chance is in geo-fenced areas, not on public roads. The infrastructure is nowhere near ready for AVs, which are never going to be 100% safe. There is not enough computer code on the planet to cover all situations.”

Richard Truett, technology and engineering reporter, Automotive News

The post Autonomous (Self-Driving) Vehicles – Available Soon? (Yes and No) Part 2: NMA E-Newsletter #649 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

By Gary Witzenburg, Automotive Senior Writer and Contributing Editor, President of the North American Car, Truck, and Utility of the Year, and NMA Member.

Editor’s Note: HOUR Detroit Magazine has graciously permitted the NMA to publish this piece, which initially appeared in a slightly different version on its pages. Part 2 will be presented in next week’s newsletter.

Ready for your family outing, to the mall, then dinner. You call your car. It backs out of the garage and waits in your drive. You pile in and sit wherever you want since no one will drive. You face front, your spouse and kids swing their seats around to face each other.

You’ve told the car where to go, so it chooses the quickest route, obeying all stops and speed limits, keenly aware of what is happening around it. Someone steps off the curb ahead, and it slows, ready to stop if necessary. It warily eyes an errant dog cavorting to one side. You’re catching up on emails, your spouse is texting, the kids are enjoying video games. It lets you out at the mall, then zips off to park.

Shopping done, you call it to pick you up. Then it’s off to your favorite restaurant. After dinner, you catch a quick nap on your way home.

That is the scenario most envision when they think of self-driving vehicles. But how far off is that scenario? Assuming that autonomous vehicles (AVs) will be wonderful for ride-sharing, ride-hailing, and deliveries (which will put a lot of drivers out of work) and that folks will happily embrace them for personal use whenever they become available and affordable, automakers and others have been investing billions of dollars in developing them.

But not everyone wants to give up driving. Some of us still enjoy it and will as long as we are capable.

Detroit Hard at Work
Automakers and others worldwide are testing and developing AVs on closed tracks and public roads while governments at all levels scramble to define rules and regulations for safe AV operation. Two Michigan facilities — the American Center for Mobility next to Willow Run airport in Ypsilanti Township and the 32-acre mock city called Mcity on the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus — are dedicated to AV testing and development.

General Motors’ Cruise LLC subsidiary has been testing Chevrolet Bolt EV-based Cruise AVs in San Francisco and elsewhere while developing a fully autonomous (no driver, no controls) Origin A.V. with Honda for urban passenger and delivery service. Unveiled this January 2020, the self-driving, six-passenger Origin has production approval, and development prototypes are being tested at GM’s Milford Proving Grounds.

“We feel that Cruise has all the building blocks in place to lead in self-driving vehicles,” says GM President Mark Reuss, “and the first ones will be built right here at Factory Zero, our Detroit-Hamtramck assembly facility. In October, Cruise received a permit from the California DMV to remove human backup drivers from its self-driving cars. That means Cruise can send its cars out onto the streets of San Francisco without anyone at the wheel.”

Cruise should have Bolt-based driverless AVs running around San Francisco by the time you read this. “This is our moonshot,” says Cruise CEO Dan Amman. “The chaotic, gritty streets of San Francisco are our launchpad, and it’s where over two million miles of city testing will truly hit the road for the first time: an electric car, driving by itself, navigating one of the most difficult driving cities in the world.” In addition, Walmart plans to start testing automated deliveries using Cruise AVs in Scottsdale, AZ, early this year.

GM’s bold commitment to no-driver AVs, focusing first on city transportation, is one major element of its ambitious vision of a world with “zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion.”

“We operate AVs in very clearly defined geofenced areas within the city that we have mapped,” chief engineer of the Cruise Origin Jason Fischer. “We will not go into areas that we haven’t mapped.” And while current Cruise AVs retain their steering wheel and pedals so a driver can take control if needed, the Cruise Origin does not. “There will be no ability to take control of the vehicle,” Fischer says. “The autonomous driving system will always be in control.”

Ford, partnered with technology developer Argo AI, has tested AVs (with safety drivers) on Michigan Ave. around Michigan Central Station. The automaker has established AV terminals, command centers, and high-resolution mapping for ride-hailing and deliveries in Austin, TX, Miami, FL, and Washington, DC, beginning in 2022. The company is also testing AVs in Pittsburgh and Palo Alto, CA. The Ford/Argo AI program will “assess the need for a safety driver and make a decision based on several factors, including the regulatory environment, safety performance data and an appropriate level of community acceptance” before operating without one.

“We are very focused on level 4 [see graphic above],” says Ford Autonomous Vehicles and director John Rich, “removing the driver from the equation and operating within a geonet.” A geonet, he explains, is different from a geofence, within which AVs should be able to self-drive anywhere. “We will initially choose not to drive some places within that area, but our geonet will expand as we move forward.”

Ford/Argo AI’s fourth-generation self-driving vehicles are Escape Hybrids equipped with the latest advanced sensing and computing technology. “We have upgraded our sensing suite with even more advanced LiDAR, higher resolution cameras, and more capable radar sensors,” says Ford Autonomous Vehicles chief engineer John Davis. “Combined, this helps improve detection of fixed and moving objects on all sides…providing a blind-spot curtain, detecting things like a passing car or bicyclist in a nearby bike lane.” A larger high-voltage battery supports these vehicles’ heavy electrical loads. A sophisticated sensor-cleaning system with forced-air chambers and high-pressure spray nozzles keeps its sensors and camera lenses clean.

Stellantis is partnered with self-driving technology company Waymo. Launched in 2009 as the Google Self-Driving Car Project, Waymo has developed a Level 4 Waymo Driver system that powers Waymo One, a ride-hailing service, and Waymo Via for trucking and deliveries. It claims 20 million-plus miles of autonomous driving on public roads in 25 US cities and 15 billion miles of simulation testing and is now offering AV rides to the public in Phoenix.

“Our now four-year partnership with Waymo continues to break new ground,” says Stellantis CEO Mike Manley. “By incorporating the Waymo Driver, the world’s leading self-driving technology, into our Pacifica minivans, we became the only partnership actually deploying fully autonomous technology in the real world, on public roads.” Stellantis is also working exclusively with Waymo on light commercial vehicles such as Ram ProMaster vans for deliveries and plans to expand it across its product line.

“Stellantis was our first OEM partner, and we’ve come a long way together,” says Waymo CEO John Krafcik. “Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans were the first vehicles in our Waymo One fleet and, guided by the Waymo Driver, have now safely and reliably driven more fully autonomous miles than any other vehicle on the planet. Together, we’ll introduce the Waymo Driver throughout the Stellantis brand portfolio, opening up new frontiers for ride-hailing, commercial delivery, and personal use vehicles around the world.”

Meanwhile, a very ambitious “connected corridor” linking downtown Detroit to Ann Arbor (and Metro Airport) along some 40 miles of Michigan Ave. (US 12) and Washtenaw Ave. (M-17) is in the planning stages.

“At the outset, the vision calls for one dedicated interior lane for both the east and west side of Michigan Ave,” writes editor R.J. King in the Nov./Dec. issue of DBusiness magazine. “Those two lanes will need barriers at first, to separate autonomous from general traffic including pedestrians. Several crosswalks will be needed, traffic lights must be coordinated, and all manner of hardware and software is required to connect GPS satellites, cellular arrays, Wi-Fi systems, sensors, and underground fiber cables.” An alternative plan suggests using a new lane along I-94 instead of Michigan Ave.

According to King, this project’s vision began with Ford executive chairman Bill Ford. It will be managed by Cavnue, a subsidiary of New-York-based Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners, working with Michigan’s Department of Transportation, Office of Future Mobility and Electrification, Economic Development Corp., and Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, along with state and local partners, stakeholders and communities.

“The project will be designed to evolve to meet transportation goals,” he writes, “but in the beginning, the dedicated lanes will accommodate linked buses and shared mobility vehicles such as vans and shuttles and expand to other connected and autonomous vehicles like freight and personal vehicles.” Phase one completion is targeted for the second half of 2022.

Next week, read part 2 of Autonomous (Self-Driving) Vehicles –Available Soon (Yes and No). Gary explains the critical missions and asks the experts how soon we will see AVs on the road.

The post Autonomous (Self-Driving) Vehicles – Available Soon? (Yes and No) Part 1: NMA E-Newsletter #648 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

By Shelia Dunn, NMA Communications Director

On a recent Saturday evening, I spoke at a concerned-citizen Zoom meeting on the planned express toll lanes for US Highway 69 in Overland Park, Kansas. In researching the topic and listening to local residents and commuters, I thought it would be appropriate to write about the difficulty in fighting such a project.

First of all, a little information on Overland Park and Highway 69. This Johnson County city is the second-largest in the state, with close to 191,000 residents. It lies less than 20 miles south of Kansas City, with Highway 69 dividing the city in half. Hwy 69 serves as the central commuter hub to Kansas City proper.

Pre-COVID, 80,000 vehicles traversed the four-lane highway daily between the two cities, and it is currently considered the most congested highway in Kansas. Traffic safety is a concern—the crash rate is 53 percent above the statewide average. Highway 69 has been declared metropolitan Kansas City’s number one road priority.

The state DOT predicts traffic volume will double in the next 20 years. According to Kansas City Magazine, nine in ten Johnson County residents favor Hwy 69 improvements, 62 percent are concerned about travel safety, and 59 percent want travel time predictability.

According to the 69 Express website, KDOT has decided that the best course of action will be to spend anywhere from $550 to $655 million to create express toll lanes or ETLs. The DOT wants to remove the center median and create two new center ETL lanes alongside the four free lanes already present. The agency also plans to modify the various interchanges in the corridor.

State dollars will mainly be used for the project because, after all, it is a state highway. Many have wondered why more has not been done before now to improve Hwy 69. The state of Kansas typically handles road improvements in 10-year periods under its T-Works moniker. The last period ended in 2020. Also, just like many states, Kansas borrowed money from its transportation funds to meet budget shortfalls in other areas. And there was that massive tax cut passed under former Governor Sam Brownback that left many T-Works projects unfinished or unaddressed, such as the Hwy 69 issue.

Overland Park is not obligated to contribute to the project, but KDOT Deputy Secretary Lindsey Douglas said that if the city does, it will move faster. The agency, however, considers the ETL toll as part of the local contribution. The state is suggesting a toll rate of 25 to 33 cents per mile with a small congestion fee tacked on during AM/PM rush hour traffic for good measure.

In 2019, the Kansas Legislature passed a new tolling law stating that:

• Only newly added lanes, not existing ones, can be tolled.
• Tolls collected can be used only to maintain that tolled road. (If increased traffic on surface streets occurs after the toll is implemented, the municipality or county would have to deal with the increased maintenance and repair costs. Local drivers would have to put up with increasing congestion on roads not designed to handle those traffic volumes.)
• Toll projects cannot be implemented without community support.
• Communities may ask the state DOT for further evaluation.

Already Express 69 supporters, including KDOT, have held several community forums. Those who attended the first lightly attended forum just before pandemic restrictions believed that the plan would likely be scrapped since there was little community support.

City council member Dr. Faris Farassati said at the Saturday Zoom meeting that the DOT was not deterred by the lack of community support and has moved forward with pushing the ETL plan. After all, the Hwy 69 ETL project is the state’s top congestion-busting priority (and perhaps revenue priority too).

I have seen this ramrodding before in my work with other local advocates opposing DOT projects, such as road diets and traffic calming. Citizens may express concerns over costs or project implementation, but somehow the state DOT forces a vote by the affected city councils anyway, pushing the project into GO status.

The Overland Park City Council will vote on the Hwy 69 ETL project in June 2021. KDOT is ready to build the ETLs and is applying pressure by insisting that any other plan would take an additional two years to start. The two Overland Park councilmen who attended the Saturday Zoom call seemed to have more questions than answers, and so did I.

1. Deep in the 69 Express website is a short paragraph that the ETL would also be used at some point for bus rapid transit, but the councilmen say that this aspect has barely been referenced in any of the discussions with the state. Will the city also have to pay for any new bus transit projects?
2. If the community does not want the ETLs, but still wants the highway widened, why couldn’t the same lane expansion design be used without tolling?
3. While the proposed toll rate is less than half of the current national average (56 cents per mile), what controls are in place to prevent the state from increasing the tolls or implement much larger congestion pricing tolls in the future.
4. Why has the city of Overland Park allowed unfettered zoning in the past that could double the number of vehicles on Hwy 69 in the next 20 years? Would an ETL or even highway widening accommodate such traffic? Is this KDOT figure of the doubling of vehicles on Hwy 69 in 20 years just a scare tactic or an accurate figure?
5. One concerned citizen on the call asked if so much more traffic would be traveling on the highway, why was there no budget for noise abatement such as sound-blocking walls? An increase in traffic noise will likely cause property values to decline. Councilman Scott Hamblin said that this is a genuine concern for his constituents. He and Dr. Farassati added that many on the city council don’t care about the noise issue since they and their constituents don’t live near Hwy 69.

The NMA does not support toll roads or user fees intended to limit or ration the use of public roads paid for by all taxpayers. All motorists who pay for roads with their gas taxes should have full access to those roads. Tolling is a stealth tax because not only is it in addition to the gas tax that drivers pay to maintain the roads, it also raises the costs for moving goods, which affects all consumers.

The Hwy 69 express toll lanes project hasn’t been greenlit yet by the state, but indications are that Overland Park drivers will soon be carrying an extra burden.

The post Overland Park, KS: Future of US Highway 69 and the Proposed Express Toll Lanes: NMA E-Newsletter #647 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Over the past two years, insurance rates for trucking companies have increased an average of 20 to 25 percent. Umbrella or excess liability policies have increased even more—over 75 percent—which forces most trucking companies to carry less coverage. By federal law, all commercial haulers must carry $750,000 in liability insurance, which won’t cover most jury verdicts for damages in accidents involving large trucks.

Nuclear verdicts—jury awards surpassing $10 million—have increased vastly in the past decade. The average of over $1 million per verdict involving a large truck crash has increased nearly 1000 percent from 2010 to 2018–going from $2.3 million to $22.3 million on average.

According to trucking experts, these types of verdicts are strangling the industry. Carriers struggle to keep pace; shipping rates can’t be increased enough to compensate. Something has got to give.

Lawmakers in Montana and Texas have recently been working to make it more difficult for accident victims to reap multi-million dollar verdicts against truckers. Texas, a leader in the number of crashes involving trucks and nuclear jury verdicts in civil lawsuits, had 55,000 motor vehicle lawsuits filed in 2019. That’s a 118 percent increase from 2008.

The Texas bill, HB19, has been winding its way through the bicameral legislative session and has pitted truckers against plaintiffs’ attorneys. Eight hundred public comments were generated about the bill, and 40 individuals signed up to testify at a March hearing of the Texas House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence.

President of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, Jim Perdue, said the bill would damage current court practices, testifying:

“HB19 is designed to create unprecedented delays in both the process and delivery of finality of justice.” He added, “It’s a radical remaking of the civil justice system for a specific classification of defendants.”

Analysts from Texans for Lawsuit Reform had this to say about HB19:

“HB19 is laser-focused on the changes in law that are necessary to protect rights of Texans who are truly injured in a commercial vehicle accident while simultaneously reducing opportunities for some trial lawyers to mislead juries to seek millions in damages in cases where the commercial vehicle owner was not at fault or the plaintiff was not injured.”

Another group for truckers, Keep Texas Trucking Coalition, said that HB19 would make the courts fairer to truckers. In a written document concerning HB19, they wrote:

“Multi-million dollar or ‘nuclear’ verdicts grab headlines, but abuse is more frequently found in more routine settlements under a typical umbrella coverage of $1 million. Opportunity-seeking plaintiff lawyers partner with unscrupulous medical providers to grossly inflate claims, resulting in increased insurance premiums and driving trucking companies out of business.”

HB19 passed the Texas House at the end of April, recently passed the Senate, and is now on to the governor for his signature. The legislation has garnered widespread support from small businesses and the trucking industry across the state. American Trucking Associations President Chris Speers said in a statement:

“With this significant vote, Texas joins a growing number of states committed to stopping rampant lawsuit abuse by enacting measured, targeted, and prudent reforms that restore balance and fairness to the civil justice system.

Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed a similar bill recently that reforms civil liability laws concerning damages in lawsuits. The new law deals specifically with phantom damages or inflated billing amounts. The new reforms promote tools that increase transparency to curb inflated medical damages and outline the damages recoverable from the person deemed to be at fault. The text of the legislation states:

“Damages must in all cases be reasonable, and where an obligation of any kind appears to create a right to unconscionable and grossly oppressive damages contrary to substantial justice, no more than reasonable damages can be recovered.”

Legislation that puts practical limits on liability claims affects motorists of all stripes. When nuclear verdicts occur, not only could they put an owner-operator or small trucking firm out of business, but they can also translate into higher transportation costs, which correlates to higher prices for all consumers.

At the same time, many people involved in truck accidents can have long-term health issues, and reasonable compensatory verdicts should be extended to them. This is one of the few times when legislation may be the only rational remedy.

The post Oversized Injury Verdicts may be on the Way out in Montana and Texas: NMA E-Newsletter #646 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

A number of recent NMA e-newsletters and national email alerts to members have focused on the seismic event brewing with the national standard for traffic control devices: The Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) proposed federal rule to massively overhaul the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). Among the myriad recommendations are changes to speed zoning and stop sign placement requirements. Either, if adopted, would drastically affect driving as an efficient mode of personal transportation, not to mention as a pleasurable experience.

Your responses to the proposed rule have been stellar. Several hundred NMA advocates have posted their comments in opposition to the suggested speed limit and stop sign changes, with each message personalized to communicate distinct reasons why the FHWA should not amend those sections of the MUTCD. We have published many examples in those earlier e-newsletters (linked below). Now it is time to share with you the NMA’s response to Docket FHWA-2020-0001, the proposed rule in question.

The full 5-page letter submitted for the public record, can be found here. We covered a little more ground than the speed limit/stop sign issues, but those are the core issues that can have the most impact to motorists.

The title of this e-newsletter refers to the Speed Limit Sign, Additional Comment #2 section that starts on page 3 of the letter and is excerpted below. The NMA position is that the FHWA has the statutory responsibility for maintaining national traffic control device standards, an assignment that it is not authorized to relinquish. Specifically:

“Title 49, Section 104 of the U.S. Code establishes that the FHWA is assigned by law the responsibility (via the Secretary of Transportation) for, among other things, traffic control devices. Hence its “ownership” of the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices . . .

“On the FHWA’s own page about the MUTCD, it is acknowledged that “The Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) is the national standard for the design, application, and placement of traffic control devices. Its main purpose is to provide uniformity and consistency so road users know what to expect no matter where their travels take them.”

~~~  

“With this proposed rule, the FHWA is recommending the optional use of the proven element — a traffic speed distribution study and determination of the 85^th percentile speed — for such standardization. At the same time, the rule requires no specific alternative method to ensure that engineers who disregard the speed study option follow a procedure that results in consistent speed limit methodology.”

~~~

“By downgrading from mandatory to optional the current requirement to conduct a speed distribution study as a necessary step to determine a proper speed limit, the FHWA would be unlawfully forsaking the authority assigned to it by the U.S. Congress to maintain a national standard for speed limit postings. The proposed rule would delegate that decision-making to thousands of engineers in unique jurisdictions around the country, creating a patchwork quilt of speed limit regulations that, in effect, would do away with the notion of a uniform national standard. The FHWA cannot, must not, shirk its responsibility for maintaining this important standard. The current 2009 version of the MUTCD with Revision Numbers 1 and 2 incorporated provides those requirements. An amended MUTCD per the proposed rule would not.”

~~~

The Federal Highway Administration received over 26,000 responses during the public comment period that ended on May 14^th, including nearly 10,000 on that last day. It will likely take months for the agency to sort through the postings and respond in issuing its final rule for the MUTCD. We hope the FHWA will take our warning seriously that it can’t do what it proposes to do to Section 2B.21, Speed Limit Sign. We will keep you apprised of any developments.

Previous NMA communications on FHWA-2020-0001, the proposed rule to modify the MUTCD:

Equity and Sustainability, E-Newsletter #637

All Hands on Deck, E-Newsletter #640

More Hands on Deck, E-Newsletter #641

Equity and the MUTCD, E-Newsletter #644

Anti-Driving Regulations Will Become Law Unless You Act Now, Part 1 – Speed Limits

Anti-Driving Regulations Will Become Law Unless You Act Now, Part 2, – Stop Signs

The post A Shot Across the Bow: NMA E-Newsletter #645 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

As we have noted prominently in recent newsletters and email action alerts, the Federal Highway Administration has recommended sweeping changes to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). In Equity and Sustainability (NMA E-Newsletter #637), we criticized the appropriation of those terms, particularly ‘equity,’ to demand broad restrictions on drivers and driving.

NMA Director John Carr posted his perspective as a public comment to the MUTCD federal docket. We need not say more.

~~~

This is a general discussion of the implications of the MUTCD on equity which I will refer to later in comments on specific sections. 

Many comments on the docket treat “equity” as a meaningless word that one mentions before “sustainability,” which is in turn a word one uses after “equity.” It has an air of “I know it when I see it.” Generally, it is used as a synonym for “not cars.” 

The President has announced two general policies which shed some light on what the administration considers “equity” to mean: 

1. Agency actions should not “inappropriately burden disadvantaged, vulnerable, or marginalized communities.”
2. “The Federal Government should pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.” 

America has a long history of using traffic regulations for revenue raising or with discriminatory effect, whether against motorized or non-motorized road users. The phrases “pretest stop,” “driving while black,” and “speed trap town” are all in the American lexicon thanks to overregulation. 

Every time the MUTCD permits or requires a regulatory device instead of a warning sign, or permits or requires stricter regulation, thought should be given to how the devices will be abused. Changes to stop signs, speed limits, and crosswalk placement all give police opportunities or take them away. 

Increasing police-public interactions have a disparate impact on disadvantaged, vulnerable, and marginalized communities. The Federal Highway Administration should think carefully before encouraging states to create more traffic violations. 

~~~ 

John included several examples of how over-regulation of traffic can lead to inequities in the real-world sense of the word. Here are two:

~~~ 

Missouri

At the intersection of revenue-based enforcement and racial disparity, the Department of Justice (2015 Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department) concluded: 

Ferguson’s law enforcement practices are shaped by the City’s focus on revenue rather than by public safety needs . . .  Over time, Ferguson’s police and municipal court practices have sown deep mistrust between parts of the community and the police department, undermining law enforcement legitimacy among African Americans in particular . . .

Ferguson’s law enforcement practices overwhelmingly impact African Americans. Data collected by the Ferguson Police Department from 2012 to 2014 shows that African Americans account for 85% of vehicle stops, 90% of citations, and 93% of arrests made by FPD officers, despite comprising only 67% of Ferguson’s population. African Americans are more than twice as likely as white drivers to be searched during vehicle stops even after controlling for non-race based variables such as the reason the vehicle stop was initiated, but are found in possession of contraband 26% less often than white drivers, suggesting officers are impermissibly considering race as a factor when determining whether to search. African Americans are more likely to be cited and arrested following a stop regardless of why the stop was initiated and are more likely to receive multiple citations during a single incident.

Ferguson is not that unusual except that race riots drew national attention and a Department of Justice investigation. Otherwise, people would say, “if you don’t want a ticket, don’t speed” and forget about it.

~~~ 

Washington, D.C.

Ferrell found that with 96% of tickets in Washington, D.C. issued by cameras, “a driver in a black-segregated area is over 17 times more likely to receive a moving violation (at a cost of 16 times more per resident) than in a white-segregated area.” This despite a similar per-capita rate of crashes. In other words, robots may be color-blind, but the people who deploy them are not. 

Think of this before imagining automated enforcement is a solution to discriminatory enforcement. Cameras are placed to raise revenue (which disproportionately affects the poor) and targets groups without political influence.

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Most experts agree that the way America funds infrastructure is broken. Many of our roads are in terrible shape. The Highway Trust Fund is nearly empty. Many local governments have difficulty paying for year-round road maintenance.

The reasons vary. The federal and state gas taxes have never been adjusted for inflation. Many states divert funds to use for other purposes such as transit and education. Automakers, the federal government, and at least one-third of state governments are pushing electric vehicles, which means no gas tax from those owners. Is a road user charge or a vehicle miles traveled tax the answer?

A VMT tax means that anytime you drive, you will be taxed by the mile. This would be in addition to the federal and state tax you pay per gallon of fuel at the pump unless you are operating an electric vehicle.

How the government will assess that fee is still up in the air. It could be a monthly charge based on vehicle tracking, which means some sort of GPS-based monitoring. Your ‘privilege of driving fee’ could be paid yearly at the same time as your license plate renewal is due and after a vehicle inspection. (How intrusive and expensive will that be?)

Other road user charges might come into play too. If drivers are tracked by location and time of day, they could easily be hit with a traffic congestion surcharge. Portland, Oregon, is currently running a VMT experiment through the end of the summer on how this might work.

Auto privacy would be a problem. Motorists would likely be tracked wherever they travel. Driving to a different state or even a different county might mean you pay different fees based on local assessments.

Whatever the case, the solution to assess a fee will not be as easy as paying at the gas pump as we do now.

The American Transportation Research Institute recently released a study concerning the costs of converting to a VMT tax system. The analysis indicated that it is much more complicated to track and collect taxes from a few hundred million vehicles than collecting fuel taxes from several thousand fuel operators. ATRI Senior VP Dan Murray told Transport Topics, “Suddenly, we go from spending $70 million a year in the US to manage the federal program to over $13 billion in a national administrative cost for the VMT program. It’s a massive scale.”

For example, to provide a dongle that tracks every vehicle in the US would cost an estimated $13.6 billion.

Collecting revenue from such a sizeable remote user group is a complex problem that, at the least, will create another costly layer of governmental administrative overhead. In the meantime, roads still need to be maintained.

In April, the US Chamber of Commerce joined with a collection of transportation and labor groups called on the US Congress for a national VMT tax to pay for infrastructure. They warned in a joint letter that the reliance on the federal gas tax is unsustainable, noting that tax receipts do not keep pace with constantly improving fuel efficiency and the growing presence of electric vehicles. A national VMT system, they say, could first be tested by federal and state fleets. The Chamber of Commerce and allies also suggest that the VMT tax would replace all current gas taxes and fees. (Does anyone really believe this?)

Meeting climate goals to reduce vehicle emissions has prompted several states such as California and Minnesota to work on various schemes to reduce vehicle miles overall. A road user fee would likely be used as a stick to get us out of our cars (especially if the gas tax is retained for internal combustion-engined vehicles, creating double taxation against most drivers).

Washington is the first state to legislate eliminating the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2030. The state’s gas tax is already one of the highest in the country at 49.5-cents-per-gallon. Policymakers have added a road usage charge (RUC) to the current $15 million Forward Washington Senate Bill 5483. The proposed legislation narrowly defines the RUC as applying only to electric and hybrid vehicles but would open the door to levying a VMT tax on all vehicles in the future.

President Biden announced during the International Earth Day Summit that by 2030, he wants the US to cut emissions by at least 50 percent. He plans to electrify the federal fleet, including all postal service vehicles, but at present, the president has made no announcements for a government ban of gas-powered vehicles in the fleet even though pressure by anti-car forces has been ratcheting up.

Rural Americans, in particular, would feel the brunt of a VMT tax. Just as rural broadband programs have been difficult to implement, rural vehicle electrification will be costly if not impractical.

As of 2019, only 1.4 million plug-in vehicles (electric and hybrid) have been sold—out of 276 million vehicles registered in the US. Even though automakers are pushing EVs like there is no tomorrow, a recent Cars.com study indicated that EV owners lack brand loyalty, aside from the cult-like following of Tesla. Non-electric car owners cite range anxiety, battery life, and the costs of buying an electric vehicle as a barrier to ownership.

The NMA has always supported the gas tax as the most practical and equitable method for funding highway infrastructure. Electric vehicle owners could be charged an annual amount covering their fair share of road and bridge upkeep.

A VMT tax would add billions of government administrative costs annually, open the door for the double taxation of most vehicle owners, create privacy issues for all motorists, and disadvantage rural communities. Lean into a vehicle-miles-traveled tax? Hardly.

The post Should We Lean into a Federal Vehicle Miles Traveled Tax?: NMA E-Newsletter #643 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Coercion is an ugly word, but lawmakers have been known to use it as a blunt weapon to force compliance by the very people they represent. The latest and all-too-blatant example of legislative intimidation is contained within California Senate Bill 111. While this bill is about the use of school bus automated enforcement, a topic the NMA has spoken out against many times, we will focus here on the proposed penalty terms that essentially take away the accused’s due process rights.

SB 111 limits the base fines for the first two violations of passing a school bus illegally to $250 each. OK, you might say, that sounds reasonable. But here is the kicker: If the photo ticket recipient feels the citation is unjust and wants to challenge it in court, the bill sponsors have added a significant deterrent. If you avail yourself of the constitutional right to trial, the penalty increases to the range of $695 to $1,000 for a first charge. Try to defend yourself from a second such violation, and you risk a whopping fine of anywhere between $2,130 and $4,000. Pursue your rights further than that, and SB 111 would expose the defendant to a driver’s license suspension of up to one year.

Such heavy-handed lawmaking has just one goal in the name of control: to threaten alleged violators of the consequences of seeking their day in court, a fundamental pillar of our system of justice. How many individuals or families are willing to risk not having the money to pay the rent, the mortgage, or even put food on the table with those types of penalties dangled in front of them? In effect, SB 111 has a “don’t you dare challenge our authority” clause.

Keep in mind, too, that those photo tickets are mailed to the registered owner of the vehicle after the fact. That person may not have been the driver or even in the car at the time of the alleged violation. Want to defend your innocence in that situation? Tough luck, buddy, get ready to pay through the nose.

With claims of voter suppression being commonplace today, SB 111 would suppress basic constitutional rights under cover of law if enacted. If you aren’t outraged because you don’t live in California and aren’t likely to face this situation, think again. While SB 111 may be the latest example of this type of outrageous legislation, the practice has been going on for years in state legislatures across the country. It is why advocacy organizations like the NMA are essential watchdogs for the people’s civil liberties and why your tax-benefited support of our efforts is more vital today than ever before.

The post The Legal Obliteration of Due Process: NMA E-Newsletter #642 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Member response to the NMA’s April 13th email alert and last week’s newsletter, All Hands on Deck, #640, has been tremendous. This grassroots campaign is focused on convincing the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) that key components of its planned update to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) will make the roads less, not more, safe and significantly less drivable. That latter part seems intentional.

Over 90 percent, nearly 200, of the comments added to the public record for the proposed FHWA rule change in the few days since the NMA alert was issued have been in opposition to the agency’s recommendation to minimize the importance of data analysis in setting proper speed limits. You can read those comments, and add your own if you haven’t already, here. Responses are accepted until May 14^th.

The same response rate is needed now to address another alarming aspect of the proposed changes to the MUTCD: How and when all-way stop signs are used. Where the current requirement is to post all-way stops by exception and only with justification by data analysis, the new FHWA guidelines to local traffic engineers would be to add all-way stop signs at intersections if the mere presence of pedestrians or bicyclists is anticipated. This NMA April 20^th alert explains how the new rules could lead to a proliferation of disruptive, all-way stops instead of two-way stops or yield signs at non-signalized intersections. Environmentalists should be at the front of the line objecting to the rule change that would cause tens of millions of cars to stop and reaccelerate needlessly many times daily, burning more fuel and generating more carbon emissions.

Chris DiPrima, NMA Board Members, posted this comment on the docket for the proposed rule:

“Regarding stop sign guidance under Section 2B of the proposed MUTCD: On safety grounds, I oppose any weakening of the engineering standards regarding the implementation of stop signs.

“I live in San Francisco, a city where almost every neighborhood street is controlled by a 4-way stop. All that this has done is lead to widespread disobedience of stop signs because one can be reasonably certain that 99% of stop signs will have neither crossing vehicles nor crossing pedestrians. It also leads to no end of frustration for drivers and cyclists alike (since cyclists generally ignore unnecessary stop signs). Implementing more unnecessary stop signs will only increase disrespect for stop signs.

“Removing the requirement to conduct traffic studies means that stop signs without justification will become even more prevalent. People will decide to travel via residential streets rather than keeping onto the collector and arterial streets which have been designed to handle through traffic.

“The MUTCD should require (“must”) municipalities to conduct engineering analyses before implementing new traffic signals.”

Others have added similar sentiments on the record after the latest NMA alert was published. But just as with the speed limit issue, it is going to take a large volume of personalized responses to sway the FHWA from its mission of subjugating drivers to pedestrians and bicyclists in a misguided attempt to improve safety for all.

Here, again, is the link to the site where your comments to any or all of the FHWA-proposed changes to the MUTCD can be posted. Click the blue “Comments” button and let the government agency know what you think about its plans to change speed limit and stop sign requirements.

The post More Hands on Deck: NMA E-Newsletter #641 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

In Equity and Sustainability, NMA E-Newsletter #637, we noted the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) introduction of a proposed federal rule that would constitute the first major revision of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) since 2009. Major is putting it lightly, and lightly is not how we can afford to treat it.

The MUTCD is a dense 784-page document full of technical standards and guidance on topics like Regulatory Signs, Barricades, and Gates, Traffic Control Signal Features, and Control of Traffic Through Traffic Incident Management Areas. Not mesmerizing stuff unless you are a diehard traffic engineer, but critical to establishing the rules that keep our roads as safe as possible.

Last week we issued an email alert to all active members about one very important aspect of the FHWA’s proposed rule: how speed limits are determined. Whether you saw the alert or not, the issue at hand is so critical that it bears repeating the call to action. We have until May 14^th — the open period during which the public can comment on the proposed rule — to discourage the FHWA from weakening the speed-limit standard. Specifically, the agency is bowing to pressure from anti-driving factions by recommending that it no longer be mandatory for traffic speed distribution data to be factored into the posted-speed analysis.

The NMA email alert, found here, was issued on April 13^th. It called upon members to post comments on the Federal Register site — the link is provided near the bottom of the alert and repeated near the end of this newsletter — opposing the FHWA’s plan to strip away an essential layer of data analysis from the engineering of speed limits.

The urgency is still very much present. It was gratifying that within hours of the NMA alert, dozens of members posted their comments for the record. But that isn’t enough. As one non-member posted after he saw the flurry of opposition activity to the speed limit recommendation, “The most recent comments that have been submitted (minority) have shown support for the usage of the 85% speed in setting speed limits.”

Note the incidental use of “minority.” We must not rest until opposition comments constitute the majority of input. If you haven’t posted yet, take action now. Here are a few of the post-NMA alert comments added to the record:

The NMA will be submitting a detailed set of comments before the May 14^th closing date. But without a continuing surge of responses like those above, the FHWA will most likely adopt the changes to the MUTCD. Here is the link to the public comment section of the docket for the FHWA’s proposed rule. Use it to add your comments.

Note: Look for another NMA email alert in the coming week about the proposed changes for stop sign postings. If the FHWA has its way, the number of stop signs may well increase exponentially in the coming years. Anyone want to bet that the automated enforcement industry is already champing at the bit to expand its stop-sign camera business?

The post All Hands on Deck: NMA E-Newsletter #640 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Editor’s Note: We received over 35 responses to last week’s Is This the Beginning of the End? NMA E-Newsletter #638. No matter what side of the divide our readers fall, they certainly have many different opinions about electric vehicles.

Two things come to mind: the change from horse-drawn power to cars starting around 1900 and the transfer from steam-powered to diesel locomotives that started around 1950. Is the conversion from gas-powered cars to electric the same? It could be, but I don’t know.

One thing I do know, though: any government did not force my two examples.

I don’t care what powers my vehicle. As long as it can be completely refilled/recharged in about 5 minutes and when using the heater does not affect range, it’s ok by me.

                                                                                          Bob Morrow, Montana

Regardless of what we drive, there will still be roads, and there will still be drivers. We need to make sure our rights are protected.        

Eric Berg, Tennessee Member, and NMA Board Director 

My only experience with the practical use of EVs comes from visiting my son, who lives in Colorado and drives a Chevy Volt. Charging the car at home or work is not a problem, but it’s a different story when we are on the road.

Phone apps to find charging stations are always a problem, but the worst is when you actually find an available charging station and get hooked up. Because different companies set up charging stations, you need to have payment apps for all of them set up on your phone. It’s like needing a credit card for every single brand of gasoline. If you are lucky enough to get the payment app to work, the final hurdle is getting the charging station to function properly.

I would say we encountered an out-of-order charging station about 50 percent of the time, and there is no way to tell until after you’ve gone through the whole payment app process. Very frustrating and extremely time-consuming.

                                                                                                    Lisa S., Michigan

I love EVs and the way most of them drive, but not so much their limited range and recharge times. Personally, if I had auto-industry money to invest, I’d put all of it into the companies with the best ICE engines in the best-driving, most appealing, best-value vehicles for a long, long time to come.

                                                                                          Anonymous, Michigan

No matter how many chargers you install, how will anyone police the people who will plug their car in at the trailhead and go for an all-day hike? A friend of mine is a pilot for a major airline, and he parks his Tesla in front of the terminal in a covered garage, plugs it in, and flies off to India for almost five days. The car sits at the charger the entire time. How do you prevent that?

                                                                                          George Sedlacek, Arizona

This is great news, and people who are initially resistant will be grateful for them. EVs drive so much better than ICE counterparts and, because of the low battery, are much less likely to get into a fatal accident. The planet literally requires we end ICE vehicles ASAP. Transportation is the biggest polluter segment today. I love the sound of a roaring Mustang engine, but their time has come. EVs can be ‘juiced up’ right from home. Far more charging stations than gas stations in short time, too, watch. So many benefits and virtually no downsides sans reduced range, but with plenty of places to charge, it’s not as big a deal.

                                                                                Greg Brailsford, Rhode Island

Without government interference, the adoption of EVs will continue to increase at a pace defined by the market as people balance the drivability benefits and lower maintenance requirements vs. the range and charging drawbacks. That is a normal process with any new technology. However, with government mandates, there will be unintended consequences—people priced out of the market, electric infrastructure problems, etc. It will be interesting to watch because that is the path we are on…

                                                                                          Stewart Harman, Michigan

Where will all the batteries come from? What will happen to the batteries that are old and won’t hold a charge? The batteries need rare earth minerals, which means a lot of digging in the places that the environmentalists don’t want to be opened up to development. And what will we do with millions of old batteries that aren’t good enough to recycle? The environmentalists will have a fit over that–it’s surprising that they haven’t already. Or we might just shut down the transportation industry completely.

                                                                                          James Phend, Florida

Who wants to take a cross-country trip in an EV if the outcome adds an inordinate delay due to charging and frequency of stops? Presently, you can safely travel a couple of days in an ICE vehicle, with just one overnight stay, let’s say from Portland, Oregon to Yuma, Arizona, for example. Utilizing the shortest route through some very desolate terrain is not conducive to an EV because there are currently no charging stations for hundreds of miles. Even if there were, adding hours here would add days to the overall trip, given the present time/distance constraints for most EV’s charging requirements. Typically an EV (with a 60k Wh battery) takes just under 8 hours to charge from empty to full with a 7kw charging point. It then has approximately a 250mile range. That means that for the above trip, a person in an ICE vehicle will have arrived, spent several days on their vacation before the EV vehicle could arrive.

William Rayburn, Washington State

EVs reduce the pressure on our fossil fuel reserves. Without EV’s we would be seeing governments passing even stricter fuel efficiency standards. The results of which would not please any ICE enthusiast. Thus stop bashing EVs and policies that support them. Instead, look at the good that comes from them, distracting governments from CAFE standards and leaving more fossil fuels for ICE enthusiasts to utilize.

                                                                                          Anonymous, Pennsylvania

I greatly enjoyed your message discussing the arbitrary dates manufacturers are tying themselves to when it comes to phasing out the internal combustion engine. What all these entities are ignoring is not only the profound affection many have for cars with real engines but the vast potential of reduced carbon emissions from ICEs that is yet untapped.

Where will we be if everybody is producing only electric cars and nobody wants to buy them? The emotional component of real engines is completely left out of the discussion.

                                                                                          John Baxter, Mississippi

I have no problem with EV’s. I think they should continue to be developed and offered for whoever chooses to purchase one. But absolutely, they should never be mandated, forced, or coerced on the American public.

                                                                                          Andrew, South Carolina

Electric cars are just as bad or worse for the planet when you look at the big picture. This is a big government pipe dream that I will never support. I have no intention of ever buying one.

Anonymous, Pennsylvania

While it may sound impressive that half of new car sales in Norway are electric, remember that only 5.4 million people live there. And Norway gets over 96% of its electricity from hydro! It’s a very different story in the USA, where 87.5% of electricity comes from coal & natural gas (60%), nuclear (20%), and hydro (7.5%). Even though ‘renewables’ receive massive subsidies, wind only contributes 8.5% and solar 2%. And because wind and solar are intermittent, the grid needs redundant backup from reliable sources (usually natural gas) to keep the power flowing at all times. Keeping redundant backup plants idle much of the time is very costly to ratepayers. Too many people take our freedom of mobility for granted. That freedom is under a massive attack, and the NMA is doing a great job spreading the word. But we need to ask ‘where will we get the electricity more often and more loudly.                                                                                

David Healy, Colorado

The post Is This the Beginning of the End?—Readers Respond: NMA E-Newsletter #639 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Are we ready for the end of gas-powered cars? Internal combustion engines (ICEs) have been around for over 100 years. Are consumers ready to trust a battery solely to keep their vehicle’s engine running for the distances they want to travel?

In March, many automakers announced they would by a certain year no longer sell vehicles with ICEs. These companies are staking their future on the expectation that electric vehicles (EVs) will dominate sales in the coming years.

For that to happen, though, consumers need to get on board. Currently, EVs make up less than two percent of all new US vehicle sales and only three percent worldwide. China accounts for about 40 percent of all global EV sales, which have accelerated because ICEs have limited registration in six major Chinese cities. EVs are half of Norway’s new car sales. Tighter regulations on vehicle emissions have also accelerated EV sales in Europe as well.

In recent US opinion polls, a majority of respondents indicated they have an interest in EVs. Still, the costs for ownership need to come down, more charging stations with faster charging times are needed, and the vehicles themselves need to have a better battery range. In one poll, 29 percent of respondents indicated they had no interest in buying an EV at all. According to the US Department of Energy, there are only 1.5 million EVs registered out of 278 million passenger vehicles in the US. Currently, the US has 41,400 EV charging stations across the country, with fewer than 5,000 fast chargers.

All of this uncertainty has not deterred automakers. According to the industry trade group, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, automakers plan to invest $250 billion in vehicle electromobility over the next three years. In March 2021, automakers seemed to outperform each other with announcements.

Volvo announced first in early March that it would only sell electric vehicles by 2030. Its parent company, China’s Geely, plans to roll out EVs under a new marquee, with branding and sales strategies to rival Tesla.

Audi CEO Marcus Duesman announced to the German-language Automobilwoche, “We will no longer develop a new internal combustion engine, but will adapt our existing internal combustion engines to new emission guidelines.” Audi plans to offer 20 EV models in the next five years to become fully electric by 2030. This plan is in line with its parent company, Volkswagen, which plans to go all-electric and rival Tesla in the bargain. VW expects half of its US sales to be electric vehicles by 2030.

VW stocks soared when the company also announced that it plans to launch by 2023 a unified cell technology, which will cut battery prices in half for entry-level electric vehicles.

BMW also expects at least half of its sales to be electric vehicles by 2030. The company announced that by 2023, around 90 percent of its market categories would include fully electric models. BMW also announced it would move the vast majority of its battery and gas-powered vehicles to the same platform in the 2020s.

The world’s fourth-largest automaker, Stellantis, plans to have fully electric or hybrid versions of all vehicles available in Europe by 2025. Jeep is center stage in the plan to go electric. Jeep CEO Christian Meunier said in an interview, “Our vision is to be the greenest SUV brand in the world. We have a very strong plan to deliver that through a lot of exciting product in the pipeline.” Jeep also announced that over the next 12 months, it would install level 2 charging stations at trailheads across the US. Electrify America, which Volkswagen runs, will administer the stations.

Building electric vehicles certainly gives cache to automakers, but the bigger question has to be, will consumers buy them even if that is the only new vehicle engine design available?

Automakers and elected officials continue to exert pressure on the Biden administration to support the notion of US roadways dominated by electric vehicles in the next decade or two.

Major automakers and auto parts manufacturers in a coalition with the United Auto Workers union urged President Biden to support a comprehensive electric vehicle plan. They asked for government tax credits and numerous other financial incentives for manufacturing and buying EVs, including federal government fleet EV purchases.

The CHARGE Coalition called on the feds to use grants to expand public EV charging infrastructure to focus on traditionally underserved communities and to invest in electrifying public transit.

Both of California’s Senators sent a letter to President Biden, asking him to set a firm date to phase out gas-powered passenger vehicles. Car and Driver asked this question at the end of the article in a short poll: How do you feel about a ban on new gas-powered cars? Twenty-eight percent answered—Sure, someday, and seventy-two percent answered—No, Never.

Maybe this is not the beginning of the end after all.

However, on March 31^st, President Joe Biden announced that building capacity for electric vehicles would be a priority in his $2 trillion infrastructure plan. He wants $174 billion to incentivize building electric charging stations nationwide (500,000 by 2030), retool factories, source domestic materials, and provide tax credits for buyers of American-made EVs.

Let us know what you think about these announcements and the future of ICE vs. EV vehicles by writing us at nma@motorists.org.

The post Is This the Beginning of the End?: NMA Weekly E-Newsletter #638 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Those are the buzzwords used frequently by city transportation officials as they seek to achieve “complete streets” nirvana. Before we attempt to define the overused terms, it is essential to know why they are more in vogue now in transportation and urban planning circles than ever before.

In December, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) proposed a new federal rule that would lead to the first significant overhaul of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) since 2009. The title of the rule is decidedly boring—National Standards for Traffic Control Devices; the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways; Revision—but if enacted as proposed, it will be tremendously impactful to drivers for generations to come. And not in a good way.

The amended MUTCD would incorporate hundreds of changes to the existing set of standards, arguably the most consequential being abolishing the 85th percentile rule for setting speed limits. The national speed limit standard that the FHWA is charged with overseeing would become “should” guidance rather than a “shall” requirement for local transportation officials. That creates the potential for a patchwork of varying speed-limit regulations across the country, leaving drivers uncertain of the road rules whenever they cross from one county or city line to the next.

More troubling is the likelihood—with the FHWA proposing to drop the collecting of traffic speed measurements to determine the safest, most efficient travel rate—that posted limits will fall further below average traffic speeds. That has the potential of making violators of a more significant majority of responsible drivers. The processing of traffic tickets in the US is already a multi-billion dollar industry annually. Enactment of the changes to the MUTCD could easily raise ticket revenue collection to heights even more unfathomable.

The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) and several of its city members have responded publicly to the proposed MUTCD revision with similar talking points, decrying the effort at reform as too weak “to advance any meaningful safety, equity, or sustainability benefits.” The organization claims that “the Manual’s over-emphasis on motor vehicle operations and efficiency on rural highways [neglects] other modes and contexts.”

Before explaining what NACTO means by equity and sustainability, it is important to understand its devotion to the concept of “complete streets.” Per Wikipedia, “Complete streets is a transportation policy and design approach that requires streets to be planned, designed, operated, and maintained to enable safe, convenient and comfortable travel and access for users of all ages and abilities regardless of their mode of transportation.”

Equity in this context refers to the concern that the infrastructure for vehicular travel is given priority in spending and implementation over other modes of mobility such as pedestrian, bicycle, and public transit. The transportation industry defines sustainability as “the capacity to support the mobility needs of a society in a manner that is least damageable to the environment and does not impair the mobility needs of future generations.”

NACTO and complete-streets believers want roads redesigned to accommodate pedestrians and bicyclists. They also want to place restrictions on cars, trucks, and motorcycles to create more equality between modes of travel.

But here’s the thing: It isn’t the FHWA and the MUTCD that has created an imbalance in road use between driving, walking, bicycling, and the use of public transit. It is the demonstrated will of the public.

The American Community Survey of the US Census Bureau released this graph of participation levels of commuters by mode of transportation, citing remarkably consistent census data from 2015 to 2019:

Walking has held steady between 2.6 and 2.8 percent. The Bicycle portion, too small to quantify in this graph, is only 0.5 to 0.6 percent. The equal influence that Complete Streets programs seek for pedestrians and cyclists comes at great cost. Reducing car lanes and street parking in favor of more bike lanes while slowing/congesting traffic by over-regulation is like the 3-percent tail trying to wag the 85-percent dog. The contrast is even starker if over-the-road freight and commercial delivery services are included in the data.

Safety improvements should be made to protect all road users, but the complete-streets mission of reconfiguring road designs and clamping down on drivers to service little-used modes of travel borders on the irrational.

The post Equity and Sustainability: NMA E-Newsletter #637 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Multiple times a year, the US Department of Transportation issues grants to states for specific traffic enforcement programs. That money trickles down to cities so they can pay officers overtime. Honolulu police officers are currently participating in one such grant program this month. To measure the program’s effectiveness, the Honolulu Police Department wants officers to pull over at least four drivers every hour on a speed-related issue.

An HPD traffic sergeant made this requirement clear in a recent internal email obtained by local media: “For each hour of grant overtime worked, it is projected that each officer will generate FOUR (4) speeding-related contacts. Each stop shall be counted as one contact.”

The problem with this kind of traffic enforcement program is that officers can face disciplinary action if they do not conform. The email also pointed out that if the department could not meet its enforcement goals under the current grant, the department could lose future funding on additional federal overtime programs.

Former HPD officer and now attorney Jonathan Burge said that these kinds of ticket quota programs encourage officers to use speed traps instead of patrolling in areas where speed can be more dangerous to the public.

Another local attorney, Victor Bakke, added that the feds don’t care how many tickets you give. “They want to see if the enforcement tools that are being used are resulting in less accidents, less deaths.”

If only the federal government were that altruistic. Bakke is unaware of or ignores the fact that the aforementioned enforcement grant program, which hands out several hundred million dollars per year in awards, grades the states by how many tickets for particular types of offenses are issued. The ticket quota motivation for cities like Honolulu is driven by the measurables mandated by the federal Section 402 grant program.

In the city of Honolulu, 1820 traffic officers patrol the streets. Up to six percent of the city’s 348,000 citizens could be targeted every day during the March campaign.

After the email was leaked, the officers’ Union, the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers (SHOPCO), stated that such a quota system scheme is not allowed. SHOPCO Chief Malcolm Luto added, “When the Union found out it was being implemented, we immediately sent a letter to the police chief, and she responded, saying basically it was not supposed to be starting.”

After the letter from SHOPCO, Chief Susan Ballard apologized to officers for implementing such strict and unethical extortion practices. She claims that the information sent out to the rank and file was sent without her approval and authorization.

The Union, though, apparently stepped forward, not because of the overall ethics of the current ticket quota enforcement program but because the ticket quotas were not part of its current contract with the department. Police ticket quotas are not illegal in Hawaii as they are in many other states. The Union points out that both sides will continue discussions on whether ticket quotas that figure into officers’ evaluations should be part of the next contract.

The lucrative funding of ticket quotas by the federal government is an issue the NMA is tackling head-on with Congress. The NMA’s DETER Act, if enacted, would put an end to the issuance of grants to states and localities based on ticketing activity. Instead, states would be forced to demonstrate quantifiable traffic safety improvements to justify future federal grants.

For more information on the status of DETER, look for the upcoming Spring issue of Driving Freedoms, the quarterly magazine for supporting members. If you are a basic member of the NMA, you can upgrade here to receive an automatic subscription. If you aren’t currently a member, consider joining to earn benefits in addition to Driving Freedoms.

The post Paradise Ticket Quota Extreme: NMA Weekly E-Newsletter #636 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Editor’s Note: In last week’s newsletter #634 Virtual Shopping Grows Up, we asked for your stories, which you can read below. It seems we started a steamroller. Since the first newsletter, many stories have come out about online vehicle shopping that might be of interest:

• EV rivals Tesla, Rivian unite to target direct sales legislation (Tech Crunch)
• The Sad, Lazy Myth of the ‘Middleman’ (NADA Blog)
• Mitsubishi catering to modern buyers with ClickShop (Auto Remarketing)
• This New Auction Site Will Pay You $100 to Sell Your Car (Gear Patrol)
• Report: Volvo Dealers Respond Negatively to Digital Retail Strategy (The Truth about Cars)
• Podcast: KAR’s Peter Kelly: ‘Digital is at the heart of what we’re doing’ (Auto News)

Enjoy reading all the great stories from our members!

Funny you should send this newsletter because just-yesterday, I had a Carvana car delivered. It’s my first experience with the online car buying process. I’ve been looking and watching for a 2010 Porsche Boxster for a while. Maybe that’s why this worked out better than other buying methods because I had to widen the search window for such a relatively rare model. There aren’t many of these in the USA, to begin with, so if you don’t search nationally, you’re probably not going to find one. I did search “locally” as well and found this to be true. The car I bought came from California, so for me living in Connecticut, this was a bonus.

I agree with the idea that you want to touch//feel the car. I did that with the various models of this one with local cars (986, 987.1, 987.2, and 981—all different generations of the Boxster/Cayman, though I was aiming for the Boxster only). So I got to feel them out and see that I liked the feel of the 987.2 best. I also found one locally that was great, but as usual, the independent dealer refused to budge on the price or trade-in offer, which made the deal unreasonably expensive. I ended up getting the California car for much less, with more features and a better color choice.

These online websites really need to offer a safety-net. Carvana does this via their 7-day any-reason-return policy, which they seem to be VERY good about from what I read. They also seem to be good about providing repairs and service if you find things wrong. When the Boxster arrived, the delivery person and I did a walk-around. She used a tablet to take pictures of the car and immediately reported issues for immediate response to covering defects. Granted, I haven’t actually had these fixed yet since I only had the car for one day when I wrote this, but this was very reassuring, which is crucial. Also, shipping cost me nothing.

In contrast, I had a friend look at a traditional dealer in another state for a Boxster, and the dealer made no such offer or effort. They were happy to ship the car but wouldn’t even support a pre-purchase Inspection (PPI) in their area nor pay for the shipping costs.

Carvana doesn’t do a third-party PPI either, but the company allowed me to do a PPI over the first 7-day period (I have mine scheduled locally already).

In the end, the security of the purchase was vital—a return policy, support for issues, support of PPIs, etc., are all important aspects for me. If dealers don’t get behind this, they will get left behind as consumers move on by finding other ways to purchase a vehicle.

Frankly, I hope those dealers DO get left behind. The days of sales trickery need to be over—it’s a terrible business model.

Ashwin, Connecticut

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Last September, I shopped for a used car by doing online research and visiting several new and used car dealerships. With about half the dealers, I visited their websites and made appointments. The rest I decided to visit without calling first. I test drove several cars. Sometimes a salesman rode along, with him and me wearing masks. Some let me do the test drive alone. There was no handshaking. When I decided on a car, I negotiated by telephone. I took the car to my mechanic for inspection. When I picked up the car, the paperwork was done at the dealership. It was all pretty normal except for the masks and social distancing.

Anonymous, Kansas

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Porsche has had some form of online sales for at least two decades. Since 2005, I bought my last three Porsches using the Car Configurator that you can find HERE. Those three cars were:

• 2005 Cayenne S
• 2011 Panamera 4S
• 2018 911 Carrera 4 GTS

Porsche will manufacture the exact car you want in Stuttgart, Germany. The tradeoff is that you cannot be in a hurry. The wait is between a couple of months (the 911) or nearly a half year (the Cayenne). That means you might start making loan payments for a car that’s still in Germany. One of those cars was delayed while they filled a ship with other cars in Kiel or Rotterdam.

One time a ship caught fire and sank. My car wasn’t among them, but that’s a remote possibility when you order a specific car.

The local dealership doesn’t favor the Porsche Car Configurator due to their allocations from Porsche.

I don’t recall exactly how that works, but many times, Porsche dealers are unable to sell all the cars they might otherwise be able to sell. Demand exceeds supply. There’s an upper limit in an allocation system.

When you custom order a car, the dealership doesn’t come out quite so well because it harms their allocation. They will try to steer you towards a car they already have on their lot, or at least from another dealer with whom they can swap allocations.

They especially don’t like it when you take delivery at the Porsche Cars North America corporate headquarters in Atlanta (as I did with the 911) or in Los Angeles because it entirely short-circuits the Nashville delivery (i.e., dealer prep fees).

But they understand why customers do it. Where else can you stay in a European-style hotel overnight, spend the next day driving the same model car on each of its six tracks? (My favorite was the kick plate.) And then feel catered to when they unveil your car?

Eric Berg, Tennessee and NMA Board Member

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I bought two new cars recently. The first was a Nissan Van. They lied to me about the mileage. When I returned to the dealer, they had changed all the tags on their vans to read: Under EPA requirements, we cannot disclose the mileage of this vehicle. Nuts. 

The dealer experience is a game of lies and deceit. 

Just a couple of months ago, we bought a new Subaru Outback. We were planning to move out of California to South Dakota and thought the Outback would be great. If it weren’t for Consumer Reports, though, we would have paid $10,000 over what we paid. 

New cars are not easy to buy. The customer needs all the info we can find online and from the dealer. With all the latest computer systems, you almost need a training class, too. 

Consumer Reports provided even more information about extras, models, and upgrades. Still, unfortunately, by the time CR figured out one year, the next model year would already be coming out, making the car buying experience even more confusing. There seems to be no way to educate the public or sales folks fast enough. 

I must say the Outback is great, though, and very popular. Even the Nissan NV high-top Van works well for a guy in the motorcycle industry. And as long as I don’t drive much and live in SD, I’ll survive on 10 miles to the gallon.

Keith R. Ball, South Dakota

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I purchased a new car in December. First, I went to a dealership that I suspected would not be completive on price but had a car to test drive. Then the phone calls started and seemingly never ended.

Rather than visiting numerous dealers to see what their deal would be, I hired a service I used previously to obtain quotes for me (carbargains.org). For $250, I got prices from several area dealers, and yes, the dealer I had visited was not competitive. The deal I ultimately got was less than invoice, and I went to the selling dealer just once to pick up the car. Simple and the $250 was a small price to pay to avoid the calls and get a terrific deal.

David, North Carolina

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I’d had a good experience with an Accord. I looked at some Accords, drove one, and didn’t like it as much as I’d liked mine. I checked prices on several years old Civics and Mazda3s. I drove a friend’s Civic, decided I wanted one, called up some shops to see if they had a Civic with a stick shift around the appropriate price point. I went to a dealer that had one four years old with 35K. I drove it, had it checked by a mechanic, and bought it.

If it weren’t for the pandemic, I’d have put 100K on it by now. I’m 3K short of that—one road trip from Boston to the DC area, where my siblings and numerous friends live. Then drive on the backroads to Quakertown, PA to visit more friends. Again, I would drive on the backroads for a couple of trips to Albany, New York, to visit my best friend. I sure miss road trips!

David C. Holzman, Massachusetts

The post Virtual Shopping Grows Up—Readers Stories: NMA E-Newsletter #635 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

The COVID-19 crisis has thrown the car market into chaos (along with pretty much everything else). At the beginning of the pandemic, very few were buying cars, new or used. Auto shows were canceled. Supply chains were destroyed, and auto factories closed due to safety concerns. Then late last year, the car-buying spigot opened up again. In fact, the selling price of a new car currently averages $40,000 due to demand.

With showroom traffic almost nil, car dealers had to figure out new ways to keep customers engaged. Virtual car shopping increased and, just like many pandemic innovations, will likely continue well into the future.

An April 2020 Cox Automotive digital shopping study showed that two-thirds of potential customers were more likely to buy a vehicle online than in person.

Ten months later, however, Deloitte released its 2021 Global Automotive Consumer Study in which researchers found car-buying customers like what’s familiar and may not have changed their habits after all. Other takeaways included:

• 71 percent of US vehicle buyers still prefer an in-person sales experience.
• 75 percent of respondents want to see and touch any vehicle before purchase.
• 64 percent want to conduct a test drive.

Deloitte Vice Chairman Karen Bowman said, “Unlike many other retail sectors that have seen a wholesale shift to online buying, purchasing a vehicle remains a largely personal experience for many consumers.”

Despite the Deloitte study, most car manufacturers and dealers have chosen to expand their online selling platforms. General Motors set up Shop-Click-Drive and Cadillac LIVE and, more recently, Chevy MyWay, for instance. To keep customers engaged during the lockdown, salespeople reached out to customers with online virtual tours.

Denver Cadillac dealer Gavin Pierce said that the Cadillac LIVE platform definitely helped the dealership make sales. In May 2020, Cadillac LIVE had 65,000 visits (2.5 times higher than right before the pandemic) and currently maintains that monthly average.

Toyota and Lexus started their online shopping portals called SmartPath and Monogram, respectively, in September 2019. The companies strive to connect a buyer’s experience across various shopping and local dealership sites. Last month, SmartPath and Monogram began allowing customers to complete the entire purchase process without ever visiting a dealership. Vehicle delivery is made right to the buyer’s door.

A couple of things to keep in mind for customers on the Toyota/Lexus Platforms:

• Dealers are not required to use the portals and, if they do, must pay Toyota an undisclosed fee for use. Out of the 1200-plus dealerships in the US, only around 50 currently sync their inventory information on SmartPath, and a much smaller number of Lexus dealers currently use Monogram.
• Shoppers can only check out one dealer’s inventory at a time. No price comparisons are allowed between dealers, and consumers cannot view other available vehicles regionally or nationally.
• Everything a customer enters online goes into a ‘digital garage,’ which can then be used for a salesperson’s follow-up.

For those who are looking for a used car, many online options are available. The website Investopedia provides a list of the best websites to try. These platforms, which are not controlled by any one automaker, often provide the flexibility to search for new and used vehicles, find cars by geographic area and compare the same make and model between dealers.

Let us know how you looked for and bought your last personal vehicle by emailing the National Office at nma@motorists.org. We might include your reply in a future newsletter.

The post Virtual Car Shopping Grows Up: NMA E-Newsletter #634 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Even before the pandemic, the war on parking was ramping up in America. The curb was escalating as the place of most conflict, and that battle has only increased. The mission to eliminate curb parking by repurposing the space for bike and bus lanes is supported more by wishful Vision Zero thinking than any serious analysis of the potential effect on traffic and commerce.

For example, the anti-car and Big Bike media continue to push the idea that if there’s more parking—there are more cars. So, let’s limit the parking to reduce the number of automobiles and trucks on the streets. Dive down a bit deeper into the linked story, and you will find a reference to a 2018 study by the Mortgage Bankers Association’s nonprofit Research Institute for Housing America. The primary conclusion of Quantified Parking: Comprehensive Parking Inventories for Five US Cities is that the investment in parking is out of balance with current demand and what it claims will be declining future demand. The five cities studied were Des Moines, Philadelphia, New York City, Seattle, and Jackson, Wyoming.

Most households in America have at least one car. Adequate public parking is essential; the nation’s economy depends on it. But that is not a concern for the anti-car people. Getting cars off the road is.

The Quantified Parking study noted above was issued by mortgage bankers who have a vested interest in future zoning and real estate development. Decreasing existing parking for new residential and business spaces creates more profit for both developers and financiers. But the real battle is still being waged over street space.

Streetsblog USA posted a February Op-Ed that states, “We’ve taken street parking for granted for a long time. It’s a luxury that comes at the cost of the poor.” The op-ed goes on to say that, for over a century, cities have been automobile-centric. Streetsblog notes that in many American cities, 98 percent of adult residents own a car. Let that sink in for a moment.

The writer, Jordan Justus, is the CEO and founder of Automotus, a company that is developing curb management technology. More on that in a bit.

Justus wrote in the post that city governments are giving a subsidy to those who can afford a car—mainly middle and upper-class car owners. Lower-income people, who can’t afford cars, are helping subsidize that space. Bringing the equity idea into the infrastructure equation is the latest tactic by those who want to get us out of cars and into rideshare and other public and private transportation solutions.

UCLA Professor of Urban Planning Donald Shoup suggests that cities should be charging market rates for the real estate a car occupies. He suggests that cities can use this cash to increase transit services or bike lanes in the city’s less affluent parts. Many Americans already spend 16 cents of every dollar earned on transportation. Paying manufactured market rates for the “privilege” of parking is just another attempt at forcing people out of their cars by making it too expensive to own and operate their own vehicles.

Curb management is also becoming in vogue. Cities, pushed by companies such as Automotus, want to reconfigure curbs to prioritize commercial use over the needs of the public. COORD, another curb management tech company, released a challenge to cities in January 2020 called the Digital Curb Challenge. It partnered with Aspen, Nashville, Omaha, and West Palm Beach. This year, the company is asking for more cities to join the effort to generate “curb profits” through active street management.

Since the pandemic began a year ago, fighting over curb rights escalated in some surprising ways. In the spring and summer, many cities around the country closed down streets to cars so that neighborhood residents could use the added space for social distancing while outside. That idea then morphed into allowing restaurants to set up additional outdoor seating that extended into parking areas at the curb. Indianapolis tried this but soon realized that it was losing a great deal of parking meter revenue.

The fight to get us out of our vehicles has kicked up a notch, and it looks like the spot next to the curb is one of the biggest battlegrounds.

The post The War on Parking Escalates: NMA E-Newsletter #633 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

In July 2020, a Canadian man was charged with dangerous driving and speeding in Alberta for allegedly sleeping in a self-piloted Tesla between Edmonton and Calgary. In the December 11^th court trial, witnesses claimed that the driver Leran Cai and his passenger were asleep with their seats fully reclined, traveling 150 km/h (93 mph). His next court appearance was scheduled for January 29, 2021, but no information has yet been released on the outcome.

Tesla has a feature called AutoPilot, which enables autonomous driving on the highway, even though drivers are required to keep their hands on the steering wheel at all times to take back control as needed. Drivers must apply a slight amount of torque on the wheel every so often to signal to the system that they are still engaged. Apparently, there are ways to trick that safety feature with weights so you can take a nap. It is unclear if that is what Leran Cai did in this case.

Falling asleep in a Tesla has made many headlines in the past several years. Here are just a few of the incidents:

• Driver Falls Asleep, Wrecks Tesla In South Brunswick, NJ (Patch)
• Video appears to show Tesla driver ‘literally asleep at the wheel’ (USA Today)
• Another Tesla Driver apparently Fell Asleep—here’s what Tesla could do (ArsTechnica)
• Tesla is sued by the family of a Japanese man who was run over and killed by a car on Autopilot after the driver fell asleep behind the wheel (Daily Mail UK)

Tesla announced in October 2020 that all future Tesla vehicles would have self-driving capability. Many articles were written about this announcement, but this headline from The Verge caught our eye: Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ Beta is here, and it looks scary as Hell. This post also has a subtitle, “Using untrained consumers to validate beta-level software on public roads is dangerous.”

At the end of The Verge post, Ed Niedermeyer, communications director for Partner for Automated Vehicle Education (a group that combines nonprofits with AV automakers such as Waymo, Argo, Cruise and Zoox) said:

“Public road testing is a serious responsibility, and using untrained consumers to validate beta-level software on public roads is dangerous and inconsistent with existing guidance and industry norms. Moreover, it is extremely important to clarify the line between driver assistance and autonomy. Systems requiring driver oversight are not self-driving and should not be called self-driving.”

In the United States, motorists and automakers still have no clear-cut autonomous driving guidelines. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has recently been criticized by the National Traffic Safety Board (who inspects these driverless car incidents) for not better regulating the autonomous levels of driving between full driver control, Level 0, and complete system control, Level 5.

Also, if you build the technology, does that mean consumers will buy it? Does self-driving technology really make everyone safer on the road? Many questions remain. It doesn’t seem that Tesla, or anyone else, has yet figured out how to make autonomous driving systems foolproof.

Let’s face it, automakers aren’t good at regulating themselves, and bureaucratic government agencies like the NHTSA often try to accommodate everyone and end up protecting no one—especially, in this case, drivers and passengers.

In the meantime, do you want to share a highway with a sleeping driver on autopilot?

The post A Legal First: Charged with Sleeping while Driving Driverless: NMA E-Newsletter #632 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Motorists have always been a target for criminals, but since the pandemic began, it seems the nefarious activity has increased dramatically. Some are violent, most involve property loss and all turn victims’ lives upside down.

For example, cities large and small have reported an increase in carjackings. The Associated Press has reported cases are on the rise in Kansas City, Louisville, Milwaukee, Nashville, New Orleans, Oakland, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Wichita, and even in Wentzville, Missouri (population 39,000).

In Minneapolis, carjackings were up 537 percent in November 2020 with 125 incidents.

By the end of 2020, Chicago had a total of 1,362 carjackings, which was a 105 percent increase from 2019. That’s a daily average of nearly four, with the South and Westside neighborhoods having the worst rates.

So, what is a carjacking? Generally, they happen in larger cities, with primary targets being older drivers and women. Rideshare drivers are also victimized in some cities. Criminals typically approach people near or in their cars and are preoccupied with looking at their phones, putting groceries in the car, or taking out a child from a car seat. A common ruse is to approach while asking for directions, and then the carjacker takes swift and forceful action. The Car Coach recently outlined what you can do to protect yourself against carjackers.

Police say many factors have contributed to the increase in carjackings. Mask wearing is common now. The sight of a masked person is not as alarming, so it becomes much easier for perpetrators to gain close approach before subduing the driver and commandeering the vehicle without showing their faces. Police officials also state it doesn’t help that young people are currently not attending school and have a lot of time on their hands. Minneapolis Police Commander Charlie Adams told ABC News that 80 percent of carjackings and robberies are done by nine to seventeen-year-old juveniles.

Police around the country ask motorists and passengers to be vigilant and situationally aware, advise not to get distracted when entering or exiting vehicles or at intersections. If someone has a knife or gun, don’t be a hero—your life is worth more than property.

Loyola University Criminology Professor Art Lurigo said telecommuting for work had decreased home burglary by nine percent in the past year. Due to closed shops, business theft has gone down 20 percent. Lurigo said that carjacking for criminals is far more predictable than a typical armed robbery, adding, ” In a carjacking, you know exactly what you’re stealing…it’s a profitable crime, with mostly low risk.”

Unfortunately, so is vehicle theft, which went up 9.2 percent in 2020 over 2019 rates, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau. In 2020, 878,080 vehicles were stolen, which is the highest number in a decade. NICB President David Glawe said in a statement, “Thieves exploit opportunities and may look for vehicles parked in the same location or citizens not taking proper measures to secure their vehicles.”

To prevent car thefts, the NICB urges owners to practice sense by doing the following:

• Lock your vehicle every time you park
• Park in well-lit areas
• Do not leave an extra key with a fob inside the car—thieves have a way to use the technology to open the door.
• Consider purchasing an aftermarket alarm system
• Install a kill switch or starter disabler
• Install a GPS tracking device.

Catalytic converters are also now a target for thieves. In St. Louis, converter thefts were eight times higher in 2020 than in other years. Lexington, SC and Wichita, KS reported triple thefts last year. In general, numbers of this kind of theft are up across the board. Criminals target this vehicle part because it has been built with precious metals that have gone up in price—in particular, palladium and rhodium. Vehicle owners are stuck with a massive repair bill when a converter is stolen while the thief has a big payday. The Toyota Prius and other hybrid or plug-in hybrid vehicles are especially attractive to thieves.

Accident scams are another crime against motorists. Check out NMA Newsletter #621 for more information. So are predatory towing scams. NMA Newsletter #611 provides details on how not to be a victim of these criminal activities.

Other scams abound but have not necessarily increased since the pandemic. A popular one is an email or text that claims you ran a red light and must immediately pay a fine. Remember, if a city or county has an automated camera program, it is required by statute to mail you an automated ticket.

Criminals use these deceptions to phish for identity or financial information to exploit. Identity theft is not a violent crime but certainly is one that makes it difficult for victims to recover their finances and other identity issues.

This scam recently resurfaced in Yakima County, Washington State. Officials warned residents that if they receive an email stating you were caught on video driving through a red light, don’t respond. There are no red-light cameras in the Yakima Valley.

A radio announcer in the Jersey Shore recently received that type of email and warned his listeners not to click on links in suspicious emails and, even better, don’t open the communication to begin with. The best thing to do is delete it.

If you have been a victim of a recent motorist scam, consider sharing your story by contacting us at nma@motorists.org so that we can warn others. Your anonymity will be protected.

The post Crimes against Motorists: NMA E-Newsletter #631 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Have you ever wondered how much it costs to mitigate rockfalls on state highways and interstates? The bigger question, perhaps, is the expense worth it?

Late last year, NorthJersey.com posted an interesting article about rockfall project expenses in the state. Even though they did not come out and say it, it seems some rockfall projects in New Jersey (and maybe other states) can be money pits. Local officials often don’t understand why the state DOT is bothering since there seems to be no significant safety issue.

A case in point is NJ Route 46 in Knowlton, (Warren County) population 3,000. In 2014, a rock fell from a jagged cliffside, landed on the road, and caused a crash. Ironically, this occurred as the NJ DOT was beginning construction on a $14.6 million rockfall project. The original 2012 project estimate was $5.55 million to blast rock from the slope and build a 30-foot high fence. By 2014, that cost had increased 164 percent.

When the project budget skyrocketed, Township Committee Member René Mathez exclaimed, “We pointed out that there had been no accidents because of rockfall that we knew of, and there were probably better ways to do this. We pointed out that the engineering of this was going to be very expensive and an absolute eyesore. But none of that seemed to register. There was no interest in listening to us, and we felt entirely ignored during the process.”

Local NJ officials have started pushing back on these costly rockfall projects thrust on locales by the DOT. Attempts to discuss concerns about project scopes, effects on communities, and to review alternative solutions with state transportation officials are often ignored.

An investigation by The Record, NorthJersey.com, and the NJ Herald found:

• In the past 10 years, rockfall project expenses have grown exponentially. In 2010, many mitigation projects cost around $2 million. Now, projects range from $10 to $65 million.
• Cost increases are due, in part, to consulting firms that are charging for years of planning and research.
• The DOT has not provided any evidence of anyone killed or injured by a rock falling on a NJ road.
• Local involvement in the decision process is nonexistent once the DOT announces a rockfall project.

One of the most notorious of the upcoming NJ rockfall projects is a 0.30-mile stretch of Route 80 between mileposts 1.04 and 1.45 that runs through the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. This area has four slopes, and due to the geometry and complexity, it has been graded as one of the highest risk highways.

The first estimate was for $6 million for nine months of work. It has now grown to a four-to-five-year project with the estimated cost of $65 million (and likely more if the project goes to the full five years). Several New Jersey state lawmakers are trying to freeze the project’s federal funding because they do not believe in the science and the data behind the project.

Pennsylvania lawmakers are also involved. In a Pike County Courier article posted in February 2020, Pennsylvania State Representative Rosemary Brown called the project a debacle. She has indicated that federal funding for the project was $200 million and would be better spent on a commuter train from Andover, NJ to Pennsylvania. Brown noted that the project “poses an economic and environmental threat to the area, not to mention the everyday impact of four to five years of roadwork will have on commuters who commute through the Water Gap for work.”

The goal of state transportation departments is to enable safe modes of travel for the public. If a rockfall occurs, it can be more expensive to clean up and repair roads after a rockfall instead of paying for mitigation costs upfront. But do all potential rockfall areas need to be mitigated? With so many other infrastructure needs, should cheaper alternatives to this kind of mitigation be prioritized in this time of extreme infrastructure funding needs?

As long as the feds are bestowing vast sums of money to state DOTs for these projects, and those transportation officials are effectively shutting out any input from local authorities and any consideration of alternative measures, many rockfall projects will continue to end up being money pits.

The post Are State DOT Rockfall Projects Money Pits?: NMA E-Newsletter #630 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

By Christopher M. DiPrima, NMA Board Member

George Orwell’s seminal 1984 has defined political discourse for over 70 years. Among the book’s most prescient concepts is doublethink, the practice of using contradictory terminology to obscure the government’s actions. In 1984, the Ministry of Peace propagates war; the Ministry of Plenty rations goods; the Ministry of Love incarcerates and tortures; and the Ministry of Truth distributes the state’s official lies.

Americans across the political spectrum recognize that we live in an era of doublethink, certainly when referring to our governments’ brazen lies to its people on any number of topics. While the country’s political left, right, and center can come up with their own lists of examples, here I point to only one among many: the Vision Zero movement.

In attempting to reach the noble goal of eliminating all preventable traffic deaths, the Vision Zero movement has propagated one of the most pernicious and effective forms of doublethink in use today: “traffic calming.” People who have been subjected to traffic calming know well that the actual mechanisms of “calming” should more accurately be called by their opposite name: traffic aggravating. In classic Orwellian style, the term “traffic calming” almost always refers to roadway design changes which worsen, rather than alleviate traffic, and causing aggravation, not calming, for motorists and other users of the public right-of-way.

A hallmark of doublethink is that it forces the user to accept odd contradictions as gospel, like the famous “WAR IS PEACE” slogan of 1984’s Oceania. Here again, Vision Zero excels in doublethink:

Vision Zero teaches that moving more people requires fewer traffic lanes—a half-truth at best which obscures assumptions about coercion and mode choice elasticity. “MORE IS LESS.”

It asks that we increase the price of driving, but then claim that this is meant to increase economic and social equity. It decries subsidies for motorists, but ignores that all mass transit is, and always has been, heavily subsidized. “CHEAP IS EXPENSIVE.”

It advocates “complete streets,” then attempts to remove motorists—often the largest user group—from those streets. “INCOMPLETE IS COMPLETE.”

It advocates accessibility, but then removes parking and encourages dangerous bicycling behaviors which present elderly and disabled people from accessing parts of their cities. “LESS ACCESS IS MORE ACCESSIBLE.”

It claims that faster speeds always lead to more fatalities, ignoring the mediating factor of crash rate and thus disregards the fact that the fastest roads, freeways, are also the safest. “SPEED KILLS.”

Most recently, Vision Zero extremists have added the term “traffic violence” to the lexicon, painting any traffic collision as a deliberate attack on innocent people. We live in a world with real traffic violence, from car bombs to the horrifying use of automobiles as weapons against protestors and other mass gatherings, and yet Vision Zero advocates insult the memory of those victims of actual violence by equating all traffic collisions to these acts of terrorism—and by extension, all motorists as murderers-in-wait.

The broader anti-automobility interests use doublethink in an attempt to dupe voters into supporting their programs. For decades, these advocates have pitched mass transit improvements to motorists as a way of reducing traffic congestion. The sales pitch is that improved access to transit will take people off the roads, thus reducing congestion for those who choose to remain. But then, they make sure to take away general purpose travel lanes, cut back traffic signal timings, and prioritize slow and inefficient street-running buses rather than grade-separated transit. They fight against any measure which would improve traffic congestion because they believe that if traffic is less congested, then transit would become less appealing. So, congestion mitigation through transit improvements isn’t allowed to mitigate congestion.

Motorists who have been subjected to Vision Zero doublespeak know better than anyone that the tenets of “traffic calming,” “road diets” (a euphemism for lane reduction), shortened signal timings, arbitrary turning restrictions, and unnecessary and unsupportable speed limit reductions—all serve to aggravate rather than calm traffic, and all road users suffer. Motorists in cities which have implemented “traffic calming” know that the driving mindset has changed from a relatively polite and orderly world to a Hobbesian war of all against all—where every second of delay cascades into gridlock, and where courtesy becomes the enemy of efficiency.

I posit that this is the primary reason why Vision Zero has been such a spectacular failure in our cities, failing to reduce traffic deaths while also failing to deliver on meaningful transit improvements or congestion mitigation. All that Vision Zero has offered American cities is a state of perpetual warfare between modes. Is it any surprise traffic aggravation techniques have failed to produce calmer, safer streets?

Far from being a fringe set of ideas, Vision Zero is now embedded into the transportation philosophies of many major cities. We now live fully in the Orwellian era of city transportation planning. This is doublethink’s most complete victory: cities’ Ministries of Transportation now attempt to prevent us from transporting ourselves.

It was all right, everything was all right—the struggle was finished.

They love Vision Zero.

The post The Orwellian Era of Transportation Planning: NMA E-Newsletter #629 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

At the urging of the late motorists’ advocate extraordinaire, Jim Walker, the NMA provided grant support for the defense of a Michigan man pulled over for driving over the speed limit in 2015. This wasn’t your typical speeding case, as illustrated by final closure earlier this month when the state Supreme Court declined to take up an appeal from prosecutors.

The facts of the case: Two Saranac officers stopped Anthony Owen for driving 43 mph in an unposted speed zone. Although Owen had not exhibited any signs of impaired driving, he was asked if he had been drinking. He acknowledged “three or four” drinks but denied driving drunk. After roadside sobriety tests, the officers wrote Owen up for suspicion of drinking and driving. During the stop, Owen volunteered that, along with a concealed carry permit, he had a registered handgun in the car. The charges included possessing a firearm while being intoxicated.

The central question of the case was whether convictions arising from traffic stops based on ignorance of traffic law should be upheld. The misunderstanding wasn’t Owen’s, but rather the officers’ who believed the village had a blanket 25 mph speed limit. The street was actually subject to a default limit of 55 mph per state statute. If the reason for traffic stop wasn’t warranted, were the subsequent DUI and firearm possession charges lawful?

In 2006, Michigan passed Public Act 85, which required municipalities to conduct speed studies to justify posted limits. Many had been set previously by local officials without any engineering justification. Years after PA 85 went into effect, several of those same localities ignored the law and kept postings artificially low. That led to situations like Saranac where enforcing a 25 mph limit was illegal without proper engineering support.

Walker testified at Owen’s original trial, noting that PA 85 required local governments to establish speed limits based on science and not some arbitrary method. He added, “It’s long past time that cities and counties can defy the law. We are supposed to be a society under the rule of law. That means the government has to follow it just as much as the citizens.”

Owen was initially exonerated in the courts, but the Ionia County prosecuting attorney successfully appealed and convicted Owen on impaired driving. The Michigan Court of Appeals later determined that the traffic stop was unlawful because of the mistaken belief that the speed limit was 25 rather than 55 mph, which effectively suppressed the evidence obtained during the Owen traffic stop. The prosecutor again appealed, resulting in the placement of the recent Fourth Amendment unreasonable-search-and-seizure case on the state Supreme Court’s docket.

The Court, by a 4-to-3 order, declined to hear the appeal, thereby upholding the Court of Appeals decision in Owen’s favor. The threat averted–for the time being anyway–is that traffic stops and convictions based on a mistaken understanding or total ignorance of the law cannot hold up. The startling fact is that the more uninformed the enforcement officer, the greater his power, and the more diminished the constitutional rights of drivers become.

The bad faith exhibited in the Owen case was not by the officers who made the traffic stop but by the Village, which subverted state law by allowing imaginary speed limits to be enforced.

The post The Consequences of Ignoring the Law: NMA E-Newsletter #628 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

By guest writer Eric Peters

The problem with speed limits is they’re arbitrary and presumptive.

A velocity maximum is decreed, and you are presumed a threat to others if you exceed it. Almost everyone understands this is silly—else almost everyone would not “speed” routinely. Most of us do not play Russian roulette, for instance, irrespective of any laws forbidding it, because we don’t need to be threatened with a ticket to refrain from putting a loaded gun to our heads.

Almost everyone understands that driving five, ten mph, or even faster than above whatever the speed limit is isn’t like that. That “breaking” the speed limit is like stepping on sidewalk cracks and not likely to break your momma’s back. It is why few feel shame or guilt when “caught” going faster than the speed limit. Indeed, the opposite is likely true. Drivers resent being extorted by the courts and insurance mafia over something we know caused no harm and was not likely to cause harm.

Interestingly, this defeats the supposed purpose of speed limits if the purpose isn’t to pretextually fleece motorists.

Ostensibly, speed limits are posted—gird yourself—for “our safety.” It is an almost mathematical axiom that the very last thing intended is the plain meaning of those two words when you hear those two words.

An altogether different meaning is intended, which can be demonstrated by pointing out how useless speed limits are as information about how fast or not it is safe to drive on any given road, especially an unfamiliar one.

This ought to be the purpose of speed limits—advisory rather than arbitrary. Suppose limits convey useful information about speed in relation to the road ahead instead of the set-deliberately-below-the-speed most people drive on that road. More might actually drive the advisory speed limit. Inevitably, most drivers ignore the posted limits and see them as easy pickings for on-the-go tax collection.

Part of the problem is vocabulary.

A speed limit sounds like some engineering threshold, like an engine’s RPM limit. Exceed the redline, and engine damage is probable because the engine’s mechanical limits have been exceeded.

Most people take care not to exceed the redline because they know it has objective informational value, and they’d better pay attention to it.

But a speed limit is nothing like that. It is a statutory limit—something illegal to exceed because it has been so decreed but not necessarily harmful in and of itself.

It is obviously not an objective threshold beyond which danger lies, which is why most people do speed, regardless of any statute. General contempt for speed limits is universal, which undermines “our safety.”

It is not because people “speed,” but because the correlation between the signage and conditions is so tenuous that most of us ignore the signs unless police are in the vicinity. While some drive too slowly relative to the speed, the rest of us are driving to make sure that traffic does not needlessly bunch up when it could be flowing much more smoothly. This sets up a bizarre and irritating dynamic.

The speed limit obeyers are often taking a kind of righteous delight in their rigid obedience, which in their minds justifies not yielding to the drivers exceeding the speed limit because they are breaking the law!  While the “speeders” understandably get exasperated by the “slowpoke” ahead who is preventing them from driving at a speed they know isn’t dangerous, even if statutorily unlawful.

If “our safety” rather than our money is desired, the gov, perhaps, should post speed advisories with no fines attached.

This would benefit drivers not familiar with a given road by giving them a sound ballpark idea about how fast they ought to enter an unfamiliar curve, for instance. They would be given heed for the sake of safety as opposed to fear of a fine.

Because we have speed limits, people tend to either completely ignore them—knowing they can likely take the curve up ahead at ten or even twenty MPH faster than the sign says is “safe” (even at the risk of a ticket) because they have been driving that road and taking that curve every day for the past ten years at ten or even twenty MPH faster than the sign says is “safe.”

If a driver is not familiar with the road and has not taken the curve up ahead every day for the past ten years, they see the sign that says twenty-five MPH and creates a road hazard by driving preposterously slow for the curve. The next time they take that road, they’ll probably ignore the sign, like almost everyone else.

Motorists then habituate a combination of contempt for the signage as well as mindless obedience of signage irrespective of conditions, and neither is of much service to the cause of “our safety.” The entire regime is as counterproductive and cynical as it is profitable.

This explains why probably speed limits as absolute won’t end anytime soon.

Eric Peters lives in Virginia and enjoys driving cars and motorcycles. In the past, Eric worked as a car journalist for many prominent mainstream media outlets. Currently, he focuses his time writing auto history books, reviewing cars, and blogging about cars+ for his website EricPetersAutos.com.

Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this newsletter are those of the author.

The post The Thing about Speeding: NMA E-Newsletter #627 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

By guest writer Mariya Frost, Director, Coles Center for Transportation
Washington Policy Center

Editor’s note: This post first appeared on the Washington Policy Center Blog.

The state Department of Commerce is very clear about its views on driving: officials must reduce or altogether eliminate people’s need to drive.

In their latest draft of the state energy strategy, Commerce officials outline ways they feel people and goods can be moved “more efficiently and equitably.” Until recently, mobility was generally defined as the efficient or predictable movement of people and goods. In Washington, this means reducing traffic congestion and improving freight mobility. However, there is now a push to infuse every aspect of policy with “equity” – an ambiguous term that sounds positive but seems to do little in practice for low-income and minority families. In transportation, “equity” is often used to secure funding for transit, walking/biking projects, and road diets that make traffic congestion, private mobility, and access to employment more difficult for the majority of working families.

Officials argue that vehicle emissions have disproportionate impacts on communities that live near highways, ports, rail, and other industrial areas. To reduce emissions, they argue, officials must reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT), or how much people drive.

As a policy, VMT reduction has been around for a long time. In Washington, annual per capita VMT reduction targets were codified in statute in 2008, reducing annual per capita VMT by 18% by 2020, 30% by 2035, and 50% by 2050.

These goals are not realistic or meaningful, yet they can have harmful consequences as officials use them to justify land use and transportation policy decisions that can reduce mobility and quality of life. The state set a goal of reducing per capita VMT by 18% by 2020. Yet from the time this target was set through 2019, per capita VMT decreased by only 2.7%. The goal to reduce VMT by 30% by 2035 will not be met at this rate. It is unlikely that future VMT reduction goals will be met either.

VMT reduction targets were set to support state transportation policy goals, which include the goal of helping the environment and “enhancing healthy communities.” Since vehicles are increasingly fuel-efficient and clean, the state should consider eliminating VMT reduction as a goal rather than grasping for new reasons to keep it in place. Unfortunately, the draft energy strategy argues that VMT reduction is also necessary to address traffic congestion, reduce injuries and accidents, and eliminate local pollution. This effort highlights that VMT reduction, rather than being a means to an end, is now an end in itself.

The state believes transportation systems are more efficient if there are fewer people driving, which they actually argue would increase economic prosperity and growth. That claim is not supported by data.

There are studies that show no causal relationship between VMT and economic activity (gross domestic product). There are also studies that suggest increased VMT may promote economic activity and “decoupling” VMT from the economy to mitigate climate change is inefficient. Commerce officials do not offer evidence to support their claim that reducing driving would produce an increase in economic activity. That seems more like wishful thinking than a strategy backed by data.

Nonetheless, the state plows ahead with their plan to reduce VMT and “shift travel onto more efficient modes” – like public transit. The report cites King County as employing the “most effective and lowest-cost strategy.” Despite that assertion, King County officials (and specifically, Sound Transit) are notorious for spending astronomical amounts of public money on projects like light rail that yield low benefits. For example, benefits from the Sound Transit 3 light rail expansion are not projected to surpass costs until 2072 at the very earliest, and that was pre-COVID and the shift to telework. Again, Commerce touts their own wishful thinking as fact, revealing the strategy to be largely ideological.

Officials recommend that the state emulate King County’s strategy, focusing on compact development around transit, and “expanding transit services and making them more attractive, affordable, and easier to use.” Expanding transit use, the report says, is especially important post-pandemic to improve “transportation efficiency and equity.” They further speculate, without any data, that “inter-urban mass transit, like high-speed rail, could reduce the need for high-emitting air travel.”

The underlying assumption, as expressed by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), is that increased transit use is equivalent to “VMT that was avoided.” They claim that “nearly 868 million vehicle miles were avoided in 2018 due to public transit use.” This is not a valid correlation, primarily because public transportation use and traffic congestion are unrelated. A statistical analysis of the 74 largest urbanized areas in the United States over a 26 year period and found that “transit utilization does not lead to reduction in traffic congestion; nor does decreasing transit utilization lead to an increase in traffic congestion.” Even so, in 2018, Washingtonians drove 62.4 billion vehicle miles. That means, according to WSDOT’s logic, all of transit across Washington state only mitigated about 1.4% of actual VMT.

Pitching transit use as a way to reduce VMT in any meaningful way has repeatedly proven to be ineffective, despite billions spent on transit expansion. Continued claims that this is a useful strategy to reduce VMT are dishonest and a waste of public money.

The report adds that, like transit use, active transportation – walking and biking – is also way to “significantly reduce VMT of motorized vehicles.” Again, the report provides no evidence for this claim. Looking at census data for Portland (2012-2019), where active transportation has been promoted for years, both biking (-0.3%) and walking (and -0.4%) as a percentage of total workers, which is already incredibly low, have decreased. In Seattle, where biking and walking are an even smaller percentage of population, biking decreased (-0.1%) and walking increased (+0.2%).

If officials want to decrease VMT “significantly,” promoting transit, biking and walking are certainly not the way to do it. Most people who choose to drive could not replace their car with walking and biking anyway, since they do not live close enough to their place of work (which is one reason they drive). If officials insist on reducing VMT, they should start by admitting that working from home, which was already increasing pre-COVID, is far more effective and helpful in reducing how much people drive. This would leave state transportation officials with what should be their primary focus: accommodating trips and maintaining the roads we pay for.

Mariya Frost serves as the Director of the Coles Center for Transportation as part of the Washington (State) Policy Center. She is a widely-recognized expert in state transportation policy, and her analysis and online commentary appear regularly in news coverage statewide.

The post Officials Pitch Wishful Thinking as Fact in Washington State Plan to Reduce Driving: NMA E-Newsletter #626 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Several states have recently announced that they have added wildlife over and underpasses, with many more on the way. Large animals such as deer, elk, and bears roam seasonally, frequently colliding with vehicles in the process. In Wyoming, for example, there are 6,000 documented collisions annually. Wildlife managers and transportation engineers use infrastructure design to help prevent wildlife-vehicle collisions. As a unique and indispensable tool for accident prevention, this kind of infrastructure also helps reestablish biological connectivity for herds.

The benefit is not just for animals but motorists too. Not only can a collision with a large animal total your car, but it will also likely kill the animal and could put your life or your passenger’s in mortal danger.

State Farm estimates that between July 1, 2019, and June 30, 2020, there were over 1.9 million animal-collision insurance claims in the US. According to a recent company study, new data show US drivers have a 1 in 116 chance of a collision with wildlife.  Most of the time, collisions occur at dusk or during the night in October, November, and December.

Overpasses are expensive to build. In Wyoming, two-lane road structures cost between $6 to 14 million. An interstate overpass is even more expensive, typically in the $20 to $30 million range. That is why the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and WYDOT only recommend these structures when justified and suited to the species and location. Other lower-cost options include using existing underpasses, slowing night-time speed limits, posting more visible “wildlife present” warning signs, and improving sightlines by keeping rights of way mowed and clear of trees and brush.

Data and other on-the-ground conditions must support any road modifications. Sometimes the data include decades of research on how big game such as deer, elk, moose, or pronghorn migrate. When animal bypasses are appropriately located, they have proven to be 80 to 90 percent effective in reducing collisions.

In Utah, a video was released showing how successful a wildlife overpass over Interstate 80 has become. Three-and-a-half miles of fencing guide wildlife to the overpass that crosses above six lanes of traffic. This overpass is 50 feet wide and 320 feet long. In the last two years, cameras on the bridge have captured herd animals plus black bears, bobcats, cougars, coyotes, and smaller animals like yellow-bellied marmots and porcupines crossing the bridge. This overpass came online in 2018, but in the two years before completion, Utah DOT recorded 106 collisions with wildlife, including 98 deer and three moose.

Most of these bridges are for wildlife only. In San Antonio, Texas, the city has built a human-animal natural bridge between two sections of a city park. City officials claim it is the longest bridge of this kind in the US. The Robert L.B. Tobin Land Bridge stretches over a six-lane highway and connects two sections of the 330 acre Phil Hardberger Park, named after a former mayor. The overpass has been a public-private partnership with $10 million in private donations added to $13 million from a bond approved by voters in 2017.

Recently in Colorado, the Interstate Highway 25 South Gap project added two wildlife underpasses at the Greenland Road and I-25 Interchange. Both are 100 feet wide by 18 feet tall and will hopefully prove to be highly effective at minimizing animal-vehicle interactions. The Colorado DOT plans to add two more in the area with the hope of reducing such accidents by 90 percent.

Another planned wildlife overpass is the 200 foot-long Liberty Canyon Wildlife Crossing stretching over the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles. This bridge is expected to be finished in the next five years. Many migrating animals have lost their natural range because they cannot easily cross the intimidating highway. The planned bridge will benefit all wildlife in the area and, in particular, mountain lions who face isolation in the Santa Ana and Santa Monica Mountains and possible extinction.

Protecting wildlife protects motorists in the end. Safety comes with a price tag. Not taking appropriate measures has a bigger one.

The post Protecting Wildlife and Motorists through Infrastructure Design: NMA E-Newsletter #625 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

You might not think telecommuting is a motorist issue, but you’re mistaken. Recently, various news outlets stated that almost half of the 160 million American workers commute from home due to the pandemic. Even after COVID-19 vaccinations are available, will working from home continue?

Many workers have told researchers that they want to keep working from home after the pandemic runs its course. People enjoy not making that long commute and have more time to spend with families and friends. Many workers are even thinking or have moved to a cheaper city if commuting is no longer necessary. Office buildings are standing empty, which helps the bottom line of employers but hurts building owners and other businesses in the area that cater to employees, such as lunch places, salons, and gyms.

Recently, Deutsche Bank suggested that a five percent wage tax should be imposed on remote work not mandated by the government. If workers choose remote work, they would be required to pay the tax. Employers would pay the tax if they don’t offer employees a place to work and require them to work from home. Deutsche Bank researcher Luke Templeman estimated that the new tax would generate $48.7 billion per year and suggests that the money should be given out as $1500 cash grants to employees who make less than minimum wage and cannot work from home.

Vehicle emissions also dropped around the world at the beginning of the pandemic since fewer motorists were commuting. In a University of California, Berkeley study, researchers found that regional carbon dioxide emissions dropped by 25 percent at the beginning of the pandemic due to a nearly 50 percent drop in traffic.

In September, the San Francisco Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission voted to move forward a proposal to require people at large, office-based companies to work from home three days a week. The MTC was hopeful that this radical proposal would be a way that the area could slash vehicle gas emissions.

Within a month, San Francisco Mayor London Breed and San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said they could not support a proposal that mandated this action because it would bring economic harm to cities’ downtowns. Fifteen Bay Area representatives of the State Legislature also raised their concerns in a joint letter to the MTC. Soon after, MTC Commissioner Nick Josefowitz suggested that the requirements could be amended to target those who drive to work every day.

In November, the MTC did just that. They scrapped the original idea and instead adopted an alternative strategy to reduce carbon emissions and improve the region’s environment. Now, large employers (50+employees) will be asked to reduce employee vehicular commuting. Employers would be responsible for identifying and funding incentives to reduce car commuting to 40 percent by 2035. This mandate is due to California’s requirement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 19 percent by 2035. MTC must design and approve a plan to help meet the state’s mandate or risk losing $100 million in state funding by 2022.

The most significant implication of telecommuting, of course, is the lack of money going towards the state and federal gas tax. Fewer commuters mean less gas and less gas tax, which has substantial implications for funding infrastructure in the short- and long-term.

Most states and even cities are now trying to figure out how to make up the difference. Many counties and cities have already raised or are thinking about raising the gas tax to compensate. For example, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s recent budget proposal included increasing the city’s gas tax, ticket fines, and fees.

How to fund infrastructure was already a huge issue before the pandemic. Now, it will likely be the most significant issue (beyond the pandemic and the economy) on deck for upcoming state legislature sessions and Congress.

If more employees work from home post-pandemic, the implications will likely hit the pocketbooks of all of us one way or another.

The post Long-term Implications of Working from Home: NMA E-Newsletter #624 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Automatic License Plate Readers or ALPRs can detail a motorist’s comings and goings without any thought of whether the person driving is suspected of nefarious activity. Some motorists around the country are challenging ALPR tracking in court. The latest dispatch comes from Virginia.

In 2015, motorist Harrison Neal started his legal battle over the Fairfax Police Department’s use of automated license plate readers. Neal argued, with help from the Virginia Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, that Fairfax, a heavily populated DC suburb, used ALPRs to scan license plates of non-criminal suspects. The ongoing police surveillance amounted to a violation of state privacy laws.

After a lengthy civil trial, the judge ruled that the license plate data did not qualify as “personal information” because it was not attached to a name. The ACLU appealed, and the case ended up in the state’s highest court, where it was quickly remanded back to Fairfax County Circuit Court.

In that trial, Circuit Judge Robert Smith agreed with Neal and found the system “provides a means through which a link to the identity of a vehicle’s owner can be readily made.” The judge also stated that a “passive use” of the system violated the state’s data law and placed an injunction blocking the blanket capture of license plate information. The Fairfax police appealed, and the case again went to the State Supreme Court.

In October 2020, the state’s highest court rolled back Circuit Court Judge Smith’s decision. In a 15-page opinion, Justice Stephen McCullough wrote that to violate state law, the ALPR system would have to be a “record-keeping process,” noting that photos of cars with time and location data may be kept because they alone cannot identify a person. He added:

“The strictures of the Data Act contemplate accountability and responsibility by an agency for the data it keeps—not data it can query from other sources.”

McCullough acknowledged that this was indeed a loophole.

“These separate databases certainly facilitate the investigative process by confirming the accuracy of a hit generated by the ALPR-system, but they are not part of the ALPR system and do not form part of its record-keeping process.”

Virginia ACLU Executive Director Claire Gastanga noted that these systems allow police departments to track motorists going anywhere at anytime. She also issued the following in a written statement:

“This personal information sits in a database for a year whether you’re a suspect of a crime or not. Security and privacy can both be protected without giving police the unregulated power to collect private information ‘just because’ and ‘just in case.'”

Virginia State Police purge its database of license data after 24 hours. Some local departments keep license plate data for up to two years. Local police officials claim they use the information to solve crimes and find missing people.

The Fairfax County Police retain license plate data for one year. After the most recent ruling, Chief Edwin Roessler Jr. told the The Washington Post that his department “will continue to provide the highest level of ethical service to our communities while safeguarding the privacy and constitutional rights of all that we serve.”

The issue will likely be revisited in January by the Virginia General Assembly. In 2015, a bipartisan coalition of privacy advocates pushed a law through both state houses that was later vetoed by then-Governor Terry McAuliffe. The bill would have imposed a seven-day limit on keeping license plate data by police. State Senator Chap Peterson, who introduced the 2015 bill, said this about the Supreme Court’s most recent ruling:

“If taken to its logical conclusion, state or local agencies can collect and hold personal data indefinitely, as long as they keep it in separate databases with separate passwords. That misses the point of the Data Act, which is to prevent ‘the government’ from holding your personal information. Whether or not it can be shared within the government is not relevant, at least in my view.”

After Governor McAuliffe’s veto in 2015, Harrison Neal filed a freedom of information request with the Fairfax PD. He wanted records of his vehicle, and received two photos of his car and license plate, with the time and place taken. The state’s data act declares that within government agencies, “There shall be no personal information whose existence is secret” and “Information shall not be collected unless the need for it has been clearly established in advance.”

So, why was the Fairfax PD collecting Harrison Neal’s license plate data?

ACLUs Gastanga said in the Washington Post:

“The court is saying it’s just fine for police departments to engage in mass surveillance and indefinite retention of data and share it across agencies with no limit. Since it’s multiple agencies, somehow, it’s not covered. As long as Fairfax shared it and it can all be assessed in one place, it’s not a ‘system’ because it’s outside the agency.”

Gastanga also said that the Virginia General Assembly should take up the issue. She believes that civilian review boards of local police should become a part of the discussion, adding:

“These boards should consider reviewing policies and begin a conversation about how people should want to be policed, to tell their departments that this kind of unlimited passive collection of private information and data should stop. And, at a minimum, retention time should be limited.”

The NMA recommends that local and state ALPR regulations:

• Restrict the use of ALPRs to municipal, county or state law enforcement agencies
• Prevent sharing of plate data for any reason
• Require deletion of data after 10 days unless flagged
• Limit the types of crimes and violations that data can be used to investigate
• Restrict data matching to specific databases such the State Criminal Justice Information Network, National Crime Information Center and missing/kidnapped persons lists

Help us discover which communities are abusing the privacy rights of citizens by inquiring whether your locality permits ALPR use and, if so, what protections it has in place. Click here and then on “Write an Effective Public Records Request” for helpful tips on getting the information you seek from government agencies.

The post ALPRs win the Day in the Virginia Supreme Court: NMA E-Newsletter #623 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

The U.S. Postal Service provides a vital link between the NMA and you, our members. From the quarterly member magazine, Driving Freedoms, to letter status reports during these COVID times, we rely heavily on the usually reliable USPS to deliver our information to you throughout the year.

The postal service has undergone some changes in recent months, from the retirement of some high-speed sorting equipment to cutbacks in overtime for employees. The effect of these actions has often been a slowdown in the delivery cycle.

December is a critical period for nonprofits. It is the end-of-year, tax-planning month for many. Donations from supporters during these few weeks can make a significant difference in the resources available to us to further our mission of protecting and advancing the rights of motorists.

So what do these two things ─ mail delivery and December fundraising ─ have in common?

Every year, the NMA mails out a late November campaign letter to members asking for contributions to our cause. This year, that letter has been delayed. Our mailing was dropped at the post office immediately after the Thanksgiving weekend, but delivery is already running several days late.

In case you don’t receive that mailing from us soon, below is the message it contains from NMA President Gary Biller. If you haven’t done so already, please consider making a generous, tax-advantaged donation to the nonprofit National Motorists Association.

I love it when we strike a chord that resonates throughout the NMA membership. Such is the case with the proposition of NMA-led research initiatives designed to further public knowledge and create a broader dialog about issues motorists face every day. Member reaction to our request for the funding of such data-driven studies has been tremendous. 

The number of individuals donating during the first half of the current NMA fall campaign is up nearly 40 percent compared to similar fundraising periods of recent years! 

Please help us continue the momentum. If you haven’t had an opportunity to donate yet this year, take advantage of the tax benefit of gifting the nonprofit, 501(c)(3) National Motorists Association by December 31^st. Your contribution options are provided below. 

While the campaign has been going very well, please note that the NMA’s annual Spring fundraiser was canceled as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have much ground to make up to adequately fund an NMA research program. 

You can also help in another way: Let us know how you would prioritize the research projects noted below. Take the opportunity to suggest your own project ideas. Our email address is nma@motorists.org. We will feature many of the suggestions in the upcoming Winter 2021 issue of Driving Freedoms. 

Here are the four research projects currently under consideration: 

Effect on driver behavior & traffic safety of arbitrarily lowered posted speed limits
Some cities are rushing to lower speed limits while ignoring proven engineering safety standards. The “slower is safer” mantra is not accurate according to much data already gathered. An NMA study would expand the dataset and analyze the adverse effects of slowing traffic to a crawl, or as some are proposing, eliminating vehicular movement completely. 

The Statistical Accuracy of Traffic Accident Reports
Investigate whether assigned causes for accidents reflect reality on the road. Data collected from accident reports directly affect government highway safety policies which in turn influence enforcement actions. Poorly resolved data results in, at the least, misinformed policy.

The true cost to taxpayers of Vision Zero programs and the effect on road user safety
The cost to taxpayers, locally and nationally, for Vision Zero and Complete Streets programs, already staggeringly in the billions of dollars, continues to escalate. A hard look at the actual cost of such programs and their real effect on safety is overdue. 

The environmental impact of the use of stop signs rather than yield signs
Think of how many times each day you stop or slow down and speed back up at a lightly traveled intersection. Multiply that by millions of drivers and you get a sense of the wasteful expenditure of fuel, and the added wear-and-tear on vehicles. An added bonus: While environmentalists often see drivers as the enemy, this research project could convert them into becoming allies for freeing up traffic flow. 

Please add the NMA to your charitable organizations that you are supporting this year. Your gift can provide you with a 2020 tax benefit and can pay handsome dividends by funding our important motorist-related research.

THANK YOU!

The post Going Postal: NMA E-Newsletter #622 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

As of November 5^th, 33 people have been charged in an elaborate staged-accident scam involving slammers, spotters, crooked lawyers, and doctors. All are accused of conspiring to bilk insurance companies and commercial carriers for damages. The local police and FBI investigations are ongoing and more people are expected to be indicted in the near future.

The anatomy of a far-reaching fraud scam like this takes time and coordination. Here are just some of the particulars in the New Orleans scheme.

The Slammer

As a slammer, Cornelius Garrison would drive (with passengers in the car) and intentionally cause accidents with big trucks and other commercial vehicles as they were changing lanes. He would then abandon the vehicle, have one of the passengers pretend to be the driver, call 911, and report the crash. This is called a jump-in, false-claim scam designed to initiate fraudulent medical claims.

One example took place in 2015 when Garrison drove a Dodge Avenger into a bus. According to the indictment, the settlement resulted in a $677,500 windfall, and Garrison’s cut was $80,000.

In September, Cornelius Garrison was shot to death four days after the US Attorney’s Office in New Orleans filed charges. He was accused of staging over 50 wrecks and was murdered amid reports that he had been cooperating with federal investigators. Police continue to investigate his death.

The Lawyer

In late October, personal injury attorney Danny Keating Jr. was indicted for participating in as many as 31 staged accidents. He was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, for conspiring with alleged ringleader Damian Labeaud and others in a scheme to stage auto accidents intentionally. If convicted, Keating will face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Labeaud would refer staged accidents to Keating and other as-of-yet-unnamed New Orleans personal injury attorneys. Like Keating, attorneys would receive $1000 per passenger for accidents with tractor-trailers and $500 involving other vehicles. Keating represented 77 plaintiffs in 31 staged accidents and settled 17 cases for approximately $1.5 million.

Overall Costs of Staged Scams

The FBI estimates that the cost of non-health insurance scams cost $40 billion annually. US families end up paying for this with an average cost of $400 to $700 more on insurance each year.

The extensive New Orleans staged accident scam is far from settled, and the number of people involved in the conspiracy is staggering. But staged accidents can happen anytime, anywhere, and sometimes with only a solo criminal driver.

Here are several examples of various road scams:

The Swoop and Squat

Variation 1: Two vehicles working together target an innocent driver with the first fraudster in front and the other pulling up alongside. The first fraudster brakes hard, and the innocent driver rear-ends the first car because they were blocked by the second.

Variation 2: Two vehicles working together target an innocent driver with one fraudster in front who is cut off by the second fraudster causing the first one to hard brake, and the innocent driver read-ends the car.

Variation 3: Same as Variation 2 except with only one fraudster who speeds up along the innocent driver, cuts in, and then brakes hard—the innocent driver cannot escape the rear-end collision.

The Panic Stop

This scenario is similar to the swoop and squat. The fraud car is in front often with several passengers who watch you drive. If you take your eyes off the road for a split-second, the fraud car slams on the brakes. Another rear-ender, and guess what—it’s your fault.

The Wave and Hit or the Drive Down

The fraudster signals with a wave or a headlight flash that it’s safe to proceed to an innocent driver trying to merge or change lanes. The criminal then sideswipes the car, denying later they ever signaled or waved. This fraud is also prevalent in parking lots.

The Sideswipe

This staged accident occurs at intersections with two left-turning lanes. The innocent driver accidentally drifts into the other lane on the turn, or the fraudster does and sideswipes. The scammer will claim the other driver caused the accident. A similar scenario can happen with turning right and leaving a parking space from the curb.

Start-and-Stop

This accident fraud occurs in heavy traffic. The scammer drives ahead of the innocent driver and begins to move but for no reason brakes and forces a rear-end collision.

What can you do?

Avoid becoming a staged accident victim by utilizing the following tips from the National Insurance Crime Bureau (and a few of our own).

1. Don’t tailgate. Leave adequate room between you and the car in front of you in case they hard brake suddenly. The National Safety Council recommends the three-second rule by which the trailing driver leaves a three-second cushion of travel time between him and the vehicle in front.
2. In parking lots, drive slowly and pay close attention to others driving or walking near you.
3. When leaving the curb, be aware of what is happening behind you and proceed with caution.
4. Don’t drift into another lane when turning left.
5. When turning right, proceed with caution and account for all vehicles, bicyclists, and pedestrians in the area.
6. Call the police to the accident scene and obtain a police report (with the officer’s name) even if the accident has minimal damage.
7. Use your smartphone camera or a disposable camera in your car to document accident damage and the number of passengers in other vehicles.
8. Avoid “runners” and “cappers.” These are people who appear from nowhere, directing you to personal injury attorneys. They are generally part of a broader insurance scam.
9. Avoid doctors who insist you file a personal injury claim if you are not hurt.
10. Do not allow any tow truck driver who arrives on the scene to take your vehicle. Make your own call for a tow and get the fees upfront in writing. Check out more on this from the NMA E-Newsletter #611—Protect Yourself from Predatory Towing.

If you think you have been involved in a staged accident, call your insurance agent, the police, the state insurance commission, and report it to the National Insurance Crime Bureau by calling 800-835-6422 or submitting a form on the NICB website. If you want more information, download the NICB brochure on Staged Automobile Accident Fraud.

The post Extensive Staged-Accident Scam in New Orleans: NMA E-Newsletter #621 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Black Friday kicked off the 2020 holiday gift-buying season. As a matter of fact, Black Friday sales this year started in the early part of November instead of the day after Thanksgiving. Most of these sales will likely be online due to the pandemic. According to Digital Commerce 360, US consumers are projected to spend $198.73 billion with online retailers this holiday season. That is 43.3 percent higher than the same period last year.

Even before the COVID crisis, online shopping expanded so quickly that delivery companies struggled to keep up with demand. In September, Ware2Go (founded by UPS) released a survey that showed market shift brought on by COVID-19 prompted unprecedented demand. Ware2Go CEO Steve Denton said in a recent interview, “We’re anticipating this year’s shipping volumes to hit a new peak. With most supply chains already working above their 2019 peak shipping volumes, we recognize that this holiday season will be unlike any the industry has seen.”

That’s this year, but what happens to delivery when the pandemic is over?

Many companies are investing heavily to develop the newest delivery device, whether it’s sidewalk robots, flying drones, or electric cargo bikes. Several plan to go driverless to cut down on the cost of drivers and more will likely make their fleets electric.

Whatever happens, consumers will continue to shop online at unprecedented rates, which means the demand to deliver our stuff will be greater than ever. Logistyx Technologies President Ken Fleming said recently in an interview the changes will last beyond the pandemic, “E-commerce growth is great news for most trucking businesses, especially those supporting e-commerce order fulfillment, as delivery volume to distribution centers and directly to consumers keeps rising.”

One of the most significant changes in delivery is that instead of shipping to a grocery retailer, trucking companies are delivering to an e-commerce middleman warehouse, which then does the final hand-off. This means more final-mile deliveries.

Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, announced earlier this month that it would expand in-garage delivery for Prime members to 4,000 US cities. In 2017, the company launched Amazon Key to deliver packages inside homes with smart front door locks and indoor cameras for customer reassurance. They wanted to solve the problem of porch theft. Amazon Key drew mixed reviews and had since focused on delivery to garages (and car trunks) in 50 US cities.

Walmart also recently announced that it would team up with Cruise, a driverless car operation owned primarily by General Motors. The two companies will begin a program to test driverless-vehicle delivery of goods directly to Scottsdale, AZ customers. Walmart has also teamed up with Waymo (the driverless-vehicle unit of Google parent Alphabet) in a similar program. The Arkansas-based company has also started experimenting with delivery via flying drones.

Fight for curb space is also intensifying in urban centers. Four cities (Aspen, CO; West Palm Beach, FL; Omaha, NE; and Nashville, TN) are the latest to participate in pilot programs to evaluate apps that supposedly will help improve congestion by renting curbside time for delivery and rideshare companies.

Cities, mobility companies, urban planners, anti-car activists, and Big Bike all see dollar signs when it comes to the lowly street curb, which was paid for with taxpayer dollars.

New York City recently stepped up efforts to curb deliveries during morning and afternoon rush hours between Sixth and Madison Avenues from 45^th to 50^th streets. Trucking Association of New York President Kendra Hems said even though a group of trucking associations has asked about the pilot program’s effectiveness, the ad hoc coalition has not yet received an answer from the city. She added there are two other problems for NYC delivery trucks:

1. Business owners schedule deliveries, leaving truck drivers and delivery companies to pay any fines that are levied, and
2. Closed streets and newly placed streetside restaurants due to the pandemic have made it harder for truckers to deliver goods.

The future of delivery looks bright for delivery and freight companies, but what about the rest of us? Of course, the convenience of having stuff delivered directly to our doors might save us time and money, but convenience should not be the only consideration. As more and more delivery trucks and other automated delivery devices crowd the roadways, what impact will this have on overall congestion? More personalized delivery intermingled with rideshare and increased driverless car traffic has already had a significant impact on motorists in urban cores. For rural residents, finding goods in stores might become an issue if more products go to a middleman warehouse instead of directly to stores.

Auto manufacturer, delivery, and tech company executives have formed a new group that will grapple with future transport’s thorniest issues. The Commission on the Future of Mobility plans to put together a new regulatory framework for the global transportation sector going through a worldwide transition driven by shared, connected, autonomous, and electric technologies.

Can the industries that profit from these changes be trusted to make decisions that serve the public’s best interests? Likely, corporate interests will take priority, leaving the rest of us to cope with the mobility landscape that emerges.

The post The Future of Delivery: NMA E-Newsletter #620 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

We like clever wordplay as much as the next guy. The double entendre of the title, however, stirs an emotion stronger and more negative than “like.”

Christopher Matthew Spencer, one of our most active members in Southern California, led the charge by submitting a public records request to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office (LADA). He had strong suspicions about the unethical use of funds seized by the county under state civil asset forfeiture statutes.

His October 2020 request sought:

“(A) List of expenses relating to all promotions, conferences, events, functions, and so forth that was spent by the DA’s office to promote and hold their asset forfeiture seminars. For a period of 36 months.”

Spencer’s action was triggered by the knowledge that such seminars cost over $100 per hour of DA’s staff time to organize. As he wryly notes, “There are plenty of ways for the government to (appear to) reduce cost.”

It took Christopher Matthew 45 days to get a response to his records request because of claims by LADA that they “didn’t pay anything.” Only through persistently aggressive follow up by Spencer did the stonewalling crumble.

LADA’s response was careful to note that “No taxpayer dollars are used to promote and hold asset forfeiture seminars. The training is funded with assets seized and forfeited in accordance with Health and Safety Code Section 11489(b)(2). Under the law, 1% of assets seized and forfeited shall be distributed to “a private nonprofit organization composed of local prosecutors which shall use  these funds for the exclusive purpose of providing a statewide program of education and training for prosecutors and law enforcement officers in ethics and the proper use of laws permitting the seizure and forfeiture of assets under this chapter.”

With that, LADA produced records that showed that it knew how to lead the monetary charge. LADA entered into an agreement with the Los Angeles County Prosecutors Association (CPA) through which the CPA would provide reimbursement for associated costs. That reimbursement ostensibly fell within the 1% rule of using seized assets from citizens, of which motorists are particularly vulnerable, to conduct such training.

Among the records that Spencer received were those related to a March 14 – 16, 2018 “Asset Forfeiture Summit for Law Enforcement Executives” at the luxurious Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa in Dana Point, CA. Was the ethics clause of 11489(b)(2) served by charging over $88,000 worth of rooms and catering at an out-of-county luxury resort? The Marriott provided some credits to the overall charges, but the fact remains that property seized by law enforcement was used to fund posh seminars designed to teach participants how to optimize the handling of forfeitures.

We’ve seen this playbook before. LADA/CPA hold lavish asset forfeiture seminars for prosecutors and law enforcement agencies that are supported financially by property seizures that often occur without the property owners being charged with a crime, let alone convicted. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration hands out annual enforcement grants to the states based in large part on how many tickets a given state issued the year before. In other words, the states are encouraged to conduct ticket quota campaigns to get more government funding to run revenue-producing ticket quota operations.

Is it any wonder that the NMA’s agenda in Washington DC continues to be the reform of civil asset forfeiture laws and the elimination of government-funded ticket-quota incentives? In both cases, the systems feed on themselves, enriching government agencies while targeting the public for sanctioned abuse.

Spencer reached out to Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger as well as Deputy District Attorney Joseph Iniguez to seek answers and ask for an investigation into the asset forfeiture seminars. “I recommended to the DA’s office that instead of enriching the owners of luxury resorts and fancy restaurants, they could use legally retained proceeds from seizure activities to rent high school auditoriums to conduct seminars. We’ve heard over and over again how schools across the nation are suffering budget crises. The $88,310.63 spent at the Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa would help educate a lot of school children—the DA can pay school districts for the use of their idle spaces for these events,” he added.

The post Leading the Charge: NMA E-Newsletter #619 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Statewide ballot initiatives and local votes on infrastructure and transit have now been finalized from the November 3, 2020 election. Check out the final results below from the motorists’ rights statewide initiatives we outlined in the NMA weekly E-Newsletter #612. Important local election results follow the state ballot initiatives reporting.

Statewide Ballot Initiatives

Arkansas

Arkansas Transportation Sales Tax Continuation Amendment (2020)

Passed by a 55 percent majority.

The state will create a permanent 0.5 percent sales tax that pays for infrastructure funding.

California

California Proposition 22, App-Based Drivers as Contractors and Labor Policies Initiative (2020)

Passed by a 58 percent majority.

Rideshare and food delivery companies spent $205 million to win this vote. Gig drivers are still gig drivers with few benefits. Here are a few articles on this important vote with national implications:

• Uber wins big over gig workers in California Prop 22 vote (Fast Company)
• California’s vote to keep Uber drivers as contractors is a blow to the labor movement (Fast Company)
• Proposition 22 Passes, But Uber and Lyft Are Only Delaying the Inevitable (Vice)
• Uber, Lyft see California ballot win as national model (Auto News)
• California’s Prop 22 Wins in Massive Handout to Unsustainable Transportation (Streetsblog USA)

California Proposition 24, Consumer Personal Information Law and Agency Initiative (2020)

Passed by a 56 percent majority.

California will now expand the state’s consumer data privacy laws and will create the Privacy Protection Agency to enforce the state’s data privacy laws.

• California voters approve Prop. 24, ushering in new rules for online privacy (Los Angeles Times)
• California’s Prop 24, the “California Privacy Rights Act,” Passed. What’s Next? (Future of Privacy Forum)

Georgia

The Georgia Dedicating Tax and Fee Revenue Amendment (2020)

Passed by an 82 percent majority.

State officials will now change the state constitution to ensure that the legislature spends funds from fees or taxes on designated projects, rather than divert them.

Maryland

Maryland Question 1, Legislative Authority over State Budget Amendment (2020)

Passed by a 76 percent majority.

State officials may now change the state constitution to allow the Maryland General Assembly to increase, decrease, or add items to the state budget as long as those items do not exceed the total proposed budget submitted by the governor.

Massachusetts

Massachusetts Question 1, “Right to Repair Law” Vehicle Data Access Requirement Initiative (2020)

Passed by a 75 percent majority.

Question 1 received a great deal of national press because of its potential to establish a precedent for other states on crucial car ownership issues. Automakers spent $43 million to defeat the measure.

• Massachusetts Voters overwhelmingly back ‘Right to Repair’ ballot question, reject ranked-choice voting (Boston Globe)
• Massachusetts voters pass right-to-repair expansion opening up car data (Auto Blog)
• Massachusetts Voters Affirm the Right To Repair Your Own Car (Reason)

Michigan

Michigan Search Warrant for Electronic Data Amendment (2020)

Passed by an 89 percent majority.

This constitutional amendment will now require a police search warrant to access a suspect’s electronic data and electronic communications. Other states will hopefully be encouraged to build their own initiatives on personal data protection standards.

Virginia

Virginia Motor Vehicle Property Tax Exemption for Disabled Veterans Amendment (2020)

Passed by an 86 percent majority.

Permanently disabled vets will now have an exemption from state and local property taxes on one car or truck.

Important Local Ballot Initiatives

Credit: Michael Rivera

Alabama

Baldwin County voters said no (for the second time) to a toll on the Baldwin Beach Express to I-65. Millions have already been spent on the project, which now has no more funding sources.

California

Bay Area Caltrain Measure RR passed, which will create a new 1/8 cent sales tax to help fund Caltrain service. The funding will help keep the train running and keep the train electrification project on schedule.

Colorado

Initiative 2A passed and Denverites will soon be paying 0.25 percent more in sales tax (for a total of 8.81 percent) to move the city closer to decreasing greenhouse gas emissions 100 percent by 2040.

Georgia

Gwinnett County voters for a second time rejected a transit plan that would have levied a one percent sales tax to fund a $12 billion transit expansion that included an extension of MARTA’s (Atlanta area) Gold Line into the county and a new rapid bus system.

Maine

Portland passed Referendum Question B: Act to Ban Facial Surveillance by Public Officials. Residents can now sue for illegal surveillance under the ban. City employees can also face suspension or termination if caught violating the new ordinance.

Montana

Property taxes will be going up slightly in Missoula. Voters passed by a 59 percent majority the Urban Transportation District’s mill levy request. The $3 million raised annually will add increased service on weekends, frequency on popular routes and increase chances for all-electric bus fleet by 2035.

Oregon

Portland Metro Measure 26-218 did not pass by a wide margin (57 to 43 percent). The Let’s Get Portland Moving initiative wanted to expand transit, biking and walking by placing a payroll tax on large employers in the area.

Credit: Stuart Seeger

Texas

Austin voters approved two transit-related measures: One to raise taxes to fund several new light rail lines and other transportation infrastructure, and another to improve pedestrian and biking infrastructure with a city loan of $460 million. Similar measures failed in 2000 and 2014.

San Antonio voters approved by 68 percent to allocate a portion of local sales taxes to fund improvements to the city’s VIA bus network.

Washington State

Eighty-two percent of Seattle voters approved a new sales tax to preserve frequent bus service, shuttle vans, and free student fares. The six-year measure of a 0.15 percent sales tax will generate $42 million a year.

The post Motorists Vote 2020 Ballot Initiatives Final Count: NMA E-Newsletter #618 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

By Shelia Dunn, NMA Communications Director

For years, an ongoing debate has been raging in the media about who would be responsible when a driverless vehicle injured or killed another road user. Perhaps, we will soon have the answer.

In March 2018, Elaine Herzberg jaywalked from a center median with her bicycle across a dark street in Tempe, Arizona, and was hit by a driverless car. This tragic accident was the first US death involving another road user and an autonomous vehicle.

Dashboard video was taken of the street and inside the car at the time of the accident. The safety driver on board, Rafaela Vasquez, was distracted and unable to avert from the accident at the last minute. In autonomous mode, the Uber traveled 38 mph in a 35 mph zone and did not attempt to brake.

I have written about this accident quite extensively in the past. The week after the accident, I detailed what happened and some of the issues involved on the NMA Blog.

The Tempe police chief stated at the time that the autonomous Uber was not at fault in Herzberg’s death. Chief Sylvia Moir told the San Francisco Chronicle after reviewing the video, “It’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode based on how she (Herzberg) came from the shadows right into the highway.”

Local police and both the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigated the accident. The state of Arizona immediately suspended permission for Uber to continue testing driverless vehicles in the state. Uber reacted by pulling all of its related programs from other states until partial reinstatement several months later. Soon after the accident, Uber also settled for an undisclosed amount with the Herzberg family.

In March 2019, Yavapai County Judge Sheila Sullivan Polk declared that Uber had no criminal liability in the death of Elaine Herzberg.

In November of that same year, the NTSB concluded its investigation with a 400-page document that stated that neither Uber, the state of Arizona nor the car’s operator were vigilant. The report also concluded that Uber’s driverless car technology revealed a cascade of poor design decisions that led the Volvo XC90 SUV to process improperly and respond to Herzberg’s presence as she crossed the roadway. The vehicle’s radar did not detect Herzberg until about six seconds before the accident. The system could also not classify an object as a pedestrian walking a bicycle unless they were near a crosswalk. Herzberg was 100 feet from the nearest crosswalk.

The Volvo’s automatic braking system had also been disabled because its electronics interfered with Uber’s self-driving sensors.

The NTSB report also criticized the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the federal road safety agency, for not regulating driverless car tests on public roads. One of the NTSB members stated, “There’s no requirement. There’s no evaluation. There are no real standards issued.”

NHTSA has avoided autonomous driving regulations and instead issued voluntary guidelines, including safety assessment reports. As of this week, more than 2-1/2 years later, NHTSA has not yet issued its report on the accident.

Fast forward to September 2020—a Maricopa County grand jury has charged the Uber safety driver Rafaela Vasquez with negligent homicide in the death of Elaine Herzberg. Her employer, Uber, and the company that built the automated system involved in the fatal crash won’t be charged.

Before the accident, Vasquez (a backup driver waiting for the primary autonomous driving system to alert her when an intervention was needed) was watching her phone instead of the road. Ryan Calo, University of Washington School of Law Professor (who studies robotics), stated to Wired Magazine in a recent interview, “That’s a simple story, that her negligence was the cause of (Herzberg’s) death. Bring a case against the company, and you have to tell a more complicated story about how driverless cars work and what Uber did wrong.”

Even if Vasquez had been watching the road, could she have reacted in time? For decades, research has shown it is challenging for humans to keep attention focused on partially automated tasks. That is why up until late 2017, Uber used two safety drivers to solve the “automation complacency” problem. However, the company went to a one driver requirement a few months before the tragic accident, presumably to save money.

Also, weeks before Herzberg was killed, an Uber whistleblower named Robbie Miller warned company executives in an email about safety issues. He told top officials, “A car was damaged nearly every other day in February (2018). We shouldn’t be hitting things every 15,000 miles.” He also added, “Several of the drivers appear not to have been properly vetted or trained.”

As we slowly gravitate to autonomous levels 3, 4, and 5 (no human intervention), the responsibility factor will become even more acute.

The trial of former Uber safety driver Rafaela Vasquez, the least-deep-pocket target on the liability list, begins soon.

The post So, Who IS Responsible in a Driverless Car Accident?: NMA E-Newsletter #617 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

By Tom Pearson, NMA Alabama Member

Editor’s Note: The issue of abolishing jaywalking regulations, particularly where high-volume, inner-city streets are concerned, is a tricky one. In last week’s NMA E-Newsletter, #615, Arthur Miller made a compelling case that road safety suffers when one set of users (pedestrians) can cross the street whenever and wherever they like, and another set (drivers) is held responsible for dealing with the uncertainty involved. Tom Pearson provides a thoughtful rebuttal in this newsletter, presenting a rationale for eliminating jaywalking rules. 

Eleven years ago, NMA Newsletter #32, A Different Kind Of Distracted Driving, described how the town of Drachten, in the Netherlands, removed all traffic regulatory signs — and even street-to-sidewalk curbing — in the spirit of what Hans Monderman espoused, as noted by Tom in this newsletter. The result was fewer accidents and better overall road safety. 

But there is a key difference between eliminating all regulations, like what Drachten did, where every road user knows that having no rules actually means everyone is reacting to the same set of circumstances, and what New York City is proposing by eliminating jaywalking rules. In the latter case, the pedestrian (and presumably, bicyclist) class of road user is free to cross the road with impunity, leaving the driver to guess what each pedestrian’s personal decision-making behavior outside of normal crosswalk protocols will be, while also bearing responsibility for any mishap that occurs. 

Attorneys Miller and Pearson make solid cases on either side of the jaywalking issue. We present both for your consideration.

Eliminating Jaywalking Laws Will Make Roads Safer? A Response

I don’t usually comment, but I must speak up in opposition to aspects of this week’s newsletter.

Though certainly not appropriate for all roadways, I believe that the elimination of jaywalking rules is, in general, a very good thing. While rules are important, more important, is that everyone using the roadway space pays attention to what they are doing when using that space.

As the pioneering work of Hans Monderman has demonstrated, too many rules, especially those providing right-of-way to drivers or pedestrians, are associated with less attention to driving or walking in a shared space. The rule creates the psychological presumption that everyone knows and will follow the rule. The rule seeks to ensure safety and draws attention to the “rights” in the space rather than what is actually happening. Drivers and pedestrians assume that the rule has covered the safety aspects of the space and, therefore, they can relax. Relaxed, inattentive drivers and pedestrians cause accidents.

We don’t want people thinking primarily about rules when they are in shared spaces like roads. Instead, we want them to keep an eye out in an environment where not doing so often means the difference between life and death.

In this case, on the fly negotiations between users of the space using eye contact and a variety of signals is safer than implementing right-of-way rules. For accidents that occur, tort doctrines like the “last clear chance” work well in resolving liability in such cases.

Further, the author dismisses the racial component of law enforcement out of hand because the rule is neutral on its face. Well, so what? Every rule issued by a state is a potential point of bias or corruption because its enforcement relies on armed officers interacting with citizens. Because a significant number of officers don’t seem to be able to keep their personal biases out of or cannot resist abusing the power that comes with their law enforcement duties, it behooves us to keep their duties restricted to the enforcement of only rules that are absolutely necessary and effective for ensuring the liberty of the people to go about their business in a reasonably safe manner.

Absolute safety cannot and should not be the goal.

I share the author’s opposition to dirty license plates being a pretext for a police stop but wish that he could see that the same logic applies by and large to jaywalking rules.

I am also an attorney and, though I share the author’s concerns about road safety, I firmly disagree with much of what he advocates as a solution to road safety issues. As Monderman has demonstrated, making the rules in shared spaces ambiguous often results in safer use of the spaces as well as more efficient flow. In the experiments he carried out in a dozen European cities, he went so far as to remove all traffic lights and other indications of how one should navigate the space. That required users of the space to remain focused on the situation rather than using the “rules” as a psychological excuse for not devoting full attention to a risky activity.

That approach aligns the risks of everyone who uses a roadway with the necessity of paying attention and the benefits of staying alive. Reliance on rights of way, on the other hand, subsidizes inattentive behavior and makes everyone less safe.

The post Eliminating Jaywalking Laws Will Make Roads Safer? A Response: NMA E-Newsletter #616 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

By guest writer Arthur Miller, NYC NMA Member, traffic attorney, and co-owner of the New York Truck Stop website and podcast.

The foundation of road safety for all users, motor vehicles, and pedestrians alike, is order and predictability. One of the most dangerous scenarios for a driver lawfully proceeding under power is when someone jaywalks in front of them. Jaywalking means that a person crosses in the middle of the street instead of at an intersection, or in a marked crosswalk, or against the traffic signals.

This week, Bloomberg City Lab posted an article co-written by Angie Schmitt, former Streetsblog USA editor and a self-described expert on pedestrian safety, and Charles Brown, a researcher and adjunct professor at Rutgers University. The title of their opinion piece: 9 Reasons to Eliminate Jaywalking Laws Now or Jaywalking Laws don’t Make Streets Safer.

Using Orwellian doublespeak and fuzzy logic, the writers claim that jaywalking rules really don’t protect pedestrians, are racially biased, and that there are better ways to protect the public. But will eliminating jaywalking rules really help anyone?

The very first traffic rules, issued in 1903, dealt with the issue of who has the right-of-way on a city street:

“The roadbeds of highways and streets are primarily intended for vehicles, but pedestrians have the right to cross them in safety, and drivers… must exercise all possible care not to injure pedestrians.… By crossing a street as nearly as possible at right angles, preferably at a regular crossing…pedestrians will greatly add to their own safety, facilitate the movement of traffic, and make it much less difficult for the horses, which often have to be reined in suddenly and painfully to avoid careless and unthinking pedestrians… “

The writer of those rules, the so-called father of traffic regulations, William Phelps Eno, realized that to rein in street chaos and promote safety:

1. We must have concise, simple, and just rules, easily understood, obeyed, and enforced under legal enactment.
2. These rules must be so placed and circulated that there can be no excuse for not knowing them.
3. The police must be empowered and ordered to enforce them, and men should be trained for that purpose.

Safety is best maintained when everyone knows the rules and that police are empowered to enforce them.

Most of us jaywalk, simply because we can. Our time is precious. We think we can cut through traffic safely. We think the car will stop for us. We believe the rhetoric of safety “advocates” that we have the right-of-way. But as the most vulnerable of road users, we cannot always assume that the operator of a heavy piece of machinery will see us or be able to stop in time. And the operators of motor vehicles should have a reasonable expectation that vulnerable road users like pedestrians and cyclists will follow established norms of behavior.

Why Eliminate the Rule against Jaywalking and Who Benefits from it?

The question remains—who has the right-of-way on a city street? If there is no rule against jaywalking, will pedestrians cross the street at will wherever they want along the street?

Researchers already know that jaywalking will be detrimental for future driverless cars, but what about motorists now?

One of the basic tenets of Vision Zero is that in a vehicular accident involving a pedestrian or bicyclist, the driver is always responsible. (In fact, many VZ supporters want the word “accident” stricken from traffic safety vernacular, replacing it with “road or traffic violence.”) While drivers have the primary responsibility to avoid injuring pedestrians and cyclists, VZ fails when it leaves vulnerable road users with the impression that rules do not apply to them and that they have no responsibility for their own safety.

The NMA contends that every road user has a responsibility for their own actions that impact their safety and others around them. If tragedy strikes, it is crucial that investigators determine who was at fault. There are times when it is the driver, but there is a growing sentiment to make that the default determination.

Recently, a New York City councilmember brought forth a new bill to decriminalize jaywalking. If this passes, other cities will likely follow suit. If you drive at all, you know that jaywalking is prevalent everywhere, but no longer making it a technical violation gives pedestrians the freedom to do what they want.

At the time, the New York Daily News wrote an article about this proposed law, and I was so incensed by the idea that I wrote this letter-to-the-editor.

‘It’s abundantly clear, from the article ‘Queens Councilman’s Bill Would Decriminalize Jaywalking in NYC‘ (September 16) that transportation policy in this town is dictated by the personal injury lawyers and tech-investing venture capitalists. They shamelessly use safety and race as emotional selling points to maximize their court wins and get people to give up their cars and use app-based services instead. Jaywalking is not a crime. There are no criminal repercussions. It’s an offense like any other traffic violation and countless other rules, like having a dirty license plate or drinking in public, any of which are grounds for a police stop. Don’t want cops to stop jaywalkers? Then tell City Hall. Most pedestrian injuries involve jaywalking or crossing against the light. Other factors like pedestrian impairment by alcohol, drugs, and cell phone distraction are hardly measured. Go ahead. Make our streets less safe by telling pedestrians they’re not even partly responsible for their own safety. The personal injury lawyers will get them or their estates more money.”

They Don’t Care about Safety 

Rules of the road are needed for safety. People must know their rights and responsibilities. The NYC proposal would change the law to read that pedestrians are simply “advised” to cross in the crosswalk at the green and not mid-street instead of “shall” do so. 

Since the COVID-19 crisis began, here in NYC, at least, the local and state governments are cutting the amount spent on public safety education…and they were not spending very much before. The highly touted school zone speed camera program puts millions into NYC’s general funds, but none of that is dedicated to promoting traffic safety. If drivers are required to be educated on rules of the road, why not educate pedestrians and other road users on road safety rules and how they can help assure their own safety. 

Drivers certainly have the primary responsibility for roadway safety and avoidance of pedestrians and cyclists. But VZ proponents do a great disservice to public safety when they give vulnerable road users the idea that they have no responsibility for their own safety.

Use of the Race Card is Disingenuous

I agree that jaywalking should not be a basis for a stop and frisk by the police, but that’s an entirely different issue. Don’t allow officers to use simple offenses like jaywalking as a basis for stopping people. The Daily News article stated that the police issued 397 jaywalking tickets in 2019, and 89 percent went to Black and Hispanic pedestrians. But police can lawfully use the violation of ANY offense in NY to stop a person of interest… from jaywalking to drinking in public.

Did you know, though, that in the first eight months of 2020, NYC police officers issued 3,200 tickets for an “obstructed/dirty license plate?” Want to talk about police stops for spurious reasons—can’t imagine anyone getting hurt because a driver had a dirty or obscured plate. How many of those stops were really because the driver was Black or Hispanic?

Racial profiling is a huge issue and needs to be solved through reform efforts. However, changing jaywalking rules have nothing to do with race and everything to do with traffic safety.

Changing the Jaywalking Law Benefits Personal Injury Lawyers. 

Comparative negligence is the issue, which means that in a civil action for damages, the degree of personal responsibility of the plaintiff is a factor in the awarding of damages. The standards vary among states. In New York, personal injury lawyers have great sway— a person can be 90 percent at fault and sue the other party for 10 percent responsibility. In New Jersey, though, if a plaintiff is more than 50 percent responsible, they collect nothing.

Here’s a site that lists the standards for state negligence laws if you’re interested in learning more about your state’s information.

During a personal injury trial for injuries to a pedestrian,  in a comparative negligence state like NY, a judge instructs the jury about the jaywalking rule. In the jury’s assessment of the parties’ rights and responsibilities in awarding a decision, the law must be considered. If jaywalking is no longer a rule, the judge cannot advise the jury that the pedestrian’s actions or even the pedestrian’s responsibilities are to be considered in an award. If you kill the rule against jaywalking, personal injury lawyers have it made…And all our auto insurance rates go up, too!

The App Sellers and Telecom Providers are the Big Beneficiaries

Distracted driving, along with distracted walking and biking, are huge problems that few researchers adequately measure. Data are rarely collected from pedestrians or cyclists about their distractions. I’ve had cops tell me about grizzly pedestrian deaths where the pedestrian still had earbuds in place.

But Big Tech and Telecomm providers want to sell you more apps and other distractions—it’s their business model. We even see car commercials touting all the app-based distractions (“It’s an Alexa, not a Buick,” says one TV ad). The app and telecom industry must take more responsibility. 

Jaywalking and cyclist deaths were plummeting for years until about 2009, according to this 2018 Governor’s Highway Safety Association Report. Anti-car and Big Bike advocates claim that the rise in fatalities coincided with the rise in SUVs and pickups. But the rise also coincided with the debut of the iPhone, which came out in the summer of 2007— go figure.

A takeaway from the GHSA report cited above is that most pedestrian deaths involve jaywalking. A sizeable number of these tragic accidents involve pedestrians walking at night under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Clearly, rules and public education would do more for safety than telling pedestrians that rules do not apply to them.”

Editor’s Note: For more about the reality of pedestrian fatality statistics, check out Problem Solving Ain’t What It Used to Be (NMA E-Newsletter #496)

The post Eliminating Jaywalking Laws Will Make Roads Safer?: NMA E-Newsletter #615 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Reason Foundation’s Transportation Guru Robert Poole released a study in August of how nine states could financially benefit if they were to lease their toll road systems to private concerns. Poole writes that these states would gain significant income from a long-term public-private partnership (P3), especially if the state had already paid off its outstanding tax-exempt toll road bonds.

Apparently, this kind of P3 is an accepted practice in Australia and several other countries. The idea is that the government sells or leases its revenue-producing assets to unlock those assets’ future value. Proceeds, either by an upfront or annual payment, could then be used for other high-priority public purposes, and the government gets out from under managing that asset.

The city of Chicago has done that with its Skyway Road. So has the Indiana Toll Road, a P3 project that went bankrupt in 2014, only to have it turned over to another private party to try again. Even though the Chicago and Indiana roads are both part of the Interstate Highway System, the two vital transportation routes are not owned or operated by the state or federal governments.

Poole indicated in the study that the following nine state-owned toll road systems would benefit from a long-term P3 lease:

• Florida Turnpike is a 309-mile northwest to southeast axis spanning from north of Tampa to Fort Lauderdale.
• Illinois Tollway has 294 miles of toll roads in 12 counties (including the Chicago area) in Northern Illinois.
• Kansas Turnpike is a 236-mile-long toll road from the southeast near the Oklahoma border to the northeast and ends in Kansas City.
• Massachusetts Turnpike is a single 138-mile toll road extending from the western part of the state to Boston on the Atlantic coast.
• New Jersey Turnpike has 117 miles of controlled-access highways, a major thoroughfare providing access to localities in New Jersey plus Delaware, New York, and Pennsylvania.
• New York Thruway spans 570 miles in upstate NY. Cashless tolling will be implemented in November 2020.
• Ohio Turnpike is a single 214 mile-long toll road that serves as the primary corridor between Chicago and Pittsburgh.
• Oklahoma Turnpike Authority has an extensive turnpike system with ten toll roads (and a few more planned), totaling 606 miles across the state. Fourteen percent of Oklahoma highways are toll roads.
• Pennsylvania Turnpike is a 360-mile east-west toll road highway. Much of the proceeds go to the state’s DOT to help pay for transit.

The Reason Foundation also provided a second post of Frequently Asked Questions on Poole’s report. Last month, Poole wrote an additional opinion piece called Would Leasing a Toll Road Contradict the Users-Pay Principle?

In that article, he examined in more detail the concept of state-owned enterprises. States create SOEs to carry out a specific business purpose, but Poole writes that they are constrained by political obligations, unlike private businesses. He argued that “monetizing” the asset value of a state-owned road would be wise if three criteria were respected:

• A competitive bidding process would only be open to highly qualified toll road operators with positive track records.
• The long-term lease’s terms and conditions will need to include critical outcomes such as emergency response, pavement quality, and early termination if things go wrong.
• The company would need place limits on toll increases and should index for inflation.

NJ.com transportation reporter Larry Higgs wrote an article about the Poole study asking readers to remember back to 2007 when then-New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine’s promoted his ill-fated “monetization” plan. The idea was similar—lease the state’s toll roads to a private company for decades to earn fast cash to help pay state debts and fund its Transportation Trust Fund. Higgs wrote that the plan proposed four 50-percent toll hikes over the lease’s duration plus annual toll hikes. Angry drivers (especially in South Jersey where there are few travel options), opposed to the idea, came to public meetings en masse and quashed the plan.

NMA New Jersey Government & Public Affairs Director Steve Carrellas said in the article about the Poole study, “This is an interesting perspective on toll road “monetization,” but as these things usually turn out, they are too good to be true.”

In Florida, where at least four new toll roads are currently under consideration, Poole claimed that taxpayers could save between $11 billion to $17.9 billion if a 50-year P3 lease for the Florida Turnpike’s outside operation was signed. Poole added, “The bottom line is the immense value of the Florida Turnpike system could be used to improve the state’s fiscal condition greatly.”

Using comparable data from long-term P3 leases worldwide, Poole estimated that after paying off outstanding turnpike bonds, the state of Florida could receive an upfront payment of $14.5 billion for a 50-year lease. He suggested three possible uses for the lease proceeds:

• Address $64.3 billion in unfunded 2045 Multi-Modal Plan projects
• Reduce state debt to secure a higher bond rating and then receive future lower interest rates
• Slash the state’s retirement system’s $22 billion “unfunded liability.”

Poole claimed that most of these worldwide P3 long-term leases limit annual toll rate increases to the rate of inflation. The toll road company would likely speed up modernization efforts and implement electronic tolling. Instead, a more likely scenario is that any private enterprise would optimize profits by continuously hiking tolls and skimping on maintenance, as evidenced by post-lease actions in past P3s deals.

States might be tempted to pursue a P3 for existing toll roads as the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically cut traffic volumes and revenues. City and state officials would need to chop budgets and public services to stay solvent. As The Atlantic pointed out recently in an article, these measures reflect a serious problem in American policy: The systematic neglect of public infrastructure since the 1970s. Public investment, instead of privatization, should again become the norm.

We reached out to the Alliance for Toll-Free Interstates, of which the NMA is a corporate member. Stephanie Kane, Director of Communications, provided this written statement on the privatizing of already established toll roads:

“Privately financed infrastructure requires a revenue stream – which in terms of roads and bridges, it’s just taxation via tolls. Consumers will be shouldering the burden by paying more for goods every day, making tolls an underhanded tax on the general public.” 

“Privatization of our interstates turns public assets into privately controlled assets, left to be operated and maintained in a way that first and foremost meets the expectations of the private company’s shareholders and investors. With a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, how can a company be expected to also act in the public’s best interest when those interests are at odds with each other? Private dollars in road funding will rob everyday drivers to line the pockets of Wall Street and international investors.”

States should never sell out their roads or their motorists.

The post A State Should Never Lease Its Roads: NMA E-Newsletter #614 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

It is amazing that the topic of setting adequate yellow light intervals for traffic signals continues to be a hotly-contested topic among traffic engineers. The yellow timing is an important variable for intersection design, and it is also important to drivers for another reason: Short yellows combined with photo enforcement is a proven method for generating volumes of red-light violations.

As has been shown many times throughout the years, a small increase of 0.5 to 1.0 second in the yellow duration can decrease the volume of camera-generated tickets by 50 percent or more. Cities such as Loma Linda, CA have documented red-light violation reductions of 80 to 90 percent virtually overnight. Contrary to claims by ticket camera supporters, those improvements did not disappear as drivers “got used to” the longer yellow cycles.

That makes it all the more interesting that the yellow interval timing debate rages on in the traffic engineering community. During one such recent discussion on the Institute of Transportation Engineers member forums, Jay Beeber posted a conversation he had with Karl H. Zimmerman some years ago. Zimmerman, along with co-author James A. Bonneson, published research on yellow light timing in 2003. Their “Effect of Yellow-Interval Timing on Red-Light-Violation Frequency at Urban Intersections” was subsequently published by the Transportation Research Board.

The Zimmerman-Beeber dialog that follows is quite insightful. While it probably won’t stop engineers from continuing to debate yellow light timing as they have for decades, it surely should give pause to those who argue for trimming yellows to bare minimums. The bolding and underlining was added for emphasis by Beeber.

Question: In general, we discussed the results of your research work with James Bonneson for the Texas [A&M] Transportation Institute. You indicated that your results showed that increasing the yellow duration beyond the value computed using the ITE Kinematic Formula provided additional safety benefits through a reduction in both violations and collisions. Could you confirm this?

Zimmerman Response: Confirmed. The ITE Kinematic Equation handles the basic physics of the situation well but does not specifically address other related factors such as signal conspicuity, traffic volume, flow rate at the time of yellow onset, and other moment-by-moment factors. One built-in assumption may or may not be valid: the 1.0 s reaction time (which, depending on the complexity of the situation, might not be adequate). The grade term is also important because it significantly affects the stopping distance of vehicles, and it should not be dropped, especially if the approach grade exceeds 3 percent.

Q: Specifically, I asked about Table 2-2. Effect of Selected Factors on Red-Light Violation Frequency, from report 4196 (aka Table 6-1 from report 4027). You indicated that the results for Yellow interval duration under the section of the table entitled “Effect of an Increase in the Factor Value” meant an increase over the value computed using the ITE Kinematic Formula. The results show a 53% decrease in violations after increasing the yellow duration by 1.0 second. Could you confirm this?

Zimmerman Response: Confirmed. That is what the value in the table represents. Keep in mind, this is an average reduction. Some locations might show a higher reduction, some a lower reduction. We did not do anything outside of 5.5 s yellow intervals, so we cannot say for sure, but it probably will work up to 6.0 s and maybe even beyond.

Q: We discussed Figure 2-2. Red-Light Violation Frequency as a Function of Yellow Interval Difference, from report 4196. You indicated that the point designated as 0.0 on the figure would be the value computed using the ITE Kinematic Formula. The data indicate that yellow durations beyond the value computed using the ITE Kinematic Formula, up to about an additional second, resulted in a reduction of red-light running violations.

Zimmerman Response: Yes, up to a 5.5 s yellow interval, as stated in the report. I see no reason why increasing yellow would not work for yellow intervals above 5.5 s if there was a violation problem at an intersection.

Q: We discussed Figure 2-8. Effect of a Change in Yellow Interval Duration on Crash Frequency, also from report 4196. The data indicate that yellow durations beyond the value computed using the ITE Kinematic Formula, up to about an additional second, resulted in a reduction of red-light running crashes.

Zimmerman Response: Confirmed-we saw this with field data collection in Project 0-4027.

Q: We discussed Figure 5-13. Effect of a Change in Yellow Interval Duration on Red-Light-Running from report 4027. The data indicate that yellow durations beyond the value computed using the ITE Kinematic Formula, up to about an additional second, resulted in a reduction of red-light running violations.

Zimmerman Response: Confirmed – again, we saw this with field data in 0-4027. Vehicle-by-vehicle approach data from another project going on at the same time (0-4022, which involved dilemma zone protection at high-speed signalized intersections) implied that this effect would be true even though we did not change yellow intervals in the latter project.

Q: We also discussed the issue of whether drivers adapt to the longer yellow durations. You indicated that, in your professional opinion, this does not happen to any significant extent.

Zimmerman Response: I do not believe adaptation/habituation is a major problem over long time periods. I also do not know of a recent, valid engineering study that confirms or refutes that belief, and the logistical, temporal, and financial challenges of performing such a study at most intersections would make such a study infeasible. One instance where such a study might be possible is at intersections equipped with violation cameras, eliminating the need for costly manual data reduction. (In effect, you have already done that study at multiple intersections, which shows just how simple it is if data collection and reduction are already done.) Instead, there is a lot of hand waving on the subject.

It is possible that the appearance of adaptation can occur if traffic volumes increase without changes to signal timing, especially flow at the end of green and especially in coordination situations. That would not be true adaptation but an artifact of the control scheme. It would make sense that drivers adapt to longer yellows and give themselves a second more of effective green time to get through the intersection. Still, I would bet the average driver couldn’t identify a four-second yellow from a five-second yellow, and might not even realize the yellow at one intersection is longer than at another intersection. Instead, providing a longer yellow interval may give drivers time to make “safe and prudent” driving decisions that all state driving statutes are founded upon.

I believe that the expectation of adaptation is a mental analogy to the actions of drivers when speed limits are changed. Except…the circumstances are very different for speed limits and yellow intervals. Drivers experience speed limits all day, every day, on every route upon which they drive. Yellow intervals are site and approach specific and may or may not affect a driver at any particular time. A driver’s speedometer is on the dashboard, in clear view, all the time, and speed is a continuous factor affecting driving behavior. A yellow indication is visible for a few seconds at most, on signal equipment that is visible for maybe 15 seconds at a time (or less). The two are not parallel phenomena, so driver reactions to changes cannot be expected to be the same. (There are some indications that adaptation to new, higher speed limits does not happen, either. Many of the “speeding” problems are actually due to artificially low statutory maximums that drivers recognize as artificial and then choose to ignore.) 

[As a side note, using posted speed in the calculation of yellow interval duration will underestimate the resulting yellow time for prevailing traffic conditions, as implied above. The actual 85^th percentile speed, or speed limit PLUS an appropriate correction (my best estimate: 10 mi/h) should be used instead.]

Q: We discussed concerns raised by the red light camera industry and their supporters with regard to increasing the yellow time by about one second over the value computed using the ITE Kinematic Formula. Specifically, the following claims have been made: 

1. If the yellow time is increased, drivers will adjust and run the red anyway.

Zimmerman Response: Not necessarily. The potential for violations depends on: traffic flow at the end of the green, cycle length (and the motorist’s perception of delay if he/she has to stop), uncertainty about what vehicles behind a subject’s vehicle is doing (e.g., “Is the truck behind me going to go? Because if it is, I’d better go through, too.”), platoon arrival and cohesion, oversaturation, coordination effects, weather, fear of enforcement (reasonable or not), and other transient effects at each yellow onset. (Others have found slightly different effects than this list, but that does not alter my point.) Adding more yellow time may relieve some of these conditions. Proper engineering of signal coordination will relieve others. 

2. If the yellow time is increased, drivers will expect a longer yellow time at intersections where it has not been increased and will run the red signal at those intersections.

Zimmerman Response: If this is true, then why do we (as engineers) use different yellow intervals for different speeds? Would those not create the same situation that is being described?

This assertion is illogical on its face. Drivers do not really know the length of the yellow interval, and I will assert that it does not really matter to them, either. Drivers need what they need when the event occurs, with minimal carryover to the next one (which could be minutes, hours, or even days later). Even drivers who drive the same route day in and day out may not have the same set of events occur each time, which makes learning specific ways to “beat” the system much more difficult-assuming that most of them even try. 

3. If the yellow time is increased, this will increase the opportunities for rear-end crashes due to an increased exposure of motorists to an indecision zone.

Zimmerman Response: The opposite should be true here: increasing yellow times should reduce the opportunities for rear-end collisions by allowing drivers to make “safe and prudent” driving decisions. In addition, there should be fewer errors in decision making either way-drivers who decide to proceed (rightly or wrongly) will have more time to reach the intersection and will be less likely to be red-light violators. Drivers who decide to stop will be able to stop less abruptly. Drivers who are undecided have a better chance of making a safe decision. And truck drivers (see below) will be less likely to be violators as well.

All three of these assertions go against the basic legal assumption that drivers will make “safe and prudent” operating decisions when driving. The law is written assuming that they will. These three assertions assume that drivers, in general, are incapable of handling any responsibility and will behave in dangerous and stupid ways when behind the wheel. A few drivers will, but the vast majority will not. The assertions focus on the (proportionally) very, very few who are not “safe and prudent” either through inexperience, fear, confusion, intoxication, illness, or anti-social behavior, and not the many, who are merely trying to get to work or home safely without more inconvenience than necessary.

Q: We also discussed how increasing the yellow duration might affect intersection capacity. You indicated that it was a mistaken belief that increasing the yellow duration by one second at the expense of the green interval would decrease capacity. In your professional opinion, increasing the yellow time in this manner does not decrease intersection capacity.

Zimmerman Response: For every green interval, there are two periods of lost time: at startup (typically about two seconds, although this amount varies by cycle and by traffic mix), and at shutdown at some point during yellow (which may be anywhere from two seconds to four seconds or more, depending on the circumstances-usually more under very low flows). For operational analysis, both startup and shutdown lost time are combined and put at the end of the green interval. Then, for simplicity’s sake, the total lost time for the green interval is assumed to be equivalent to the yellow change interval (Y) plus the red clearance interval (AR). This is “easy,” but it can lead to the assumption that Y+AR = lost time. As a result, to “minimize” lost time, Y+AR should be as short as possible.

The reality is that lost time is not truly dependent on Y+AR, may be more or less, and does not change much when yellow interval duration is changed. This situation is actually a trade-off between safety and operational efficiency – you can get an extra second or two of “efficient flow” by trimming a second or two off the yellow interval, but you will also get a significantly larger number of red-light violators because drivers are not getting the warning they need to prepare to stop. Field data show this.

The post Better Know an Expert: NMA E-Newsletter #613 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

The November 3rd election day is a month away, and mail-in voting has already begun in many states. If you have not cast your ballot yet, be sure to consider motorists’ rights issues in your decisions on which candidates and issues to support.

Check out the NMA’s Motorists Vote 2020 Guide (a slideshow with a progression arrow on either side) for information to help you do that. Here are some additional guides that have been published online by national media organizations designed to inform the electorate about performing the most vital of citizen responsibilities in a representative democracy:

• How to Vote in Your State (interactive web portal from the Washington Post)
• Early voting for Election 2020–When you can start to vote in-person in every US state (CNET)
• Map: Mail-In Voting Rules By State (NPR)
• How to prevent your mail ballot from being rejected (Washington Post)
• Making mail-in voting free is a quick way to raise voter turnout (Quartz.com)
• Voting on Election Day 2020:–Everything you need to have and do to vote (CNET)
• How to track your election ballot online after you vote (CNET)

The nonpartisan voting website Ballotpedia has posted that voters in 32 states will decide a total of 120 statewide ballot measures on November 3rd. Here are the state ballots that involve motorists’ rights, or infrastructure/transportation funding.

Arkansas

Arkansas Transportation Sales Tax Continuation Amendment (2020)

The state wants to create a permanent sales tax that pays for infrastructure funding. Here are some of the editorials for and against the measure:

• About that highway tax increase and what it will and won’t pay for (Arkansas Times)
• Opposition formed to highway sales tax increase. Just say no to the legislature (Arkansas Times)
• Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson stresses the need for permanent road tax (Arkansas Online)

California

With the distinction of being the most populous state, California has many statewide ballot initiatives every election cycle. Here is a link to an interactive guide for all 12 measures before voters on November 3^rd. Two of the ballot questions are transportation oriented.

The first is California Proposition 22, App-Based Drivers as Contractors and Labor Policies Initiative (2020). Here are three recent articles that highlight this ridesharing/delivery company backed proposition:

• Uber, Lyft Face Uphill Struggle for Gig-Worker Votes in California Ballot Measure (Governing)
• A ballot measure backed by Uber and Lyft is now the most expensive in California history (Quartz)
• California’s Gig Economy Ballot Measure Fails Workers, Labor Groups Say (Bloomberg)

The second is California Proposition 24, Consumer Personal Information Law and Agency Initiative (2020).  Here are three articles that outline the issues of Proposition 24.

• The Fight Over the Fight Over California’s Privacy Future (Wired)
• Why the Electronic Frontier Foundation Doesn’t Support nor Oppose California Proposition 24 (EFF)
• Proposition 24: More data privacy (CalMatters)

Georgia

The statewide ballot initiative, the Georgia Dedicating Tax and Fee Revenue Amendment (2020), will, if passed, change the state constitution to ensure that the legislature spends funds from fees or taxes on designated projects, rather than divert them. Here are two online articles that examine the initiative:

• Decoding the Georgia Dedicating Tax and Fee Revenue Amendment (League of Women Voters of Coastal Georgia)
• What is the Georgia Constitutional amendment on fees about? What to know before you vote (Savannah Morning News)

Maryland

Maryland Question 1, Legislative Authority over State Budget Amendment (2020)

If passed, Question 1 would change the state constitution to allow the Maryland General Assembly to increase, decrease, or add items to the state budget as long as those items do not exceed the total proposed budget submitted by the governor. We found this lone editorial on the measure.

• Vote Yes on Question 1 to Restore a Healthier Constitutional Balance (Maryland Matters) 

Massachusetts

The Massachusetts Question 1, “Right to Repair Law” Vehicle Data Access Requirement Initiative (2020) has received a great deal of national press because of its potential to establish a precedent for other states on crucial car ownership issues.

Automakers are lobbying hard against a car owner’s right to repair. Their position is that even if you own a vehicle, all the software is proprietary to them, and only licensed auto mechanics can work on your car (at greater cost to you). Local independent auto mechanics and do-it-yourselfers have worked hard to get this measure on the ballot. Here are some articles about Question 1:

• Motorists Vote 2020 Massachusetts: ‘Right to repair’ battle heats up in Mass. (AutoNews)
• Sorting fact from fiction on Massachusetts Question 1: Right to Repair (WCVB)
• Motorists Vote 2020: Auto Industry TV Ads Claim Massachusetts Right to Repair Benefits ‘Sexual Predators’ (Vice)
• Motorists Vote 2020 Massachusetts Right to Repair Ballot: Car manufacturers pool $25m to fight auto repair ballot question (Commonwealth Magazine)
• Automaker-Funded Groups Are Using Fear Mongering To Take Away Your Right To Repair Your Car (Jalopnik)

Michigan

The outcome of the following initiative affect personal data protection standards, and might also set a direction for other states: Michigan Search Warrant for Electronic Data Amendment (2020).

A “Yes” vote supports the constitutional amendment to require a police search warrant to access a suspect’s electronic data and electronic communications. A “No” vote opposes the amendment to require a search warrant. We did not find any editorials in favor of a “No” vote:

• Voters to decide whether to ban police use of electronic data without a warrant (Detroit News)
• Proposed constitutional amendment to limit police scanning devices for data (Michigan Public Radio)

Virginia

This ballot initiative was brought forth by state lawmakers: Virginia Motor Vehicle Property Tax Exemption for Disabled Veterans Amendment (2020). A “Yes” vote allows a permanently disabled vet to have an exemption from state and local property taxes on one car or truck. A “No” vote does not allow the exemption. 

Local Ballot Issues

Many local ballot issues have been brought forth around the country that are too numerous to place here. Issues range from transportation funding to law enforcement reform. We encourage you to learn as much as you can about community issues, particularly those that can affect drivers, directly or indirectly, before casting your vote in the November 3^rd elections.

Thank you for your support of motorists’ rights at the ballot box!

The post Motorists Vote 2020 Ballot Initiatives: NMA E-Newsletter #612 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

In July, the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) warned motorists in Chicago and Houston about predatory towing scams. Unfortunately, this sort of fraud can happen anywhere, and at unexpected times. The best protection is to be prepared with knowledge.

The scam usually occurs after an accident. You’re upset, maybe even injured, and probably not thinking clearly. A tow truck driver shows up and seems to provide a necessary service. You sign a form authorizing a tow, and off your car goes. But the form you signed was blank in terms of costs, and this is where the scam comes into play. The towing company can now tack on fees and even additional services that were not performed. And now the tower has your vehicle as collateral and leverage.

National Insurance Crime Bureau spokesman Fred Lohmann said, “We have seen instances in which tow truck drivers become belligerent with accident victims. Any legitimate operator will satisfy your concerns. An illegitimate one will not.”

The NICB provides the following guidance when faced with a towing situation:

• Never permit an unsolicited tow truck driver to take your vehicle.
• If you or the police did not call a tow truck to the scene, do not make any deals.
• Do not give tow truck drivers your insurance or personal lien information.
• Verify tow truck signage is identical to what appears on the paperwork. If there is no signage, ask for identification.
• Do not give a tow truck driver permission to tow your vehicle until they provide a printed price list of all tow and storage fees, plus any miscellaneous charges that apply.
• Also, ask for and receive printed documentation on where the driver will tow your vehicle if it is not a location of your choosing.
• If you doubt the legitimacy of the operator, call the police.

Consider keeping this list in your vehicle’s glove compartment for reference. You never know when you might need it.

The post Protect yourself from Predatory Towing: NMA E-Newsletter #611 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

At best, it is a lazy assumption. At worst, there is an agenda at play, facts be damned.

In late August, the engineering firm Sam Schwartz issued a release, “First Look at 2020 Traffic Fatality Rates Shows Sharp Spike,” that ascribes an uptick in the US traffic fatality rate over the first six months of 2020 to speeding. No evidence is offered to support that claim.

Sandwiched between two quotes from Richard Retting, sometimes referred to as the ‘father of the red-light camera in America’ and current Sam Schwartz’s National Practice Leader for Safety & Research, is this statement: “While this analysis does not identify underlying causes for the increased fatality rate, higher travel speeds is a likely factor given emptier roads and greater opportunity for speeding.”

The Schwartz report included a review of traffic fatalities and vehicle miles traveled data from 22 of the 50 states for the first half of the year. It extrapolates from there.

In response, the NMA issued the following national press release in early September:

National Motorists Association (NMA) President Gary Biller cautions public officials and the media that a report from Sam Schwartz Engineering claiming a significant increase in motor vehicle fatality rates due in part to higher travel speeds during the COVID-19 pandemic may be misleading.

The report, based on data from a limited number of states, claims that while the overall number of auto fatalities during the first six months of 2020 declined by about six percent compared to the same period last year, the fatality rate based on 100,000 vehicle miles traveled (VMT) increased by 12.7 percent due to a significant decrease in the number of miles traveled. The report posits, without proof, that “higher travel speeds is a likely factor” in the increase.

Said Biller, “The limited data from less than half the states and the speculation that vehicle speed is the cause of the increase in the fatality rate, along with other factors that Sam Schwartz appears not to have considered, provide needed context for the preliminary conclusions of the report.”

One possible explanation for the rate increase may be a change in travel patterns during the pandemic, rather than a change in individual driver behavior. An analysis conducted for the NMA by Jay Beeber, Executive Director of Safer Streets LA, using data from the Federal Highway Administration and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for all states shows that fatality rates are higher on non-interstate roadways versus interstate highways, and higher on roadways (both interstate and non-interstate) in rural areas versus roadways in urban areas. For example, in 2018, the most recent year for which complete data were available, the fatality rate per 100 million VMT on interstate highways was 0.68 compared to a fatality rate of 1.14 on non-interstate roadways. Likewise, the fatality rate on roadways in rural areas was 1.65, while the rate on urban roadways was 0.85.

During the 2020 lockdowns, vehicle travel did not decrease in equal proportions on all types of roadways throughout the US. Over the first four months of the pandemic, March through June, vehicle miles traveled on interstate highways decreased 36 percent but were down five percent less than that on non-interstate roadways. Similarly, urban roadways saw a 34 percent decrease in VMT, while rural roadway travel decreased 28 percent. “This shift to a higher percentage of driving occurring on rural roadways and non-highway roadways, which naturally have higher fatality rates, could very well account for the increase in fatality rates identified in the Sam Schwartz report,” explained Beeber. “Additionally, Sam Schwartz was only able to obtain data from 22 states and the District of Columbia, and it is unclear whether these states are representative of the entire country. Further, motor vehicle fatality rates have declined over the past three years, so a small uptick in the rate may simply be a result of the natural statistical fluctuation seen from year to year.”

“It’s important to note,” added Biller, “that we are currently living in a time of historically safe roadways. The fatality rate on our nation’s roadways has decreased by almost 30 percent in the past two decades and is down about 80 percent since 1966. We should be careful not to put too much stock in limited reports announcing how dangerous our roadways have become, especially ones that blame bad drivers for what may well be a statistical anomaly.”

The post The Blame Game: NMA E-Newsletter #610 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

The warning signs have been around for a long time. The scramble to fall in line with Vision Zero demands that traffic fatalities be eliminated regardless of the cost to taxpayers, and society in general, has even affected organizations like the Institute of Transportation Engineers that are supposed to be protecting the engineering standards that keep our roads safe and efficient.

ITE currently is considering a new policy statement under the heading, “Vision Zero and Safe Speeds.” The recommendation to its membership of traffic engineers and other transportation professionals is to fully embrace and support Vision Zero.

One of the catchphrases used in the ITE community is “20 is plenty.” The reference is to a forced reduction of posted speed limits to 20 mph in our cities. Boston is one city that dropped its statutory limits from 30 to 25 mph, and based on false reporting that the change caused drivers to slow down, it is considering another reduction to 20 mph.

Recently, a discussion thread was started on the ITE member forum asking fellow members about the success of 20 is Plenty programs. Jay Beeber, Executive Director of Safer Streets L.A. and NMA Life Member, had seen enough when he posted the following takedown of the whole approach:

“Can we please stop pushing the “20 is plenty” nonsense and other arbitrary setting of speed limits? This is not a scientifically-based approach to speed management. The foundation of engineering is science and data, not ideology. The overwhelming scientific evidence is that arbitrarily lowering (or raising) speed limits on local roads has little to no effect on actual speeds, and therefore little to no effect on safety. There are scores of studies over the years that prove this. All it does is make violators out of the vast majority of drivers.

“I realize that for some, criminalizing driving is a feature of these policies, not a bug. But this approach can lead to very negative societal consequences. For example, anyone who is concerned about the over-policing of minority communities for minor infractions should recognize that criminalizing a majority of the driving population will make this problem much, much worse. I wonder how you might feel if you pushed this policy, and someone gets pulled over for going 30 mph in a 20 mph zone that was previously 25 mph, the stop goes south, and someone ends up dead.

“It has been said before, and it bears repeating over and over since it has still not gotten through to some folks, but the only way to reduce speeds (assuming that’s a necessary policy on a particular roadway) is to change the nature of the roadway in some manner that changes the driver’s perception of their speed. Otherwise, you are on a fool’s errand and will simply create pain and misery for the populace, give people a false sense of security, waste resources that could otherwise be put to effective safety measures, and create disrespect for traffic control devices, elected officials, and law enforcement.

“Massive enforcement efforts will not achieve the desired goal. Drivers are capable of complying with an uncomfortably low-speed requirement for about a block or two (such as a school zone). After that, the natural tendency to match your speed with your perception of the “comfortable” speed for that situation and roadway will take over. Humans cannot control these perceptions as they are primarily a function of the autonomic nervous system, and no amount of draconian penalties can change the natural perception-reaction response.”

The reaction to Jay’s post was mixed, with some rooting him on and others rooted in Vision Zero principles. The most notable response came from Martin Parker, P.E.. Mr. Parker researched and wrote the seminal study on the topic, “Effects of Raising and Lowering Speed Limits on Selected Roadway Sections,” which was published in June 1996 by the Federal Highway Administration. He posted:

“Thanks, Jay, for your comments and insight into the issue of 20 is Plenty. Yes, I was one of those who conducted a nationwide study in the 1980s and early 1990s to examine the effects of raising or lowering posted speed limits. The typical result was a change in speed of less than 1 mph. Sometimes lowering the speed limit increased average and 85^th percentile speeds, and sometimes raising the speed limit lowered average and 85^th percentile speeds. You never could predict the result in changing a speed limit sign, but the result was always close to no major change in speeds.

“Yes, you can provide massive amounts of enforcement to enforce an artificial posted speed limit, but as soon as the special enforcement is reduced, you are left with the same speed curve. Today our proud enforcement officers have issues greater than devoting resources to an artificial limit.

“If we are really interested in Vision Zero, then we need to make these areas “safe” for pedestrians and other non-motorists. The only way I know of doing this is by declaring the section an Auto-Free Zone. No automobile or trucks allowed in the zone. Then you might have to regulate bicycles operating in the zone, but vehicle speeds would not pose a problem.”

The experts have spoken. Our job is to make sure the engineers and policymakers are listening and taking this seriously.

The post 20 is Plenty (except when it isn’t): NMA E-Newsletter #609 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

In 2016, Columbus, OH, beat out 77 other US large and small cities to win the coveted $40 million US Department of Transportation Smart City Challenge.

As the state capital and the largest city in Ohio, Columbus has the distinction of being the largest US metropolis (2018 population 892,533) not to have a subway or light rail system.

The Smart City Challenge was slated for four years, and the deadline for completion is 2020. Has the project been a success, or has the Smart City Challenge been a mixed bag of hope, enthusiasm, inconclusive results, and a whole lot of cash? Getting drivers out of their cars also has been a relatively clear objective.

The Project Cash

In addition to the $40 million from the USDOT, the city was also awarded a $10 million grant from Paul G. Allen Foundation/Vulcan, Inc. for the development of electric car planning. The city, Franklin County, and the Ohio DOT provided $18 million in matching funds. Ohio State University donated $15 million, plus its School of Engineering provided substantial in-kind contributions. University researchers have been helping evaluate most of the projects.

The private sector chipped in with millions of in-kind donations. A nonprofit made up of 75 private-sector CEOs called The Columbus Partnership committed $90 million to help fund smart city efforts.

Smart Columbus spokeswoman Jennifer Fening recently stated that organizations had also invested an additional $720 million throughout the region in mobility innovation and education. Projects include a wind tunnel and a smart mobility center at the Transportation Research Center between Marysville and Bellefontaine. A total of $110 million has been spent on smart roads and signals. Honda plans to begin testing pre-collision detection devices and connected car technology for traffic signals in fleet vehicles. The state DOT has also launched Drive Ohio, which serves as Ohio’s clearinghouse for driverless vehicles. It also created the Smart Mobility Corridor for AV testing on a 35 miles stretch along Route 33 north of Columbus.

The Results

Despite all the cash and community partnerships, the city has not yet entirely transformed itself into an innovation hub. The project time frame was four years, but the umbrella organization running the program, Smart Columbus, received a USDOT extension to continue the project through the middle of 2021. The extension is partly due to the pandemic, which caused some of the program efforts to be curtailed or put on hold.

President and CEO of The Columbus Partnership, Alex Fischer, recently said that there had been better progress with some projects than others, “Microtransit. Renewable energy. A carbon-neutral society. All are going to be platforms that the partnership will continue to build on.” He added, “The private sector is planning to make sure things started, don’t stop.”

Receiving this kind of cash and in-kind support can sometimes be a burden, mostly if the demonstration project was not entirely successful. How do you measure success with something like this, anyway? How can anyone know if all the cash poured into the project was worth it? Perhaps one idea of determining success will be what the project looks like in 10 years.

Smart Columbus

The vision of the project is clearly stated on the website: To empower our residents to live their best lives through responsive, innovative, and safe mobility solutions. The four areas of focus include connected, autonomous, shared, and electric.

In 2019, Andrew Wolpert, Smart Columbus project manager, said in an interview with Governing, “Columbus is essentially a living laboratory, so we will be able to show our results, lessons learned, to the country. And hopefully, they can take our lessons learned and use these projects, and modify and scale to however they need, so they can hopefully benefit their community.” As of June 2020, delegations from 80 cities and 20 countries have visited Columbus to learn about the programs.

The “Experience Center,” housed in a former downtown parking garage and along the banks of the Scioto River, is the nerve center for Smart Columbus. It serves as a project showroom and doubles as the project office. The biggest prize has been the project’s Operating System, which has developed an open-source code for other cities to use and aggregates data for public and software developers.

Seventeen projects in total are currently highlighted on the website:

• Smart Columbus Operating System (integrated data exchange of local data)
• Smart Mobility Hubs (interactive digital kiosks known as IKE)
• Smart Columbus Experience Center (showroom, test drive center, and project office)
• Multimodal Trip Planning Application & Common Payment System (plan and pay for travel in central Ohio)
• Self-driving shuttles (use of limited closed-loop shuttles to connect residents to jobs and resources)
• Expansion and adoption of multimodal transit (improve transit and improve access to mobility options)
• Acceleration Partners Program (partnering with largest area employers to change mobility patterns, i.e., get people out of their cars)
• Connected Vehicle Environment Pilot (connect vehicles to street infrastructure)
• Event Parking Management (an app that helps with Downtown and Arts District parking)
• Smart Columbus Ride and Drive Roadshow (host thousands of EV test drives)
• Fleet Electric Vehicle Adoption (help company fleets to switch to EVs)
• Mobility Assistance for People with Cognitive Disabilities Study (help the cognitively disabled to travel more independently on fixed-route bus service)
• Prenatal Trip Assistance Study (assist pregnant women without reliable transportation to attend prenatal doctors’ appointments)
• Electrified Dealer Program (increase goal of EV adoption by nearly 500 percent)
• Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure (grow region’s EV charging capability)
• Grid Modernization and Decarbonization (reduce greenhouse gases and modernize electric grid to support innovation and sustainability)
• Consumer Electric Vehicle Adoption (accelerate EV adoption among central Ohio drivers)

Obviously, millions of dollars have been spent on this living laboratory. Maybe some critical work has been done with area partnerships and figuring out what can work, but the question remains: are these projects scalable and was the return on investment worth the effort? The verdict is still out.

The post Checking in with Columbus, Ohio, Winner of the 2016 Smart City Challenge: NMA E-Newsletter #608 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

For the first time, the NMA has developed a national guide for voting called, appropriately enough, Motorists Vote 2020. The confirming (and most important) step in any advocacy effort is signified by the casting a vote in local, state, and national elections. If you don’t have time to write letters to the editor or visit with elected leaders about the issues most important to you, voting for the candidates and initiatives consistent with your views becomes even more critical.

For this year’s election, we encourage everyone to decide soon how they will vote on November 3^rd due to complications caused by the pandemic. If you decide to vote by mail, ask for your ballot early and make sure you vote according to the rules. Timing will be everything, particularly with potential postal service issues, so either mail your ballot well ahead of Election Day or consider delivering it yourself to a designated drop off locations.

For example, here in Wisconsin, we are required to have an adult independently verify each mail-in ballot for it to be valid. The witness must sign his/her name on the outside envelope, signifying the integrity of the ballot inside. Then, as in most places, the ballot needs to be at the county or city election office by the deadline. Get out the Vote volunteers who can help with questions, serve as ballot witnesses, and help with voter registrations are sometimes available at public libraries and other government buildings. Check with your city or town clerk for details.

If you have never voted before or have let your voter registration lapse, registering to vote is the first step. All states and the District of Columbia require voter registration except for North Dakota, where eligible residents can vote with suitable personal identification.

Voter registration generally takes place at the city or county level. In 17 states and DC, voters may register the day of the election. The rest of the states require registration ranging two to four weeks before election day.

Check out the Motorists Vote 2020 Guide to link to your state’s voting information.

Voter Registration History and the Driver’s License 

In 1993, Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which allows states to provide citizens the opportunity to register when applying for or renewing a driver’s license. This often is referred to as “motor-voter.”

According to the US Election Assistance Commission, approximately 25 million motor voter registrations, originated at state departments of motor vehicles (DMVs) during the 2016 election period. In many states, the collection of voter information has been shifting from paper-based to digital registration forms. Many DMV systems are linked to state voter registration databases.

In 2016, Oregon became the first state to implement automatic voter registration or AVR. As of April 2020, 19 states and the District of Columbia DMVs participate in AVR.

We have posed some questions in the Motorists Vote 2020 Guide that you can use to build your own candidate report card on motorists’ right issues.

Voting is the most important democratic act any citizen can do.

The post Motorists Vote 2020: Advocacy Starts at the Ballot Box: NMA Weekly E-Newsletter #607 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Most Americans drive to work because of the freedom that this mobility choice provides. Well, that and other suitable transportation options are limited in many locales. In recent years, there has been a concerted effort to limit car ownership while commuters are urged to take transit, rideshare, walk, and ride bikes/scooters. The COVID-19 crisis, though, seems to have stopped that idea in its tracks. In many places, transit ridership may never again approach past peak activity. If so, the long-term implications for transportation funding become even more complicated, and so does everyone’s daily commute.

In a recent NewGeography.Com post, author Randal O’Toole illuminated the idea of transportation resiliency. He quoted a new study from accounting giant KPMG that predicts commuting to work will decrease up to 20 percent due to the after-effects of the pandemic, one of which is the greatly expanded use of telecommuting. Shopping trips by vehicle will likely decline up to 30 percent due to increased online shopping.

Another KPMG prediction: 43 percent of former transit riders do not plan to return to buses, subways, and trolleys, and most who don’t work from home will likely turn to cars. If this happens, driving will increase by close to five billion vehicle miles per year in America alone, which will impact those of us who already commute by car every day.

O’Toole writes that transit is far less resilient than driving. At the height of the COVID-19 lockdown in April, the Federal Highway Administration claims that driving fell 42 percent compared to last year. Transit ridership fell by 84 percent.

Boston-based reporter Spencer Buell always loved the fact that he and his wife could take transit everywhere. The city has some of the worst traffic congestion in the nation, an effect heightened by narrow, winding streets downtown. A third of Boston households do not own a car. Buell and his wife live in East Boston, which is separated by the rest of the city due to the harbor, so biking to work is not a viable alternative. Now because of public health concerns, Buell cannot bear the idea of riding transit. He and his wife have decided to purchase a car to take control of their transportation options.

According to a CarGuru Survey from June, 22 percent of respondents claim they plan to purchase or have already purchased a car even though that had not been their plan before the pandemic.

The San Francisco Chronicle wrote this headline recently: The Pandemic Crushed vehicle Sales in the Bay Area. Then People Flocked to ‘COVID Cars.’  Immunology researcher Jeanmarie Gonzalez used to commute from Oakland to San Francisco. She recently bought a used car for her commute and said, “I’d rather drive than be on public transit multiple hours a day.” Gonzalez added that buying a car was a tough call, “I couldn’t afford a hybrid, and I didn’t have a place to plug in an electric car, so my options were limited. I prioritize human health in general over environmental issues, even though the environment is very important to me.”

In New York City, the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles reported that in July, residents registered nearly 40,000 cars—the highest amount recorded for any month in recent years. Many anti-car advocates have been claiming that NYC would see a coming “Carmageddon.” Mayor Bill de Blasio urged residents in a recent news conference not to buy a car, “Cars are the past.” Streetsblog and other anti-car advocates are urging city officials to use the crisis as an opportunity to push for more open streets, road diets, bus and bike lanes.

But these other mobility-as-a-service options are not fail-proof. In late July, Revel Scooters pulled the plug on its service in NYC after two user deaths, including that of local TV reporter Nina Kapur. Micromobility devices can sometimes be dangerous due to the inexperience of users, inadequate protective gear, and lack of attention by other road users. In the end, microtransit also costs too much per user.

Ironically, even one of the most ardent anti-car advocates, Brooklyn, New York resident Doug Gordon says he and his family are thinking of purchasing a car to escape the city. He is one of the hosts of the podcast called War on Cars. (Imagine that!)

Transit and micromobility do not seem to have long-term transportation resiliency or adequate safety records. On the other hand, will everyday commuters be able to come to grips with even more traffic congestion?

The post Commuters Need Transportation Resiliency: NMA Weekly E-Newsletter #606 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

The Delaware Supreme Court ruled recently that red-light camera ticket fines under $100 cannot be appealed beyond local courts. Delaware Code Section 4101 states:

“A person found responsible for a civil traffic offense shall have a right of repeal only in those cases in which the civil penalty imposed exceeds $100.”

Stanley Lowicki challenged his May 2017 $172.50 red-light camera ticket for the reasons most of us do—he wanted to prove his innocence. After he learned that he could not challenge the ticket beyond the local traffic court, he decided to take on the system instead. His case has been winding up through the state court system ever since. Lowicki argued in both lower court and the State Supreme Court that the entire amount of the ticket should be considered under Code Section 4101, not just the actual traffic fine. Here is the breakdown of Lowicki’s red-light camera ticket.

As you can see, the cost of the basic violation is $75.00. The additional “fine” of $97.50 was composed of tacked-on fees, which state law ignores when considering the $100 threshold.

Due process, guaranteed under the US Constitution, has broken down in Delaware at the most basic level—the lowly traffic ticket. If citizens cannot exercise their constitutional rights to fight traffic tickets, how can they protect themselves from governmental overreach?

The Delaware law that authorized traffic cameras does not allow tickets to exceed $110 for a fine paid on time, and additional court costs/administrative fees may not exceed $35.00. It also declares that no assessments “other than those specified” may be imposed. That fee restriction became moot, according to the state, when two years later, lawmakers permitted the levying of charges for a variety of purposes, such as those shown above for all court cases.

As more states attempt to send traffic tickets to civil court, due process will suffer at the most basic level. Instead of “Innocent until Proven Guilty,” the dictate will be “Guilty, no matter what—pay up or else.”

The Delaware Supreme Court ruling spreads the bounty among many agencies and makes “Policing for Profit” look better than ever for cash-strapped cities and states.

The post Pay that Red-Light Camera Ticket No Matter What: NMA E-Newsletter #605 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Editor’s Note: Last week, in Part 1, we discussed ideas for traffic stop reform. This week we delve into some of the thornier issues for reform from the NMA perspective.

Recently, Berkeley, California’s city council passed an ordinance to remove police officers out of the traffic enforcement equation. After the requisite planning and community input, the council is expecting the city’s Department of Transportation to pick up that responsibility as early as next year. It will be an interesting “experiment” to watch. Berkeley will be the first US city to try this with traffic enforcement. City council members in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have also begun the discussion of letting unarmed city employees make traffic stops.

According to FBI data, the majority of routine traffic stops are not dangerous for officers. In 2019, only six officers were killed during traffic stops. No one knows if putting people in the field that don’t carry guns will deescalate confrontations that can occur during traffic stops and accident investigations. Would racial profiling be curbed with a different kind of “officer?” Would these new kinds of enforcement personnel feel safe without the protection of a badge and gun? Would a bias against drivers due to a city’s Vision Zero program become the norm? There are many more questions than answers.

Across the country in New York City, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced his office would create a new Street Safety Bureau to beef up the NYPD’s Collision Investigation Squad. He also plans to work with lawmakers to create bills to combat “vehicular violence.” Upon creation, a prosecutor from the DA’s office would go to every fatal crash, day or night. Gonzalez says that prosecutors will be able to determine earlier whether a case is criminal (for motorists) or not.

Other reformers have gone further and called for a nongovernmental safety agency or nonprofit entity to handle traffic accident investigations. The agency would handle taking reports, performing accident reconstruction, directing traffic at the scene, and testifying in court if necessary.

Would supplementing or even replacing some police department functions such as traffic enforcement and accident investigations be feasible? If officers are not used in either scenario, city and state officials might be encouraged to turn all traffic enforcement and accident issues into civil instead of criminal cases.

Civil court, of course, is vastly different than criminal court. The accused loses several due process rights. The concept of innocence or guilt is essentially foreign to civil court. The ticket recipient would be found responsible or not responsible, with the constraints of the civil court making it more challenging to achieve the latter. Moving all traffic matters to a civil court system would encourage, to a greater degree, some cities and states to run ticket mills.

Automated Traffic Enforcement, Street Surveillance, and Big Data

Automating traffic enforcement with devices such as red-light, speed, and distracted driving cameras coupled with facial recognition and license plate readers would be among the worst of police reform outcomes for motorists.

Constitutional rights would be routinely violated, and having Big Brother watching every move we make is the sort of society none of us want America to become. Ironically, cameras and surveillance will not make the streets safer in the long run.

Jay Beeber of Safer Streets LA recently had this to say about increasing automated camera enforcement:

“Advocates argue that they will eliminate the need for police interaction, and so are more “equitable.” However, to be effective in that regard and negate the potential negative effects of lowering the speed limit, you’d have to place them primarily in lower-income neighborhoods with large populations of people of color. This leads to the problem that automated enforcement issues orders of magnitude more tickets than police officers. So now you’ve created an economic burden in communities that are least likely to be able to afford it.  And this is especially true in places like California where ticket prices are exorbitant.”

As cities become ‘smart,’ connected data will help municipalities operate with more cold efficiency, including opening the door for more surveillance of their citizenry. Facial recognition has already been banned in several US cities—Boston is the latest.

Use of Police Drones or Robots during Traffic Stops

The use of Robocops and flying drones for traffic stops is overkill. Many technology companies are pushing this idea that police officers at the time of a stop, could utilize a flying drone or walking robot. The police officer would never have to interact with the driver, but talk through the drone/robot interface and even issue a ticket by drone or robot. Flying police drones will likely be used in traffic enforcement (like small airplanes) and traffic accident reconstruction.

Sounds like a sci-fi movie depicting a dystopian future.

Determining what kind of policing we want in our community should be part of the democratic process. As free citizens, we need to have our voices heard so that decisions are measured and appropriate.

Whatever happens with police reforms, traffic stops are a significant part of the problem and also need to be part of the solution.

The post What about Police Traffic Stop Reform Part 2: NMA E-Newsletter #604 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

2020 has undoubtedly been a tough year for all of us. The COVID-19 crisis has changed many aspects of our lives, and so have the protests around the world in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

At first, the protests were against police brutality, and now they have turned into calls for police reform.

Much of the call to defund the police essentially means taking police officers out of various call scenarios such as mental health issues, welfare checks, working with the homeless, and even traffic enforcement. This idea of defunding scares many who believe that police are still necessary for keeping the peace. The national debate on what police should be in a community is an important one.

A traffic stop, for instance, is when most people encounter police. Many feel intimidated and afraid for their lives when stopped by the police for something as simple as having a deodorizer hanging from their rearview mirror as in Michigan.

Motorist racial profiling and illegal vehicle searches have been a regular part of the police toolbox for a long time. Such actions shatter the trust between community and law enforcement, violate constitutional rights of citizens, and often result in lawsuits that cost taxpayers millions of dollars to settle.

By the same token, police will often tell you that traffic stops, the most frequent enforcement encounter with the public, create security anxiety for them too because the stop itself can create uncertain situations.

For years, the NMA has offered guidance to drivers on how to best handle traffic stop interactions. True traffic stop reform starts with actions such as these:

Federal Reforms

• Congress must pass legislation that prohibits the government from funding ticket-quota-based traffic enforcement campaigns.
• All lawmakers should actively support civil asset forfeiture reform. Motorists too often are easy targets for property seizures unrelated to chargeable violations.
• “Keeping the peace” has somehow morphed into militarized police departments in many communities. A bill such as the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act could be a step in the right direction.

State Reforms

• Stop counties, parishes, and municipalities from funneling money garnered from traffic fines and fees back to police departments or traffic courts as a reward for ticketing activity. The conflict of interest is obvious.
• Require better training of police officers on traffic stop protocol and de-escalation techniques.
• Encourage local municipalities to build community-police oversight boards that set higher police accountability standards with the goal of building better public trust.
• Provide better protection for officers who whistleblow against their departments over ticket quotas. The same protection must be afforded to police department leaders who are pressured by city officials to generate a certain level of revenue through ticketing practices.
• Place ticket revenue caps on cities that limit traffic ticket revenue to a standard percentage of the city’s annual budget. For example, after Ferguson erupted about six years ago, Missouri capped the routine traffic violation revenue a city could take in at 20 percent of its overall revenue. Also, states must enforce this cap by placing state funding limits for cities that go over the cap and do as Arkansas did in the last several years by officially naming these towns that violate the cap, a speed trap city.
• Fund skilled (behind-the-wheel) driver’s education for all high school students and novice drivers.

Local Reforms

• Facilitate community-police oversight boards to set policing standards, to ensure accountability, and build public trust.
• Endorse policies that encourage safe driving behaviors through proper engineering rather than for-profit schemes.
• Apply legitimate ticket revenues toward road safety improvements and driver education, eliminating the incentive to use motorists as ATMs for general purpose projects that have nothing to do with driving or road-user safety.

Recent, well-publicized events have brought police-community interactions to the forefront of national debate. We encourage all NMA members to become part of that discussion, particularly at the local and state levels.

Next week, a look at some thornier issues of traffic stop reform related to questions of due process and other constitutional rights.

The post What about Police Traffic Stop Reform Part 1: NMA E-Newsletter #603 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

By a Michigan NMA Member

On July 6, an electronic billboard appeared along I-96 in Redford Township, Michigan, just east of the city limits of Livonia. It warned drivers leaving Detroit, “Driving while black?  Racial profiling just ahead. Welcome to Livonia.”

Livonia is a racially-mixed city of 97,000, covering 36 square miles of 1950s homes just west of Detroit. The sign was crowd-funded by a grass-roots citizens group and attributed to Livonia Citizens Caring About Black Lives. The group requested statistics on police traffic stops.

The city responded by posting data on citations issued to black and white male drivers. A Detroit News article of July 12 contains a link to www.LivoniaPACT.org, which features citation statistics for 2019. The city also billed the citizens’ group $13,000 for its FOIA request.

These are fascinating data, showing how many citations were issued for each kind of traffic violation, giving a rare look into the behavior of a big suburban police force.

The numbers show exactly what kind of behavior will get you a ticket in Livonia, Michigan.

Livonia issued 30,551 citations following traffic stops or crashes in 2019, 24.45 percent to black males and 30.23 percent to white males (and presumably 45.32 percent to females of all races).

Many of the citations are for bad driving performance and causing crashes. Failure to yield, failure to stop in the assured distance, improper turns, signal violations, and other crash causes generate the expected proportions of tickets. But some statistics invite questions as to whether motorists are being stopped to raise revenue or for undue harassment.

As you might expect, speeding is the most common citation, for 8,730 tickets or 29 percent of the total:

Ticket Reason                                                                Number of Citations
Violating posted speed limit                                                                 5,330
Violating basic speed law (“reasonable and proper”)                   103

The vast majority of these speeding tickets—5,154 of 5,330—on city streets and county roads were written for one to five mph over the limit. Police seldom stop drivers for such small violations, so these citations represent “roadside breaks” that encourage drivers not to challenge tickets in court. This is a likely indicator of a ticket mill, run for revenue, and not for safety.  Only one driver was cited for driving too slowly.

Another indicator of policing for profit is pleading citations down to nonmoving violations such as “blockading a road:”

Impeding traffic                                                                               244

Livonia includes nine miles of high-speed, multi-lane freeways. These roads are the primary connections to Detroit Metro Airport and between Detroit and its western suburbs. The statistics call out freeway violations separately:

Limited-access highway speeding                                        3,297

Livonia police wrote almost 10 tickets a day to freeway drivers passing through from out of town. Of these, 2,994 were written for 1 to 5 mph over the limit, although the drivers were probably exceeding the 70-mph limit by more than that—these freeways operate at close to 80 mph. Citing suburban drivers on I‑275 and I‑96 helps Livonia even its racial balance in ticketing: only 17.77 percent of the ticketed freeway drivers were black males vs. 38.28 percent white males.

If all 8,730 speeding tickets end in conviction and a fine, they will yield about $1.1 million for the city in 2019.

Certain violations raise suspicions of “pretextual stops” of drivers singled out by police:

Ticket Reason                                                          Number of Citations
Tinted windows                                                                          204
One headlight                                                                              324
Broken taillight, or white light to rear                               895
Improper lane use                                                                     226
Object hanging from mirror, or obstructed view*       113
Cracked windshield                                                                  170
Dirty or obstructed license plate                                           30
Amber-light violation**                                                             14

*It’s been legal to hang trinkets from your mirror in Michigan for several years.
**Michigan is the only state where drivers must stop for a yellow signal, but few police stop anyone for it.

Registration and insurance violations generate a lot of citations, partially attributable to Michigan’s mandatory-insurance law and the lingering effects of the driver responsibility tax:

Ticket Reason                                                    Number of Citations
Expired or improper plates                                                  1,271
No registration form                                                                1,082
No proof of insurance                                                             1,099
Operating with suspended or revoked license            1,135

Some dangerous behavior doesn’t generate many citations in Livonia. Its police only managed to ticket one drunk a night in the city’s 36 square miles:

Ticket Reason                                                   Number of Citations
Operating while intoxicated or impaired                      385
Careless driving, including crashes                                 138
Texting                                                                                         101
Tailgating                                                                                      43
Failure to yield to pedestrians                                               4

Not every ticket went to drivers; bicyclists received nine citations in Livonia in 2019.

The City of Livonia is to be commended for posting these statistics, even though they aren’t entirely flattering. Every city should post data like these, to let citizens see if enforcement matches traffic-safety problems and locations. Livonia’s mayor has ordered her administration to begin talking with civil-rights groups. More postings are said to be coming on the city’s web site.  The police promise to use data to inform decisions and citizens will be watching to see if future citations are aimed at safety and not revenue.

Editor’s Note: It is good to hear that Livonia, MI is embracing a higher degree of transparency, although a $13,000 charge to respond to a public records request on traffic ticketing data seems rather steep. To put Livonia’s ticketing past in perspective, check out this August 2012 press release by the NMA where we analyzed the driver-sourced data reported to The National Speed Trap Exchange to identify the worst speed trap cities above and below populations of 50,000 in the United States and Canada. Spoiler alert: Livonia earned second place in the higher population category. Seven cities in the Detroit area attracted enough attention in our rankings that we singled them out in the same release. Remember, this was a study done eight years ago. We hope that each of the municipalities join Livonia in shining a brighter light on ticketing policies as a helpful step toward reform.

The post “Driving While Black” Billboard Shines Light on City Ticket Records: NMA E-Newsletter #602 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

None of us ever want a traffic ticket, but at least many of us can afford to deal with the ticket either by fighting it or paying the fine. You might believe that if you violate a traffic law, no allegedly about it, you should pay the fine.  But what if the only recourse for paying means reducing your monthly family budget for essentials like food and rent?

A California red-light camera ticket, for example, is nearly $500, and it’s nigh impossible to defend yourself in traffic court. Luckily, in California, you won’t lose your license if you can’t pay, but if you’re poor, the $500 fine would likely be challenging to pay. Motorists in other states aren’t so lucky. Today at least 11 million people across the country have suspended driver’s licenses because of unpaid fines.

Last year, the US Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause against state actions. The case before the Court, Timbs vs. Indiana, involved civil asset forfeiture, but the ruling bolsters arguments against debt-based license suspensions.

Did you know that all 50 states may suspend a driver’s license for a violation that has nothing to do with driving? Offenses might include failure to pay child support, defaulting on alimony, student loans and property taxes, underage drinking, and non-driving drug convictions. Forty-three states will suspend your license for unpaid fines and tickets. Only four states require proof from the state that the driver could pay and did not.

The cost of reinstating a suspended license can vary from $20 (Arizona and Idaho) to $1200 (Massachusetts). A 2018 Reason Foundation report noted that 95 percent of Michigan’s license suspensions were due to non-driving offenses.

A federal bipartisan bill called the Driving for Opportunity Act, US SB 4186, was introduced last week by Senators Chris Coons (DE) and Roger Wicker (MA). A diverse coalition of criminal justice, law enforcement, civil rights, and conservative advocacy groups join the NMA in supporting this bill.

If enacted, the Driving for Opportunity Act will provide grant incentives to states that do not suspend, revoke, or refuse to renew a driver’s license of a person or refuse to renew a vehicle registration for failure to pay a civil or criminal fine or fee.

NMA President Gary Biller noted in a recent press release, “Families, and society in general, are burdened, not benefitted when a driver’s license suspension threatens a person’s livelihood in support of his or her family. The financial hole to dig out of becomes that much deeper, particularly for lower-income individuals.”

For years, various state legislatures have tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to change its laws with regards to driver’s license suspensions. A national law would allow uniformity and, hopefully, help many of those caught in this downward spiral to be able to get back on solid ground.

The post Driving for Opportunity Act: NMA E-Newsletter #601 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

In last week’s Induced Demand, A Reality Check, #599, Maryland Member Sherman Johnson raised important concerns that, “even developers must admit that we cannot continue to widen our way out of traffic congestion indefinitely.  More highway capacity means more housing developments and more cars on the road (induced demand).”

His response was in reaction to Chris DiPrima’s NMA op-ed a few weeks earlier. We were curious about Chris’ response to Sherman’s observations. He did not disappoint:

The topic of induced demand is an interesting one, and worth exploring on its own. When I wrote, ‘a simplistic and incomplete understanding,’ I did not mean to imply that induced demand does not exist, but rather that the relationship between roadway supply and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is not as absolute as urbanists and Vision Zero advocates would have us believe.

While the concept of induced demand is quite old, the research which coined the term was conducted by Mark Hansen and later expanded by Robert Cervero of the University of California-Berkeley. Cervero’s studies went beyond correlation and deeper into causation. As presented in his excellent summary, Cervero makes significant observations which refine the arguments behind a simple relationship between supply and demand:

1. When transportation systems are expanded, much of the “induced demand” is either trips which would have happened outside of a peak (peak shifting) or trips which a person wanted to take, but could not because the system supply was not available (latent demand)

These two types of trips represent the public surplus created by the new system capacity: trips that people wanted to take, but would either put off until after rush hour or cancel completely.

The latter category, latent demand, is the classic ‘induced demand’ that anti-expansion advocates cite when they oppose the construction of new freeway lane-miles. However, per Cervero’s research, it only represents about one-third of the new traffic which appears on those expanded roads. Also, I would suggest that these trips are a direct public benefit: people are able to do more things that they wanted to do.

Attempting to categorize latent demand leads to a fundamental question on the role of government in deciding which trips are acceptable versus expendable. Even in a majoritarian democracy, many of us would find it deeply uncomfortable that our elected leaders can choose that certain trip types are all right, but going a few towns over to check out a new restaurant is undesirable induced demand.

In any case, latent demand is not infinite: there are only so many places one can go, especially in areas which are already fully developed. Transportation planners should account for peak shifting and latent demand when they construct new infrastructure, but these factors are not an excuse not to build at all.

2. The relationship between roadway supply and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is mediated by land use

Improvements in transportation infrastructure improve travel times. This may cause cities and developers to up-zone and densify areas served by the new infrastructure. This has been true since time immemorial: the construction of roads, and later streetcars, was often made with the explicit purpose of making the adjacent land more valuable. Perhaps more famously, it was a key plot element in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

It is often the increases in development permitted by agencies following transportation upgrades that induce more trips, not simply the provision of the infrastructure. Counterfactual cases can be found in places like Camden, New Jersey, which has an advanced roadway network but little traffic congestion because there is relatively low-density served by those roads.

3. After six to eight years, about 20 percent of the new capacity is preserved, even accounting for latent demand and land use-induced demand

This point is often lost because 20 percent preservation sounds like an 80 percent failure. However, changes of less than 5 percent can have massive effects on traffic congestion. As anyone who commutes year-round can attest, even the minor reductions in traffic volumes caused by summer holidays often lead to noticeable reductions in travel time.

Sherman and I partially agree when he states, ‘More highway capacity means more housing developments and more cars on the road.’ Where we differ is that I do not believe that more highway capacity must inevitably lead to more development. Indeed, if we as a society are willing to stop needed transportation infrastructure growth as a congestion mitigation measure, we should equally be able stop increasing density levels so that we do not overwhelm our transportation system.

The answer is a balance between the transportation system and land use intensity rather than giving into the impulse to densify at any cost. Here, Sherman and I are in complete agreement. Rather than continuing to consolidate the nation’s wealth and opportunities in a few major cities, people and companies should grow in areas which already have surplus infrastructure supply, or which can build that supply without degrading quality of life for everyone.

At the very least, employers can make policies like flexible work hours and telecommuting common. This demand-side approach addresses the congestion problem directly and effectively, as we have seen during the unprecedented changes in demand caused by shelter at home orders.

By contrast, legislating behavior through the misery of traffic congestion is, at best, a deeply unpleasant way to modify behavior. It leads directly to the extra turns and neighborhood shortcutting that are undesirable and more dangerous to both residents and through motorists.

The post Induced Demand, Probing the Issue: NMA E-Newsletter #600 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Induced Demand:    The principle that, because of pent-up demand, traffic expands to
                                            fill capacity as new roads are built or existing ones expanded.

Christopher M. DiPrima’s excellent op-ed published by the NMA a few weeks ago, Vision Zero’s War on Arterials Has Been a Failure, #596, generated a response from member Sherman Johnson of Maryland who delved further into induced demand. That created an opportunity to ask Chris, who has an advanced degree in city planning, to respond to Sherman’s concerns.

The exchange is quite enlightening. As Chris subsequently noted, “Induced demand has become incredibly important to local (and in some cases, national) transportation policy in the 21^st century, and I agree that it deserves an in-depth treatment. All too often, people interpret it to mean that “new roads make their own traffic,” and the reality is that the relationship is not so simple.

Let’s let Sherman and Chris help us navigate the issue, starting with Sherman’s reaction to the aforementioned NMA newsletter:

I’m also in full agreement, with one exception—DiPrima wrote: 

“Coupled with a simplistic and incomplete understanding of induced demand (the idea that providing more capacity creates more traffic), these advocates believe that by reducing capacity, they can take sufficient vehicles off the road to improve safety.” 

Induced demand is not an ‘idea’, sadly, it is very real. There is nothing complicated about it. It has been exhibited over and over again. There are countless examples all across America—my ‘backyard’ being one.  

Parts of Frederick County Maryland are beautiful—they remind me of the unglaciated area of Wisconsin, up around Ontario—but it is being destroyed. The D.C. (and Baltimore) area continues to attract major employers, and that means more people. Most of those people look for someplace that they can afford and still be able to commute to work. As access to FredCo (northwest of D.C.) has been made easier—relative to other D.C. suburbs and exurbs anyway—people have chosen to locate here. That means our schools are ridiculously overcrowded. Many kids are forced to attend classes in “portables” (trailers) that are much less secure than a school building. Prime farmland is paved over for eternity; our property taxes increase (because development never pays for itself), and our quality of life continues to spiral downward. 

I-270 is the artery that feeds the malignant ‘residential sprawl’ tumor. Widening 270 would guarantee that it would get much worse. 

That aside, even developers must admit that we cannot continue to widen our way out of traffic congestion indefinitely. More highway capacity means more housing developments and more cars on the road (induced demand). The newly widened highway quickly becomes a linear parking lot again.  

Eventually we run out of right-of-way. Many of our area roads are at that point now. Then what? Governor Hogan’s latest initiative calls for condemning a lot of private property—bulldozing homes and buildings, building sound barriers in what’s left of people’s back yards— and taking parkland to further widen I-495 (the Beltway) as well as I-270—all the way up to I-70 in Frederick. 

One is reminded of the definition of insanity, ‘To keep doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result each time.’ 

It’s time to stop and take a deep breath. 

Continuing to widen highways, to the point where eminent domain must be used to kick people out of their homes is clearly not a good solution. Some urban areas are simply impacted. They are beyond any reasonable population limit. The only solution I can think of is to encourage large employers (public and private) to locate elsewhere. Maybe some form of tax incentives could be used? It’s a big country, and much of it is economically depressed and actively looking for growth—why not spread those businesses around?

* * *

We debated including Chris’ response here. It is detailed enough—and trust us, worth the wait—that we felt it best to publish it in a second installment next week. Knowing how engaged both he and Sherman are on an issue that affects the daily driving of so many of us, we wouldn’t be surprised if the thoughtful discussion will trigger the demand for additional NMA E-Newsletters on induced demand.

The post Induced Demand, a Reality Check: NMA E-Newsletter #599 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

The need to advocate for motorists’ rights has grown during the time of COVID. NMA members need to be more vigilant than ever in their home communities and states.

This newsletter is a reflection of what we see trending nationally. Last week in Part 1, we looked into our crystal ball at speed limits, automated traffic enforcement, and street surveillance. In Part 2, the focus is on police reform, infrastructure, tolls, and some positive issues we see coming down the pike.

We also want to hear your predictions of “What’s Next?” Please email your comments to nma@motorists.org.

Police Reform

After the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, protests erupted in big cities and small towns around the country. Most protestors are demanding police reform and an end to police brutality. Why is this issue important to motorists? Most police interactions with the public are traffic-stop related.

The issue of police reform, transparency, and the role of enforcement will continue to be an issue in nearly every community. Both the US House and Senate are working on national police reform bills, and President Trump recently signed a related Executive Order.

The biggest concern for motorists in this police reform debate is that automated traffic enforcement does not become a default solution.

Infrastructure

Party politics dominate infrastructure at almost every level of government. Nationally, the Senate released last July a $287 billion plan to fix and maintain highways and bridges across the US. This month, the House offered its plan to tackle infrastructure after COVID-19 with an emphasis on maintenance, and increased funding for public transit. President Trump has also released an infrastructure plan that is receiving opposition due to the $1 trillion price tag.

States were struggling with funding infrastructure improvements before the pandemic crisis. Now, the situation has worsened due to the decrease in gas tax revenues during the pandemic.

Even though the Illinois gas tax will go up on July 1, the state’s DOT projected in early May that it could lose $560 million in revenue this year. Washington State similarly declared that up to 40 percent of revenue would be lost due to the crisis. The two states are not alone in delaying or canceling road projects for the remainder of the year.

How to pay for infrastructure and what kind of infrastructure to fund appear to be the two questions that very few elected officials (or political parties) can agree upon during this time.

Road Tolls, Congestion Pricing, and Road User Charges (ROC)

With the downturn in the economy, government officials and other bureaucrats will hawk road tolls and congestion pricing as the best way to pay for roads and other expenses. Some analysts claim that the gas tax is a nearly dead funding source due to the advent of electric vehicles and more efficient gas-powered cars. The situation isn’t helped by frequent raids on gas tax revenues by both state and federal officials to pay for various programs, including some not transportation-related.

States are working hard to come up with answers on how to increase maintenance for older roads and bridges and investing in new infrastructure to support population growth. A prime example is the state of Michigan, which, before the pandemic hit, was already struggling with the magnitude of its infrastructure funding problem.

In 2019, state lawmakers had an open fight with Governor Gretchen Whitmer when she proposed a 45-cent increase to Michigan’s 26.3-cent fuel tax rate. She felt this was the easiest way to provide funds for road and bridge projects. Lawmakers disagreed, creating a six-month impasse until a plan for tolling roads in the state was hatched.

The Michigan Senate passed SB517, a bill that would establish a panel to investigate the feasibility of charging tolls on roads and bridges. That same bill has passed the House Transportation Committee, and now it’s on its way to the full House for a vote. The Governor was against tolls a year ago, and as recently as January said that she would like to see a number of funding sources for infrastructure.

Road User Charges, also referred to as a VMT (vehicle miles traveled) tax, continues to be seen as the alternative to the gas tax. If such a tax is ever implemented, this would mean that every mile you drive would be tracked and taxed.

We addressed the subject last year in this series of three newsletters:

Are we Slinking Ever Closer to a Universal Road User Charge?

• Part 1 took a look at the national landscape
• Part 2 examined what Congress was doing a year ago
• Part 3 investigated regional and local efforts

Many cities will continue to push for congestion pricing. New York state lawmakers have already passed legislation for NYC to start the country’s first congestion pricing scheme. The state, though, has not yet received permission from the federal government to proceed. Boston, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle are toying with the idea.

Some Positive Issues for Motorists’ Rights

• Civil Asset Forfeiture laws will continue to be reformed on the federal and state levels.
• Overall traffic enforcement may be reduced as state, and local police resources are stretched thin due to budget cuts.
• Rank-and-file police officers will feel more comfortable either whistleblowing or even suing police departments over ticket quotas.
• Driverless and connected cars will not be deployed as predicted any time soon. There are too many algorithmic flaws and not enough funding to fix the road infrastructure to support them in the near future.

Many issues are ahead, and we need our readers of the Weekly E-Newsletter to support the efforts of the NMA and volunteers across the country who are standing up for motorists’ rights. Thank you for your support!

The post What’s Next for Motorists’ Rights—Part 2: NMA E-Newsletter #598 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

The need to advocate for motorists’ rights has grown during the time of COVID. NMA members need to be more vigilant than ever in home communities and home states.

This newsletter is a two-parter and comes from what we see trending nationally. This week, we look at speed limits, automated traffic enforcement, and street surveillance. Next week, the focus will be on police reform, infrastructure, tolls, and some positive things we see coming down the pike.

We would like to hear your views on what’s next. Please email us at nma@motorists.org.

Speed Limits

Before the current world health crisis, cities and towns were under pressure by Vision Zero and anti-car proponents to lower limits without regard for natural, safe driving speeds. The 85^th percentile continues under critical review at all levels of government. The carcass of the 55 mph National Maximum Speed Limit even seems to be rising from the dead as calls for reinstitution of a federally mandated restrictive limit are growing.

Ironically, the Center for Disease Control announced at the end of May that personal vehicles are currently the safest way to get around in the current pandemic and after the country completely opens. (Of course, the agency later retracted this recommendation after pressure from anti-car activists.)

Automated Traffic Enforcement (ATE): Red-Light and Speed Cameras

Many cities have echoed the camera company party line in declaring ATE as a vital safety tool when it is no secret that the revenue from photo tickets is often a budget balancer for them. The coronavirus jolt to the economy may cause more cities to look at the deployment of cameras to fill budget gaps.

Several new types of automated cameras are becoming available as part of the policing tool chest. Green-light cameras combine red-light and speed camera technologies. Distracted driving detection cams mounted along roadways primarily detect whether a driver is using a cell phone while the vehicle is in motion. The Australian state of New South Wales began using the detection cameras this year. In the first two months of operation, more than $7.1 million in fines were issued to 21,000 drivers, or roughly the equivalent of 5 million US dollars.

Street Surveillance: Automated License Plate Readers, Surveillance Cams, Facial Recognition, Contact Tracing Apps on Phones, Drone and Airplane Surveillance

Big Brother and Sister are here, and they are not going away.

Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) and Other Surveillance Cameras

Many cities around the country are either funding mobile (police vehicle) ALPRs or are putting the devices at the entrances and exits to their towns. Neighborhood groups now also use ALPRs, closed-circuit cameras, and personal Ring doorbell cameras to track traffic in and out of their subdivisions. Police ALPR use will only increase. Same with surveillance cameras, especially with civil unrest used as justification.

Facial Recognition

Facial recognition devices constitute the surveillance technology of choice in China. In the US, while privacy rights groups and even cities have started pushing back against rights violation issues surrounding the use of facial recognition as an enforcement tool, its implementation for identifying and tracking individuals on the streets and in their cars is on the rise.

Data gathered from facial recognition are already connecting to databases that contain personal information and biometrics gleaned from state DMVs. Privacy safeguards are not apparent.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recently filed a lawsuit against Clearview AI, a facial recognition company. Clearview allegedly collects and stores data without the owners’ knowledge and sold access to the data to other private companies and law enforcement. More privacy lawsuits like this will likely be filed against opportunistic companies in the future.

Facial recognition will become more important in the sharing economy, especially as a way to identify paying customers for rideshare and mobility services (that is if either come back to life after the pandemic).

Phone and Contact Tracing

Private companies are already tracing your movements by utilizing various apps that use location tracking. Do you use a weather radar app? The app needs to know where you are to give you the information about the local weather. That is a trace. Compound that with all the other phone apps that ask for your location—you get the picture.

As part of the surveillance response to the COVID-19 crisis, Apple, Google, and many other tech companies around the world are working on contact tracing apps. These phone-based programs will be used to show if you have the COVID-19 virus and will attempt to track all the people you came in contact with so that they can be tagged too. Coupled with thermal imaging cameras and other types of surveillance, you are likely to be tracked everywhere you go. Contact tracing apps have already been used to follow recent protesters.

Drone and Plane Surveillance

Police and other government agencies are using drones for various reasons: accident reconstruction, active shooter incidents, and other active incidents to gather intelligence. This includes using drones during recent protests.

Overhead surveillance by aircraft is being used in cities like Baltimore. The ACLU recently launched an ad campaign to advocate against the practice. Highway speed surveillance by plane will likely continue wherever allowed.

Of course, the future is not fixed. Many events can happen in a short time, such as what has happened in the past month in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis. The subsequent worldwide protests and civil unrest are prime examples.

Next week in Part 2 of What’s Next for Motorists’ Rights, we will delve into police reform, infrastructure, and other possibilities that motorists’ rights advocates will welcome.

The post What’s Next for Motorists’ Rights—Part 1: NMA E-Newsletter #597 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

By Christopher M. DiPrima, California Member of the NMA

The COVID-19 shelter at home orders have given us the opportunity to evaluate the effects of massive, rapid changes in the use of our transportation system. The results of this giant experiment are trickling in, and they are proving that years of speed-slowing measures on arterials and disinvestment in freeway capacity have increased the risk of vehicle crashes, not decreased it.

Since the dawn of the Vision Zero movement, pedestrian advocates have insisted that slowing vehicle traffic will have a positive effect on safety. Their logic has been that because lower-speed crashes are more survivable than higher-speed crashes, and because humans are inherently incapable of driving safely, the best course of action is to slow everyone down as much as possible. Coupled with a simplistic and incomplete understanding of induced demand (the idea that providing more capacity creates more traffic), these advocates believe that by reducing capacity, they can take sufficient vehicles off the road to improve safety.

This effort has taken several forms, including removing travel lanes, restricting turns, shortening traffic signal cycle times, and removing intersection level of service from development criteria reviews.

The natural result of slowing down traffic on arterials is that motorists have looked for shortcuts, usually on parallel neighborhood streets, which were never designed to be thoroughfares. Residents of these parallel streets notice the increase in traffic and complain to their governments, often leading to the installation of speed humps, chicanes, stop signs, and other traffic-slowing measures.

With shelter at home orders drastically reducing traffic, the need for these shortcuts disappeared overnight. Why cut through neighborhoods when the freeways and arterial streets are flowing well? Indeed, one report by Joint Venture Silicon Valley’s Institute for Regional Studies found that while per-capita freeway vehicle miles traveled (VMT) dropped 41 percent due to the shelter orders, all-road VMT declined by 75 percent or more. (The report, “Silicon Valley COVID-19 Impacts: Transportation, Emissions & Air Quality,” can be downloaded from here.)

This substitution effect, where more traffic returns to freeways because they offer a speed advantage, is one of the reasons why these freeways were built in the first place. As early as the 1950s, studies like the Detroit Metropolitan Area Transportation Study and the Chicago Area Transportation Study showed that the introduction of freeways to a road network tended to increase traffic on perpendicular routes but reduce traffic on parallel ones. For the Peninsula, this means that increasing freeway capacity on US-101 and I-280 should decrease traffic on local north-south streets like El Camino Real – exactly what is happening now that the freeways once again offer a meaningful travel time advantage over parallel surface streets.

Because freeways are statistically the safest roads, this should lead to a drop in crashes and deaths per VMT. Indeed, despite the invented moral panic surrounding “super-speeders,” this has confirmed itself as Bay Area injury crashes per vehicle mile traveled have declined by almost 50 percent, and unsafe speed crashes have declined 79 percent year-over-year. In other words, despite traveling faster, we are getting into fewer crashes – even accounting for the reduction in travel miles – because we are driving on safer roads.

While this may seem counterintuitive, it should be obvious to any experienced motorist. As the Vision Zero lobby has constricted traffic flow, it has turned arterials into a Hobbesian war of all against all. It does this principally through two means:

1. It makes road users aware that they have limited time to make it through each intersection. This makes them take more risks to ensure that they can clear intersections.
2. As intersection level of service declines, and especially as it becomes uneven, it becomes more advantageous for motorists to avoid certain intersections, or to approach them from a different direction. This, in turn, increases the number of turning movements required. As the number of turns increases, the number of vehicle-vehicle, vehicle-bicycle, and vehicle-pedestrian conflict points, and combined with the increase in risk tolerance discussed above, the decline in level of service should lead directly to an increase in crashes.

The answer to this problem is simple and has been known to engineers for decades. In the interest of safety, Vision Zero must abandon its war on arterial streets. Those streets should be designed to increase vehicle throughput, thus reducing diversion onto other streets. They should encourage straight-through driving, rather than the multitude of turns now required to optimize travel time. Far from making the system more dangerous, it will make it safer.

This doesn’t mean that all of the safety improvements that we have added to arterials should go away; to the contrary, adding turning pockets, daylighting crosswalks, adding crossing beacons, and hardening medians are just a few of the sound principles which improve safety without decreasing capacity and causing the attendant negative side effects.

Rather than blindly applying traffic-slowing measures in neighborhoods, we should identify shortcutting as a symptom of a failure of our arterial street system and make real fixes to those facilities. And yes, in some cases, that will mean expanding streets so that more people can drive on them. But the result will be neighborhood streets much more like the ones that Vision Zero advocates lionize: streets that serve all users at the pace of life, instead of hybrids which serve poorly both neighborhood residents and through motorists.

Editor’s Note: This is typically where we would add a “The opinions expressed here are the author’s own,” but we find ourselves in full agreement with Mr. DiPrima.

The post Vision Zero’s War on Arterials Has Been a Failure. It’s Time to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Grid: NMA E-Newsletter #596 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Some years ago, the NMA developed “7 Sensible Signals, A guide to better driver-to-driver communications.” Among the signals were the universal thumbs up, or A-OK sign as an indication of appreciation:

It is difficult to mistake the intent of that acknowledgment. Another sensible signal, still in use today, has often created law enforcement animosity:

We still receive the occasional report of a driver being ticketed for flashing his lights to warn those approaching from the other direction of a police cruiser parked ahead. Those charges typically get thrown out when challenged on First Amendment free speech grounds. And, of course, the danger ahead can sometimes be an accident, a road spill, or other potentially dangerous conditions that other drivers should be aware of for safety reasons.

The one sensible signal that sometimes created the opposite message than intended was, ironically, the Apology. The potential for misunderstanding is one of the reasons we have since retired 7 Sensible Signals:

Imagine having someone cut you off in traffic, only to flash the V sign. Rather than “I’m sorry,” many could easily interpret that as a victory sign, raising tensions. We don’t need more road-rage incidents.

Recently while clearing out some old files in preparation for our office relocation, we came across a letter written 25 years ago to the NMA about a motorist’s international experience with hand signals. His observations from 1995 were quite interesting:

“I just returned from a trip to North Africa and learned about an additional signal that I like. While in Cairo (a city of 15 million people and 9 million vehicles), we had occasion to spend time in its traffic. Please keep in mind that there is virtually no traffic enforcement – the electric signals blink, there are no speed limits, and one rarely sees a police car. The whole time we spent there, we saw the infamous international hand signal for irritation not once. We did see another signal, though.

“We saw drivers put their left hand out their window with thumb and little finger extended, and then waggle the hand. We inquired about the meaning of this gesture, and were informed that it meant, ‘think about what you’re doing.’ I am impressed with the civility of this gesture. The response was always of a similar acknowledging nature ─ a wave or a toot of the horn, and never hostile.”

You are, no doubt, part of a well-traveled readership. Tell us, what unusual motorist-to-motorist hand signals have you seen, domestically or internationally, in jest or anger, effectively executed or not? And if there is a tale attached to the episode, even better. We love good stories.

The post Human Signals: NMA E-Newsletter #595 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

There are many forms of legitimized stealing. The government has perfected a near-perfect version, with motorists too often serving as easy prey.

The NMA’s legislative focus in Washington, even when lawmakers are advancing little during these pandemic times, continues to be two areas of policing-for-profit that desperately need reform. One practice ─ as if it takes much practice to execute ─ is the use of ticket quotas to incentivize the citing and fining of drivers. Just the mention of “ticket quotas” evokes a visceral reaction by motorists everywhere.

But it is the other NMA lobbying focal point in D.C. that serves as the subject of this newsletter. Civil asset forfeiture, while less understood than ticket quotas by most, is a far more lucrative and insidious means by which enforcement agencies profit by seizing property from citizens.

The amount of federal forfeiture funds taken from the populace each year is staggering, with so much to go around that U.S. Department of Justice and the Treasury Department maintain their respective forfeiture trust funds. The following data only detail federal seizures. State enforcement agencies have their own “successful” forfeiture programs.

That’s a cool $15.6 billion in property taken from folks who often were not even charged with committing a crime, let alone convicted. Going back to 2001, when government forfeiture came into vogue, the feds have snatched $44.4 billion worth of assets from the people.

Motorists are particularly vulnerable to seizures at roadway checkpoints and during traffic stops. The justification is crime-fighting, stopping the transport of assets alleged as connected to illegal activities. “Alleged” is usually a term that favors the accused in the American system of justice. However, with civil asset forfeiture, that designation provides the legal basis for the government to seize property without due process.

If you don’t think asset forfeiture can happen to you while out on the open roads, you might want to read the ordeal faced by Phil Parhamovich as described in the cover story of the Winter 2018 issue of Driving Freedoms.

The Institute for Justice released an illuminating study on this issue last June, “Fighting Crime or Raising Revenue, Testing Opposing Views of Forfeiture.” Quoting from the report’s conclusion:

“The results of this study question forfeiture proponents’ claims that forfeiture ─ or at least equitable sharing, the nation’s largest forfeiture program ─ fights crime effectively. At the same time, the results add to the small but growing body of scholarly evidence suggesting the ability to generate revenue is a significant motivator of police forfeiture activity, lending weight to critics’ claims that law enforcement agencies use forfeiture to police for profit.”

“As it stands, the weight of the scholarly evidence supports forfeiture critics. Given the serious civil liberties concerns raised by forfeiture, and especially civil forfeiture, the onus should be on forfeiture proponents to provide systematic, empirical evidence for their claims that forfeiture is a crucial law enforcement tool.”

The good news is that several federal lawmakers, and advocates like Institute for Justice, are joining the NMA in a push to overhaul forfeiture laws. Due process and agency transparency must become synonymous with civil asset forfeiture. While the coronavirus crisis has held up progress in Congress for the past few months, we are poised to apply new pressure so that forfeiture reform is given priority, perhaps as part of a much-needed transportation and infrastructure bill that legislators must act on soon.

The post Flipping the Stacked Deck: NMA E-Newsletter #594 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

From the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, anti-car groups have shamed, cajoled, and humiliated city officials to open streets and relegate vehicular traffic to the role of unwanted guests. These various programs, called Active Streets, Open Streets, Safe Streets, or Slow Streets, have popped up in nearly every major city in the country. Not only that, these groups and their media counterparts also are on a quest to make sure car-banned streets stay that way after the current crisis. Seattle has already succumbed and declared that 20 miles of its newly appointed streets closed to auto traffic will remain that way indefinitely.

The push in New York City, Oakland, and San Francisco is vociferous and unrelenting. Since the crisis began, the rhetoric over cars and trucks driving down streets has ratcheted to a level never seen. What’s worse, these people are shaming the driving population, which is nearly 92 percent of those eligible to hold a U.S. driver’s license, into believing that their “new norm” is the proper path for everyone.

Destroying the car culture is the goal even at a time when most feel safer driving or riding in a car due to social distancing requirements. An NMA supporter recently wrote this in an email to us:

“I wonder how we can get across the message that, just because a few people can’t handle the tasks of driving or walking, the entire transport system of a city has to be slowed down, everywhere, all the time. Most people will grant that special pedestrian-dense environments have to be made safe, but they ought to rebel against the notion that all auto and truck users deserve to be penalized. At its most extreme, the anti-car argument calls for all roads to be slowed down against the chance that a wino might stagger into a main road mid-block at 2:00 AM.”

Before COVID-19, anti-car groups called for increased urban density, no-car-parking minimums for new developments, and have even changed the Level of Service designation in California to promote a multi-modal urban landscape in determining new development. Before the crisis, urban planners and designers were working tirelessly to increase urban density near public transit options in established car cities like Los Angeles and Atlanta.

Now any transportation expert or reporter who says anything critical about urban density is branded as a “sprawl lover” or “urban gadfly” and bullied online.

Make no mistake, anti-driver groups are not just trying to get us out of our cars, but also want transportation dollars to mandate bike lanes and expensive transit projects that have an extremely high cost per user ratios, and can’t survive without taxpayer subsidies.

As the fight for transportation dollars grows ever more intense with all these competing factions, it is the road-user majority, comprised of motorists and truckers, who have the most to lose. American streets were built for vehicles to move people and goods safely and efficiently where they want to go. That is still the primary purpose for roads, whether they service large metropolitan areas, suburban towns, or rural communities.

Many cities have announced that they will be cutting expenditures for bike lanes and Vision Zero programs. Anti-car groups can’t fathom why this is happening. Many cities have postponed important maintenance projects while traffic is down. Others have had to lay off road workers. Cities and towns face even tougher decisions with transportation priorities because of budget limitations. These decisions affect every road user, whether motorist, public transit user, bicyclist, or pedestrian.

In a recent Outsideonline.com post entitled, Could the Pandemic Kill Car Culture? the author concludes with something quite telling in reference to prioritizing biking and walking over driving:

“We still desperately need a “new normal” for our streets, but we also have to prepare ourselves for a long period during which cities insist it’s a luxury we can’t afford.”

To get the economy back on track, transportation must be a priority. And that means we need streets and roads to pave the way for the movement of people and commerce. Motorists and truckers need to be more vocal on the local and state levels to remind officials that vehicular transport is necessary for a vital economy.

We should not stoop to the level of anti-car groups that try to advance their argument by bullying and shaming those with whom they disagree. Civil discourse on community priorities starts with the facts, something we have on our side.

The post Compunction to Shame needs to Stop: NMA E-Newsletter #593 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Editor’s Note: This article was initially written for the Spring edition of Driving Freedoms magazine. The information here pertained primarily to life before the COVID-19 crisis. Still, we believe traffic fines and fees will be even more of an issue for small towns (and big cities) everywhere due to shortfalls in the budgets that have been decimated by the Coronavirus lockdown.

Significant dollars from different traffic fines and fees sometimes account for more than half of the revenue collected by small towns. Income from speed traps, poor/inadequate signage traps, automated traffic enforcement, and parking patrols all help prop up budgets, which often include the very department that is responsible for catching drivers—the police.

Last September, Governing.com released a national analysis on the extent small towns fund their budgets through traffic penalties. Researchers compiled data from thousands of annual audits and reports filed to state agencies.

Fines are the punishment for committing the offense, and fees are levied to support operational expenses. While both have increased in recent years, fees have risen the most. Very often, fee revenue has been tacked on to fund areas of government that have little to do with the justice system itself. Now with the COVID-19 crisis, the pressure for small towns to increase fees will only increase due to the pressure to raise funds for the town budget.

Here are some of the results before COVID-19 detailing how important this revenue source is to a small town’s bottom line:

• Fines and fees account for more than 10 percent of general fund revenues in nearly 600 jurisdictions.
• In 284 of those small governments, the percentage is at least 20 percent.
• More than 720 towns reported that annual revenues exceed $100 for every adult resident. (The numbers would be even higher if the analysis didn’t exclude communities reporting less than $100,000 in fines.)
• Rural areas with high poverty have the highest traffic-revenue rates as do communities with minimal tax bases and independent municipal courts.
• Out-of-state drivers are often targeted.

Most of the states that stood out in the research were from the South: Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas, with one exception—New York. Fifty-two Georgia localities collected penalties from drivers accounting for more than one-fifth of general annual revenue, while Louisiana had 49 local governments that met that dubious standard.

By contrast, states in the Northeast with high property taxes had no localities exceeding the 10 percent threshold.

President of Louisiana’s Public Affairs Research Council Robert Scott said recently that smaller tax bases contribute to the problem, but ingrained habits are the real culprit, “If I had to point to one reason why this happens, it’s because culturally you have (local) agencies who’ve grown dependent on these type of revenue sources. They don’t want to let it go.” Lisa Foster, co-director of the Fines and Fees Justice Center, concurred, “There’s a culture that’s built up over time of tolerance and normalization of this idea that courts are there for revenue generation.”

New York is home to nearly 1,300 town and village courts, which keep most of their revenue from fines and fees. Judges have an incentive to earn back the money spent on courts since the town or village financially supports them. Fund for Modern Courts chair Amelia Starr recently said in an interview, “Almost any state that has courts that generate money for their locality in small towns is vulnerable to exactly these kinds of pressures.”

Actions taken by state lawmakers can also help compound the issue. In states with the most fine-reliant jurisdictions, local governments incurred deeper state funding cuts over the past decade. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, states that implemented caps on local property taxes starting in the late 1970s have many small towns with sharply increased fines and fees.

Of course, one of the biggest concerns with this devotion to fines is the tacit implementation of traffic ticket quotas. Many times, officers feel pressure either by the department or city managers to write more tickets to increase revenue.

Policing for profit should never be tolerated; it is not conducive to forming a bond of trust between law enforcement and the community. As one of our national issues, the NMA will continue to advocate against traffic ticket quotas and unfair traffic fines and fees.

The post Are Small Towns Addicted to Traffic Fines and Fees? NMA E-Newsletter #592 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

By Gary Biller, NMA President

The media has never shied away from peddling stories that sell. Often in doing so, the truth gets kicked to the curb or run over. Such is the case in the current lockdown climate where sensationalistic headlines scream that 100+ mph super speeders are taking advantage of less-crowded roads across the country in the face of more people staying at home during the coronavirus pandemic. The evidence presented to make that case is often more anecdotal than quantitative, and misleading if not completely wrong.

A few of those headlines from late April:

Traffic rates drop to half, motorists speeding more often
               Blufield Daily Telegraph (West Virginia)

Washington sees rise in speeding on empty freeways
               Mynorthwest.com (Washington State)

The pandemic pace: A look at congestion-free speeding and its risks
               Smartcitiesdive.com

To be fair, The Washington piece references reporting from the California Highway Patrol that nearly 2,500 tickets were issued in March to drivers going 100 mph or greater. But let’s put that in perspective. That outlier ticketing rate involves less than 0.01 percent of the 26 million licensed California drivers. That rate is even tinier when the many out-of-state drivers on California roads are factored in. Meanwhile, the >99.99 percent of motorists driving sensibly are tainted by the widespread, distorted reporting.

The premise of the SmartCitiesDrive.com article is significantly different than what the data show in the article. They don’t indicate significant speeding on the corridor but do provide evidence that speeds return to normal free-flow rates when there is no congestion. It is misleading at best to tell the public that people are rampantly speeding due to lower traffic volumes.

A traffic-operations professional, who specializes in safety and mobility issues, reached out to the NMA in late April to express concern about serious misrepresentations being made about speeding during this COVID-19 crisis. His team at a safety laboratory will soon be releasing a study on traffic volume trends during the pandemic. He noted with respect to the conclusions drawn in the SmartCitiesDive.com story that, “What is happening is that without congestion, drivers are returning to free-flow speed on the highway. This is not dangerous, it is expected. . . The graph [in the article] clearly shows that the highest average speed is about 65 mph. People are not super speeding. They are merely able to drive at the same speed they usually do when there is no traffic on the road.”

The results of his team’s study and related observations tell a more nuanced tale than what many media outlets are weaving.

• Traffic volumes on freeways have decreased by 40 percent in the region studied, consistent with research findings from other states,
• Average vehicle speeds have not significantly changed, indicating that most people are continuing to drive the speeds they are comfortable with (hence why the 85^th percentile speed is an appropriate measure for setting speed limits),
• The volume reduction is primarily passenger vehicle traffic. With more trucks on the road, average speeds often decrease,
• With less traffic, police will see more individual cars driving and fewer platoons. This makes it easier to place focus on specific vehicles and more likely for individual cars to be perceived as going faster than they are.

Anecdotes and preconceived notions are a replacement for data for too many people and media outlets, particularly when there is a narrative to sell. The NMA and its members must continue to push back on the traffic-speed misinformation being spread, particularly during the special travel circumstances during the current pandemic.

The post The Selling of a Narrative: NMA E-Newsletter #591 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

By Gary Biller, NMA President

This is a controversial topic, even outside of these extraordinary times when most of the nation is confined to restricted movement as officials grapple with getting the coronavirus pandemic under control. With shelter-in-place edicts still in effect in most places, there is no doubt a lot of pent-up frustration. So we’re going to tackle the right-to-travel issue and provide an avenue of release for that energy.

First, let’s focus the discussion on the real question: The right to drive. Current times notwithstanding, and short of incarceration, people not only have the right to travel but are able to exercise that right quite freely. Long treatises have been written on the subject, and I won’t relitigate them here. The freedom to drive, where and when we want—that is the basic issue.

Some NMA members would like to see the driver’s license abolished, and as part of that process, to eliminate all state departments of motor vehicles. I have said before, and I’ll repeat here: Give the NMA $10 million and an army of lobbyists to take on this two-pronged battle, and we’d not make a dent. It’s not a realistic or practical goal.

The NMA’s mission involves reversing what the driver’s license has morphed into: Instead of a certification of an individual’s competency to drive a motor vehicle and understanding of traffic laws, the license has become a national ID card, and a means to gather information about and assess penalties to those individuals.

That is the real threat to driving freedoms. Well, that and the ongoing, concerted attacks by anti-driving and anti-driver movements. But let’s put aside the issues involving Vision Zero and Complete Streets programs for the time being and, for the purposes of this discussion, concentrate on the licensing issue.

To kick things off, I’ll share some past correspondence that I, NMA Founder Jim Baxter, and the late Jim Walker have had with others on this topic. As passionately as we all feel about the right to drive, there is no doubt readers will have some strong responses. I would expect nothing less. Email us at NMA@motorists.org with your thoughts. We’ll share the most interesting points of view.

From Jim Baxter, Aug 2010, responding to an email inquiry
“I appreciate your frustration with the abuse of governmental authority as it affects the ‘right to travel.’ Given your interest and concern in this issue, I assume that you know the ‘right to travel’ is not explicitly mentioned or defined in the Bill of Rights. It is certainly implied, but it is not articulated in those words. The courts, over time, have distinguished between the right to travel and the ‘privilege’ to operate a motor vehicle. They have held that the two are not synonymous or interdependent.

“There are many ways a person can travel without operating a motor vehicle. Granted, in this day and age, most travel is via a motor vehicle, but it is not necessary to operate a motor vehicle to travel in a motor vehicle as a passenger. You are correct, the exercise of rights should not involve registration, permits, or taxation. But, while you cannot be charged a fee to register to vote, you do have to register to exercise the right to vote. And, while we constantly talk about free speech, we still have to pay to have that free speech circulated to audiences beyond shouting distances.

“My point is that these pure concepts do require melding with the realities of the world we live in. My free speech doesn’t give me the right to force a printer, or the government the right to force a printer to print my words, for free.

“As you noted, ‘rights’ apply to everyone. A blind person can exercise free speech, vote, can’t be searched without a warrant, and can assemble with others. He also has a right to travel — but the courts would not hold that he had a right to drive an automobile.

“The courts have held that a person has a property interest in a driver’s license and that license cannot be taken away without due process. This removes the driver’s license from the pure definition of “privilege,” but it does not raise it to the level of an enumerated right.

“I realize that this does not fit your view of how this issue should be judged. However, it would be disingenuous of me to pretend that the courts in this country would rule that driving a motor vehicle is a right that cannot be regulated or taxed by the government. They have had that opportunity in the past, and you and I are witnesses to how they decided these questions.”

From Gary Biller, Feb 2012, responding to another inquiry
“I believe that stating we have an inalienable right to drive when the truth is that it is a conditioned right because of the licensing requirement, is problematic. If the media picks up on even a simple statement on our website and presses the matter, it becomes awkward to explain.

“An earlier comment I made to others:

“This discussion has taken an interesting turn from opposing a tyrannical government for tagging our vehicles to current distress over a story published by the NMA over a year ago. (The Driver License: Is It Necessary?, Nov/Dec 2010 issue of Driving Freedoms)

“Traveling by private automobile is a right. But that right is muddied by a system the government put into place in 1913 when the first driver’s license was issued, a system that has become well-entrenched over the past 100 years. Driving is a right, but it is hybridized by the government’s requirement for driver certification.”

From Jim Walker, Feb 2012, in the same email discussion thread
“Driving is a right — IF done safely and competently.  Being licensed is the way a government can revoke that right — IF the person repeatedly drives unsafely or incompetently.  I have NO problem with driver’s licenses being controlled with rational traffic laws designed for safety only.

“I have BIG problems with driver’s licenses being used as the club for financial performance or other things unrelated to driving safety.

“I do NOT want the repeatedly convicted high-BAC driver on the road, or the one who runs from police causing accidents, or the one who repeatedly causes accidents by incompetence, etc.”

From Gary Biller, Oct 2013, in a separate email exchange
“The NMA position that the sole purpose of the driver’s license is to certify competence as the operator of a motorized vehicle remains unchanged. In other words, public safety is served by requiring a certain level of knowledge and skill for those who get behind the wheel of a vehicle on public streets.

“Let’s look at this another way. Traffic signs that regulate the actions of drivers can also restrict the freedom of travel to some degree. High-occupancy vehicle lanes prohibit certain drivers from entering under penalty of law. One-way streets prevent drivers from moving freely. “No Parking” signs restrict how drivers come and go. Would the same defense work in those cases, basically saying the state has no right to hinder our movements on the road?”

The post The Right to Travel: NMA E-Newsletter #590 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

By Rob Talley

Editor’s Note: The Washington Report is a regular feature of the NMA’s quarterly Driving Freedoms member magazine. Our representative in DC, Rob Talley, wrote the original version of this newsletter for the spring issue of the magazine before the pandemic halted its publication. So Rob recently updated his dispatch to include more recent developments on Capitol Hill, and we are pleased to share it with you here.

The outlook in Washington for any issue, much less transportation policy, was completely upended with the outbreak of the coronavirus and associated US responses beginning in February.

Before the national crisis, House and Senate policymakers were working on transportation-related legislation that would have established funding levels for major highway and transportation safety programs for the next five years. In 2019, the Senate Committee working on the legislation passed a bipartisan proposal that authorized $287 billion in funding over five years.

In January, key Democratic leaders released a much more comprehensive infrastructure framework that would authorize $760 billion in funding. A significant portion, $329 billion, would go toward highways infrastructure according to discussions with staff working on the proposal. Another $105 billion would go toward improving public transit. Also included were non-traditional transportation proposals such as funding $34.3 billion worth of clean energy investment, and modernizing the electric grid to allow for more electric vehicle charging stations. House Republicans have not endorsed the proposal, expressing concerns about the expansive nature of the bill and objecting to some of the priorities.

While policy differences are an overarching problem in finding middle ground, the difference in funding levels is also a significant hurdle to passage. Even the more modest Senate proposed a $287 billion funding level that requires new funding mechanisms as the current gas tax fails to keep up with infrastructure funding needs.  Before the pandemic, policy leaders were looking at options that include the vehicle miles traveled tax and even surcharges on electric vehicles to cover EV road use, but these have proven politically sticky.

The NMA has expressed objections to policy leaders endorsing these proposals over the inclusion of funding for Vision Zero and Complete Streets programs. The Complete Streets program proposed by Congress would seriously degrade the consideration of automotive needs in transportation decisions. In communities that enact these programs, Vision Zero Coordinators, often full-time government staff, have no objective but to make sure that road usage is constrained, not enhanced, to protect the public and get people out of their cars. The Senate proposal creates a linkage between funding to states and localities and passage of Complete Streets programs that come close to creating a federal directive for setting local transportation decisions.

The NMA also continues to push the DETER Act, a bill to eliminate the use of ticket quotas in determining allocations of funding to states and localities for highway safety programs. We will seek to have the proposal attached to the highway authorization bill as it moves forward in the process.

Most recently, the discussion of stimulus-related legislation has sparked interest by some legislators for the inclusion of a transportation bill in a massive economic package. President Trump tweeted his support for as much as $2 trillion in overall infrastructure investment in the next stimulus bill. Still, signals for support are mixed, and the situation is very fluid. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), has endorsed and subsequently retracted support for such an effort in a stimulus bill.

Further clouding the outlook, decisions on the inclusion of provisions in previous stimulus bills have been made by a handful of senior policymakers in a closed room, not through regular legislative processes. Until Congress can get back to Washington and begin a more regular schedule, predicting the future of legislative action is very difficult. In the end, the greater the economic stress, the more likely major federal spending on things like infrastructure becomes.

The post The Washington Report–COVID-19 Crisis Edition: NMA E-Newsletter #589 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Editor’s Note:  Part 3 will be the final chapter for readers’ comments on our Newsletter #585. More than 40 readers emailed us their thoughts on roundabouts. We did a tally on how many believe in signaling or not signaling in roundabouts:

• 46 percent for signaling
• 32 percent opposed to signaling
• 22 percent who did not indicate either way

For additional comments, please read Part 1 and Part 2.

Readers’ Comments Part 3

As you point out, the standard is to signal 200 feet before changing lanes. I can enter and leave pretty much any roundabouts in this county before my car has traveled 200 feet. If I’m at a 4-way roundabout, and I want to take the third exit, I would have to have my right signal on pretty much as I enter, then pass the other two exits without exiting at them, contrary to my signal. That is actively misleading the other drivers. If instead, I only signal after I pass all the exits I won’t be taking, and I’m going to be barely within the reaction time of anybody behind me who would care. The entire concept is ludicrous and unworkable.

CD, Arizona

Having driven in Ireland, where roundabouts are the norm rather than the exception, I followed the practice of signaling just before the exit. When driving on the left, roundabouts are clockwise and seemed easier than in the US, maybe because drivers are used to them!

Russell, New Mexico

First, let’s look at the reason we have turn signals. It’s basically to remove uncertainty (or surprise) by other motorists about actions you take that affect them.

Following that idea, in my experience with roundabouts, the most important place where uncertainty needs to be removed is the uncertainty on the part of a driver who is entering a roundabout, regarding whether the next car coming around will exit at that point (typically upstream of his entry point) or proceed around. “Is this guy exiting, in which case I can proceed to enter, or is he coming around, in which case I wait?” Of course, at some point, you find out one way or the other, but the uncertainty here (as in many different traffic situations) leads to hesitation at best, and an accident at worst. This makes the case that turn signals should be used when exiting the roundabout.

Using signals upon exiting the roundabout also addresses the second most important place where uncertainty needs to be removed— signaling the driver behind you of your intent to exit and of possibly slowing down.

Conversely, what good would using a turn signal when entering a roundabout do? Is there any doubt in other drivers’ minds that a car sitting on the approach to the roundabout intends to enter? There’s no possible element of surprise here. But what’s so bad about a little hesitation created by uncertainty? Not much, until you take the big picture view of the traffic system and multiply one little hesitation by millions of situations. It makes the difference between the free-flowing, coordinated choreography that we all dream driving could be, and the stop-and-go, jerk-action, desperate-last-second-lane-change situations that we actually experience.

Jim Toscas, Illinois

The funny thing about roundabouts—New Jersey used to be the king of circles, and the butt of Jersey jokes. NJ has all but eliminated them now, and I believe it is because out-of-staters (like me) never understood how to drive in them. I always figured the person with the least fear had the right-of-way. In Pennsylvania and other states, new roundabouts have signs detailing the right-of-way. 

I was not aware of any law for signaling, but since I signal almost by instinct, I use that right turn signal to let oncoming drivers know I’m leaving, and they can consider entering the circle. I had hoped to create a trend by example, but it’s not working so far. No matter, I feel funny when I don’t signal (please do not consider me a holier-than-though; I simply drive a lot and have too much time to think about things like this).

Jeff, Pennsylvania

Totally moot. Nobody signals their turns (or stops), and the stupid state doesn’t use its overhead freeway displays to “remind” stupid drivers to do even simple things: move to the right, signal your turn, turn left from the left lane, right from the right, etc.

Big Wayne, California

Roundabouts come in many forms. Our county roundabouts are both single and dual lane. 

For a single-lane roundabout, there doesn’t seem much sense in signaling at all. No lane changing because there’s only one lane. Signaling left to go left could defy the facts of turn signal mechanics, which decree that the turn signal goes off if the wheel is turned opposite to current direction, i.e., activate the right signal while turning left.

In our two-county dual-lane roundabouts, I use turn signals only when changing lanes within the turnabout. Good sense requires letting others know that I’m changing lanes. 

Generally, the turns in turnabouts are gentle enough that reducing speed below the already slow turnabout speed is not required. Thus there is no impediment to traffic when a motorist proceeds out of the turnabout. I disagree with DefensiveDriving.com that signaling is necessary to exit turnabouts. 

Roundabouts are very efficient traffic flow devices. They should be built everywhere possible to replace stop signs. Good sense and situational awareness have kept traffic moving since the first one was created. Adding complications like how many feet from a roundabout “out” to signal, or whether to signal, just impose an unnecessary burden on the driver.

Art, Colorado

While not elucidated anywhere in statute, lane positioning is a less obvious way of handling this. If you think about it, your position in the lane is strong, but a less obvious signal of your intended path. Activating your signal is, in a way, a conscious break in your driving flow, but in a roundabout, signals must be too precisely spaced for noncompliance to be reasonably ticketable.

It’s almost as if this case opens up a new venue for descriptors of reasonable driving. Acts and omissions that, while not ticketable, should be part of the conscious awareness of every driver.

How does a government or other sanctioning body define and disseminate rules and guidelines like this?

It makes me think of the difference between Japan and the US when it comes to issuing licenses in the first place. Think about how easy it is to get a license in the US vs. Japan. Now think about how easy it is to get a motorcycle license in the US vs. getting a 750cc MC license in Japan. We’ve made our choice in the US—we choose to license drivers with minimal instruction and make it possible to get a license without learning about subtleties like roundabouts. Yet, the mayor of Carmel, IN, wishes to penalize drivers for not learning about these manifestly untaught subtleties.

Eric, California

Everyone entering must turn right, so signaling does nothing but distracts both the signaler and the signaled. Everyone leaves by turning right, but they should be in the right lane unless it is a two-lane exit (rare), so nobody is affected, no need to signal. 

Signaling lane changes in multi-lane rotaries is a good idea. A rotary where all exits are on the left would flow better, but requires expensive over/underpasses! There is a natural conflict between entering and exiting traffic with the right entry and exit. Also, we need education, so people realize that they can go around again if it is hard to get off!

David Pickett, New Jersey

No signaling. There are too many roundabout configurations which would require many different signaling rules. Signaling affects a driver entering the roundabout from the same road the car is exiting. Anyone who believes the signal of a car exiting is a fool. There are too many instances of cars mis-signaling to rely on the signals of a car exiting.

Mike Smyth, Washington State

The whole question of turn signals in roundabouts is ridiculous. In even the simplest roundabout (the intersection of two perpendicular streets), the last place a driver looks at is the taillights of the car in front of him. Safety demands he divides his attention between looking left and behind him for traffic that has the right of way, and cars entering from his right who may or may not judge his position correctly. Add to that, a requirement that he calculate distance from the next exit to know when to switch from signaling left to signaling right. 

Turn signals should be used to alert other drivers that you are going to depart from straight ahead, so they can back off and give you room to do that. Everyone in a roundabout is going to turn, either right now or very soon. Everyone knows that. Turn signals simply add complexity for zero benefits. 

The only safe way to negotiate roundabouts is to SLOW DOWN and be prepared to yield. Remember, the alternative is sitting and waiting for a red light to change. Just as a lane merge on a highway goes faster and more safely for everyone when drivers slow down, be courteous, and alternate, roundabouts are faster and safer for everyone when drivers do the same thing.

Stephen Leonard, Idaho

I just read newsletter #585, and I find the roundabout signaling issue to be a huge issue in my area. I agree that the right turn signal should be used. Especially as a vehicle approaches a roundabout to turn right, as that would allow a car waiting at the roundabout to yield to his right, yet still enter the roundabout, knowing the oncoming driver is turning, and his progress will not be impeded.

Signaling a left turn as approaching is ridiculous, in my opinion, as no driver actually tracks, or needs to follow, every other vehicle through 270 degrees of travel.

Where I live, confusion about what it means to yield is a significant issue in roundabouts. It seems many drivers feel the need to wait for at least one approaching vehicle to their left, whether they needed to or not, based on distances. Since this lengthens the time for every driver behind them, in a one-lane roundabout, traffic can back up for a mile in all directions during peak times, or if it is snowing. Yielding to the right of way does not mean you have to wait for one vehicle, which might be 600 feet from the roundabout. Roundabouts are made to slow drivers down. Now, drivers wait for a car that slowly enters and passes through the roundabout.

Tom, Wisconsin

I think this is the most ridiculous thing I have heard recently. It seems to me that the powers that be simply are, yet again, looking for a source of revenue, a reason to interject themselves into the personal life of ordinary citizens and have absolutely no interest in furthering traffic safety and protecting the lives of the citizens.

In some traffic circles, the distance between exits is so short that I believe confusion would be a significant problem. Of course, the government sees dollar signs. It is irresponsible government, like the ones pushing this in Indiana, who are turning law enforcement into tax collectors and diminishing their reputation in the eyes of the public.

Jeffrey, Pennsylvania

The post Turn Signal on a Roundabout; Readers’ Comments Part 3: NMA E-Newsletter #588 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Editor’s Note: Roundabouts elicit all kinds of opinions, and the comments from our recent Newsletter #585 was no exception. Last week, we presented the first set of comments. Part two also runs the gamut of those for and against signaling in a roundabout.

Readers’ Comments Part 2

No signaling should be required upon entering or exiting a roundabout because it serves no useful purpose. Everyone in front of you and behind you knows you are going to turn right eventually without slowing down. Only changing lanes within a roundabout after entering should require signaling.

This is so obvious—how can there be any other opinion on it? The only reason to legally require signaling upon entering or exiting a roundabout is the hope of collecting “revenue” when people acting on good instinct forget to do what is illogical.

Gary, Kansas

I believe that the rules DefensiveDriving.com suggests are correct. I have used those rules for many years.

James Phend, Florida, NMA Foundation Director

Roundabouts can be and usually are confusing. Many drivers speed through them, causing other more timid users to contemplate what they need to do in such a rushed environment. Adding turn signals to the mix only adds to the confusion.

The Indiana law that requires a motorist to signal 200 yards before a turn is not practical when driving in a roundabout. The attorney general inserting his opinion on the need to signal within seconds of your turn is subjective and not the law.

                                          Dennis Eros, Washington State

“When turning left (last exit/three-quarters around), signal left upon entering, switch to the right as you come to the exit.”

This last suggestion (from the DefensiveDriving.com) makes no sense. If you signal left when entering a traffic circle, people are going to think you are going to go the wrong way. Signaling when you are about to exit the traffic circle makes sense and makes the roundabouts safer for all who drive them.

Alex, New Jersey

Simple: Signal right if moving from left lane to right lane within the circle & when exiting. Don’t signal otherwise. Signaling left when entering the circle implies that you are an idiot who intends to turn clockwise into the circle.

Bob, Michigan

An experienced driver having driven in more than 30 different countries with a million miles behind the wheel, I agree with DefensiveDriving.com’s ideas on navigating roundabouts. My first driving experience in Europe was 45 years ago. I learned how to navigate roundabouts by watching how the European drivers negotiate roundabouts. Many, if not most drivers there use their signals as recommended. I also believe that Europeans are more aware of the driving conditions.

In cities, roundabouts increase the flow of traffic and safety only if drivers yield when they should and take the right of way when they have it. That same logic applies in many driving situations.

Larry, Nevada

I’ve given up. Self-canceling signals found on virtually every light vehicle aren’t conducive to it. Too much wheel movement in both directions.

Mike Siedlecki, Oregon

I can find no other purpose for signaling at a roundabout, except to indicate an intent to exit a roundabout at a particular road, and that’s always to the right.

Thus in Indiana and any other states that have such laws on the books – any legal requirement to signal a left turn or right turn before entering a roundabout should not be enforced.

Donald, Wisconsin

I’m very sensitive to when signaling is useful, and when it’s not. In a rotary (as we call them in Massachusetts) where one car can’t pass another while circling, there is no need for signaling.

In a rotary where cars can pass others while circling, it would probably be helpful for cars to signal right when they are about to exit if they are in an inner lane of the rotary. And if a vehicle is in an outer lane of the rotary and is going to be passing at least one exit before exiting, it might be useful for the driver to signal left until the car has passed the last exit before it exits.

David Holzman, Massachusetts

As a retired truck driver, I started using turn signals to let others know what my intentions were, so they wouldn’t have to guess. In that way, they may not have to brake, which helps traffic speed in the roundabout. I do not think it should be enforceable, because police ticket hunters will be there to make their cash.

Merrill Gehman, Alaska

One reason the use of turn signals should not be required in roundabouts is that you are continually turning already in one. That requires a lot more attention to your steering wheel, and for a lot of drivers, having to take a hand off the wheel to use a turn signal is problematic. You don’t need to know the other driver’s intentions if they are in front of you because of any direction they choose doesn’t affect you. If you are next to them even a little, a turn signal may not be visible to give you enough time to react anyway.

The other thing about roundabouts is the ridiculous 15 mph speed limit. Have you actually tried to go that slow in one? Just try it when other drivers are around you. I did it once with no one around just to see if I could. Insane!

Clair Oppriecht, Wisconsin

Speaking of roundabouts, here is something I found humorous. Highway 191 going north out of Jackson, Wyoming enters Teton National Park at about 4 miles north of town. No one notices this unless they read a small sign that says “Entering Teton National Park.” Driving in or out of the park is little-noticed because that part of the park has no noted entrance or exit point. If one continues on 191, one eventually exits the park, again without any notification that you’ve ever been in the park.

Gross Ventre junction is seven miles north of town on 191, which is in the park. This junction is for North-South traffic on 191 and East-West traffic on the crossroad, which has a name, which no one remembers. While 191 is a heavily traveled road, the crossroad is a lightly traveled road. Normal people do not think this is a situation where a roundabout would be helpful. For that reason, many people, including myself, wrote letters to the newspaper saying we thought spending $5 million on an unnecessary roundabout would be stupid. Of course, we were not listened to even though the Park Service always complains they don’t have enough money.

The roundabout was built, and it was audacious. In the center was a large statue of something or someone nobody ever heard of, but it was beautiful. It must have at least doubled the cost of the roundabout.

Shortly after the roundabout was finished an 18-wheeler going about 50 miles an hour plowed into it on a dark night. The entire center of the roundabout was demolished. The traffic lanes remained intact. This was a few months ago, and so far, the Park Service hasn’t said when or whether they will rebuild the center structure. It remains in ruins as a testament to the National Park Service’s stupidity.

Kenneth Willis, Wyoming

The post Turn Signal on a Roundabout; Reader Comments Part 2: NMA E-Newsletter #587 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Editor’s Note: One thing we do know about roundabouts (traffic circles or rotaries), every driver has an opinion. There is something fundamental about stopping, yielding, and signaling that seems to create as much conflict on the road and strong opinions as almost anything we tackle.

Roundabouts, just like speed limits, are something that many drivers encounter every time they travel in their vehicles. Most understand the importance of making asset forfeiture laws fairer, but because it is more of an abstract idea for most people, they aren’t as opinionated or emotionally involved.

Last week we asked for your comments and received more comments on Newsletter #585, than any other. Over the next couple of weeks, the newsletter will be devoted to those comments.

Readers’ Comments Part 1

Turn signals should not be required in roundabouts. Why? Fundamentally, roundabouts have their own unique set of rules that make signaling superfluous. Follow the rules, and drivers are inherently safe.

But there’s another important issue to consider. Roundabouts require a great deal of concentration and focus on monitoring what other drivers are doing while negotiating where to exit and from which lane.

Attempting to signal in a roundabout is clearly much more complicated than when approaching a typical intersection. If signaling in a roundabout was required under law, there would be an exact point in space and moment in time to initiate your signal. Throwing in a requirement to figure out when to do this will overload the concentration of many drivers, even good ones, potentially resulting in crashes.

Jim Garry, New York

In Switzerland and Germany, roundabouts are everywhere. But as I tell my friends about America, “If Americans don’t invent it, it’s not good.” Europeans signal in roundabouts just as DefensiveDriving.com describes. And they always do.

In Minneapolis, driving is often guesswork. The most incompetent, passive-aggressive drivers I have ever seen.

James Crue, Minnesota

DefensiveDriving.com’s signaling guidelines for roundabouts (which is what the British call them –many Americans call them traffic circles and those in New England, call them rotaries) are, for the most part, sensible. Except for the third section, “When turning left (last exit/three-quarters around), signal left upon entering, switch to the right as you come to the exit” is illogical and sure to confuse other motorists. It is akin to signaling left then right at a typical intersection when you intend to turn right and then turn left down the road at the next corner.

Strike guideline three and amend the second to read: “For all subsequent turns, no signal upon entering, signal as you approach your exit.” Those two guidelines are more straightforward and cover every option without confusion.

Michael Lawler, California

While the use of turn signals is always advisable when it effectively communicates the driver’s intentions, failure to use them, or incorrect usage in the judgment of someone else, should never be considered a basis for citation or arrest. Drivers should never rely entirely on another driver’s use or failure to use turn signals in determining their driving actions.

James, Texas

I think if anyone signaled as suggested by DefensiveDriving.com in the newsletter, it would confuse the heck out of me, particularly the third idea. Is he going to go CLOCKWISE when he enters the roundabout?

Pat, Arizona

In 1972, while driving in Mexico City on my way to Acapulco, I was trying to enter a large roundabout (that were all over the city) without success because it was so crowded, and nobody would let us in.

Apparently, you needed to crash your way in, as noted by all the damaged cars! Anyway, in the center of the roundabout was a policeman on a pedestal who saw us having a problem. He blew his whistle, and bravely stepped right into traffic with hand held high. Everything screeched to a halt. He calmly walked over to my International Scout & said, “Senor, what are you doing, please?” My passenger and I cracked up, the officer smiled with us, then proceeded to walk us into traffic and waved us on. To sum up: Lawmakers, what are you doing, please?

Jeff Talbot, Oregon

I can find no viable reason for signaling before entering a roundabout since all vehicles need to reduce their speeds beforehand. Cars should uniformly enter each roundabout; that includes yielding to traffic from the left, enforced with the posting of a Yield sign at each point of entry.

I can find no other purpose for signaling at a roundabout, except to indicate an intent to exit a roundabout at a particular road, and that’s always to the right.

Thus in Indiana and any other states that have such laws on the books – any legal requirement to signal a left turn or right turn before entering a roundabout should not be enforced.

Donald, Wisconsin

I’ve given up. Self-canceling signals found on virtually every light vehicle aren’t conducive to it. Too much wheel movement in both directions.

Mike Siedlecki, Oregon

In my town, there is a roundabout that used to be a T-intersection, so it only has 3 points of entry/exit. Going north or south on the street, there is hardly a turn (and tons of tire tracks as people have literally driven straight through. Only when you exit to the east (first option on northbound, second on southbound), there is a “real” turn. Should north/southbound traffic signal when continuing straight? I typically only use my turn signal when heading east or coming from the east.

Jim Ely, Virginia

This was an excellent article about how ticket-issuing police forces can exploit unclear laws. I think about this gap in the law every time I use the roundabout near my home.

I don’t know what “DefensiveDriving.com” is, but their advice is dubious. There is no reason to signal upon entering a roundabout, as traffic in the circle has the right of way, and there is only one place for an entering car to go. Signaling a left turn makes no sense.

I have begun signaling a right turn before leaving a roundabout, if I need to change lanes, and as a courtesy to drivers who may be waiting to enter downstream.

Aarne Frobom, Michigan, NMA Foundation Director

The post Turn Signal on a Roundabout; Reader Comments Part 1: NMA E-Newsletter #586 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

One of the most basic rules of the road is that a driver must use a turn signal when turning right or left or changing lanes. But is this the case when exiting a roundabout?

The Indiana Court of Appeals says no.

The case started with a 2018 traffic stop in Warsaw. According to court documents, the defendant drove through a Kosciusko County roundabout and exited without signaling. An officer stopped him for failing to signal, and then he was promptly arrested due to the officer’s discovery of drug paraphernalia in the vehicle.

The man was subsequently charged with felony drug possession. Facing several years in prison, the defendant said the traffic stop itself was unlawful because it violated the state statute, and the evidence gathered should be suppressed. The state argued that when a driver leaves a roundabout, he or she is deviating from the normal flow of traffic and requires a turn signal.

The whole case hinged on the question: Must drivers signal when exiting a roundabout?

Traffic in a roundabout moves counterclockwise, and drivers usually have several options depending on the number of exits and lanes. Indiana law indicates that drivers are required when turning right or left to signal no less than at least 200 feet before turning or changing lanes.

The defendant won both his first case and the Appeals Court case because while roundabouts are not excluded from the Indiana statute, these special intersections were not widespread in the state when these traffic laws were established.

The Appeals Court wrote, “Any assumption that the signaling statute specifically applies to roundabouts fails to withstand scrutiny when the reality and logistics of roundabouts are considered.” Basically, due to the way roundabouts work, motorists cannot reasonably signal at the distance the law requires.

Apparently, this case raised more questions than answers according to the Court:

“Based on our current turn signal law, how and when would a motorist be required to signal his exit from a roundabout?

“Must a motorist signal when exiting the roundabout intersection, even when he has traveled straight through and is proceeding in the same direction on the same street upon which he entered?

“Would that be considered a “turn,” or does a “turn” occur only when a motorist chooses to take an exit onto a different street?

“Does exiting a roundabout, which often involves a driver veering to the right, involve a “turn,” or does it depend upon the angle of the exit and the degree to which the driver must rotate his steering wheel?”

Carmel, Indiana Mayor James Brainard, doesn’t believe the situation has to be this complicated. The self-pronounced roundabout capital of the country, the city of Carmel (population 92,000), has built 128 roundabouts since 1998. Brainard recently told the Indianapolis Star newspaper that he believes the state should require roundabout signaling and tickets for those who fail to do so.

The state Appeals Court agrees with Brainard that the law should be updated to include all the numerous roundabout varieties and configurations. The Court added, “All of this convinced us, that Indiana Code Section 9-21-B-25 is a square peg that cannot fit into a roundabout hole.”

The Indiana State Attorney General’s office does not agree with the Court’s ruling and is evaluating its next steps.

So, when should a driver signal in a roundabout? Here is what DefensiveDriving.com states about the issue:

One of the most common mistakes that people use on roundabouts is signaling incorrectly, or not at all. When appropriately used, indicators can be an excellent way to increase safety and convenience on a roundabout, by letting those around you know of your intentions. A good rule of thumb is to always signal immediately before your exit, using your right indicator, just as you would when turning. Correct indication on a roundabout goes as follows:

–When turning right (first exit), signal right as with a normal right turn.
–When going straight ahead, no signal upon entering, signal as you approach your exit.
–When turning left (last exit/three-quarters around), signal left upon entering, switch to right as you come to the exit.

We are interested in hearing from you. What do you think the rules for using (or not using) turn signals when exiting a roundabout should be? Email us at nma@motorists.org, and if we receive enough comments, we might present them in a future newsletter.

The post Turn Signal on a Roundabout: NMA E-Newsletter #585 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Editor’s Note:  A number of our weekly newsletter readers had responses to Part 1 of Newsletter #582 Out of Chaos Comes Driver Courtesy. Not only did they send comments, but two also had videos to share of an earlier time when courtesy among all road users was the true rule of the road.

This Cambodian Street traffic video reminds me of when there’s a power outage in the area where I live. There are four traffic lights which don’t work. When this happens, nearly everybody simply takes their turn at the intersections. No muss, no fuss. Just people doing what is reasonable for the situation.

Anonymous, Pennsylvania Member

_____________________________

It used to be like that on Market Street in San Francisco in 1906, pre-regimentation. 

No traffic or intersection controls, no signs (or license plates because people had the right to travel), plenty of jaywalking, and only two cops the entire length of it. By the way, now Market Street doesn’t even allow cars as it was just converted to a car-free street in January 2020.

Warren, Arizona Member

______________________________

What is the real psychology here?

Laws, rules of the road, etc. do not as much serve to prevent things from going wrong as they do to provide a basis for who to punish when they do go wrong.

Failure to understand this universal concept is at the root of many of today’s socio-political conflicts.

Jim, Illinois Member

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One of the remarkable differences I noticed when living in Germany in the late 1980s was the dearth of traffic signs. Oftentimes, there was NO sign when obviously it was the priority road: no stop signs, even.

Here is a quote from a Getting Around Germany article that explains this in more detail:

“The basic premise of German traffic law is the “doctrine of confidence”, which in effect says that motorists must be alert, obey the law, and drive defensively at all times so that all motorists and other road users (including pedestrians) can have confidence in each other. Motorists must be especially alert for and anticipate the actions of elderly or disabled pedestrians or children, all of whom are exempt from the doctrine of confidence. All road users must act to prevent endangering, hindering, and unreasonably inconveniencing other road users.”

Eric Berg, NMA Board Member

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Two recent articles found in the NMA daily email Driving News Daily (subscribe now) and on the NMA Driving News Feed provide interesting perspective on the shared use of streets.

• Is Jaywalking Still a Crime?
• Take A Colorful Stroll Through 1911 NYC With Incredible Restored Footage (video)

Note from the video that the speeds of anything or anybody are pretty slow that even bicycles can go as fast as anything else powered by motors or horses.

Chaos is manageable when the speed range is comparatively slow. That’s what the bike/pedestrian advocates are getting at—a return to some aspects of yesteryear with shared-use streets. The obvious problem for them is that the streets have evolved to support cars so now they strike back and denigrate motorists and our “car culture.” Is history repeating itself?

It is amazing how the lack of controls force people to pay attention to the environment and not develop a false sense of security.

One might assume that once the automobile became common, the car also became a status symbol — class wars were tied to those who could afford to drive and those who were stuck walking. But in fact the opposite is true.

According to an essay in Salon, motorists were the outsiders and were outnumbered by pedestrians who resented being displaced to the sidewalks. This phase lasted well into the 1920s, when the automobile industry lobbied to make cities more car-friendly and to make jaywalking first a faux pas, and eventually a crime. Crosswalks were added to streets in 1911 and laws against jaywalking were widespread by the 1930s.

Steve Carrellas, NMA Foundation Board Chair & Executive Director

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“. . . it is amazing how the lack of controls forces people to pay attention to the environment and not develop a false sense of security.”

And I would add how drivers are generally less competitive (or perhaps “less territorial” is a better way to put it), as in “I’m not going to let him merge in front of me,” when the controls are less noticeable. The two videos, Cambodia and San Francisco more than 100 years ago, show that a common courteousness and a shared sense of purpose come to the forefront when there aren’t prescribed rules to the game.

Gary Biller, President, NMA

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“a common courteousness and a shared sense of purpose come to the forefront when there aren’t prescribed rules to the game.”

This is exactly the phrase I’ve been wanting to describe what I saw on the crowded main roads of Manila last month. 

I decided that Manila traffic was generally more polite than in the U.S. 

I managed to figure out that the difference stemmed from the lack of presumption of right-of-way in a system where lanes did not mean much, and drivers did not have a sense of possession of the roadway real estate. 

Although the system wasn’t perfectly adhered to, the attitude seemed to be, “we’re all in this together,” instead of “I own this lane, so screw you if you need to merge.” 

Turn signals were almost never used, and a horn (usually) seemed to mean, “I’m here, don’t merge into me,” instead of, “I intend to go first.”  

The cars were nowhere near as beat-up as in New Jersey, despite driving the roads with inches to spare, and motorbikes occupying all unused lane space.

Anonymous, Michigan Member

The post Out of Chaos Comes Driver Courtesy Part 2–Readers Comments: NMA E-Newsletter #584 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Let’s have some fun with this. We’re going to quote the opening, middle, and closing paragraphs of a traffic engineering paper, and you guess what year it was published. In fact, let’s simplify that further: In which era was the paper published?

1. Pre 55 mph National Maximum Speed Limit (before 1974)
2. During the NMSL restriction (1974 to 1995)
3. Post NMSL (after 1995)

The answer can be found at the end of this newsletter. One thing is certain: Deep down, most traffic engineers have always known the truth about speed limits. Too often, though, they haven’t had the influence or the fortitude to overcome the politics of “speed kills” or the mentality that otherwise responsible drivers are naturally programmed to go too fast. The result has been a plethora of revenue-based, rather than safety-based, enforcement systems.

Here are the opening paragraphs of the paper:

“Transportation is an essential element in the dynamic society found in present-day America. Not only is it essential that persons and goods be moved from place to place, but great emphasis is placed on the fact that this movement be made rapidly and comfortably. Thus we find that speed is a primary factor in all modes of transportation. In the realm of highway transportation, speed is not only one of the most discussed factors, but it also is one of the most controversial factors. Every traffic expert, whether professionally qualified or self-designated, is usually ready and willing to discuss the speed problem during the course of the daily conversation. Such terms as, “Speed is the greatest contributing cause to traffic accident severity,” “Speed still public enemy No. 1,” “Speed kills,” and “Nobody obeys the speed limit,” may be heard or read with increasing frequency. 

“Because many recognized traffic specialists disagree on various factors of the so-called speed problem, it is not surprising that the general public has many varied and often diverse opinions concerning speed. Consequently, it might be well if the term “speed” be defined as the rate of movement of a vehicle, generally expressed in miles per hour. The term “speed” is an indication of velocity; however, as commonly used, the term implies high speed. The question may then be raised, “Well, what is meant by the term ‘high speed’?” Not only would a description of this adjective vary between individuals, but each individual would possibly change his definition in accordance with the existence of other conditions present on or off the highway. Such items as visibility, weather, surface characteristics, vehicle type, traffic movements and volumes, pedestrians, driver variables, and soon, might all influence the answer. It is therefore essential that all those who are actively engaged in the battle against traffic accidents and congestion have a clear understanding of the many facets of the so-called speed problem.”

Further on,

“The following conclusions were drawn in the study [where observations were made on two residential city streets carrying state and federal highway routings):

1. Traffic consistently ignores posted speed limits and even the absence of speed limit signs, and runs at speeds which the drivers consider reasonable, convenient, and safe under existing conditions;
2. Drivers do not operate by the speedometer but by the conditions they meet;
3. The general public gives little attention to what speed limits are posted;
4. The general public has a false conception of speed;
5. Most present posted speed limits are ineffective because they are unreasonable and hence are useless. Their removal would have virtually no effect on traffic and would save large sums of money;
6. Speeds vary little with the time of day;
7. Speeds vary little with traffic volumes up to the point where congestion begins;
8. Adequate speed limits, high enough to cover normal traffic operations and enforced with only sufficient tolerance to meet unusual conditions or cover the usual inaccuracies of stock speedometers, would probably help expedite traffic and aid in the enforcement of all traffic regulations;
9. Extensive additional studies of this nature are needed from which to derive data for an intensive campaign of education for both the general public and public officials on the true concepts of speed limits; and
10. A sound definition of speed limit should be developed and universally adopted.”

And in conclusion,

“Government officials must be taught to look upon speed measuring devices as enforcement and engineering equipment, and not as revenue equipment. Engineers must learn how to determine speed characteristics and to establish speed zones in a scientific manner. The police and courts must learn and utilize the latest methods for apprehending and re-educating those drivers who drive at speeds that are unreasonably too fast or too slow. Last, but by no means least, the general public must learn that speed facts are being assembled, and they must demand public officials who will utilize these facts.”

The answer is a), the pre-NMSL era. The paper was presented in 1957 at the University of Wisconsin Traffic Engineering Institute by John Baerwald, a professor of traffic engineering at the University of Illinois.

The post A Speed Theory Quiz: NMA E-Newsletter #583 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

More than ten years ago, we reported the fascinating results achieved in Drachten, a small city in The Netherlands that eliminated all traffic signs only to find that out of sanctioned chaos came order. And unending driver courtesy. And a greater sense of safety for all road users.

A couple of excerpts from A Different Kind of Distracted Driving, NMA E-Newsletter #32:

British behavioral psychologist John Staddon believes traffic signs actually make streets more dangerous for motorists and pedestrians. He believes that traffic signs condition drivers to be less observant. Drivers trained to rely on instructional signs, rather than their own judgment, can create an “inattentional blindness.”

Staddon noted that while highways in the U.S. are wider, better marked, and less crowded than England, the minor accidents he comes across every day or two in the U.S. are rare occurrences in the U.K.

And:

A few years ago, all regulatory traffic signs were removed from the city center of Drachten, a Dutch city with a population of about 50,000. Demarcations between roads and sidewalks were also stripped. Despite the free-for-all design, the steady stream of vehicular traffic flowed smoothly, and pedestrians walked the streets safely. “Right of way” became an instinctual process between motorists. Their collective sense of responsibility and consideration created a safe environment.

Our update on the lessons of Drachten is illustrated by the following 92-second video of recent traffic from Siem Reap, Cambodia:

We’re not sure we’d have a greater sense of security while traversing this free-for-all, unregulated intersection, but as other video taken at the same intersection has shown, the traffic throughput and shared courtesy are extraordinary. Over the 1-1/2 minutes shown in the clip, nearly 60 vehicles, scooters, and pedestrians crossed through the intersection safely. Horn honking, usually a sign of anger and aggression in America, is at a minimum and typically used to offer a helpful signal to other travelers.

We are by no means endorsing the elimination of all traffic signs and regulations in the United States and Canada. But with distracted driving a leading cause of accidents and fatalities here, traffic engineers would do well to reduce the clutter of roadway instructions that, in addition to myriad in-cabin controls, displays, and alarms provided by automakers to fiddle with, preoccupy a driver’s vision.

The post Out of Chaos Comes Driver Courtesy: NMA E-Newsletter #582 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

In August 2019, 20 truckers with nine trucks held a rally at the Missouri State Capital, protesting the safety of autonomous trucks. They were there to support a bill on the drafting table by State Representative Mike Moon.

Downshift to this year’s state legislative session; Moon sponsored and introduced a bill that would require a trained person to be present in an autonomous vehicle. HB2059 would specifically forbid vehicles from being operated in automatic mode on a highway or street unless a licensed and trained person is present inside the vehicle. “The Driver” would have the ability to monitor the vehicle’s performance and take control if necessary. Even though introduced in early January, HB2059 still awaits a committee assignment.

Recently, OOIDA gave support to Moon’s bill. Government Affairs Manager Mike Matousek states that autonomous trucks (ATs) have a lot of potential, but there are many challenges as it relates to commercial haulers and safety. He noted in a recent statement:

“There are hundreds—or even thousands—of concerns that need to be addressed before a driverless vehicle of any size should be allowed to operate on public highways. Requiring a trained person to be present in an automated motor vehicle—both passenger and commercial motor vehicles—that is operating in ‘automatic mode’ is a relatively simple solution.”

The engine that churns our economy is moving goods by truck from city to city, and even across town. Without this vital transportation service, life would be rather different for most of us. The wide variety of goods we are accustomed to would not be available without truckers. CNBC reported in November 2019 that Self-Driving Trucks [are] likely to hit the Roads before Passenger Cars.

Truckers, of course, are not happy with this future scenario. Over 3.5 million professionals drive trucks in America. Add in those affiliated with the industry, and the number tops out at 8.7 million. In about half of the states, trucking and related jobs are among the most significant of professions. The disruption of the industry would wreak havoc for workers and their families.

Lowering driver overhead will likely make trucking companies more profitable. Consumers might even like the idea too because it could mean that the price of goods will go down. The question, though, on everyone’s mind, will ATs be safer?

A scenario that some advocates are putting forward seems quite simple. One driver would lead several other driverless trucks in a platooning operation on the open road. Truck platooning links two or more trucks in a convoy. These vehicles would use both connected and automated driving technology to stay in touch continually, maintain correct spacing and road speed.

Not only does this save on driver pay, but platooned trucks would also save on fuel due to less aerodynamic drag. Here is a 2018 YouTube video that shows how platooning works.

Open road platooning is one thing, but trucks still must reach their final destination, which is usually in urban areas with stop-and-go traffic. Some have suggested that in-town trucks would be “driven” by operators, much like a soldier drives a military drone. Perhaps not all truckers will be out of a job if they undertake retraining as a “driver-operator.”

Lately, many experts have been dialing back the arrival date for a Level 6 (free of any human interaction) autonomous vehicle. Lowering expectations is probably a good thing. With all the issues we currently have with infrastructure, auto and truck recalls, and cybersecurity concerns with connected vehicles, we’re not ready yet.

In the meantime, before full autonomy, AVs will have to deal with human drivers.

Car and Driver recently showcased a story about a man who was arrested for brake checking an autonomous van (and its human safety driver) in Arizona. The man was a disgruntled former employee and had exhibited road rage several times against Waymo AVs.

An extreme case maybe, but not everyone in Arizona has been enamored with autonomous vehicle testing. No longer just the purview of motorist-to-motorist encounters, road rage has now entered the autonomous zone. Guns pointed from driveways and rocks thrown at AVs are just a few of the intimidation factors the state’s safety drivers have encountered.

At the end of its road rage story, Car and Driver issued a short poll that asked one question: Do you feel hostile toward self-driving cars? You could select one of two answers:

1)  Not at all, I welcome technological advancement in all its forms.
2)  Yes, hate ‘em, but I wouldn’t try to cause a crash over it.

Which answer would you choose?

When we took the test, the results to that point were 64 percent for Answer 1 and 36 percent for Answer 2.

We might not feel hostile now, but when human drivers are driving amongst autonomous cars and platooning trucks, how will we feel then when they follow every rule of the road with no give and take? Or to put it another way, with no discretion?

The post So What Happens if We Don’t Want Them? NMA E-Newsletter #581 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Every so often, some spring cleaning is required to tidy up and put one’s house in order. We are getting an early start on the seasonal ritual at the NMA offices, and in the process, turned up an interesting opinion piece written by a member who is still very active today. We won’t name names because the focus should be on his words, which have a relevancy today as they did in 1992. That is particularly so on the heels of an announcement by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it has awarded $562 million in highway safety grants to the states for 2020, much of which is earmarked for high-visibility enforcement campaigns that are evaluated by how many tickets are handed out, not strictly by safety improvements.

Please Call Me a Professional Speeder

We hear a lot about enforcement schemes aimed at the “professional speeder.” The cops are always announcing another ticket-writing blitz against the guy who makes a business of driving fast, on every freeway trip, all the time.

But what’s wrong with being a professional speeder? Where I come from, professional means skilled, judicious, knowledgeable, and careful. A professional doesn’t make mistakes and can be counted on to perform properly, every time, under all circumstances. I’d consider it an honor to be called a professional speeder if only my car would go fast enough, and it didn’t attract police attention.

On the highway, professional speeders include a lot of people who drive for a living, whose families depend on them, and who take pride in the job they do. Truck drivers, bus drivers, delivery men, messengers, sales representatives, repairmen, and a lot of professional people are also professional speeders as a matter of economic survival. These are the people who make society work. They are not the people who are causing a problem on the highways.

Instead, the police need to be chasing the amateur speeder. This is the character driving unpredictably, at speeds he’s not used to, in suspect equipment, under conditions that call for caution. The amateur speeder is the beginning driver, or a drunk, or someone short on brains and maturity. With a little training, the police could learn to spot these guys and write tickets for real accident-producing behavior. They’d probably welcome the chance to do some real police work, instead of simply sitting by the side of the freeway, reading the numbers on a radar unit.

Of course, under our present system of traffic law, there is no legal way for the police to distinguish between one kind of speeder and another. And, it’s a lot easier to fulfill a ticket quota by writing up the salesman doing 75 on a wide, straight freeway than the clown doing 45 on main street. The phrase “too fast for conditions” is meaningless when the speed limit is too slow under almost all conditions, and all drivers are speeders, professional or otherwise.

So the next time your state legislators or highway patrol proudly announce another campaign against professional speeders, ask them publicly if they know what professional really means. And then ask them why they’re chasing the wrong people.

The post Twenty-Eight Years Later: NMA E-Newsletter #580 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Over the past several months, the latest Illinois red-light camera corruption case has unfolded. The 2014 Redflex bribery scandal preceded the current mess. Several company and public officials went to jail, and in 2017, Redflex paid the city of Chicago a $20 million settlement. You would have thought that the state had learned its lessons, but nope. No doubt this is due in large part to drivers taking the hit, much more than the city.

The ongoing, highly public corruption is why many citizens distrust the government. When we elect someone to public office, we expect them to uphold their oath to the people, not profit off the backs of taxpayers. Call us naïve, but democracy best works when those elected continue to have the public trust. Many honest men and women, of course, run for office and, when elected, work hard for us.

Chicago State Senator Martin Sandoval did not. In November, he resigned from his state seat because he knew what was coming. For years, he kept bills to ban red-light cameras out of the transportation committee he chaired, because he was greedy and dishonest. He raked in the bucks from SafeSpeed, an Illinois home-grown camera company.

SafeSpeed CEO Nikki Zollar has denied any wrongdoing. She stated that “We don’t pay people off.” According to the company’s website, it has contracts with more than 30 Illinois municipalities. Despite Zollar’s protestations, the company and some of its investors were large campaign contributors to Sandoval.

In January, Sandoval entered into a plea agreement in federal court for taking $250,000 in bribes and for tax evasion. He has indicated that he will cooperate with federal investigators in their ongoing investigation of additional political corruption. He told reporters he was “deeply ashamed” and faces 13 years in prison.

Sandoval made his dirty money from red-light cameras outside the Chicago area. In 2008, fewer than 90 cameras outside of Chicago generated $5.4 million. By 2018, more than 300 cameras were responsible for issuing more than $56 million in violations. Generally, cities and towns receive anywhere between 30 to 60 percent of the cash generated from citations with the camera. Companies keep the rest of the loot.

In 2017, an exhaustive Chicago Tribune investigation unveiled information that many of the Chicago suburban cameras were placed at some of the safest intersections. Due to state law, intersections on state highways had to be approved by the Illinois Department of Transportation, which had drafted a policy in 2006. Lobbyists and “an unnamed lawmaker close to red-light camera firms” helped redefine the process of how intersections were selected for cameras and that the original 2006 policy was never implemented. The Tribune found that the state’s draft criteria would have only approved cameras for three of the 184 intersections on state routes.

Study after study has shown red-light cameras increase rear-end crashes because driver’s slam on their brakes to avoid a citation. According to the IllinoisPolicy.org website, local governments are no longer talking about safety any more when it comes to these devices—officials need the money citations generate to help pay for basic services.

The city of Chicago also appears to be in the same predicament. Between January 2008 and September 2019, city of Chicago RLCs banked $672.4 million total. In 2017, the city made $54.4 million in revenue.

Motorists have been fighting back, though. The Windy City settled in 2017 a nearly $40 million class-action lawsuit that alleged the program violated due process. Also, in 2017 another lawsuit was filed that claimed Chicago’s program is unconstitutional since it fails to satisfy several state law requirements. Despite all the lawsuits and other issues with RLCs, the city just can’t quit using money from citations to balance its budget.

Bipartisan bill HB3927 is currently gaining momentum in the House. If passed, it would ban red-light cameras plus deny cities home rule power in this area.

Will elected officials have the courage to pass this legislation?

After the many scandals, this policing for profit scheme has got to go in Illinois and every other town in the US that has red-light cameras.

The post Too Many Red-Light Camera Scandals in Illinois: NMA E-Newsletter #579 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

By Shelia Dunn, NMA Communications Director, and writer of the Keep the US Moving Blog.

When did traffic safety become the purview of Big Bike and Vision Zero? In my experience, many motorists are hybrids: motorist/pedestrian, motorist/bicyclist, etc. The collective “We” are absolutely concerned about traffic safety. But why does it then feel like it is an “Us vs. Them” mentality?

Vision Zero seems to have clogged up the idea of personal responsibility. The goal of not ever having a traffic death is laudable, no doubt. To accuse anyone driving a car as the instigator of the “crash” is not. Common sense dictates that everyone has a responsibility for traffic safety—their own and others who use the road.

Just like everything else in this county, it seems the polarization surrounding the issue of who is most responsible for road safety is not helping anyone. In the past six months, at least 10 Vision Zero cities have reported that more pedestrian/bicyclist deaths have occurred than the year previous.

Nearly every day, Big Bike and VZ proponents call for an immediate arrest of any driver involved in a traffic accident even though the police are obligated to investigate before determining responsibility. Of course, every death is a tragedy but why has the rhetoric been pushed to such heights? No one should ever trade on a family’s tragedy to score ideological or political points.

The Toronto Sun recently ran an editorial called: Vision Zero has turned into another City Hall industry. I have to agree. Twelve city staffers currently work on the city’s VZ plan while other transportation units help support the effort and add to taxpayer cost.

In the past three years, Toronto spent $109.6 million on the goal of eliminating all traffic fatalities. The city implemented road diets by adding bike and bus lanes. It also dotted the streets with traffic calming measures. The largest Canadian city, with nearly three million residents, subcontracts much of its traffic enforcement to for-profit red-light and speed camera companies that feast on speed limits that have been lowered on 237 kilometers (or 147.3 miles) of roads.

The writer of the Sun article, Sue-Ann Levy, says it seems many lanes have been reduced to turtle speed. Traffic congestion is rampant, and frustrated drivers are struggling to get anywhere in the city by car.

Does this fallout, born of blind devotion to Vision Zero, seem like common sense to anyone?

The post Big Bike and Common Sense: NMA E-Newsletter #578 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Amidst the national movement by transportation planners and Vision Zero proponents to restrict driving, true believers who have never seen a car or motorist they like–speed kills, you know–we occasionally stumble upon remnants of a saner world.

Those moments of clarity are probably more common than you might think if you follow the media headlines. It’s just that the noise created by anti-driving advocates is drowning out those among us who consider personal mobility a vital societal freedom. Bringing safety into the debate is a red herring; speed limits and traffic fatality rates have been diverging consistently for decades, the former climbing higher and the latter reaching record lows in recent years.

Today’s remnant of sanity, pointed out by an NMA life member from San Diego, resides on the City of Sacramento’s Public Works page. A page, we might add, that prominently promotes the city’s Vision Zero program with these words:

Vision Zero is a traffic safety philosophy that rejects the notion that traffic crashes are simply “accidents,” but instead preventable incidents that can and must be systematically addressed.

The City of Sacramento takes transportation safety seriously and has taken an ambitious step in adopting its Vision Zero goal — signaling that the City is willing to do the hard work necessary to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries.

This year the City of Sacramento reduced speed limits in school zones on eligible streets to 15mph.  We are also studying the Top 5 Vision Zero Corridors to work with our communities on improving transportation safety.

The devotion to the program is even accompanied by a nice logo:

It takes some drilling down in the Public Works section to find established traffic engineering sanity. Really deep drilling, as a matter of fact, by following the City of Sacramento site breadcrumb Public Works > Transportation > Traffic Data & Maps > Speed Limits. There, Vision Zero believers among Sacramento bureaucrats missed this published truth:

SPEED LIMITS AND COLLISIONS

People frequently ask to lower the speed limit on residential streets to make their streets safer and more livable. It is a common misconception that speed limits signs reduce collisions. Studies indicate that no significant change in average vehicle speeds has occurred after the posting of new or revised speed limit signs. In fact, research shows no direct relationship between posting speed limits and collision frequency.

If Sacramento doesn’t pay attention to its own words, its zero-fatality program will go the way of some other major cities like Portland, San Francisco, New York, and Seattle where hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars poured into Vision Zero programs have often resulted in rising traffic deaths rather than the elimination of fatalities.

The post Remnants of Sanity: NMA E-Newsletter #577 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

We recently updated and republished a popular post, Do Vision Zero Programs Equal More Traffic Accidents?, on the NMA Blog. The article points to several examples of cities where pedestrian/bicyclist accident and fatalities rates have not improved, and in many instances have increased, after expensive Vision Zero programs have been implemented. Such programs have the laudable but unrealistic goal of attaining zero traffic deaths by restricting, and in some cases eliminating, motorized traffic in city centers.

Our little exposé on the NMA Motorists.org website attracted the attention of a pro-motorist letter writer from Great Britain, who shared similar concerns and frustrations with Vision Zero programs across the Atlantic. His spot-on observations follow:

* * *

I am writing this from Great Britain, and we are being fed this VZ anti-car nonsense as well.

Sadiq Khan is the Mayor of London and is, of course, very anti-car and wants to impose VZ. 

Here is a copy of a letter I wrote to a trade magazine, just slightly altered to suit your American followers.
 

It would seem that as usual, non-motorized road users can just do what they like and do not have to accept any responsibility for their actions!

Of course, your laws are different to ours, but generally, the theme is the same.

Though this might sound callous, does the price of mobility justify a few deaths and injuries?

Would we really want to sacrifice mobility to live in a totally risk-free society?

Mayor Khan, along with many others, are using this ‘vision’ as part of their ceaseless ‘war on the driver’ by imposing draconian measures on those choosing to drive.

‘Mobility’ means the distribution of goods and services, so how does this equate in the grand scheme of things to Vision Zero?

Do we all stop ‘consuming’ to save lives?

As a driving license holder, I must obey hundreds of rules/regulations, and I am punished if I get them wrong. As a cyclist, there is not much I can get punished for and certainly, there is very little enforcement of regulations. As a pedestrian, I can just do what I like, as there are no offences I can commit listed in the Highway Code!

(The Highway Codes is our national version of the rule book for all road users. There is no ‘jay -walking’ offence in this country)

Every year millions of mostly safe drivers are punished for meaningless infractions of the law, but how many road-using non-drivers are punished? In fact, how many non-drivers have read the Highway Code, even though seventeen pages of the Code are devoted to pedestrians?

By continually putting all the road safety emphasis on the license holder, is it any wonder that accident reduction has stabilized, when the vast majority of pedestrians and cyclists can do what they like with complete impunity from punishment.

The post International Anti-Car Nonsense: NMA E-Newsletter #576 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Motorists are not cash cows, and it is time elected officials stop treating us as such!

In Washington State, Tim Eyman decided he didn’t think it was fair for everyone in the state to pay for big city transit projects through ever increasing vehicle registration fees (or car tabs, as the locals call them).

Anger with car tab increases stem from passage of Sound Transit 3 in 2016. It is a 25-year, $54 billion expansion which hiked the motor vehicle excise tax from 0.3 percent to 1.1 percent with all monies collected by the regional authority, Puget Sound. Sound Transit 3 also allowed the government to raise the local sales tax and establish a new annual property tax within the transit district boundary.

In 2017, the cost of car registration fees surged and caught many car owners unprepared. Also, Sound Transit used a 1999 depreciation schedule which overvalued newer vehicles, further raising the charges it could collect.

Out of frustration, Eyman and his group, the Permanent Offense team, started a petition drive to put an initiative on the ballot to limit the state’s registration fees to just $30, and base vehicle property taxes on Kelley Blue Book values instead. If the measure was put on the ballot and passed, it would end the practice of using inflated valuations to boost tax revenue. The Initiative would also eliminate the ability of Sound Transit to impose additional taxes on vehicle owners.

Getting an initiative on the ballot is difficult and can sometimes take several years, which was the case for Eyman and Permanent Offense. Local and state officials don’t like ballot initiatives, especially if they cut into their bread and butter. That’s why governments will do nearly anything disqualify petition signatures (Read last week’s newsletter #574: East Liverpool, Ohio Voters win the Day against Red-Light and Speed Cameras.)

Despite all odds, volunteers were successful in getting the initiative on the November 5, 2019, Washington State ballot. Even though the other side spent a great deal of money to defeat Initiative 976, it passed with 55 percent of the vote. (Oddly enough, similar initiatives to cap car tab fees at $30 per vehicle passed in 1999 and again in 2002. The state government kept inching the fees up, which is why public advocates had to take action yet again.) Passage of the initiative also means an immediate $450 million hole in the state transportation budget now exists.

The immediate response by the state and localities involved court cases, broken promises, and a great deal of handwringing.

Lawyers for the city of Seattle, King County, and the Association of Washington Cities successfully argued before a local judge who issued a preliminary injunction to block the measure from taking effect. In December 2019, a divided State Supreme Court upheld the ruling.

Three high-court justices, though, disagreed with the ruling and insisted that the public will should not be ignored. They wrote in their dissent:

“Delaying the effective date of a law enacted by initiative is an extraordinary measure, and it is debatable whether the challengers have shown a likelihood of success on their constitutional challenges to the initiative. While the challengers point to significant losses in revenue and service that could result from a stay and the state highlights the cost of any necessary taxpayer refunds, these monetary injuries are not the only ones that matter. Also important is the potential harm to voters’ confidence in the initiative system and our democratic process as a whole.”

The dissenting opinion noted that, generally, an initiative is presumed valid until it has been proven unconstitutional through the full court process.

Eyman, who is now running for governor, said that he felt that Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson nominally defended the vote in court. Eyman claims that Ferguson tried to sabotage the case by failing to file for a change of venue to take the case out of King County (which overwhelmingly voted for the measure).

By the end of November, the Washington State Department of Transportation, under the direction of Governor Jay Inslee, released a list of transportation projects that would now be deferred.

State DOT Secretary Roger Millar wrote in a November 26^th letter that the purpose of delaying projects that are not yet underway is to provide state lawmakers and the Governor more funding flexibility. The deferred list also included projects funded by the Connecting Washington transportation package of 2015, which was an 11.9 percent gas tax increase. These projects funded by the 2015 gas tax increase did not have any funding from the vehicle registration fees funding, and many question why these projects were put on the list.

Overall, Washington decided to place 90 different transportation projects on hold while the Governor and state lawmakers sort out funding priorities during the 2020 legislative session.

One such project: the North Spokane Corridor (NSC) Project, also called the North-South Freeway, had been promised to voters for decades and was finally funded in 2015. Even though the Connecting Washington funds included other car taxes and fees, the WSDOT confirmed to Washington Policy Center’s Transportation Chief Mariya Frost that the NSC is funded solely by the 2015 gas tax increase—the same gas tax increase that Initiative 976 does not impact.

Curiously, several bike and pedestrian projects still have funding, even though resources for these projects came entirely out of the state’s Multimodal Account. Many alternative transportation and transit projects would have lost much of its funding due to the reduction in car tab fees brought on by Initiative 976.

Now that the State Supreme Court has weighed in on the debate, motorists have no choice but to keep pushing for what they voted for and passed in November.

Eyman has also encouraged Initiative supporters to only pay the $30 car tab fee as set out in the voter-approved law.

When states are allowed to ignore the will of the people, the democratic process breaks down as Washington State has so aptly demonstrated.

The post Shenanigans Abound in the Washington State Ballot Initiative over Car Fees: NMA E-Newsletter #575 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

East Liverpool Citizens against Traffic Cameras is a group that has been trying to get a “ban on red-light cameras” measure on the local ballot for a few years. In 2017, City Auditor Marilyn Bosco blocked the group’s proposed referendum by refusing to certify it even though there were enough valid signatures on the petition. This is a common tactic by local municipalities who don’t want voter-initiated referendums. East Liverpool, with a population of just 10,700, collected $1 million from its ticket cameras in 2018.

County Judge C. Ashley Pike then ordered the auditor to certify the measure. More city court filings ensued, and finally, in August 2019, Bosco certified the group’s anti-camera petition with a caveat—she had the right to revoke the certification if the state Court of Appeals rejected Judge Pike’s ruling. The state court quickly rejected the city’s argument. State law does not allow a city auditor to revoke a certified petition.

The court ruling allowed East Liverpool residents to vote on the initiative November 5, 2019. If voters agreed to the ban, future city councils would be prohibited from installing ticket cameras without the prior consent of the people. They did so overwhelmingly. Seventy-two percent of East Liverpool voters rejected the city’s use of speed and red-light cameras.

Still, officials didn’t want to give up photo ticket revenue. Just prior to election day, the city convinced Columbiana County Common Pleas Judge Scott Washam to temporarily block the public from learning the results of the vote. Its lawyers asked the judge to permanently enjoin the measure’s votes from being counted and certified by the board of elections.

In late November, Judge Washam rejected the city of East Liverpool’s attempt to invalidate the public vote on technical grounds, and the votes were counted. East Liverpool joins Ohio voters in Ashtabula, Cleveland, Chillicothe, Heath, Garfield Heights, Maple Heights, South Euclid, and Steubenville in rejecting the use of ticket cameras.

Nationwide, citizens in 39 cities have voted to prohibit the use of photo enforcement when given the opportunity.

Congratulations to the East Liverpool Citizens against Traffic Cameras on a successful, hard-fought effort! Local groups like this play a key role in combating the scourge of automated ticketing programs.

Beginning January 13^th, the ATE Racket Report blog name will change to Ticket Cam Alert USA. We encourage you to read this blog every Monday to learn what is happening with photo enforcement around the United States and in Canada. Also, if you are conducting a fight on the local level, we encourage you to check out the NMA Facebook Page Ticket Cam Alert USA and participate in the related Ticket Cam USA Discussion Group.

The post East Liverpool, Ohio Voters win the Day against Red-Light and Speed Cameras: NMA E-Newsletter #574 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

The Complete Streets Act of 2019, U.S. House Bill 3663, is creating a lot of rhetorical questions on our part. In NMA E-Newsletter #552, the title question was “An Appropriate Balance for Whom?” in response to the bill’s declaration that the needs of walkers and bike riders must be accommodated before those of drivers on all new and improvement road projects. That edict would force a script flip of how Americans travel daily.

A recent article in the ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers) Journal gives us a glimpse into one such bizarre road design. Let’s start with two images of the advisory bike lane (ABL) concept outlined in the Journal:

There is a single lane for two-way motorized traffic, and two bike lanes outside of that center lane dedicated to bicyclists heading in opposing directions. When vehicles approach each other head-on in the middle, the drivers both move into the bike lanes temporarily. No safety issues there for bicyclists, and no blame for motorists who are trying to avoid a direct collision without bumping angry, blind-spot riders off of their bikes, right?

We referred to ABLs as a concept a bit earlier. But according to Michael Williams, a consultant writing for the ITE Journal, this design ─ which he also refers to as “edge lane roads” ─ is operational in more than two dozen locations in North America. The application is targeted for urban or suburban roads with average annual daily traffic of 6,000 vehicles or less.

And, one presumes, a proportional number of bicyclists. That would be, according to data on daily modes of transportation from the 2016 U.S. Census, approximately 20 cars or trucks for every individual bicycle on the road.

That ratio significantly understates the number of vehicles vs. bicyclists on the road at any given time, considering that the average daily trip (distance and time) by car is longer than by bicycle. At the recent national conference on Vision Zero and Road Diets sponsored by the NMA in Los Angeles, attendees played a little game. When looking out the glass windows of our meeting venue onto bustling Venice Boulevard, which recently had gone through its own forced restriction of car lanes, we counted five bicyclists traveling in the west bike lane over the course of about an hour.

This is why we must defeat the Complete Streets Act of 2019 and similar efforts to restrict driving to absurd levels. Watch for continuing NMA email alerts and e-newsletters about the role you can play in helping us do just that.

The post So This is What Complete Streets Comes Down To?: NMA E-Newsletter #573 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

By our latest count, twenty states have explicit laws banning traffic ticket quotas. And yet, the practice continues, even within some of those states. City, county, and state budgets must be met, and a reliable target for revenue continues to be the motorist.

A brief rundown of the states with quota prohibitions follows but first, courtesy of reporting by TheNewspaper.com, here are just a few of the abuses uncovered in 2019:

Massachusetts

Forty state troopers were caught claiming bogus overtime hours, inspired by a federally funded ticketing program that required each trooper to issue at least eight speeding tickets per shift. Failure to do so led in some cases to the trooper in question being prevented from earning overtime pay. Eight of the state police were indicted for embezzlement for their roles tied to the speed trap detail.

Missouri

Ticket quotas have kept State Attorney General Eric S. Schmitt busy. In June, he secured an admission from the city of Diamond that its chief of police required or encouraged his officers to issue a minimum number of traffic violations. One of the Diamond officers blew the whistle on the scheme to Schmitt, proving a violation of the state’s law that disallows a political subdivision or law enforcement agency from having a quota policy.

Just a few months later, AG Schmitt charged the city of Marshfield for engaging in the same practice, referring to the speed trap ticket quota as “taxation by citation.”

Texas

A Dallas officer was caught falsifying nearly 40 speeding tickets to meet the funding requirements of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s high-visibility enforcement grant program. He faces up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and repayment of the overtime he took home as a result of writing 569 tickets over four months.

The federal grant program so blatantly ties grant awards to ticketing activity that the NMA sent a letter to Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao in 2017 urging reform. The lack of a meaningful response gave rise to the NMA’s anti-ticket-quota bill, the DETER Act, that is currently a focal point of our lobbying efforts in Washington.

Ohio

The city of Independence fired a long-term police veteran after it suspected he was responsible for notifying the media about the town’s ticket quota actions. The officer, Lieutenant Leonard Mazzola, denied the accusation and is suing the mayor, police chief, and law director. Mazzola earlier had complained internally about the quota policy – termed “a performance standard fundamental to effective policing” by the chief – that had a goal of reaching the issuance of 3,000 traffic tickets per year.

Florida

In another whistleblower case (and indicator that ticket quotas undermine police morale), the city of Hialeah has been accused of punishing an officer for failing to issue a prescribed number of tickets per day. Florida statutes prohibit a traffic enforcement agency from establishing a traffic citation quota.

Ticket quotas, whose existence is so often denied, are real. The victims are the motorists who bear the brunt of overly aggressive, and sometimes fraudulent, enforcement activities, and often the police officers whose job performance is threatened by policies forcing them to write tickets they otherwise might not issue.

State laws against ticket quotas:

Arkansas Code § 12-6-302

California Vehicle Code § 41602

Connecticut General Statutes § 29-2b

Florida Code 316.640

Illinois Compiled Statutes 2610/24

Iowa Code § 321.492A (2016)

Louisiana Revised Statutes § 40:2401.1

Michigan Compiled Laws 257.750

Minnesota Statutes 169.985

Missouri Revised Statutes § 304.125 (2016)

Montana Code Annotated 46-6-420

New Jersey Revised Statutes § 40A:14-181.1 (2013)

North Carolina General Statutes § 20-187.3

Nebraska Revised Statutes § 48-235

New York Labor Code § 215-A

Pennsylvania Statutes 71 P.S. § 2001

Rhode Island General Laws § 31-27-25

South Carolina Code of Laws § 23-1-245

Tennessee Code § 39-16-516

Wisconsin Statutes § 349.025

The post Ticket Quotas are Alive and All Too Well: NMA Weekly E-Newsletter #572 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

It’s been seven years since we wrote about the Driver Alcohol Detection System and Safety (DADSS) program–A Frog in the Pot, E-newsletter #187–and efforts to make ignition interlock devices standard equipment in all vehicles. Proponents of forcing all drivers to pass alcohol detection testing before being able to operate their cars are nothing if not determined.

The Reduce Impaired Driving for Everyone (RIDE) Act of 2019, per U.S. Senate Bill 2604, and its counterpart House Bill 3159, keeps their hopes alive by requiring all new vehicles to have alcohol detection systems within four years.

We recognize the politically incorrect timing of addressing the issue of impaired driving during the holiday season, and restate that the NMA does not support, encourage, or condone drunk driving. Impaired drivers who put themselves and others at risk do not belong on the road. But we also do not support zero-tolerance concepts that subject the vast majority of non-imbibing motorists to intrusive testing every time they get behind the wheel.

The unreliability of detection technology is a major cause of concern. False positives are commonplace. Imagine a DADSS device that requires the driver to submit a breath sample to start a car, and to also give regular-interval samples while the vehicle is in motion, forcing shutdown at inopportune times and possibly under unsafe conditions. And if those “rolling samples” require active involvement by all drivers, distracted driving will become an even more widespread road safety concern.

SB 2604, sponsored by Senators Tom Udall (D-NM) and Rick Scott (R-FL), currently sits with the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. The House bill, 3159, is sponsored by six Republican congressmen and women and is being considered by the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit Committee. Consider reaching out to members of both committees, particularly those who represent you directly. Ask them questions like:

1. What is the false-positive rate of DADSS, and how will that be taken into account?
2. How will DADSS distinguish driver vs. passenger BAC levels?
3. Will DADSS include external reporting capabilities, e.g., be tied to V2X (“vehicle to everything”) connectivity? If so,
   1. Will the system report every episode of an intervention, false positive or not, to an authority for possible assignment of a penalty? What privacy safeguards will be put into place?
   2. How will the system determine who was operating the car at the time of the “incident?” Will the vehicle owner automatically be assigned blame?
4. How much will the DADSS technology add to the cost of a new vehicle? Will that cost be borne by the consumer, and will there be an ongoing cost to the car owner to process DADSS data?

At the least, our elected officials should have satisfactory answers before supporting legislation that would subject all drivers to an unprecedented level of personal intrusion and regulation.

The post The Slow March toward Forced Temperance: NMA Weekly E-Newsletter #571 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Last week’s newsletter (Part 1, #569) provided a statistical summary of responses to an NMA November online survey seeking feedback about CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards. Here, in Part 2, is where the rubber hits the road. Those taking the survey were given the opportunity to include commentary to explain their choices of whether U.S. fuel economy standards should be set at 54.5 miles per gallon by vehicle model year 2025, be frozen at the 2021 requirement of 37.0 mpg, or hold steady at the current 2018 fleet average level of 27.0 mpg (or lower).

If Part 1 provided a graphical representation of the survey results, the feedback gleaned from hundreds of comments adds important perspective.

There is not nearly enough space to include all of the responses here, but we tried our best to share representative opinions. The feedback is segregated by how the writer voted, i.e., CAFE standard at 54.5 mpg, at 37.0 mpg, at 27.0 mpg, or none of the above, to provide context.

For more survey comments, visit U.S. Fuel Economy Standards – November 2019 Survey where we set up a dedicated page to document the overall results and to publish additional feedback. The volume of opinions shared was substantial, indicative of the importance of the CAFE standard to motorists. We read every response and published as many as possible.

Without further ado:

The CAFE standard should remain at 27.0 mpg or even go lower

• The Obama-era fuel-economy standards were a political gesture, and are obviously unattainable. Rather than preserve this fantasy-based aspirational standard, fleet fuel economy should be allowed to find its own level as dictated by fuel price, consumer choice, and the price of technology. 

• CAFE standards are a “slippery slope” argument. Either allow the free market to regulate vehicular fuel consumption, or if government mandates are to be implemented, simply raise the federal gasoline tax. Improved fuel economy will occur as a natural consequence. 

• Raising CAFE standards does nothing to lower the consumption of fossil fuels or the carbon footprint as it pushes car manufacturers to produce electric or hybrid vehicles. The electricity used by hybrids and electric vehicles will force utilities to generate more electricity thus consuming more fossil fuels. Wind and solar generation is sparse at best and unreliable (e.g. night time). Fossil fuels saved at the pump will be consumed at the power station. 

• I would favor around 30 mpg. I really don’t think it is safe for people to travel in a car that is smaller. Since I get 24 mpg on the highway in my obviously inefficient car, I don’t think 30 mpg is too much to ask, but there are many reasons why it should not be raised higher. Some people need a larger vehicle for other reasons, such as having more passengers or having to carry work tools. I think the government is far too intrusive on these types of decisions. I think California and New York should go pound sand. 

Raise the CAFE standard to 37.0 mpg, the 2021 target, and then freeze it

• While I answered yes to question 2 because I feel 35-40 mpg is a reasonable fleet average target over the next five years, I don’t necessarily agree that it should be “frozen” there forever. I would like to see the CAFE standard amended to require modest increases into the future beyond 2025, perhaps reaching 50 mpg by 2030. I’m far more concerned with the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on our planet than reducing dependence on foreign oil. Additionally, I’m confident that continued advances in electric/hybrid propulsion, materials science, and vehicle safety systems will enable manufacturers to build automobiles that can achieve 50+ mpg standards without compromising passenger safety.

• Automakers should still be pressured to find creative ways to produce higher mileage vehicles, especially since US auto buyers are moving more and more towards larger, less-efficient vehicles (trucks and SUV’s). This is NOT a safety issue as you allude to, it is a realistic concern – we need higher MPG, but not by forcing automakers within a timeframe, but by incenting innovation and increasing it at a realistic rate.

• The auto industry and market are in a period of transition to electrified vehicles. But that will take time for the technology to develop, costs to come down, and the recharging infrastructure to catch up. Current requirements don’t take that into account and are so draconian that expensive electric vehicles would be forced onto the market. This will cause people to hold their older, more polluting cars longer, hurt the domestic auto industry, and greatly inconvenience many people. Let the market decide the rate of introduction of these technologies, not the heavy hand of government. Note: The argument that cars must get smaller and lighter isn’t really true anymore since electrification is the next step – it will just take time to get there.

• I believe that the 37 mpg is more realistic, but more importantly, I believe that American people should have a better range of choice for their cars. Once again, the government is trying to force us into cars that many of us do not want. I also remember how bad cars were when the first big CAFE jump was implemented. Also, CAFE is a national issue. States, such as California, should not be allowed to set different standards. That would make cars even more expensive and less user-friendly. Consumers in rogue states would suffer a greater injustice.

Meet 54.5 mpg by vehicle model year 2025

• The 2012 standards have ‘pushed’ automotive technology, otherwise the “bean counters” at each automotive company would not have spent a dime on advanced R&D! Notwithstanding that, WE (the people) need to get our legislators to do something about propping up the Federal gas tax before electric vehicles become so ubiquitous that our Federal Highway (maintenance) fund is bankrupt. 

• You mention that “more stringent levels will force auto manufacturers to make vehicles smaller and lighter, and compromising driver/passenger safety.” This is a moving target. Lighter vehicles cause less damage to others. If everyone drives a lighter vehicle there is little safety penalty, but vehicle weights have moved up to where many are over two tons, and some SUVs are over three tons. As with speed it is the difference in weight that is a problem. Continuing to increase vehicle weight is unsustainable, but the only thing that is likely to reverse it is fuel economy standards. As the driver of a 2,800-pound convertible, my life is put a risk by the giant vehicles with which I share the road. 

• I used to work for an OEM automaker. The lead times to develop a vehicle are incredibly long. The automakers have already done the product planning and pre-production work for the 54.5 mpg standard. Plus, Europe and China require similar efficiency standards on a similar timeline, so the automakers will need to produce similar vehicles for other markets anyway; they’d prefer to sell the same products and same powertrains in all markets as much as possible. And, as I’m sure you’re aware, the fuel economy that we’re all familiar with (on the “sticker”) is not the same as the 54.5/37.0/27.0 mpg fleet fuel economy that we’re talking about here; the adjusted average MPG of the fleet will be much lower than any of these numbers. 

• I am okay with the 54.5 mpg standard, but the compromise between California, Ford, BMW, VW, and Honda that would raise CAFE standards 3.7 percent instead of 5 percent seems like a reasonable compromise. I do expect electric vehicles to dominate sales in the years to come, but if we don’t force the automakers to make these small, incremental improvements, they will do nothing. I would also hope these known costs will cause these automakers to switch their R&D to electric motors and drivetrains sooner rather than later. 

• The industry will not increase mileage on its own. Never has, never will. As a libertarian, this is one of the limited uses of governmental power I would approve.

And finally, observations from a few who didn’t choose any CAFE standard

• The Federal Government must be blocked from any further marketplace interference in this area. Let end purchasers make market-driven choices without any counterproductive meddling from an overreaching federal authority. 

• We often regulate things that are secondary or tertiary to what we purport to be after. If dependence on foreign oil is bad, then foreign oil should be taxed until the utopian balance of foreign vs. domestic oil consumption is reached. If carbon dioxide is bad, then the carbon content of fuel should be directly taxed or regulated. This requires much less intrusion and bureaucracy and hidden corruption to get to the desired end. If we have to stick with CAFE standards, one change I would like to see is that all passenger vehicles be regulated to the same standard. That is, the differing standard for trucks/SUVs and passenger cars should be eliminated. 

• I see no reason for a CAFE standard to exist at all. Modern electronics and fuel controls have more than accomplished the purpose of balancing fuel economy and emissions. As a consumer I am amazed at the power and economy achieved in a commercially available automobile. CAFE accomplished its goal. Retire the CAFE standard completely.

The post What U.S. Vehicle Fuel Economy Standards (if any) Should Be – Results of an NMA Online Survey, Part 2: NMA E-Newsletter #570 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Throughout November, we posted an online survey designed to better understand the sentiment of NMA supporters toward government-imposed CAFE standards. The Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations established in 2012 mandated automakers to meet a fleetwide average of 54.5 miles per gallon by the vehicle model year 2025. That is quite a leap forward considering the 2019 criteria are 42.5 mpg for passenger cars and 30 mpg for light-duty trucks, including SUVs.

The US Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency caused a stir last year when the agencies proposed freezing the fleet standard at 37.0 mpg, the 2021 target, for the foreseeable future. Several states, led by California, are challenging that proposal.

The NMA survey included the opportunity for respondents to share their opinions in addition to answering the prepared questions. We will share many of those opinions in next week’s newsletter and will post many more on a special section of the Motorists.org site. First, though, here are the overall results of the questionnaire:

Although the NMA online survey on U.S. fuel economy standards is now closed, feel free to add your thoughts about government CAFE standards by emailing us at nma@motorists.org with the subject line “CAFE Standards.” Based on responses to the November survey, this is a topic of great interest to NMA readership, and therefore to us. Your feedback is an important component to the NMA’s position on the fuel economy issue.

The post What U.S. Vehicle Fuel Economy Standards (if any) Should Be – Results of an NMA Online Survey, Part 1: NMA E-Newsletter #569 appeared first on National Motorists Association.

Eric Berg loves his Porsches. Not for others to stare at and admire, but to use the machine for which it was designed: racing.

The following is the NMA director’s photo essay of taking his 911 out for several spins at a race track in Alabama. We’ll let Eric set the stage:

“Rezoom is a driver school that I’ve used several times. I returned to one of my favorite tracks in Leeds, Alabama. The Barber Motorsports Park is known as the Augusta of race tracks because of its manicured landscaping and whimsical outdoor sculpture.

“Set up on Friday consisted of taking the day off from work, and getting the car inspected at the Porsche dealership in Nashville on the drive to Alabama. Then there was tech inspection by the drivers school, signing the waiver at the track, and getting that prime spot in the paddock for the rest of the weekend.

“My run group never started on time because of mishaps in the previous novice run group that required spill cleanup, towing, or Armco barrier repair. Sunday, my new friend from the Musikstadt Region of the Porsche Club of America joined me as my passenger. Even with a passenger and street tires, I was able to log a lap time below 1 minute, 47 seconds on the 2.38-mile track.”

Images from the weekend of racing, with comments by Eric:

Can you believe I got all of that into a tiny 911?

This is a rent-a-racer. I’m not making this up. One of the vendors provides mechanical assistance, tire changes, and other services. They started carting along a $7,000 thirteen-year-old supercharged Mini Cooper race car. If your car breaks and they can’t fix it, then you can rent their car and not spoil your whole weekend.

This is what happens when your tires get so hot that pebbles stick to the tread.

Cars get very thirsty when you’re going this fast and accelerating this hard. They only get about seven or eight mpg.

This is what happens on the first run of a frosty morning with cold tires. The Corvette ahead of me spun out on the warmup lap under the yellow flag BEFORE LEAVING THE PIT LANE! He left a lot of debris on the track that my tires ran over.

This is what happens when you try too hard.

Heavy traffic

The final day of Daylight Savings Time at Barber Motorsports Park.

The post See You On the Race Track: NMA E-Newsletter #568 appeared first on National Motorists Association.