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Fatalities In The War On Cars Are Never In Cars


by Dan Savage, The Portland Mercury

If a pedestrian jumped off a sidewalk, ran into the street, pulled a driver out of her car, and inflicted injuries so severe that the driver died moments later in the arms of a passing stranger.... that pedestrian would probably face more severe consequences than the driver who killed Erica Stark:
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[B' Spokes: A better analogy would be if pedestrians were juggling chainsaws and the whoops I just killed someone (http://dearestdistrict5.blogspot.com/2016/04/everyone-plays-part-in-chainsaw-safety.html ). But I do think the author makes a good point, the so called war on cars does not result in cars death, only an inconvenience in parking and perhaps in travel time. On no! People spent a lot of money on a luxury item that is not living up to it's potential like a bunch of spoiled brats. Totally ignoring the real reasons, cars were great when few had them and few drove but to design a city where everyone drives on infrastructure designed and funded by 1950 standard of one car per family. Now driving is a miserable experience, too many cars on the road, so the solution is more cars! Alright it's more no or little accommodations for non driving so people are encouraged by threat of death to drive. And in the end, cars loose unless there is a war on cars and their over use. If cars are indeed are the luxury item people want, then they should welcome paying extra in taxes for first class accommodations while the rest of use make due with what's not set aside for cars. What's that, cars already too expensive so you want other people to help pay for your luxury? Hmm.]

http://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2016/12/06/18730471/fatalities-in-the-war-on-cars-are-never-in-cars
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Why America’s roads are so much more dangerous than Europe's


Updated by Norman Garrick, Carol Atkinson-Palombo, and Hamed Ahangari, Vox

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Where these strategies have been successfully implemented — New York City, Portland, Cambridge, and Seattle, along with Washington, DC — biking has skyrocketed and traffic fatality rates have dropped at a much higher rate than in other cities. Between 2000 and 2012, there has been a four-fold increase in the number of people biking to work in DC while the traffic fatality rate fell from 9 per 100,000 to 3 per 100,000. More research is needed, but one possible explanation is that protected bike lanes reduce the amount of space dedicated to cars and ultimately slow traffic.
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http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/11/30/13784520/roads-deaths-increase-safety-traffic-us
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ON-CALL DRONES TO LIGHT YOUR WALK OR BIKE HOME


-> If you have to walk or bike down dark streets at night, a U.K. insurance company wants you to be able to call up a small fleet of drones to accompany you—acting as lights that fly with you to illuminate your path home. Fleetlights, a prototype service, is designed to be summoned with a mobile app, and uses someone's phone to go wherever they go. One drone flies ahead, and two fly to the side, each equipped with lightweight, high-powered lights. The service isn't available yet as there are still legal, commercial, and technical details to sort out. The code for the system is available open-source, so others can work on developing the technology. http://bit.ly/2fQEMRK

from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.
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GPS-ENABLED HOUSEHOLD TRAVEL SURVEYS SAMPLE SIZE


-> The Transportation Research Board report, "Sample Size Implications of Multi-Day GPS-Enabled Household Travel Surveys," summarizes a project that studied the design of household travel surveys. Multi-day travel surveys are now more feasible, given global positioning system (GPS) technology. This project explores if surveys using a GPS device provides less drop-off in response compared to travel diaries. This project also investigates the effects of using multi-day data for developing travel demand models and explores the impact of sample size on multi-day versus single-day surveys. http://bit.ly/2fPYEHk

from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.
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BIKE SCORE, URBAN BIKEABILITY & BICYCLING BEHAVIOR


-> In a study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, researchers sought to determine if Bike Score was associated with between and within-city variability in cycling behavior. Bike Score® is a metric capturing environmental characteristics associated with cycling that is now available for over 160 US and Canadian cities. They found the Bike Score metric was associated bicycle mode share between and within cities, suggesting its utility for planning bicycle infrastructure. Bike Score®: Associations between Urban Bikeability and Bicycling Behavior in 24 Cities: http://bit.ly/2fPZBiT

from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.
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SPEED REDUCTION STRATEGIES, INTERACTIVE SPEED FATALITY MAP


-> Speed is a primary factor in a startling number of serious crashes and injuries, and in nearly one-third of all traffic deaths in the United States. To stop these deaths, communities must prioritize speed management in their suite of policy and design efforts to save lives. Many communities are taking action to recalibrate speeds to safer levels, particularly in dense, multi-modal areas. The three effective strategies for managing speed are designing and retrofitting streets to calm traffic, lowering speed limits, and using automated safety camera speed limit enforcement. (Follow link below for details and links)

Check out Vision Zero Network’s new interactive Speed Fatality Map based on NHTSA FARS (Fatal Accident Reporting System) data from the 59,374 speed-related fatalities on U.S. roads between 2010 and 2015. Zoom into the actual street location where each collision occurred. The 10 Cities with the most speed-related fatal crashes are Los Angeles; New York; Houston; Chicago; San Antonio; Dallas; Phoenix; Fort Worth; Detroit; and Kansas City. http://bit.ly/2gyw1iZ

from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.
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The Swedish Approach to Road Safety: 'The Accident Is Not the Major Problem'


By SARAH GOODYEAR, City Lab

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It’s a radical vision that has made Sweden an international leader in the area of road safety. When Vision Zero first launched, Sweden recorded seven traffic fatalities per 100,000 people; today, despite a significant increase in traffic volume, that number is fewer than three. To compare, the number of road fatalities in the United States is 11.6 per 100,000.
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For them it is very difficult to buy into “zero.” Because in their economic models, you have costs and benefits, and although they might not say it explicitly, the idea is that there is an optimum number of fatalities.
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There’s a kind of paradox. I lived in Melbourne, Australia, in 2006. I remember I went to the library there, and I found a book that an American author had written about Sweden. And that guy, he was a little bit frustrated. He saw all these systems that we have in our society, for example when it comes to health care and social security and so on, it seems he was against these. There was some sense that if you take care too much about people in your society they will be a little bit spoiled, or whatever. That you have to fight.
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If we can create a system where people are safe, why shouldn’t we? Why should we put the whole responsibility on the individual road user, when we know they will talk on their phones, they will do lots of things that we might not be happy about? So let’s try to build a more human-friendly system instead. And we have the knowledge to do that.
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And we have increased the compliance on these roads from 50 to more than 80 or 90 percent. And we don’t catch any people at all. We reduce the speed, but we don’t catch people. And we don’t earn any money. It’s an investment for us. We don’t want to get that discussion in our society that this is a revenue-raising thing. We want people to understand that this is for safety. So we nudge people to do the right thing.
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So it’s not a war between unprotected road user and protected road user. Here we need to have a more holistic perspective. Where we need cars because they are good for society, we should use them. But in places where we don’t need them, we shouldn’t use them as much as we do.
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http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/11/the-swedish-approach-to-road-safety-the-accident-is-not-the-major-problem/382995/
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TORONTO, CANADA: GUIDE TO SAFER STREETS NEAR SCHOOLS


-> The Toronto Centre for Active Transportation (TCAT) released the "Guide to Safer Streets Near Schools: Understanding Your Policy Options in the City of Toronto" (http://bit.ly/2dmF0mM). They created the Guide to help school communities and residents improve traffic safety in their neighborhoods. It explains the processes for requesting Toronto street improvements in a simple and easy to understand format, and provides direction and tools to assist readers in advocating for neighborhoods with slower vehicle speeds and safer street crossings. http://bit.ly/2dmGiOA

from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.
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TORONTO & HAMILTON AREA, CANADA: CYCLING BEHAVIOR & POTENTIAL


-> The Toronto Centre for Active Transportation also released "Cycling Behaviour and Potential in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area" (GTHA) (http://bit.ly/2e0vm73). This new report finds very high potential across the region for shifting over 4 million trips from motor vehicle to bicycle. "If only one in five (20%) of the trips that we identified as cyclable trips were actually cycled, that would take 716,000 cars off GTHA streets every day. It would also contribute to a significant reduction in congestion and green house gas emissions, and make a major improvement in physical activity levels among GTHA residents," said Raktim Mitra, the report’s Principal Investigator. http://bit.ly/2e0xgo6

from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.
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101 SMALL WAYS YOU CAN IMPROVE YOUR CITY


-> Curbed shared 101 urban interventions and ideas that show how even the tiniest changes can make our cities better places. They collected small ideas with huge potential to make outsized transformations. Quite a few involve walking or biking: http://bit.ly/2dmEEMX

from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.
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