Thread by @benfolsom

This week, The Washington Post published an interesting story, a follow-up to last week's 'the car is still king' story. This week's story: DC's drivers are bad, and more bad than cyclists, pedestrians, and scooterists. There is quite a bit to unpack here.
washingtonpost.com/local/traffica…

First, the data. The story relies on data gathered in a Washington Post-Schar School poll conducted between 25 April and 2 May 2019. It was a telephone poll, >1500 adult respondents, 75% cell phone / 25% landline, localities polled, margin of error, etc.
washingtonpost.com/context/contex…

The data is interesting, if that is your thing, I am more interested in the intake of the data and the angle of the story. Too often, road safety is measured through public opinion as a comparative concept:

Me: Drivers speed all the time.

Any driver: But what about cyclists!

It can be a difficult conversation to have, online or in person, because 'Cyclists Run Red Lights' fits on a bumper sticker, but 'Drivers pilot 4000-lb metal missiles capable of 100 mph and smashing through brick walls' does not.

Because of sociological issues surrounding normalization of driving behaviors, drivers tend not to weigh potential consequences (speeding metal impacting flesh) when assessing comparative compliance with laws and norms on the road.

This is how you get drivers who outnumber cyclists 50-1 or more and are capable of orders of magnitude more property damage and injury arguing that scofflaw cyclists are just as big a problem as speeding drivers, because, well, the law is the law!

Factor in the 'no guilty men in prison' effect, in which all drivers assert it's not them, it's *other* drivers who operate unsafely and you have a recipe for no productive discussion. All with a backdrop of 37,000 traffic fatalities in the US in 2017, including 6000 pedestrians.

They are tough conversations to have, and have cost me, if not outright friendships, then certainly time out of friendships and cast existing relationships into new dynamics.

The underlying poll for this story takes a more data-centric approach, first asking how people get around, then asking their opinion on law-abiding by different transit mode type. Obvious disclaimers for possible response bias baked into this poll as in every poll.

The results show what anyone who gets around by means other than a car, even occasionally, knows anecdotally: All road users disregard the laws and rules of the road, all the time.

This is something of an important story for a big newspaper to write, because it challenges the norms of driving. It sets compliance on a level and makes plain public opinion that *even drivers* don't care about following the law.

While much of the safe streets world works toward separated bike lanes, safer pedestrian crossings, etc., I don't want to wait for new asphalt and curbs. I want to use the streets on foot and on my bicycle and not be in constant fear of sudden death, and RIGHT NOW.

This has to come from cultural shift. Drivers will not change behavior on their own. The most important forces guiding culture on the road have to make road safety a priority. This by definition means minimization of driving.

Governments, law enforcement and the media are the most influential entities in road culture. When news outlets frame urban growth as 'drivers vs. cyclists,' or installation of bike lanes as 'shrinking the roads,' this is fomenting conflict, not promoting understanding.

Here is a good, recent example such pro-driver media framing:

https://twitter.com/freep/status/1138039113515446272

When law enforcement does not pursue charges even when a cyclist has rolling video of drivers acting in a criminally unsafe fashion, or mockingly suggests a 3-foot law is only enforceable if an officer is there with a yardstick to measure a close pass, this is pro-driver.

When a government assesses options for road redesign and prioritizes moving traffic volume over safety of road users, this is pro-driver.

Here is a good, current example of such a government decision to keep local, majority-driver residents happy. The resulting street redesign would still be a terror for a child on a bike:
alexandriava.gov/tes/info/defau…

Committed drivers will look at this WaPo story and the underlying data and zoom right down to opinions on pedestrian, cyclist and scooterist behavior and say, see, they're just as bad. That how it works in a world where drivers are the majority and others are the minority.

So this story itself may not move the needle, but it is a good place to start. The next logical exposé is in the consequences for each class of road user's non-compliance. Drivers killed >37,000 people in 2017, including 6000 pedestrians.

Pedestrians, cyclists and scooterists killing people as a result of their road behavior is so rare that there are no reliable statistics. The fact that such acts are so rare is why they are such big stories. You can't find ten times a cyclist caused a death in the past decade.

Cycling and safe streets advocates know all this, and have quick access to all the vetted government stats on the subject. An outlet like the WaPo taking it up as means to reconsider a social norm in the face of the epidemic of death on the roads would be very good.

If nothing else, it gives some print-media fuel for the anecdotal notion I have held for some time, which is to say that cyclists don't break the law at higher rates than drivers, and as such, drivers should not get mad at cyclists for doing things drivers do.

It's empirical. He @washingtonpost, come set up a camera at basically any four-way stop intersection in Old Town Alexandria, or any rush hour intersection in the District. Let it run, then analyze compliance in a good faith manner.

@washingtonpost What will be observed is all classes of road user violating the law at similar rates, but only one class of user with the potential to cause immediate death or serious property destruction with a bad decision.

I thought about this a little more as I biked 30 lbs. of food, drink and gear to the beach. That WaPo piece last week used ‘America’s love affair with the car’ as a nutgraf. That’s 1960’s automaker propaganda that sought to recast the roads as built for drivers only.

That story, linked here, said a lot of things about how much DC people drive, with the barometer number at ‘73%,’ that being the percentage of area workers that drive, alone, in their car to work.
washingtonpost.com/local/traffica…

The number nationwide is a solid 76%, and by solid I mean it does not change. The only time it went down in the past 20 years was the recession of 2008-09. Fewer people working, fewer people driving. Also fewer people dying, as pedestrian deaths were at a decade low in 2009.

If you pay attention to these things, the DC area is also one of the fittest places in the nation, and has among the highest concentration of bike commuters, a well-developed, if aging, mass transit infrastructure, and a high concentration of federal employees using transit.

Even with all that, DC-area workers drive, alone, just 4% less than the national average. A deeper national dive into the Census American Community Survey probably reveals some seriously dark car dependence.

So that’s the context of ‘America’s love affair with the car.’ I thought it was a bad way for the WaPo to frame the story. I advocated for ‘America’s crippling addiction to the motor vehicle.’

Then Monday’s story about widespread public opinion on lawless behavior of area drivers. And it made more sense. It’s a setup.

In DC we love our cars, but drive like assholes, so... [insert next content here].

With no idea if @washingtonpost plans to build on this meta-story, let’s fill the channel with numbers and statistics to show how destructive cars are to life in DC.

Do your data dives, tag the WaPo and maybe someone come up with a hashtag.