Aren Cambre's Blog

(EDIT: Replaced first video with much better one.)

This video, shot from a San Francisco streetcar, is from 1906, just a few days before the San Francisco earthquake:

Note the huge numbers of pedestrians on the road, the dangerous interactions between various transportation modes, the lack of efficiency, and the layers of clothing.

I don’t know how many of those buildings survived the 1906 earthquake except–of course–the building at the end.

Here’s a similar scene today:

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…and this guy claims he has a video of the same area from 2005:

I was interviewed by BBC World Service last night. Reporter Jeff Baird, an American BBC employee from Oregon, saw that Fark.com linked to a news article about my Texas speed trap report. Lawrence Pollard did the actual interview.

We did it over Skype. I didn’t have good equipment, so I had to put my face about 4″ from the microphone on my son’s Asus netbook. If you listen to the interview, you’ll hear disturbances in the audio. I guess I leaned too closely or breathed into it?

The Russian subway bombing prevented them from playing it in the London breakfast show, but it played a few times before their dawn.

The interview.

The full 27 minute segment I was on. (I think I am towards the end.)

This plain text belies my excitement, but this was a major high for me. I cannot believe I’ve been broadcasted on wordwide media.

Above is my interview with Dallas’s WFAA channel 8, broadcast on March 23, 2010, which was about my Texas’s Worst Speed Traps article.

WFAA also talked to Keller Police Chief Mark Hafner. He disputed that Westlake is a speed trap. (Westlake contracts policing to Keller PD.) He says, “When we took over policing in 2002, Highway 114 had 3-4 fatals a year. In the last 2 years, we have not had a fatal accident on highway 114.”

I pulled all Westlake auto fatalities from 1996-2008 on a graph. Remember that Keller took over policing in 2002. Here’s the graph:

(Important note:1996-1998 really did have 0 fatalities, but no ticket data was available from the state.)

Sorry, I see no correlation. Do you? Except maybe a lack of a correlation between fatal wrecks and tickets–although I admit that you can’t draw much of a conclusion from this limited data. Plus TX-114 was recently rebuilt in the area, but I can’t find answers yet on how this affected Westlake’s portion. (EDIT 3/26/10: According to State disputes Westlake speed limit (Fort Worth Star-Telegram),TX-114 reconstruction through Westlake was completed in late 2002.)

But wait, there’s more!

Let’s narrow down Westlake fatalities just to TX 114:

1 fatality on occasional years on Westlake’s TX-114, a far cry from “3-4 fatals a year.”

EDIT: I was interviewed on Dallas’s WFAA channel 8 for this. See the video and article at Small North Texas town tops list in speeding-ticket revenue. Also see my response to the video.

Texas Municipal Wall of Shame: the 40 most prolific speed traps, ordered by total ticket revenue per citizen.

I am not certain, but I think this covers all tickets written from 2000-2008.

This was calculated from data from the Texas Office of Court Administration’s Trial Court Judicial Data Management System.

If cops didn’t do traffic stops in safety-challenged places, would we even need “move over” laws?

This University Park, TX cop did a traffic stop in the middle of an intersection!

According to the Kansas City Star, Enterprise Rent-A-Car deprives renters of an essential safety item.

Enterprise ordered around 66,000 Chevrolet Impalas with standard side curtain air bags deleted. Every retail Chevrolet Impala buyer gets this, but Enterprise’s renters don’t.

This is important: to save $175 per car, Enterprise deprives renters of a critical safety device. Even worse: much of this upfront cost is earned back once the car is sold. And the worst: when renting and finally selling off these vehicles, Enterprise declined to clearly inform that this car is missing an essential safety feature.

Some studies suggest side air bags give up to a 50% crash survivability improvement in side collisions. Consumer Reports strongly recommends side air bags in all car purchases.

Now I will think twice before renting a car from Enterprise.

(Props to The Truth About Cars for finding the article.)

Per Frontburner:

…it’s certainly a deterrent for me to walk down one side of the street when I see twenty yards in front of me a gang of menacing-looking thugs approaching from the opposite direction.  I’m most likely to cross the street and avoid the possible confrontation.  … However, if I were told as I walked down that sidewalk (with no thugs in sight) that some number of years after I have walked down the sidewalk, a group of thugs might be called together (after much legal wrangling and automatic appeals, etc.) and might possible menace me for having had the audacity to walk down that sidewalk on their side of the street — I probably wouldn’t be deterred.

This argument applies to any punishment far removed from the crime, including Texas’s silly “Driver Responsibility” fees. They have no deterrent effect, and they are not paying for a service.

This is simply a way that liberals and too many Republicans hide new taxes.

University Park PD is soaking passing motorists with blatant speed traps:

This speed trap soaks southbount motorists on the US 75 access road approach to SMU Blvd.

UP City Manager Bob Livingston justified this cash grab with, “The location is one, if not the highest, site for injury and non-injury accidents in the City.”

It’s because of red light runners, Bob. Speed enforcement doesn’t make people respect red lights. Even my 5 year old son could guess that.

If you see this car in your rearview mirror, you won the reverse lottery!

Per today’s press release, the Texas DPS’s holiday “special concern” is “drinking and driving,” but that doesn’t stop them from a colossal revenue grab.

In 2007, at least 80%* of their holiday moving violation tickets were revenue enhancement speeding tickets. Their stated “special focus” suggests the same will happen again.

The Texas Legislature created our 70 mph rural speed limit in 1963. Now, if you can tell me what an arbitrary number, picked out of a hat 45 years ago, has to do with road safety… You get the point: NOTHING!

So, yes, fully eighty percent of TxDPS’s holiday moving violation activity is  revenue enhancement. This is what passes for highway policing?

Thank you, Texas DPS: revenue first.

*80% is from speeding tickets / (total citations - seat belt violations).

A Dallas Morning News blog article says cops are running ticket mills in White Rock Lake park. The crime? Bicyclists running stop signs.

Even though I am frustrated by White Rock Lake bicyclists, I believe this enforcement is just revenge. Let me explain.

I think motorists are justifiably upset at arrogant bicyclists. Commenters on the DMN blog and my experience confirm many who:

• Decline to yield when entering a roadway.
• Decline to use a special bridge intended for them. Instead, they choose to endanger themselves and motorists by cycling amidst traffic running three times as fast. (I’ll give them medals for bravery! They don’t even have the visibility and protection of vehicles!)
• Do things just to provoke motorists.
• Have holier-than-thou attitudes againt cars.
• Ride 3-4 abreast, making it difficult to safely pass them.
• Decline to watch out for pedestrians.

What’s the stop sign’s point? Mitigate right of way issues. That’s it.

Compared to cars, cyclists travel slowly. They have plenty long to review intersections and make right of way judgments. They rarely need a full stop. Why force them?

Full and complete stops don’t address any of the above problems. That’s why I believe this is simply revenge.

Add the simpleton logic of “it’s the law so it should be enforced,” and it becomes sweet revenge.

I don’t subscribe to simpleton logic, so I don’t approve victimizing bicyclists with this revenge, profit-fueled ticket mill.