Aren Cambre's Blog

UPDATE: I got a letter similar to this published in the Dallas Morning News! (link)

Dallas is about to harass and annoy motorists with its own “me, too” cell phone law.

As I blogged earlier, several studies affirm that hands free phone use is as dangerous as handheld phone use. Dallas’s proposal prohibits one but affirms the other. What sense does that make?

Is goal is to punish those too poor or feeble minded to have a hands free unit? School zone safety correlates to drivers’ social status or nerdiness?

Now distracted motorists must have both hands on the wheel. I feel safer already.

Thanks, city council!

In a bold move to punish technically unsophisticated or poor people, Texas’s third wealthiest city enacted a hand held cell phone ban in school zones. With this, Highland Park encourages equally dangerous hands-free use. But hey, as long as you’re rich or know Bluetooth, you’re teh awesomezor!

How “brave.” How “innovative.”

As if its outrageous property values aren’t already tax-tastic enough, Highland Park may soon enhance its traffic ticket profits by giving its cops another reason to hassle motorists: a proposed ordinance will ban cell phone use* within active school zones.

Why the asterisk? *Not applicable when hands-free mode used.

It’s a two-faced ordinance: you can’t talk on a cell phone but you can talk on a cell phone if you use your hands free unit.

But wait, you say, isn’t this about safety? Don’t you need your hands on the wheel?

The “inattention blindness” is equivalent for any cell phone user, so hand placement has minimal bearing on cell phone-related motorist safety. Several studies affirm this equal risk:

• “Driving impairment was just as bad regardless of whether participants used hands-free or hand-held cell phones.” (source)
• “…using a cell phone while driving is a major cause of traffic accidents, and that hands-free devices have little safety benefit.” (source)
• “…banning hand-held phone use won’t necessarily enhance safety if drivers simply switch to hands-free phones. Injury crash risk didn’t differ from one type of reported phone use to the other.” (source)
• “…motorists who talk on both handheld and hands-free cell phones are as impaired as drunken drivers.” (source)
• “…headsets and other hands-free devices are just as unsafe as any other type of cell phone.” (source)
• Etc.

By only banning “handed” cell phone use, Highland Park would tacitly endorse an unsafe activity.

Additionally, the law would concentrate profit enhancement punishment on those too poor or technologically unsophisticated to have hands free units, even though these groups may be equally unsafe as hands-free users.

I’ll close with an analogy: suppose a city has a river with too-low, flood-prone levees on each side. Banning only “handed” cell phone use is like only fortifying one levee. The net effect is minimal because whatever water would have flooded over the fortified levee will instead spill over the other, unfortified levee.

Highland Park should either leave the levees alone or fortify both levees. Only fortifying one levee–banning one unsafe activity while encouraging another unsafe activity–makes no sense, except as an anti-motorist profit ploy.

Today I saw a Trinity Vote (the “yes” crowd) brochure featuring a flooded Trinity River from 2007. Clearly they haven’t backed off the spirit of ignorant predictions of flooded roadways by former councilmen John Loza and Sandy Greyson.

Here’s the truth.

To inundate the toll road, a flood would have to crest at least 415.64 feet above sea level, and probably a few feet more due to a mini-levee on the toll road’s river side. That is at least per the designs. Click on the picture at right to see a higher resolution version.

The USGS’s Trinity Gage 08057000, (yes, it’s spelled “gage“) located near the Commerce St. bridge, has the river’s bottom at 368.02 feet above sea level. Simple mathematics says the river has to be at least 47.62 high, a whopping 17.62 feet above flood stage, to get on the toll road.

This gage has taken daily readings since 1987. I put the readings in a spreadsheet, ordered them by height, and found that the highest reading in these 20 years was 45.77 feet from May 3, 1990. This even includes readings not formally approved for publishing. Only 15 readings out of 11,814 (some days have more than one reading), or 0.1%, are even above 40 feet.

What does this mean? In the prior 20 years, the river never rose high enough to flood the road.

What’s clear is that if this road even floods, it’s going to be incredibly rare, possibly counted on one hand during a person’s lifetime.

On November 6, Dallas voters will decide proposition 1, concerning a proposed toll road:

…to prohibit the construction, maintenance, or improvement of, or the expenditure of funds or, any roadways within the Trinity River levees unless certain restrictions relating to use, location, number of travel lanes, and speed limits are met…

A yes vote cancels the toll road, requiring a low capacity road instead.

A NO vote allows the massive Trinity River Corridor Project to proceed, with the toll road being built.

To be clear, I am uncomfortable with much of the Corridor Project. The new park being built by downtown is a joke.

However, the toll road opposition (the “vote yes crowd”) are advocating a huge blunder using arguments that range between flaky and crazy:

• Exaggerate the park’s value. The park section that shares space with the toll road should be called Drainage Ditch Park. It’s currently a long, barren plain between 30 foot levees. Sure, the redeveloped land will be better than it was, but it will never be a White Rock Lake Park or a San Antonio River Walk. You can’t even see Drainage Ditch Park unless you’re in a tall building or on a bridge (or on the toll road), very few people will ever live within walking distance, and the levees and flood risk prevent significant structures or trees from being anywhere near the park. This artificial lake will almost certainly have no services–or it will at least have nothing we don’t mind being ruined in the next flood. The above photo shows how far away amenities will probably be, and this 1908 Trinity River photo shows why the park cannot have any services:
  
  Even if a toll road was to seriously disrupt this park, it would have a minimal impact on Drainage Ditch Park.
• Petty selfishness. Some allege the road only benefits suburbanites. It’s false (see next), but even if true, so what? Is Dallas now like selfish Highland Park, which is intentionally reducing capacity of a grossly congested arterial road?
• Misconstrue the traffic benefit. Opponents say the road only benefits people who want to bypass downtown. In fact, by relieving traffic on the notoriously congested I-35E, the toll road eases downtown access.
• Misconstrue the traffic benefit II. Some opponents allege that more roads will increase congestion by making transportation easier. Heaven forbid we make it easier for people to transport themselves! We don’t know if we can built our way out of congestion because we haven’t even tried!
• Authoritarianism. The prior three points show how the opponents endorse European-style, interventionist government, where government exists to tell you what to do, not to serve you.
• Anti-motorist. Scuttling the toll road will make Dallas look awfully close to Portland, OR, where transportation funds are intentionally diverted to expensive public transportation projects mainly to defund road projects.
• Mischaracterize the value. Some opponents say that Dallas has very little on the line, under $100 million bond dollars that can be returned. In fact, this toll road’s net value may well exceed a billion dollars, the vast majority of which will be paid for by other agencies and jurisdictions. If Dallas scuttles the toll road, we lose its entire direct value plus value adds like reduced congestion, reduced pollution, and easier access to downtown.
• Mischaracterize the cost of alternatives. The only realistic alternative to building the toll road in Drainage Ditch Park appears to be a route up Industrial Blvd. In addition to disrupting a vibrant commercial area and a chunk of Dallas’s property tax base, this would require at least $300 million more. (Eminent domain isn’t cheap,and that’s not all.) Furthermore, if no toll road is built inside Drainage Ditch Park, the park’s cost may increase.
• Mischaracterize the loss. Some opponents allege that funds will still be available for a (more expensive) alternative if we ditch this plan. Actually, history suggests that fierce competition for scarce dollars prohibits this money from magically sticking around for us to use later. Recall DART’s fight with the FTA concerning Love Field rail tunnels, where DART came close to losing $700 million.
• Bickering over petty issues. Just look at the silly arguments over exit ramps to Drainage Ditch Park. WHO CARES? If you can’t get to Drainage Ditch Park from the toll road, several bridges will take you to the other side.
• Unreasonable standard of certainty. Uncertainty and flux is a natural part of complex projects, especially ones that aren’t even finalized. Instead of recognizing that this is still a work in progress, the opposition makes hay over minor unresolved details (e.g., can trees be put around the road?), acting as if they represent a gaping hole. If absolute certainty is the only to govern, we can’t have representative democracy!
• Conspiracy theories. The opposition repeatedly alleges that the public has been duped into voting for a toll road and that the Dallas Morning News is complicit. In fact, a high speed road was clearly mentioned in the 1998 bond program that authorized this public works project, and its opposition even mentioned an “eight-lane tollway” (which in reality will be 4 lanes to begin, later maybe 6 as capacity is needed).
• Flat out dumb arguments. Some whine that this toll road will take a few years to plan and build. Hello, when was the last time a complicated road project didn’t take a while to build?
• Armchair quarterbacking. Some of the roll road’s technical issues are Byzantinely complicated. Regardless, many members of the opposition with zero experience appointed themselves hydrologists and traffic engineers and made insanely false pronouncements, like suggesting (incorrectly) that this summer’s rains would have flooded the toll road. In fact, no flood for the past 20 years would have reached the toll road! Some also suggest that additional roadway capacity won’t make a difference. Oh, really? Put Central Expressway back at 2 lanes each direction and let’s see what happens!
• Cut off your nose to spite your face. Some argue that this whole public works project has gotten out of hand. I agree. I think most of the non-transportation improvements, including designer bridges and Drainage Ditch Park, are at best a questionable use of taxpayer money. However, this anti-toll road crusade is “cutting off your nose to spite your face.” We are “sticking it to the man” by surgically discarding the only economically useful part of the Corridor Project! How much sense does that make?

The NO vote has broad support. Elected politicians of all stripes, business leaders, major community groups, and professional organizations are virtually unanimous: VOTE NO ON PROPOSITION 1!

If you’re not convinced, review the Dallas Morning News’s Trinity toll road articles and Vote No! Save the Trinity.

I’ll be voting NO on November 6. The economic and environmental benefits of a badly needed highway far outweigh a sliver of land from Drainage Ditch Park.

This morning, while driving on southbound Garland Road (TX 78) by White Rock Lake, I saw a careening, white Nissan Maxima headed the wrong way, barrelling down at me.

I could tell it was imminently going to swipe the Volvo wagon in front of me and was barrelling right at me from my left. So I jumped a curb and slammed on my brakes.

I ended up halfway on grass and halfway on a hike and bike trail:

(All pictures are from my cell phone and have poor color balance.)

Luckily, no runners were in my path! I took longer than the Volvo to stop because the grass was wet with dew. Thank God for antilock braking!

If you look closely, you’ll see a Toyota Highlander about 100 feet in front of me. It also had to jump the curb. I guess the lady in the Volvo wasn’t paying good attention; she could have avoided the crash if she got off the road, although I may have then run into her?

Here’s where I launched off the curb:

One of my left wheels did that.

I barely missed the careening Maxima.

Once I realized I was OK, I jumped out of my car and checked on the lady in the Volvo. She was dazed and just wanted out of her car. She couldn’t open her driver’s door:

Seeing that no immediate action was needed, I called 911. I had to ask her twice to shut off her engine as I was on the phone; she was too startled to remember to do that.

Fortunately, she was totally unharmed. Her dogs were also startled and unharmed:

The Maxima’s driver appeared to be in more trouble. As soon as I was comfortable that the Volvo lady was OK, I asked a bystander to help her with her dogs so she could get out. I then went to the Maxima.

The Maxima ended up doing a 180:

Plenty of people were attending to the guy by the time I got to him. At first, I thought his head was bleeding, but it turns out the guy’s rasta-style dreadlocks were hanging over his shoulder. He was shaking and in apparent mild shock. Bystanders were reassuring him. Since he looked OK, I didn’t interfere. His passenger compartment was intact:

He was complaining of foot pain. That wasn’t surprising given the impact location:

Anyone need a coil spring?

(It’s right in front of the car.)

I asked the guy in the green cap to wait for the ambulance and flag it down.

Based on the timestamps in the picture, I guess the fire truck didn’t arrive until about 5-6 minutes after the crash, and the ambulance was about 1 minute later. This surprised me since the fire station is just a mile away up the same road. But maybe that’s normal response time?

The paramedics got the guy on his feet, so I guess he was OK?

The only cop to show up was a traffic cop (in Dallas PD, they wear red epaulets), and he arrived roughly 10-12 minutes after the crash. That response time shocked the heck out of me.

The crash appeared to be caused by an unobservant motorist who had to make a last minute lane change to avoid a slow-moving or stopped truck. The unobservant driver swerved into the Maxima’s path. In avoiding the unobservant driver, the Maxima’s driver lost control and careened into oncoming traffic.

Since I didn’t witness this part, the cop didn’t need me to stick around. After making sure the Volvo lady didn’t need more help (the emergency personnel weren’t helping her as she was unhurt), I took off for my meeting, which was about creating a foundation for White Rock Lake Park. Incidentally, my car ended up in this very park!

Do Volvos automatically blink headlights when the airbag goes off? I am not sure that a driver could make headlights blink:

The United Kingdom is the poster child of an abusive police state. Thanks to its 6,000 automated speed cameras:

• 4,500,000 drivers, 28% of all UK licensed drivers, have speeding convictions.
• 900,000 drivers, 7% of all UK licensed drivers, are one conviction away from a driving ban.
• 92% of moving violations are speeding tickets.
• Almost $200,000,000 of revenue is raised annually with traffic fines.
• Half of speeding violations are for less than 10 mph over the limit.

This is the sorry state where automated enforcment will bring us.

If you aren’t outraged, you haven’t been paying attention.

Sources: http://www.carkeys.co.uk/news/2007/march/30/12839.asp (most) and http://www.cfit.gov.uk/mf/reports/ar2004/index.htm (licensed driver count)

Red light traffic cameras: are they about safety or profit?

Dallas recently started a red light traffic camera program. Owner of offending vehicles get a $75 citation that’s like a parking ticket:

• doesn’t go on anyone’s driving record
• super easy to prosecute
• low rate of contested tickets
• no restrictions on how fine revenues should be spent

In other words, it’s a moneymaker.Dallas’s 2005-06 budget indicates $19,757,102 came from “municipal court” fines, which excludes vehicle towing and storage, parking, and library late book fines. It’s likely that the vast majority of this $19.7 million figure comes from traffic fines. Dallas expects this fine revenue to increase 60% once the red light camera program goes online. Wow!

My state senator, John Carona, is coming to the rescue. He has introduced a bill forcing cities to send all profits to state coffers.

This is ingenious for three reasons.

First, all funds go to a state account that compensates for uncovered emergency room bills. Basically, red light violators are collectively paying for the injuries they cause.

Second, why must cities profit from traffic enforcement? Are cities too stupid to properly allocate enforcement resources without a profit motive? Do cities profit when they fight crime? How much does a city haul in when prosecuting a burglar? (Try nothing!) Why does Dallas need to profit off red light runners?

Third, cities are still allowed to retain enough to pay for the camera program–as long as it doesn’t exceed 50% of the ticket revenue. Sounds fair to me!

Predictably, cities are showing their recalcitrant, greedy natures and are up in arms over this commonsense legislation.

It’s just more proof that traffic enforcement is mostly about the revenues, a clear violation of our Constitutional due process rights.

In the past few days, the nanny state safety goons have influenced the newspapers with creative spin on recent road safety statistics. The headlines alert us that that roadway deaths are at their highest levels in 15 years, implying we have dangerous highways that need urgent solutions!

That is hogwash.

It is true that highway deaths increased 1.4% in 2005, the most recent available year. If I left it at that, you might believe that we’re reversing decades-old safety trends. Here’s why that is a faulty conclusion.

Cannot Ignore Exposure

If you spend 1 hour in 0 degree weather, you have a higher chance of suffering hypothermia than if you spend 1 minute outside. Your increased exposure you cold increased your likelihood to hypothermia. Likewise, if you drive 100 miles each day, you have a higher likelihood of being involved in a crash than if you drive 1 mile. Your increased mileage exposed you to more risk.

Aggregate that to a national scale: if all the drivers in a nation drive more miles each year, then the nation as a whole may experience more deaths not because each driver is more dangerous but because the nation has increased its exposure to risk.

The total death count by itself does not shed much light on the total safety picture. You must to scale the death count to risk exposure.

Go back to that hypothermia example. Suppose we do a larger experiment. On day 1, 10 people go outside for 1 hour in the 0 degree weather, and one person gets hypothermia. You might infer that each individual has a 10% chance of getting hypothermia.

Suppose we repeat the same experiment with 50 people, and 4 people get hypothermia. The chance of any individual getting hypothermia decreased by 20%! How could that be? Didn’t hypothermia cases quadruple? In fact, the risk–that is, the number of people in the cold–increased fivefold. That is a much larger increase than the increase in actual cases of hypothermia.

Similarly, if risk–miles driven–increases more rapidly than total deaths, then your roads are actually safer, despite the increased death count, because the chance of any individual dying on the road is decreasing!

The Nitty Gritty

From 1995 through 2005, the number of vehicle miles driven annually (VMT) has risen by an average 2.1%. However, over that same time period, the total death count has risen by an annual 0.6%. This suggests that the death rate is decreasing. Our highways have been getting safer despite the increased death count! Here is a chart comparing deaths to vehicle miles traveled since 1966, with linear trend lines to show the long-term trends:

Clearly, the VMT count is rising much more quickly than the death count.

From 1995 through 2005, the death rate decreased by an average of 1.5% per year. It decreased every year except for 2005. Is 2005’s number alarming? I say no.

In 1995, the death rate was 1.73 deaths per hundred million miles traveled. In 2005, the death rate was 1.47. That’s a 15% decrease!

Digging a little further into the statistics shows a smoking gun.

Blame Motorcyclists

The yearly death count for motorcyclists has skyrocketed. In fact, on average, motorcyclist deaths have increased about 40 times faster than passenger vehicles every year from 1997 through 2005. Here’s a chart:

What’s going on? Two things: there are many more motorcycles on the roads than before, and most states’ helmet laws have been repealed in the past 10 years. Today, only 20 states have full motorcycle helmet laws.

What would happen if motorcycle death increases equaled instead of grossly outpaced passenger vehicle death count increases? Here’s how the numbers would change if we used an adjusted death count:

• The adjusted 2005 death rate would be only 1.39, which would mean a one third increase in the death rate reduction from 2005.
• The adjusted 2005 death rate would only be 0.1% higher than the adjusted 2004 rate.

Perspective

Road safety nanny state types nostalgically look back on the days of the old national 55 mph limit. Look at this chart, showing actual death rates against time:

Notice how roads today are substantially safer today than in ‘74, when the 55 mph limit started? (This is a separate point deserving more research, but also notice how the death rate flattened–didn’t meaningfully improve–in the 8 years following the 55 mph limit and actually turned back the excellent safety improvement record from 1966-1973? Is this causation or correlation? That question deserves more research.)

Also note how we are starting to hit against the law of diminishing returns: the closer the death rate gets to 0, the more difficult it becomes to slice off further deaths.

Lesson Learned?

While there was a setback in traffic safety in 2005, it was miniscule, and its is likely to be mostly correlated with motorcycle deaths.

No deaths are good deaths. Ideally, no traffic deaths should happen. But painting a picture of doom and gloom with silly statements that castigate all drivers focuses energies on unproductive measures like low speed limits.

Data Sources

My data came from two NHTSA sources: the Fatality Analysis Reporting System and Traffic Safety Facts 1997. Here’s the spreadsheet where I crunched my data.

A persistent myth is that Texas Department of Public Safety Highway Patrol cops don’t arrest (pull over) motorists for less than 10 over the speed limit. It’s false, and I have three cases in point to prove it. Note that in each case, I was the passenger.

October 1995: Driver got pulled over and ticketed by TxDPS on I-45 in the middle of nowhere for doing 74 in a 65. (This was a couple of months before the statutory rural limit went to 70 mph.)

June 1996: Driver got pulled over by TxDPS on FM 217 headed eastbound into Palo Duro State Park for doing 77 in a 70. Fortunately, the driver got a warning, but I’ll bet it’s because of the clerical collar he wore when taking his driver’s license photo. (It’s a legit; he is really ordained clergy.)

Typical rural Texas speed limit sign with the goofball night speed limit.

April 2006: Driver got pulled over by TxDPS and ticketed for doing 74 in a 65. This one is particularly egregious. Texas has a goofy 65 mph night speed limit that takes effect 30 minutes after sunset. This guy wrote the ticket at 8:57 PM, a mere 9 minutes after the 65 went into effect. (9 minutes earlier was “30 minutes after sunset” on that day, so the driver would have been doing 74 in a 70, an unlikely ticket.) Furthermore, he strictly enforced this arbitrary limit (arbitrary meaning it was set by politicians in the 1963 Texas Legislature, not by a traffic engineer) on a deserted stretch of 4 lane, almost perfectly flat, median-separated US 67 east of San Angelo. (Maybe 2 cars passed during the entire about 10 minute traffic stop?) To top it off, the cop felt the need to remind the car’s occupants that “I am the law and you are nothing” with a gruff and unfriendly demeanor. Just think how you would have felt with this gruff guy blaring his flashlight in your face at 8:57 PM in the middle of nowhere. He came across as a young punk just trying to fill a quota. Heaven forbid anyone do 74 on a very good road in the middle of nowhere!

Not all cops are as hard assed as this. In another case, I know of someone who was pulled over by TxDPS for 91 in a 70 on I-20 east of Abilene. (This guy admits that he was knowingly doing 91.) The guy was polite, and the trooper wrote the ticket for 81 in a 70.

I have been pulled over five times in my life but have only received one ticket. The one ticket was from the only time I was pulled over by a TxDPS officer, and it was for, you guessed it, speeding. The four times I didn’t get a ticket are:

• 1995: Harris County Precinct 2 Constable pulled me over for illegal right turn. (I should have turned into the rightmost lane but unthinkingly turned into the next lane over.) The illegal turn was just a pretense for pulling me over to see why I was driving through South Bend, an at-the-time almost deserted neighborhood that was cleared out because of its proximity to the BRIO toxic waste site. This neighborhood had a lot of theft problems, and it didn’t help that my ‘74 Nova looked quite ratty at the time.
• 1998 (?): Pulled over by an SMU cop, although the reason was bogus. He said I ran a stop sign when in fact I had been stopped at the stop sign for a few seconds waiting for a pedestrian to pass by. (It’s actually a two-part intersection, and I think he may have thought there was a stop sign at the second part when there wasn’t.) He also accused me of speeding, but SMU cops do not have radar guns or any other speed detection equipment, and he wasn’t pacing me, so I don’t know where he got that from.
• 2001: Pulled over by Highland Park Police. Highland Park is an enclave city inside of Dallas. It does everything within its powers to discourage through traffic by clogging its thoroughfares. In particular, Highland Park forces drivers to engage in technically illegal maneuvers to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time. In my case, I was approaching a street where I needed to make a left turn. There is a bizarrely short left turn lane at this signal. Most motorists partially cut over a double yellow line to pass several cars that are always stacked up at the signal to get into the left turn lane. That way you can make the left turn at the next green instead of waiting for two cycles–one cycle to approach the signal and get into the left turn lane, and another cycle to actually get a left turn signal. (Cities without such anti-motorist mindsets would have made the left turn lane much longer or used a “suicide lane.”) I did this maneuver, and the Highland Park cop pulled me over immediately. Once he saw that my driver’s license said I lived in University Park (I was renting a house from SMU at the time), his stated reason for pulling me over was that my inspection sticker looked funny–totally bogus because there’s no way he could have seen it from where he was waiting. Anyway, it seem that if you live in either Park city, you get a free pass on traffic laws. I wasn’t ticketed. He just said I need to fix my sagging inspection sticker.
• 
  The bumper sticker that may have helped get me out of a ticket.

  2002: Pulled over by a Hancock County, IL sheriff’s deputy. He said I was doing 55 in a 45. It wouldn’t surprise me if I really was doing that. One reason is that my ‘74 Nova’s speedometer was acting up, and being over 700 miles from home, there’s no way I could fix it in a hurry. The other reason is that I am used to Texas’s speed laws, where in many but not all cases the speed limit rises as the need for lower speeds diminishes. Illinois is different: the speed limit can stay arbitrarily low all the way to the city limit sign even if the city limits extend well into undeveloped areas. On this road, IL 96, the speed limit stayed 45 well past any practical indication that you were within the Nauvoo city limits. I was pulled over right before the 55 mph speed zone started, and the road was deserted and obviously rural. The deputy let me go with only a verbal warning to drive carefully. He said he liked my “FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS VOTE DEMOCRAT” bumper sticker.

This is a better idea than blindly assuming that TxDPS gives motorists a lot of leeway.

A recent TxDPS traffic stop document showed that nearly half of all TxDPS citations are speeding citations. While it may seem surprising that such an enormous number of violations are so narrowly focused on only one of many types of moving violations, this is apparently common practice. Numbers for Houston and Austin suggest their cops also use about half their moving violation traffic tickets on speeding.

So what is the grand summary? It may pay to use a good radar detector. Even better, you don’t need to shell out a lot to get a good detector. The BEL Express 795, $80 at Circuit City, appears to do about as well as $300+ detectors.