Aren Cambre's Blog

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.

Recently, the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department (DCSD) aggressively increased revenue enhancement traffic patrols. Now the DCSD patrols all freeways in the southern half of Dallas County and is seeking more freeway patrol duties.

The Dallas Morning News explains:

The department patrols unincorporated areas of Dallas County in the southern sector – a shrinking area of only about 9,000 residents. (source)

Texas sheriffs have full countywide jurisdiction, but their traditional police mandate is to patrol unincorporated county land. The DCSD’s policing mandate is shrinking with this unincorporated land.

Dallas County Commissioners are loathe to spend scarce resources only to duplicate city police. An impending $20 million county deficit seals this point.

As the rural mandate and dollars go away, all incentive is–literally–on revenue enhancement. (Disagree? See why Dallas County started constable traffic patrols.)

Dallas County, meet your new sheriff’s department: home of Texas’s most incompetently-managed jails and revenue patrols.

I feel so much safer!

In October 1995, Dallas County, Texas funded new constable traffic patrol units in south Dallas County. Their explicit purpose was to generate profit through speed enforcement. Projected revenues were 200% of costs, meaning 100% profit.

In 1999, Dallas County expanded constable traffic patrols into the city of Dallas. At the time, Commissioner John Wiley Price only hoped for “break even” revenue flows.

In 2000, Chief Deputy Constable Helen Hicks told the Dallas Morning News that the constables write an “extremely large” number of speeding tickets.

The speed enforcement campaign has caused turf wars with the cities that were in the initial program. In 1996, DeSoto Police captain Warren Box said “The more [constable speed enforcement] we get to keep everyone slowed down, the happier I get.” However, by 2003, the Dallas Morning News characterized DeSoto City Manager Jim Baugh as expressing that constables should stop enforcing speed limits within his city and “do their main job – serve civil and criminal papers.” In fact, as of 2003, the cities of Duncanville, DeSoto, and Cedar Hill had asked the constables to back off their speed enforcement program. However, Constable Roma Skinner responded with “[the complaints] and $1 … could buy you a cup of coffee.”

The speed enforcement program contributed significantly to $177 million in unpaid Dallas County traffic tickets and tens of thousands of outstanding, unserved constable warrants by July 2008.

In the face of a $34 million deficit for fiscal year 2008-2009, Dallas County commissioners have proposed eliminating constable traffic patrol units and a central processing center to save $6 million annually. Commissioners were “surprised” to learn that the traffic patrols alone operate at a net loss of $1 million.

Al Cercone, Precinct 3 Justice of the Peace, characterized the proposal as “foolish” because of lost traffic ticket revenue. Commissioner Maruine Dickey agrees. The Dallas Morning News characterized her view of traffic patrols as “doing their job generating money.” She further said that the end of the of traffic patrols would “really become a revenue loss for the county.”

The proposal to eliminate traffic patrols is partly in response to Justice Cercone joining 4 other justices in refusing to participate in a central ticket processing center. Not only is its legality questioned, the Justices don’t appreciate how the center sometimes adjudicates citations favorably to motorists. The center also wastes county staff time with sloppy letters, loses citations, and takes up to two years to properly route citations.

Dallas, TX resident Daniel Murphy recently received a $204 ticket for a paperwork violation. After unsuccessfully spending 12 phone hours trying to sort out payment, he eventually mailed a $204 check, hoping it would resolve.

Commissioners Court administrator Allen Clemson demonstrated complete obliviousness to the plight of victimized motorists, stating that the “concept” and “execution” of the central processing center are “good.”

On July 7, the County’s elected leadership resolved to eliminate the ticket processing center, shifting its resources back to Justice of the Peace courts.

Texas constables are certified peace officers with full jurisdiction in any precinct in their respective county. However, their traditional and statutorily-implied mandate is to handle light duty matters like providing court bailiffs, handling class C misdemeanor warrants, or serving civil notices. Sheriff’s offices traditionally handle heavier duty work like warrants for class A and B misdemeanors or felonies, routine patrols, and traffic enforcement.

Ironically, the constable speed enforcement program has been so prolific the constables now have a backlog of 55,000 traffic-related warrants. This us up from 40,000 in September 2007, when Commissioner Price characterized the backlog as not being “unreasonable.”

Sources:

County constables issuing traffic tickets for first time – Safety in school zones, revenue from fines sought, Dallas Morning News, January 8, 1996

Aiming to serve better – Constable ‘s office takes on new duties to fight Dallas speeders, Dallas Morning News, October 12, 1999

LEARNING TO PLAY IT SAFE – School zone rules enforced as students return, Dallas Morning News, August 13, 2000

Constables ‘ traffic tickets irritate some – Cities want enforcement suspended, Dallas Morning News, February 21, 2003

County constables will soon serve felony warrants – Intent to ease backlog, but some say deputies aren’t prepared for risk, Dallas Morning News, September 20, 2007

Dallas County commissioners propose deal to eliminate traffic units, Dallas Morning News, June 27, 2008

Dallas County trying to raise fine collection rate, Dallas Morning News, June 24, 2008

As motorists’ frustration rises, justices of the peace pull out of automated ticket payment program, Dallas Morning News, July 5, 2008

Dallas County to scrap central collections for traffic tickets, Dallas Morning News, July 7, 2008

We were involved in a minor wreck today. Not our fault; an unobservant driver ran into our car, which was stuck in traffic leaving some parade.

The incredible part is the Dallas County Sheriff, Lupe Valdez, was in uniform and sitting in the open bed of a Dallas County Sheriff’s truck, also stuck in traffic, no more than 30 feet line of sight from us. Because of barriers, she would have had to walk about 100 or so feet to get to us.

While my head still feels shaken 2 hours later, the wreck probably was minor. An amateur investigation of the car could only find two dimples in the rear bumper from the other car’s front license plate.

Did the sheriff bother to help? Did she even acknowledge my shouted question of whether she saw the crash?

Nope. She and her non-uniformed cohorts just sat in the truck, gave a blank stare, and did nothing.

I am floored. I guess as an average citizen, I am in her “flyover country.”

I have a picture. I can’t share it yet. But I will as soon as I can.

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: