The problem in the mirror

Here’s an actual incident from the Lincoln, Massachusetts police log: “Caller reported seeing a car driving down Goose Pond Road the previous night.” That is what it takes to have the police called on you in a well off town. Just being there. Harassing nonresidents is law enforcement’s raison d’être. That driver got away because […]

So this stripper walks into a bar…

I remember talking to a reporter in 2010. A late night accident in Worcester, Massachusetts left a young lady in the hospital. A decade later the legal dust has finally settled, leaving a lesson about why Massachusetts could be the best state to buy insurance in. I can tell it as an open-and-shut case. Late […]

Speed traps have an impact

Massachusetts continues its speeding ticket blitz and people are dying. Before the ticketing rampage fatal accidents were down in absolute numbers but up relative to the amount of traffic. Now they are up in absolute numbers too: 17 in the first three weeks of May compared to 14 in the same period last year. But […]

Open roads and speed traps

This week’s ignorance of the law award goes to the Massachusetts State Police, who said “Open roads are not a license to speed.” In fact open roads are a license to speed. Massachusetts has what is known as a prima facie speed law. Exceeding the speed limit is not against the law. Under ordinary conditions […]

The end of rush hour

Demand inevitably exceeds capacity, we’ve been told. That was never true and it’s especially not true now. Traffic volume is down 40% recently as people have nowhere to go. And rush hour is gone. UC Davis reported on changes in California traffic. With so many people staying home volume is down 40% and crashes and […]

Friends don’t let friends drive Android

Another report on distracted driving came out recently. Most people saw typical press release fluff with a bar graph with no obvious scale showing how reaction time differed depending on what drivers were doing. Driving drunk was the best thing you could do short of driving sober. Using a touch screen infotainment system was the […]

Fear no evil

There’s a Billy Joel lyric I’ve always liked. “They will tell you you can’t sleep alone in a strange place. Then they’ll tell you you can’t sleep with somebody else.” Such is driving in the age of fear. We’ve always been told we have to slow down because of all the traffic… and then when […]

The age of fear

I have often wondered how much better driving would be if police were afraid to run speed traps. Obviously it’s not an experiment we can do ourselves. Nature has done it for us. I haven’t seen a police car near the illegal 20 mph speed limit sign recently. My town stopped traffic enforcement over two weeks […]

The lens of Damocles

The Massachusetts Senate is close to approving a bill allowing widespread use of ticket cameras. There were some preliminary votes a couple weeks ago. A slim majority seemed to support it, but perhaps in response to public comments a final vote was put off. Politicians hate it when voters find out what they’re up to. […]

Reduced speed traps boost safety in Colorado

A story from Colorado hit my inbox this morning. With fewer speed traps on I-70 near Grand Junction the highway is safer. That’s not what the reporter wants us to believe, but it’s at least as true as the conclusion he drew. Here are the facts. The road had seen “some pretty graphic accidents” so […]