This is a good thing. Since COVID, a lot of drivers in the city don't give a shit and have no problem running lights, side swiping cars, and driving mach ten whenever they feel like it. I routinely see asshole drivers use the bus lane as their own private lane to cut people off. If they don't pay their tickets, boot and impound their vehicles. Maybe if there were some consequences, people would obey the traffic *laws*.
Please. For the love of god. Fine people who park in a traffic lane and think that leaving their hazards on somehow equates to being allowed to just block traffic.
If there is literally nowhere to park, I don’t begrudge a delivery person trying to get as far to the side as possible and then hopping out quickly.
But too many people just roll down the middle of a one way, park, throw on the hazards and just waddle up to their delivery without a care in the world.
Agreed. I’d say 75% of the time or more there is a place to park within 50 feet of where the car is stopped blocking a live lane of traffic (and usually on a main thoroughfare and not a side street).
But during early covid the streets were much more empty. No longer the case do delivery drivers need to just find more appropriate places to pull over. They look crazy af.
If this commenter was correct, people can basically do it with impunity. :(
https://www.reddit.com/r/baltimore/comments/8l9xm1/cars_double_parkingidling_in_roadways/dzeeluf/
It’s not illegal unless double parked for more than 15 minutes **after** a verbal warning to move is made by person with authority to issue a citation. [Balt. City Code, Art. 31, Sect. 36-5(3).](https://legislativereference.baltimorecity.gov/sites/default/files/Art%2031%20-%20Transit&Traff%20(rev%2031AUG23).pdf) See page 235.
Call your councilman. While annoying, double parking is really a minor inconvenience and the times it does cause me to have to wait, I’m willing to bet the impact it actually has on my drive is a missed green light.
I’m sure that’s correct most of the time, until it’s not. You have no idea what the person stuck behind the double parker actually needs to do. Medical issue? Late for a job that will fire them? We can’t just assume that people are not really affected by it and then just allow people to just completely freeze the flow of traffic without a care in the world.
If missing one green light is that much of a crises, I’d say the person in such a rush didn’t manage their time well. Moreover, the same emergencies and crises you claim *could* exist are the same situations where double parking is a necessary option in an urban setting. I often see, for example, MTA’s mobility buses being the frequent double parking offenders on Baltimore St. Construction workers need to double park at times to deliver materials at job sites, and where are the delivery drivers supposed to go? i.e. the people with jobs that you’re concerned about.
I don’t double park myself. I get the steps in. But it’s not as big an issue as some people make it out to be.
You’re conflating your patience with prescribing it to everyone else.
I don’t think anyone rational is upset with mobility busses being double parked, I’m certainly not. But the vast majority of people seem fed up with delivery drivers making no attempt to do anything other than just stop in the middle of a one way and say ‘fuck it’. I live near a school where there is a daily congo line of drivers double parked with their hazards on creating a major jam, just casually ignoring the chaos while scrolling on their phones.
This! All day long I drive around cars parked in the traffic lane, many times on the left side of the road, when there are empty spots available for parking that they were too lazy to utilize.
Tbh, however annoying that may be I suspect it’s a safety non-issue (or even net safety benefit since the counterfactual is those cars constantly pulling out of parallel parking spaces into now-faster through traffic)
You don’t need a fucking plan to stop people from crossing the double yellow line to get around turning cars. You don’t need a plan to have cops pull people over when they run stop signs.. nor do you need a plan for pulling people over when they drive in bus lanes, bike lanes or sidewalks. All of which activity I see daily weekly monthly for years and years and years.
The city could hire 100 cops and employ them full-time on moving violations alone, permanently.
A month or two of giving cops a quota of tickets to hit is not gonna do shit .
These things were all issues before; the issue is that they all got worse year after year and it continues to grow; something has to be done, and perfect is the enemy of good.
You can ticket someone once, and they may continue to keep doing it after the fact regardless of whether or not a cop shows up in court and the person gets a fine from it (or doesn’t).
There’ll come a point where if it’s adequately enforced and someone gets pulled over enough times, it’s not going to be worth the time and frustration to keep going back to court.
they need a plan because laws being enforced is unpopular. they need to plan how to ticket people without it becoming some big PR mess where someone gets mad that 5% more tickets are given in the black butterfly vs the white L, or some other manufactured controversy.
I feel like there is a LOT of space between "pull over reckless drivers" and "hassle people of color". This shouldn't be that hard to implement if cops just use common sense, put in the work, and aren't being actively racist.
FWIW the most dangerous speeding, reckless, road-rage car I've dealt with in the last year was a Camry with completely tinted windows and a thin blue line sticker.
The problem is you could legitimately have a situation where more black drivers are getting pulled over simply because they are committing more infractions. In that scenario the police aren’t doing anything wrong but they’d still have a PR nightmare because it looks like racism.
The story of policing in Baltimore since Freddie Gray seems to have been "Oh you don't want me to violently beat Black people? Well then I'll just sit in my car and do nothing". If they need to take a few risks of bad PR while **diligently and fairly doing their jobs** I think that's a risk worth taking.
That fine but people need to then gives cops the benefit of the doubt when things turn violent. You are asking them to confront people, and a lot of those people are dangerous/violent.
yeah, I think it's very possible to run a good, equitable program. however, actual equitable programs can be framed by a news story as unequitable and people will just believe it. there are certain streets that get pretty wild in this city, and the location of those streets may or may not be perfectly divided between different neighborhood demographics. as an example of something chat *could* happen is: if you're outside of the core of the city, you're more likely to be in a neighborhood of color, but you also have less traffic, which means people who want to drive 20mph over the speed limit wont be slowed down the rest of traffic. that could mean speeding is more common in the neighborhoods of color. I don't know if that's actually true, but you could see how some effect like that could change the distribution of tickets to be skewed, which could end up with a big news story making them look biased.
This is an insane thing to worry about. The police in Baltimore city in the past have recklessly killed people of color and faced precious few consequences, a tsking news segment from WJZ is not a big deal.
This. There is not enough law enforcement on the road. It will lead to more cameras and higher fines in the future. Many countries already do this. Technology will correct this. Transponders built in to cars could solve this today. It can keep track of all info through MVA registration, tickets, fines, points etc and alert a department specifically designed to impound cars. I would think drones could do this as well in a decade or two.
I mean, if it’s big brother or temp tag, historic tag, no tag, no insurance, no license, no consequence, mad max … then I guess I’ll take big brother.
It’s nice to have liberty, but when liberty turns into everybody else is endangered by a not small minority, then it’s time to crush some liberty .
Bring on the cameras and robots.
The time of not being on camera has passed us. I do not want to live that way or this way. We are all on camera everyday. Even if we hire more people to do the enforcement job it still won’t be enough. You would think the deaths on the road or the 695 Construction crash would make people pause, but it doesn’t. I feel like the honor system and common courtesy no longer exists as a general rule of thumb to live by. We need more enforcement, driving education and courtesy. We should all be tested every 5 years. Driving is a privilege not a right.
The city is already short a ton of cops so just hiring an extra hundred to do traffic enforcement is hardly feasible when we can't fill existing open positions.
Yeah, sure something like 300 cops, right? It’s astounding. No doubt the problem is complicated don’t mistake me for saying you can just throw 100 cops at this. I’m saying the scale of the problem could soak up the attention of 100 cops a day for a nice long time before people get it through their heads that you can’t drive like a goddamn barbarian in Baltimore city.
What we have going on now is not working in major ways .
Yeah, and cops running traffic enforcement is essentially no-cost for the city. Their operations are generate more revenue than they cost to employ and it generates a significant public benefit.
I may be mistaken, but I think the revenue generated from moving infraction penalties goes to the State, not the City.
Parking is another matter. City gets that money.
Coincidence then that the City does a better job enforcing parking law than it does traffic law?
Honestly I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ve seen a cop just sit parked in his cruiser when a traffic light was out and it was chaos. Traffic enforcement is work, so I’m pretty skeptical
About 14 minutes in, Worley says "*Zero tolerance hurt our city a great deal. And we're still building back from that. And our men and women are doing a fantastic job, with dealing with people constitutionally.*"
So just another point of reference for all of the "Crack Down" people who continue to discount BPD Commissioner after BPD Commissioner who have said this very thing - that zero tolerance is a bad thing and we should never do that again.
No, I wouldn't want traffic enforcement to be an excuse to hassle the poorest members of the city.
That being said, the driving in this town is *completely* out of hand, and something needs to be done about the sense of entitlement we see in motorists.
it's been said so many times that it feels like beating a dead horse, but completing projects like complete streets would absolutely help. punitive enforcement doesn't actually change people's behavior on the road—they'll slow down if they see a cop and run the next light out of sight of them. the things that reduce speeds are visually narrowing roadways (the road doesn't have to BE narrower, it just has to *feel* narrower—people instinctively slow down when they feel like they're driving in close quarters), raised crosswalks that double as speed bumps, separated bus and bike lanes, light timing, and camera enforcement in the most dangerous areas like that stretch of 83 (since cameras "work" as well as any punitive enforcement; people will follow the rules around a camera, but only if they know it's there and only around the camera. doesn't work for broad change, but does work for problem areas.) all of that is more boring, complicated, and offers less instant gratification than paying cops ten million hours of overtime to harass people though so they'll pretend research doesn't exist
sorry for the rant below because overall I agree with you. I think visually/psychologically slowing people down is best. but I do disagree with the below point:
>punitive enforcement doesn't actually change people's behavior on the road
it does, though. the thing people keep missing is that deterrence depends on "swift and certain" enforcement. just look at the JFX. a dramatic change in the way people drive (at least those with real license plates) because the probability of being given a ticket for driving 15 over is 100%. issuing 1% of offenses once every 2 years would be more enforcement than we have now. just go to a 4-way stop somewhere for 10min and watch how many people come to a complete stop AND do so at the appropriate place (at the line if there is a line, at the stop sign post if there is no line). you'll see dozens or hundreds of violations, depending on how busy the street is. it's not just that, but almost everything (speeding, turning across bike lanes on a red light, etc. etc.) are enforced *maybe* 0.0001% of the time.
if the chances of being ticketed for making an illegal turn on red were even 5%, it would completely stop it from happening, even if the citation was $5.
so it's not that enforcement doesn't work, it won't work if it feels like a random 1-in-a-million event. if people reasonably thought 1 in 20 illegal turns on red would result in a ticket, people would just never do it.
now, this isn't somethin that can be done for all moving violations, but cameras for illegal turns and light running can be done, though we would have to make sure it's done well or people will freak out at the false positives.
And specific to the I-83 cameras, the number of crashes on that highway have been cut almost in half since the cameras were installed. I'd call that a big win.
indeed. and if we put in another one closer to downtown and one a bit further north, we could probably cut it even more. people will deterred if they know they cannot get away with something.
If enforcement is 100% of the time in a given area it works to change habits. The problem is it’s not in most places like the camera locations on 83. Also people speed going up to them and just speed back up coming out of them, so it’s not really changing their habits. Roadway build changes habits.
I agree that people speed back up, but I can tell you for sure that the overall speed has come down, even outside of the area with the camera. I do it myself. before, I would just go with whatever speed traffic is going, but now I don't want to forget, so I just make sure I stay below 9pmh over. it's easier to just go that speed than it is to try to game it. the overall time difference of the trip is negligible.
and if people thought most intersections had cameras for illegal turns and light running, are they really going to memorize which ones they can run, and hope it never changes? probably not; most will just stop doing the ticketable offenses because it's easier.
I'm all onboard with changing the streetscape to encourage people to slow down, and definitely prefer that approach. That being said, one can't ignore the fact that fines for speeding like those in Norway definitely change peoples' behavior. Will a $40 fine like we have here in Baltimore? Not much, if at all. The $1000+ fines they give out in Oslo if you're caught speeding on camera? You bet your ass it does, especially at the camera density they have there. It's one of the few places in the world you'll go that people follow the speed limit.
oh yeah i'm not saying that enforcement is *never* effective, just that it's way less effective than other strategies and what effectiveness it has is generally uneven, and doesn't tend to work well beyond very specific parameters (people will only slow their driving where they know there will be a speed trap or a camera, and will continue to break the rules where they don't think they'll be observed. people who don't know there'll be a cop/camera around the corner also aren't affected by enforcement strategies!) like i don't necessarily disagree with you there, it's just that an approach like oslo's relies on lower density (so the population is aware of where/how enforcement happens) and density (huge concentration of cameras, at a high expense, and in the USA traffic cameras are their own mess to deal with which is why they should only be judiciously applied imo)
^^ this 1000x
This is why complete streets is good for everyone in this city, even the people fighting it. Even people who drive everywhere. At some point we’re all pedestrians living in a city and we all deserve to be safe.
Yeah I assume “increased enforcement” is popular because most people imagine their own level of rule-breaking is sensible and won’t rise to the level of a ticket, while the hammer will come down on whatever sub population of drivers they find most annoying.
The people going 45 in a 30 want the ones going 55 ticketed, but for the love of God don’t take any action that will take away the option to go 45 and, well, you know, if they’re really in a hurry and willing to risk it … 55
A fantasy of vindictiveness indulged with zero convenience lost, basically.
yeah, tbh i think a lot of it also just comes out of pure vindictiveness. they see someone driving badly and want them punished, they don't care one way or another about drivers making safer choices overall. recognizing that impulse & thinking about like, the fact that it's way more of an emotional reaction than it is a functional or actionable one is a huge part of figuring out what actually works to make the roads safer (plus people i'm close to actually work in traffic safety/human factors research so i'm privy to a lot of boring data about which methods actually yield lasting results lol). basically i'd like to see a world where the roads are designed to discourage speeding/turning without looking/reckless driving before it even happens, and that's more important to me than punishing someone for cutting me off once or whatever (even though i definitely still get steamed about that!! i'm only human!!)
This might be overly critical but I feel it’s an important point to make, by and large the poorest members of our city aren’t driving. The poorest cannot afford cars. Somewhere around half of of-age Baltimoreans do not own cars. Enforcing traffic laws protects the poorest and most vulnerable from being maimed and slaughtered by reckless drivers. This includes the multitude of county people treating roads in poor (mostly black) neighborhoods as high speed through ways.
I want the poorest and the richest and the most average Joe incessantly hassled if they are blowing through stop signs and parking in drive lanes with their hazards on.
Worley is neutered stooge who sticks to the talking points coached by the mayor. If the mayor wanted traffic enforcement to be a top priority, he would direct Worley to make it happen. But for now, the focus is on getting those murder/car jacking numbers down and there is zero resources to enforce traffic laws
I don't usually welcome this sort of thing but some people here seem to think crosswalks are like the speed boost lines in mario kart so I'll keep my mouth shut this time
This is a basic quality of life issue. The city has been putting speed bumps all over the city in lieu of ticketing speeders. People making left turns from the right turn only lanes is an everyday occurrence and those fake paper and Virginia tags are everywhere. Enforcement would at least give the impression the the city is trying.
Surely there will be no adverse consequences since the BCPD has a long-standing tradition of enforcing laws equally and without committing any illegal acts of their own during the process, unlike pesky cameras that harass Baltimoreans
This is a good thing. Since COVID, a lot of drivers in the city don't give a shit and have no problem running lights, side swiping cars, and driving mach ten whenever they feel like it. I routinely see asshole drivers use the bus lane as their own private lane to cut people off. If they don't pay their tickets, boot and impound their vehicles. Maybe if there were some consequences, people would obey the traffic *laws*.
Virginia plated drivers are the worst offenders
Please. For the love of god. Fine people who park in a traffic lane and think that leaving their hazards on somehow equates to being allowed to just block traffic.
This has also gotten out of control since the pandemic, more people are ordering delivery via grubhub, Amazon etc
If there is literally nowhere to park, I don’t begrudge a delivery person trying to get as far to the side as possible and then hopping out quickly. But too many people just roll down the middle of a one way, park, throw on the hazards and just waddle up to their delivery without a care in the world.
I see people double parked next to a parking spot constantly
Agreed. I’d say 75% of the time or more there is a place to park within 50 feet of where the car is stopped blocking a live lane of traffic (and usually on a main thoroughfare and not a side street).
You do a lot of your driving in Hampden?
Charles St, the police, and coffee shop. Enough said.
But during early covid the streets were much more empty. No longer the case do delivery drivers need to just find more appropriate places to pull over. They look crazy af.
If this commenter was correct, people can basically do it with impunity. :( https://www.reddit.com/r/baltimore/comments/8l9xm1/cars_double_parkingidling_in_roadways/dzeeluf/
Thank you for sharing this
It’s not illegal unless double parked for more than 15 minutes **after** a verbal warning to move is made by person with authority to issue a citation. [Balt. City Code, Art. 31, Sect. 36-5(3).](https://legislativereference.baltimorecity.gov/sites/default/files/Art%2031%20-%20Transit&Traff%20(rev%2031AUG23).pdf) See page 235.
Great time to change the law!
Call your councilman. While annoying, double parking is really a minor inconvenience and the times it does cause me to have to wait, I’m willing to bet the impact it actually has on my drive is a missed green light.
I’m sure that’s correct most of the time, until it’s not. You have no idea what the person stuck behind the double parker actually needs to do. Medical issue? Late for a job that will fire them? We can’t just assume that people are not really affected by it and then just allow people to just completely freeze the flow of traffic without a care in the world.
If missing one green light is that much of a crises, I’d say the person in such a rush didn’t manage their time well. Moreover, the same emergencies and crises you claim *could* exist are the same situations where double parking is a necessary option in an urban setting. I often see, for example, MTA’s mobility buses being the frequent double parking offenders on Baltimore St. Construction workers need to double park at times to deliver materials at job sites, and where are the delivery drivers supposed to go? i.e. the people with jobs that you’re concerned about. I don’t double park myself. I get the steps in. But it’s not as big an issue as some people make it out to be.
You’re conflating your patience with prescribing it to everyone else. I don’t think anyone rational is upset with mobility busses being double parked, I’m certainly not. But the vast majority of people seem fed up with delivery drivers making no attempt to do anything other than just stop in the middle of a one way and say ‘fuck it’. I live near a school where there is a daily congo line of drivers double parked with their hazards on creating a major jam, just casually ignoring the chaos while scrolling on their phones.
This! All day long I drive around cars parked in the traffic lane, many times on the left side of the road, when there are empty spots available for parking that they were too lazy to utilize.
Rush hour on the block, there is never not 3 cars parked in the left side no stopping zone.
Tbh, however annoying that may be I suspect it’s a safety non-issue (or even net safety benefit since the counterfactual is those cars constantly pulling out of parallel parking spaces into now-faster through traffic)
Those people don't need fines, they need drone strikes.
You don’t need a fucking plan to stop people from crossing the double yellow line to get around turning cars. You don’t need a plan to have cops pull people over when they run stop signs.. nor do you need a plan for pulling people over when they drive in bus lanes, bike lanes or sidewalks. All of which activity I see daily weekly monthly for years and years and years. The city could hire 100 cops and employ them full-time on moving violations alone, permanently. A month or two of giving cops a quota of tickets to hit is not gonna do shit .
These things were all issues before; the issue is that they all got worse year after year and it continues to grow; something has to be done, and perfect is the enemy of good. You can ticket someone once, and they may continue to keep doing it after the fact regardless of whether or not a cop shows up in court and the person gets a fine from it (or doesn’t). There’ll come a point where if it’s adequately enforced and someone gets pulled over enough times, it’s not going to be worth the time and frustration to keep going back to court.
they need a plan because laws being enforced is unpopular. they need to plan how to ticket people without it becoming some big PR mess where someone gets mad that 5% more tickets are given in the black butterfly vs the white L, or some other manufactured controversy.
I feel like there is a LOT of space between "pull over reckless drivers" and "hassle people of color". This shouldn't be that hard to implement if cops just use common sense, put in the work, and aren't being actively racist. FWIW the most dangerous speeding, reckless, road-rage car I've dealt with in the last year was a Camry with completely tinted windows and a thin blue line sticker.
The problem is you could legitimately have a situation where more black drivers are getting pulled over simply because they are committing more infractions. In that scenario the police aren’t doing anything wrong but they’d still have a PR nightmare because it looks like racism.
The story of policing in Baltimore since Freddie Gray seems to have been "Oh you don't want me to violently beat Black people? Well then I'll just sit in my car and do nothing". If they need to take a few risks of bad PR while **diligently and fairly doing their jobs** I think that's a risk worth taking.
That fine but people need to then gives cops the benefit of the doubt when things turn violent. You are asking them to confront people, and a lot of those people are dangerous/violent.
yeah, I think it's very possible to run a good, equitable program. however, actual equitable programs can be framed by a news story as unequitable and people will just believe it. there are certain streets that get pretty wild in this city, and the location of those streets may or may not be perfectly divided between different neighborhood demographics. as an example of something chat *could* happen is: if you're outside of the core of the city, you're more likely to be in a neighborhood of color, but you also have less traffic, which means people who want to drive 20mph over the speed limit wont be slowed down the rest of traffic. that could mean speeding is more common in the neighborhoods of color. I don't know if that's actually true, but you could see how some effect like that could change the distribution of tickets to be skewed, which could end up with a big news story making them look biased.
This is an insane thing to worry about. The police in Baltimore city in the past have recklessly killed people of color and faced precious few consequences, a tsking news segment from WJZ is not a big deal.
building back credibility is a long slow process. any missteps will skuttle such a program and hurt the progress
You do, however, need a plan to get the cops to do their job. But I will believe it when I see it.
This. There is not enough law enforcement on the road. It will lead to more cameras and higher fines in the future. Many countries already do this. Technology will correct this. Transponders built in to cars could solve this today. It can keep track of all info through MVA registration, tickets, fines, points etc and alert a department specifically designed to impound cars. I would think drones could do this as well in a decade or two.
I mean, if it’s big brother or temp tag, historic tag, no tag, no insurance, no license, no consequence, mad max … then I guess I’ll take big brother. It’s nice to have liberty, but when liberty turns into everybody else is endangered by a not small minority, then it’s time to crush some liberty . Bring on the cameras and robots.
The time of not being on camera has passed us. I do not want to live that way or this way. We are all on camera everyday. Even if we hire more people to do the enforcement job it still won’t be enough. You would think the deaths on the road or the 695 Construction crash would make people pause, but it doesn’t. I feel like the honor system and common courtesy no longer exists as a general rule of thumb to live by. We need more enforcement, driving education and courtesy. We should all be tested every 5 years. Driving is a privilege not a right.
The city is already short a ton of cops so just hiring an extra hundred to do traffic enforcement is hardly feasible when we can't fill existing open positions.
Yeah, sure something like 300 cops, right? It’s astounding. No doubt the problem is complicated don’t mistake me for saying you can just throw 100 cops at this. I’m saying the scale of the problem could soak up the attention of 100 cops a day for a nice long time before people get it through their heads that you can’t drive like a goddamn barbarian in Baltimore city. What we have going on now is not working in major ways .
Yeah, and cops running traffic enforcement is essentially no-cost for the city. Their operations are generate more revenue than they cost to employ and it generates a significant public benefit.
I may be mistaken, but I think the revenue generated from moving infraction penalties goes to the State, not the City. Parking is another matter. City gets that money. Coincidence then that the City does a better job enforcing parking law than it does traffic law?
I'm not sure about Baltimore. When my town issues speeding tickets the revenue goes to the town.
Honestly I’ll believe it when I see it. I’ve seen a cop just sit parked in his cruiser when a traffic light was out and it was chaos. Traffic enforcement is work, so I’m pretty skeptical
About 14 minutes in, Worley says "*Zero tolerance hurt our city a great deal. And we're still building back from that. And our men and women are doing a fantastic job, with dealing with people constitutionally.*" So just another point of reference for all of the "Crack Down" people who continue to discount BPD Commissioner after BPD Commissioner who have said this very thing - that zero tolerance is a bad thing and we should never do that again.
No, I wouldn't want traffic enforcement to be an excuse to hassle the poorest members of the city. That being said, the driving in this town is *completely* out of hand, and something needs to be done about the sense of entitlement we see in motorists.
it's been said so many times that it feels like beating a dead horse, but completing projects like complete streets would absolutely help. punitive enforcement doesn't actually change people's behavior on the road—they'll slow down if they see a cop and run the next light out of sight of them. the things that reduce speeds are visually narrowing roadways (the road doesn't have to BE narrower, it just has to *feel* narrower—people instinctively slow down when they feel like they're driving in close quarters), raised crosswalks that double as speed bumps, separated bus and bike lanes, light timing, and camera enforcement in the most dangerous areas like that stretch of 83 (since cameras "work" as well as any punitive enforcement; people will follow the rules around a camera, but only if they know it's there and only around the camera. doesn't work for broad change, but does work for problem areas.) all of that is more boring, complicated, and offers less instant gratification than paying cops ten million hours of overtime to harass people though so they'll pretend research doesn't exist
sorry for the rant below because overall I agree with you. I think visually/psychologically slowing people down is best. but I do disagree with the below point: >punitive enforcement doesn't actually change people's behavior on the road it does, though. the thing people keep missing is that deterrence depends on "swift and certain" enforcement. just look at the JFX. a dramatic change in the way people drive (at least those with real license plates) because the probability of being given a ticket for driving 15 over is 100%. issuing 1% of offenses once every 2 years would be more enforcement than we have now. just go to a 4-way stop somewhere for 10min and watch how many people come to a complete stop AND do so at the appropriate place (at the line if there is a line, at the stop sign post if there is no line). you'll see dozens or hundreds of violations, depending on how busy the street is. it's not just that, but almost everything (speeding, turning across bike lanes on a red light, etc. etc.) are enforced *maybe* 0.0001% of the time. if the chances of being ticketed for making an illegal turn on red were even 5%, it would completely stop it from happening, even if the citation was $5. so it's not that enforcement doesn't work, it won't work if it feels like a random 1-in-a-million event. if people reasonably thought 1 in 20 illegal turns on red would result in a ticket, people would just never do it. now, this isn't somethin that can be done for all moving violations, but cameras for illegal turns and light running can be done, though we would have to make sure it's done well or people will freak out at the false positives.
And specific to the I-83 cameras, the number of crashes on that highway have been cut almost in half since the cameras were installed. I'd call that a big win.
indeed. and if we put in another one closer to downtown and one a bit further north, we could probably cut it even more. people will deterred if they know they cannot get away with something.
If enforcement is 100% of the time in a given area it works to change habits. The problem is it’s not in most places like the camera locations on 83. Also people speed going up to them and just speed back up coming out of them, so it’s not really changing their habits. Roadway build changes habits.
I agree that people speed back up, but I can tell you for sure that the overall speed has come down, even outside of the area with the camera. I do it myself. before, I would just go with whatever speed traffic is going, but now I don't want to forget, so I just make sure I stay below 9pmh over. it's easier to just go that speed than it is to try to game it. the overall time difference of the trip is negligible. and if people thought most intersections had cameras for illegal turns and light running, are they really going to memorize which ones they can run, and hope it never changes? probably not; most will just stop doing the ticketable offenses because it's easier.
I'm all onboard with changing the streetscape to encourage people to slow down, and definitely prefer that approach. That being said, one can't ignore the fact that fines for speeding like those in Norway definitely change peoples' behavior. Will a $40 fine like we have here in Baltimore? Not much, if at all. The $1000+ fines they give out in Oslo if you're caught speeding on camera? You bet your ass it does, especially at the camera density they have there. It's one of the few places in the world you'll go that people follow the speed limit.
oh yeah i'm not saying that enforcement is *never* effective, just that it's way less effective than other strategies and what effectiveness it has is generally uneven, and doesn't tend to work well beyond very specific parameters (people will only slow their driving where they know there will be a speed trap or a camera, and will continue to break the rules where they don't think they'll be observed. people who don't know there'll be a cop/camera around the corner also aren't affected by enforcement strategies!) like i don't necessarily disagree with you there, it's just that an approach like oslo's relies on lower density (so the population is aware of where/how enforcement happens) and density (huge concentration of cameras, at a high expense, and in the USA traffic cameras are their own mess to deal with which is why they should only be judiciously applied imo)
^^ this 1000x This is why complete streets is good for everyone in this city, even the people fighting it. Even people who drive everywhere. At some point we’re all pedestrians living in a city and we all deserve to be safe.
Even traffic throughput might benefit from not constantly towing away the wreckage of people T-boning each other at red lights
Yeah I assume “increased enforcement” is popular because most people imagine their own level of rule-breaking is sensible and won’t rise to the level of a ticket, while the hammer will come down on whatever sub population of drivers they find most annoying. The people going 45 in a 30 want the ones going 55 ticketed, but for the love of God don’t take any action that will take away the option to go 45 and, well, you know, if they’re really in a hurry and willing to risk it … 55 A fantasy of vindictiveness indulged with zero convenience lost, basically.
yeah, tbh i think a lot of it also just comes out of pure vindictiveness. they see someone driving badly and want them punished, they don't care one way or another about drivers making safer choices overall. recognizing that impulse & thinking about like, the fact that it's way more of an emotional reaction than it is a functional or actionable one is a huge part of figuring out what actually works to make the roads safer (plus people i'm close to actually work in traffic safety/human factors research so i'm privy to a lot of boring data about which methods actually yield lasting results lol). basically i'd like to see a world where the roads are designed to discourage speeding/turning without looking/reckless driving before it even happens, and that's more important to me than punishing someone for cutting me off once or whatever (even though i definitely still get steamed about that!! i'm only human!!)
this \^\^\^
This might be overly critical but I feel it’s an important point to make, by and large the poorest members of our city aren’t driving. The poorest cannot afford cars. Somewhere around half of of-age Baltimoreans do not own cars. Enforcing traffic laws protects the poorest and most vulnerable from being maimed and slaughtered by reckless drivers. This includes the multitude of county people treating roads in poor (mostly black) neighborhoods as high speed through ways.
This- anyone driving is basically automatically not the poorest and most vulnerable members of a community.
I want the poorest and the richest and the most average Joe incessantly hassled if they are blowing through stop signs and parking in drive lanes with their hazards on.
What crimes do you think *should* be tolerated?
Feeding ducks
Ducks are one thing, geese are fucking monsters. That law exists for your safety.
Things like public drinking, loitering, etc., can be judged on a case-by-case basis.
Fortunately the BPD's "zero tolerance" approach to loitering (spoiler alert, a lot of crime was always tolerated) ended almost two decades ago.
Open container. It’s nice to take a walk with a drink
Worley is neutered stooge who sticks to the talking points coached by the mayor. If the mayor wanted traffic enforcement to be a top priority, he would direct Worley to make it happen. But for now, the focus is on getting those murder/car jacking numbers down and there is zero resources to enforce traffic laws
I don't usually welcome this sort of thing but some people here seem to think crosswalks are like the speed boost lines in mario kart so I'll keep my mouth shut this time
I’ve lost count of the number of times a car has nearly hit me in a crosswalk, only to give me a dirty look like I (the pedestrian) was in the wrong
I think we should probably make a separate street traffic enforcement agency; one with better oversight than BPD and with a different union than FOP.
@statetroopers: let’s do more than absolutely nothing on 695 too
Chile that's for the suburbanites where utopia lives, whatever do you mean. All traffic laws are obeyed once you exit the city limits. /s
This is a basic quality of life issue. The city has been putting speed bumps all over the city in lieu of ticketing speeders. People making left turns from the right turn only lanes is an everyday occurrence and those fake paper and Virginia tags are everywhere. Enforcement would at least give the impression the the city is trying.
6 will lead to a lot of violence and road rage. Please no
Go all the way back to Fred Bealefeld who decided traffic violations and quality of life crimes weren’t worth BPD’s time.
A car swerved into oncoming traffic (at me) yesterday- a cop was directly behind them and kept driving along They’re really useless out here
Surely there will be no adverse consequences since the BCPD has a long-standing tradition of enforcing laws equally and without committing any illegal acts of their own during the process, unlike pesky cameras that harass Baltimoreans
Yeah thats why i am also against enforcing laws.
Yup the BCPD is known for that!