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Re: Road Crime

Posted: November 26th, 2014, 1:16 pm
by mplsjaromir
The guy's mommy called in and defended him, what a joke.

Re: Road Crime

Posted: November 26th, 2014, 1:40 pm
by mplser
I was there, and it was pretty obvious this was on purpose and possibly politically motivated. The street was full of cars that were blocked and nobody else had a problem with turning around and making the detour like the cops told them to do.

Re: Road Crime

Posted: November 26th, 2014, 1:55 pm
by FISHMANPET
Ugh.

Like, I don't know what else to say. Ugh.

Re: Road Crime

Posted: November 26th, 2014, 2:00 pm
by David Greene
It makes me very angry. The only reason I wasn't there is because I was feeding Julian after he had a late nap. Otherwise I would have been there. *With our child!*

Re: Road Crime

Posted: November 26th, 2014, 2:25 pm
by mattaudio
I wonder if many of the people posting online saying "run 'em over" are doing so because they assume that the protesters (or "mob" as they say) were minorities. We've seen the stereotypes coming through in the comments - people who aren't at work, people who don't know where to walk, etc - which makes people think that other people are less-thans, others, who deserve to get run over, who deserve not to live. If "they" do as much as join together in solidarity and block a street to make a political point. While most of the protest seemed to be white folks participating after their cushy day job, that fact is irrelevant because the stereotypes of the folks commenting online are basically saying these "other" human beings don't deserve to live. Is that really what's in their hearts? When these things cut through, just like they have with the whole Ferguson thing, it makes me think America is currently in a much darker place than we'd like to admit.

Re: Road Crime

Posted: November 26th, 2014, 2:46 pm
by ECtransplant
Yeah I'm not going anywhere near the comments section on that one

Re: Road Crime

Posted: November 26th, 2014, 3:11 pm
by mattaudio
StreetsBlog USA IDs the driver as Jeffrey Patrick Rice of St. Paul

Re: Road Crime

Posted: November 26th, 2014, 10:29 pm
by David Greene
Matt, it certainly is authentic. Comments should be required reading for white America so we can open eyes to just how bad it is.

This is why I care so much about North. I have relationships with people of color there and know the bullshit they put up with every day.

Re: Road Crime

Posted: November 26th, 2014, 10:41 pm
by Nick
You know people on the Northside?

Re: Road Crime

Posted: November 28th, 2014, 9:10 pm
by David Greene
Um...what?

Re: Road Crime

Posted: December 3rd, 2014, 4:23 pm
by mattaudio
Productive trolling paid off... Strib has apparently adopted a new style guide regarding "accident." Waiting to hear more.

Re: Road Crime

Posted: December 3rd, 2014, 4:33 pm
by MNdible
What did you recommend as an alternative?

Accident, from MW:

: a sudden event (such as a crash) that is not planned or intended and that causes damage or injury

: an event that is not planned or intended : an event that occurs by chance


I assume that it's the "chance" part of the second definition that you're objecting to, right? Because the first definition seems accurate and unobjectionable.

Re: Road Crime

Posted: December 3rd, 2014, 4:36 pm
by mattaudio
I'm still waiting to hear details on the new Strib style guide.

This has been a discussion for law enforcement agencies and media outlets around the country, and most that confront the issue move away from "accident."

My personal take? There's rarely an "accident" that is not planned or intended. Our streets are damaging and injurious by design.

Re: Road Crime

Posted: December 3rd, 2014, 4:41 pm
by FISHMANPET
Using the word "accident" takes everyone off the hook, intellectually. Welp, nothing we could do, it was an accident. Let's not call into question the road design or the enviroment or anything else. If you're serious about safety, for people in cars and out of them, you can't call it an accident. Nobody tries to analyze an accident in any meaningful way.

And the most recent use of the word "accident" was in reference to the guy that drove his car through the Ferguson protest on Lake St. That is by no means an "accident," the dude chose, for whatever reason, to drive through a crowd of people.

If we used accident in the true cases of "accidents" we'd hardly use it. There's always a human being behind the wheel, and they're always in an environment designed by a human being. A human being is responsible for the outcome of the event. Maybe in freak cases where the car is physically broken and the brakes stop working you could maybe classify it as an accident, but even that depends a lot on how the human(s) react to that situation.

It's like if every time somebody was shot and died and the shooter said "I didn't mean for them to die!" and called it an accident and let them go home with not even a slap on the wrist.

Re: Road Crime

Posted: December 3rd, 2014, 11:22 pm
by David Greene
It's like if every time somebody was shot and died and the shooter said "I didn't mean for them to die!" and called it an accident and let them go home with not even a slap on the wrist.
#blacklivesmatter

Re: Road Crime

Posted: December 4th, 2014, 7:40 am
by twincitizen
Several years ago, my insurance company was adamant that it was a "Crash", not an "Accident". Or maybe it was SPPD that corrected me. Either way, that was in 2010, and I've tried to use "crash" ever since. I can't see any objection to that term. If the vast majority of car crashes are caused by inattentive or reckless driving, "accident" needs to be banished.

Re: Road Crime

Posted: December 4th, 2014, 7:54 am
by mattaudio
"While we shouldn't strain to avoid the word, use a more precise construction if it's available."

It's always available, so that should mean the elimination of "accident" to describe cars running into things in the Strib. Thanks to Nicole Norfleet for writing about it.

Re: Road Crime

Posted: December 4th, 2014, 9:28 am
by Scott Wood
"Accident" implies lack of intent (to cause the specific damage/injury, not intent to do something else that made the incident more likely), not lack of negligence or culpability.

Re: Road Crime

Posted: December 4th, 2014, 9:51 am
by RailBaronYarr
"Accident" implies lack of intent (to cause the specific damage/injury, not intent to do something else that made the incident more likely), not lack of negligence or culpability.
Well, the first MW definition gives two cases, lack of planning and lack of intent. I don't think anyone advocating for moving away from the term 'accident' is implying that (at least in 98% of traffic collisions) someone involved must have had purposeful intent to injure or kill people. But, we do know that road design under current standards has an intent to to move vehicles at a certain speed/throughput as a higher priority than other goals. The intent isn't to injure/kill, but by focusing on other goals, the designers are allowing it. In this way, those injuries are also planned/known. Engineering manuals have a guideline for number of incidents per vehicle traveled for different intersection designs, etc, and expected severity based on design speed. So by picking a design, they have also planned for X number of injuries/deaths when they forecast Y AADT over Z number of years. I'm not sure I've seen as hard numbers in engineering studies for pedestrian/cyclist results - they're probably harder to model (which is why they've been left out of LOS calculations for decades!) and therefore not included, even though they're the most vulnerable users and are disproportionately killed/injured in our country relative to their mode share.

Similarly, you can absolutely say that certain alcohol-induced incidents have a planning nature behind them. Cities allow bars to be located in auto-dependent locations and enforce parking minimums at them. Other than trying to convince yourself that every patron who drinks will take a cab or have a DD home, I can't see how anyone wouldn't be planning for drunk drivers.

Re: Road Crime

Posted: December 4th, 2014, 10:02 am
by MNdible
"Car crash" looks absurd in formal writing.