There But For The Grace Of God
Driving home to St. Louis last November from an ABEA board retreat in Louisville, I got a speeding ticket.
“Starting tomorrow, your driver’s license is revoked for 60 days.”
I earned it, fair and square.
Why am I telling you this?
I believe in taking responsibility for my actions.
If I got caught speeding again, I believe I deserve to lose my right to drive my deadly weapon for a specified period of time.
OK, so why I am telling you this?
I am dog-on-a-bone-DONE with people not taking responsibility for their actions on our public roadways.
I’m ready to ban the word “accident” from our vocabulary when we talk about crashes that maim and kill people.
I want it to be UNTHINKABLE to hit what’s in front of you with your vehicle.
Safe transport on our public roads is a precious liberty. Let’s update our traffic laws to ensure this liberty for all.
I resolve to make our public right-of-way safe for each of us.
I start by taking responsibility for how I show up on the roadway, in my car, on my bike, or on foot. Will you join me?
In my perfect world
Have you heard of Vision Zero? It’s a worthy initiative that many of our city and state governments have embraced. I want to be a part of it.
I don’t have to be perfect, but I do have to take 100 percent responsibility for my actions. Safe transport on our public right-of-way is a precious liberty. Let’s update our traffic laws to ensure this liberty for all.
For example: If I were dumb enough to receive a second speeding ticket, I support the law enforcement officer cheerfully informing me:
“Starting tomorrow, your driver’s license is revoked for 60 days.”
“You may use today as a grace period to drive your vehicle home or to another secure place.
“But because this is your second moving violation, you MAY NOT drive any motor vehicle for the next 60 days, starting tomorrow.
“If you’re caught doing so, penalties are steep.
“You’ll lose your driver’s license for the next five years.”
We have choices
The officer could suggest options for getting around without a car — including an excellent program where people discover how to easily use their bikes for transportation.
Because bicycle transportation is normal.
Traffic Justice starts with me
How can we stop negligent driving? We can start with ourselves.
Speeding is an infraction that most people do every time they drive. We get away with it, so it becomes normal. Most people — even those who consider themselves safe drivers — feel entitled to drive above the speed limit. Evading detection is the primary concern, not safety, sight lines and reaction times. Another infraction that is increasingly common is inattention — this ranges from the mundane fiddling with a radio or GPS, to the outrageous behavior like texting or checking Facebook. Again, most people get away with it, so they continue to do it.
That affects our collective attitude toward justice when those we consider peers don’t get away with irresponsible behavior. There but for the grace of God…
It makes us unwilling to insist that driving is a privilege to be earned and maintained only through responsible behavior. That needs to change, or there will be no Vision Zero.
There are no accidents.
People who routinely practice grotesquely negligent behavior on our roads almost always give warnings before they do something truly tragic. There is often a trail of traffic violations.
In the 21st Century we understand cause and effect on our public roadways.
This whole “There But For the Grace of God Go I” thinking has got to stop. Will you join me in taking responsibility for your behavior?
In the 21st Century we understand cause and effect on our public roadways.
If you won’t, you don’t deserve the privilege of having a driver’s license.
We’ll change our traffic culture by changing ourselves first.
I take responsibility for my behavior.
You do, too, right? Yay, and thank you!
Now let’s change the culture.
Safe passage is a basic right.
I’m dog-on-a-bone-ready to ensure safe passage for each of us, however we convey ourselves.
What do we do next? Please share your ideas in the comments. If you would like to write a post on the topic of traffic justice, please let us know.
Could we possibly begin with a nation-wide ban on the use of cell phones in moving vehicles of all sorts (including, of course, two- and three-wheeled, human-powered ones)? I’m no fan of the “mania to legislate,” but given the danger of cell phone use in so-called “land missiles,” especially those moving at high speeds, this seems like a self-evident and straightforward place to begin to make our streets and roads safer for every user.
My guess is that an actual ban on cell phone use in moving motor vehicles is a non-starter.
All I have is my own experience. As you well know, if I look at my cell phone while I’m driving one of our cars, I’m either 1) totally stopped at a red light or 2) I’m looking at it in bits of nanoseconds with my eyes back-and-forth-constantly on the road in front of me.
I’ve trained myself to feel guilty when I do look at my cell phone ~ my personal take on taking responsibility for my behavior, which thankfully has been of no consequence, maybe because it’s rare that I’m ever behind the wheel of a motor vehicle.
Agree 1000%!
Thank you, Eugene!
Frank Lehnerz and I have been talking on Facebook over the last few days about resources for highlighting the door zone problem. He has purchased domain name opposethedoorzone.bike, and put some dooring maps at http://socal.opposethedoorzone.bike and http://sfbay.opposethedoorzone.bike. He also just added http://fatalities.opposethedoorzone.bike to link to the Google Doc of dooring fatalities that I have been keeping informally for many years now. In that spreadsheet, I just added a tab for other resources, and will soon include on that the Chicago dooring map (which may currently be broken in some browsers; I have contacted the site’s webmaster about that) and Paul Schimek’s Boston-area study.
On its surface, this may not seem to completely dovetail with the personal responsibility aspect of this post, since our preferred solution is to educate cyclists to ride outside the door zone. We could frame that as the cyclist taking responsibility for their own safety, but that feels like getting close to victim blaming. If we want to talk about the drivers of heavier and faster vehicles taking more responsibility for not dooring cyclists (because some will ride there no matter how much we try to educate), we must ensure we always ALSO educate the motorists about the ability of cyclists to ride outside the door zone in the first place, and the need for this to be tolerated. I’m sure everyone in the ABEA shares my frustration with all the articles we’ve been seeing recently about the “Dutch reach”, which fail to mention that riding outside the door zone is legal and recommended. In that failing, I feel that these articles further normalize door zone riding, disempowering cyclists to protect themselves. (This is aside from the question of whether the “Dutch reach” really works or not.) We could at least resolve to challenge the authors of such articles on this point whenever we encounter them.
We should also continue to educate traffic engineers about the dooring problem, and take the professional responsibility to STOP BUILDING DOOR ZONE BIKE LANES! I know many bicycle driving professionals like Mighk and Bob Shanteau have been speaking out about this for years, trying without success to get such lanes removed from being allowed by national standards documents, but maybe we just need to keep trying. I understand that among our biggest challenges in this area are some of the bicycle infrastructure advocates themselves, who resist *anything* being removed from the “infrastructure toolbox”, and advocacy organizations who have consistently downplayed the problem.
Basic to Karen’s argument is her principle:
“I believe in taking responsibility for my actions.”
This leads logically to obligate drivers & passengers to exercise caution upon exiting their vehicles, as John B. affirms above.
Yet here we have JB tying himself in knots over the DR because somehow it 1) might confuse cyclists into using the DZBL deathzonebikelane 2) cause journalists and blogsters to fail to mention CS’s cardinal ‘take the whole lane’ guidance, or 3) that the Dutch Reach – a 50 year old countermeasure taught & tested for in NL & now approved by multiple transportation safety organizations & experts worldwide – allegedly doesn’t work when performed by ideologically correct Savvy Cyclists.
Regarding #1, cyclists need to “take responsibility” for keeping out of the DZBL and Savvy Cyclists need to do a better job teaching that lesson to the UnSavvy.
Regarding #2, journalists & blogsters do what they do and it is not the responsibility nor is it in the power of Dutch Reach advocates to dictate how writers write their articles & posts. If Savvy Cyclists want to bird-dog all such omissions, then please “take responsiblity” and give it a try. Or work harder, smarter or more media-savvily to get your own message out, and not blame Dutch Reachers for not doing your job for you.
Regarding #3. Actually the DR does work, and if you have a sincere interest in the question here are 3 links – not mere ‘arguments by authority’ – so you could judge for yourself – or come back with more subtantial counter arguments than heretofore provided by John S. Allen or John Schubert or John Brooks above.
i) Officials Dutch Reach Instruction Guide – lays out the entire exiting sequence which professional driving instructors ought understand, although novice students will get a short form instruction. See Guide: https://www.dutchreach.org/dutch-reach-instructions/
ii) Witness this Hungarian bike cam YouTube at 23 seconds in. Observe the driver’s (far) hand and full shoulder-check head position allowed by his now unfrozen outer shoulder, througfh the closed window (This video is also found at the bottom of the Instruction Guide with an enlargement of the frame at 23 sec.). This driver “took responsibility”, manifestly used the far hand Reach, and thus didn’t – in fact couldn’t – fling the door wide open, but instead propped it slightly to gain a clear view back and thus avoided dooring the cyclist who had gotten himself boxed in (having failed to take the whole lane in time). Apparently the Dutch Reach reached Hungary in early 2017 and spared at least this one cyclist. QED. It worked.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7jzz27vKeY&feature=youtu.be
iii) 1st Human Factors Research Pilot Study L v R hand:
Study finds far hand advantage for Dutch Reach anti dooring method.. See: Validating ‘Dutch Reach’: A Preliminary Evaluation of Far-Hand Door Opening and its Impact on Car Drivers’ Head Movements, Large, DR, et al., Human Factors Research Group, U Nottingham, UK. (PDF). Oct 2018. ICSC 2018 Conference paper.
Link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325038552_Validating_'Dutch_Reach'_A_Preliminary_Evaluation_of_Far-Hand_Door_Opening_and_its_Impact_on_Car_Drivers'_Head_Movements
I look forward to reading and responding to your substantive critiques.
So true John!
Thanks Karen!
2 additional thoughts:
1. Early in my LE career, I was strongly corrected by a CA Highway Patrol officer who told me traffic collisions don’t happen by “accident.” So we don’t refer to them as such.
2. I believe where real change will come from is from the “heart.”
My 2 cents.
Many years ago after getting as close as I ever have to being involved in a collision driving my car, I taped a message to my dashboard. It read:
“DON’T KILL ANYBODY”
I realize that seems a bit extreme, but it served an excellent reminder of the seriousness of driving a motor vehicle and the responsibility it entails. I remember getting into the car to chauffeur my mother (who died exactly four years ago today), seeing the warning and saying “I hope I don’t kill anybody.” She thought I was being silly, but I wasn’t.
Karen’s post may move me to put that warning in the three cars that I now share with my wife and daughter’s family. I wonder how my wife, daughter and son-in-law would react to that!
Gary, I love that! I believe it’s not extreme. Actually, you’ve nailed the whole kahuna with just three words.
Let’s restore driving to the awesome and sacred privilege that it is.
Great call to personal action, Karen! I join this movement with my own commitment to operate all moving vehicles with mindfulness, obedience to rules of the road and concern for the safety of all. ♥️ ??♀️ ?
Thank you, Patty. We’ll get this done!
Speaking of the grace of God and slightly off topic (sorry, Karen), we need an inspirational video illustrating those great ah-ha moments in CS courses, positive interaction with other road users and the realization of the “Empowerment of Unlimited Travel”. I know that “by the grace of God” is just an expression for some. Whatever the source of inspiration is, can we capture those moments in a video? Can we?
Totally with you on this, Todd. Thank you for planting the seeds :-)