Faster, better…

Archive for the ‘Traffic Safety’ Category

(SOMD.COM Prince Frederick 01210) SOMD published a response by Sheriff Evans to speeding police officers on January 11, 2009. I believe the Sheriff is sincere since I spoke to him about this myself after he received an email message from me regarding similar behavior that I observed.

My impression at the time was that the officers involved were taking a casual approach to vehicle safety. I didn’t want to call. In years past I served as a Reserve Police Officer at a California city police agency. The types of police behavior I have observed in Maryland are unlike any I ever saw in California. We were taught in our various schools and academies that as police officers were morally obligated to set an example. We were required by law to break the traffic regulations only with emergency lights and sirens engaged. Failure to do so could subject an officer to serious discipline or even termination.

Unfortunately I remember what I’ve seen on the road, and I am still too frequently unimpressed. Some years back I observed a sheriffs marked patrol car and state patrol running lights only, no sirens, up the hill Southbound on route 261 at the NRL well over sixty mph. A blind hill. One was in the proper lane the other was alongside the other in the lane for on-coming traffic. Both of these officers were damned lucky there was no one coming the other direction.

A couple of years ago I saw a deputy run a late yellow which turned red as the last half of his vehicle went East bound across highway on route 231.  I also recall a county speed trap where a vehicle exceeding the speed limit was waved by as the car behind it going the same speed was stopped. The first car had FP plates.

There is obvious effort by the Sheriff to set standards and I believe he intends to do what is ncessary, but I told him on the phone that I believed there is a culture of reckless driving in maryland and police officers and their families are part of the problem.  Just last week I saw an unmarked blue police vehicle on highway tailgating another car in the fast lane and the operator of the police car was leaned into his cellular telephone.

I regularly see drivers of FP and FOP plates disobeying traffic regulations. Excessive speed, tailgating, gliding through stop signs. It is not uncommon. It is all too common.

Vehicle safety is one of those moral standards that starts from the top down and the finest have to set the example and not be part of the problem.

To the Sheriff’s credit, I have seen more of the state police officers taking what I consider unsafe risks than I ever have the Sheriffs deputies.

I would ask the Sheriff to accept to reports of the behavior of persons driving vehicles with police personal tags. Like the one the one on Mother’s Day one year that passed me on north bound Highway four at well over seventy miles in a fifty-five mph zone in a driving rain.

Next I would ask him to consider that issuance of the FP or FOP plates be considered a privilege and that any vehicle operator in a vehicle with such plates be required to observe all traffic regulations. Soomeone has to set the examples.

In Maryland, the majority of drivers DO NOT stop at stop signs. If tailgating were an Olympic sport the gold medal winners win be from Maryland. Gliding through red lights for right turns is common place and speeding on our two lane highways must be considered a right by majority. A speed limit sign is meaningless. Drivers that do observe the speed limit are harassed by tailgaters. Stopping at a stop sign often elicits a confused look or waving arms by the driver behind the stopped vehicle.  To that moron the stop sign is actually a yeild sign. Pick any uncontrolled intersection in the county and watch. The police do it too!

It doesn’t make much effort to make these observations and begin to wonder who is setting the examples in our state. Police managers need to get out on the road in unmarked vehicles and asses the situation because aggressive reckless driving is pandemic in this state and we have too few example setters setting the standard of behavior.

WUSA9.COM: ROCKVILLE, Md. (AP) — “A Montgomery County judge has thrown out speeding tickets issued to four county police officers.” Click the WUSA9.COM url to read the entire article.

A summary of the story is that a circuit court judge threw out the speed-camera tickets of four police officers because their “right to due process was violated.” Apparently the police department requires a written policy for speed camera violations for on duty police.

I found this excuse wanting for common sense and on its face – ridiculous. Using the judge’s logic this must mean that if my family has no written policy on speed camera tickets I can escape prosecution for the same lame reason. The camera caught a police vehicle speeding with no emergency lights activated. I would bet there is a policy that when an emergency vehicle is operated at high speed those emergency lights must be on. You think? It might even be a state law as is the case in other states.

Public safety culture does seem different on the East coast than elsewhere. In California at the agency I used to work for, we were trained to operate police vehicles with emergency lights activated when traffic laws were broken while responding to a call for service. There were plenty of on-duty safety regulations regarding the safe operation of police vehicles to deal with situations like these. We all knew that if we operated a police vehicle in an unsafe fashion and there was an accident we as officers would be held responsible.

What I have seen in Maryland often escapes the bounds of common sense. In a few cases I have even called and spoken to Calvert County Sheriff Evans about the behaviors I have seen. Sheriff Evans was very concerned about what I had to say. I told him my impressions of Maryland public safety was that either training is not what it should be or the employee culture is different here and members consider themselves a privileged class that is above obeying the traffic law. I said that it frustrated me when I saw sheriffs and police chiefs gathering on television commercials to talk about traffic safety and seatbelts when day after day I see emergency vehicles and private cars with public safety vanity plates operated outside of the law and all common sense.

It abhors me to make these distinctions because I worked for a police department in California. As a rule I think most officers do not like to call the bad behavior of others to the public’s attention. But this just cannot continue without people getting hurt. Where I worked officers  had training in the proper operation of police vehicles.

I know what officers are up against on a day-to-day basis. That has not escaped me.  In this state, however agencies push their luck allowing bad behavior to continue. The officers in this story were caught and should have received a citation and a conviction. The ticket should have reflected as a mark on their personnel record as well.

This lack of care for public safety extends to drivers of private vehicles tagged with public safety vanity plates.  Some years back I watched with amazement as an FP plated vehicle traveling over the limit was waved through a speed trap as cars traveling at the same speed were stopped and cited. I stopped to ask the officer why and was asked to keep moving. I regularly see holders of the vanity plates violating Maryland traffic laws. Why do they do it? In my time, law enforcement officers held themselves to a higher personal standard. What I see in Maryland are officers and their families using the badge as a means to an end and that end is to avoid a citation. This acquittal in Rockville, Maryland only served to support the out-of-control subculture.

I also know that not all officers behave this way. Thanks to Sheriff Evans and thanks to the excellent training many of our Calvert County Deputies have received I see FEWER (but I do see some) officers violating traffic laws. My sense is that Sheriff Evans has instilled in his department a personal standard and a department standard that the rights and privileges of a police officer to take emergency action are better protected and safer when policy is followed.

Judges need to hold police to a higher standard. The police unions need to hold officers to a higher standard. The public MUST hold their officers, fire fighters, and emergency medical providers to a higher standard and contact agencies when emergency vehicles and holders of public safety vanity plates violate traffic laws. Agencies need to take the complaints SERIOUSLY. The rights and privileges associated with emergency response are fragile. The dangers in driving a public safety vehicle are many and the consequences of bad behavior can be devastating. Public safety professionals are expected to behave like professionals and to fraternally hold each other responsible for law-abiding driving behaviors.

The officers in this WUSA9.COM story should ask the court to hold them personally accountable for their actions and to accept the speeding tickets and the consequences regardless of the judge’s opinion.

(From Examiner.com via DIGG) The Examiner reports on speed camera legislation in Maryland. This topic is of interest to DougWeb. We are for it and against it. We are for it since our culture in Maryland allows everyone to break the traffic laws. A speed camera catches everyone because by its nature it is impartial or least we hope that those reviewing the photographs keep it that way. It would not be correct for speeding government vehicles and their drivers to escape citations nor would it look good to ignore certain types of vanity plates like an manned radar trap might. When enough people get these citations perhaps our roads will be safer.

On the other hand, speed cameras are intrusive and we should not have to go to this extreme. All people have to do is drive safely and crash less and the idea would go away. Unsafe drivers keep the speed camera debate alive.

Maryland has an unsafe driving culture and everybody is involved in it. As long as we continue to drive like we are all omnipotent someone is going bring up speed cameras.

Read the details: http://digg.com/d1sf6h

There are many politicians in Maryland who think that speed cameras are a great way to protect citizens from dangerous drivers. In reality, there are countless flaws in administering traffic cameras and their true purpose is to gather revenue for budget deficits instead of protecting citizens.

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By Jim Schultz, REDDING.COM-Saturday, April 4, 2009 A Shingletown woman was sentenced Friday to six years in prison after being convicted last month of gross vehicular manslaughter for ramming into the back of a car in 2007 while texting on a cell phone.

Excerpt:

And despite heartfelt claims from Matis-Engle’s friends that she was a caring, loving and gentle person, Beatty said it was clear to her that the woman’s personality changed dramatically when behind the wheel of a vehicle.

“She drove without any concept that people might be in her path,” Beatty said.

Bridgett said that Matis-Engle used her cell phone to conduct three separate bill-paying transactions in the final four minutes before the collision and was in the middle of one of those transactions when she slammed into Winn’s car.”

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The Maryland Senate last night rejected by one vote a bill to authorize the use of cameras to catch speeding drivers across the state. But some senators said they were concerned that the cameras would be used largely to raise revenue for local governments and that they would represent an unprecedented intrusion into residents’ private lives.

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Yesterday Maryland just passed a law allowing the use of Speed Cameras in the entire state. They’re currently in use in Montgomery County, where the Police that receive speeding tickets themselves refuse to pay the tickets. The law says the owner of the vehicle has to pay the fine – and they don’t own the cop cars… so they refuse to pay.

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(CalvertNews.info 032309) – Another fatal crash at Jewel Rd and Rt 260. Read the details at CalvertNews.info. Young driver violated dead driver’s right of way making a left onto the highway.

(Ed note: Having had a family member in a serious highway crash, I would be interested to know the contributing factors as well as the primary collision factors. Did the driver coast through the stop sign? If he stopped did he look both ways? Was anyone on a cell phone? Stop sign compliance in Maryland is almost non-existent for right or left turns. What’s missing from this article is what behavior changes might have prevented this collision and that a preventable collision is not an accident.”

This one was real close to home. The specifics are not yet known but a man was killed at this intersection the evening of march 6, 2009.

Read the rest of the story.

Apparently in Maryland it was legal, until February 20 of this year, to change lanes without signaling. It all makes sense now. Everyone drives like they are omnipotent NASCAR racers. Even police don’t signal. Well Maryland is finally out of the dark ages realizing what a rolling multi-ton pile of metal can do to the human body–many deaths later. It is now illegal to change lanes without signaling. This should be one more tool in a police officer’s fight against aggressive drivers. Three violations in a row are required for reckless aggressive driving citations and one of those in the state of California has always been failure to signal when changing lanes.

I’m happy that this little over sight was corrected. Now it will, unfortunately, take generations to bring Maryland drivers up to par with the safer states. Are there safer states? Post for another time.

Read the rest of the story.

The question comes up occasionally. Am I, or is another person in front of me driving too slowly? Do I have to get out of the way and allow every fast driver to pass? There is another story on this blog written by a reporter that believes no one has the right to impede the flow of traffic even if the slower driver is at the speed limit. Drivers “stubbornly” moving at the limit are the problem in that reporter’s view. When is the flow of traffic being impeded.

Looking through the on-line Transportation Articles of the Annotated Code of Maryland, you read that the state or other local jurisdictions have the right and the duty to establish speed limits based on traffic engineering studies when the state’s maximums do not apply. (Even speed minimums can be specified.) One could assume, and correctly, that speed limits are there for a reason and that traffic proceeding at the speed limit is traffic moving at a safe speed.

Now just in case conditions warrant, it is possible to drive slower than the speed limit. 2-801(a) of the Code states, “A person may not drive a vehicle on a highway at a speed that, with regard to the actual and potential dangers existing, is more than that which is reasonable and prudent under the conditions.” The statute then goes into some specific cases. The most important meaning however is that no one should drive on a Maryland highway so fast that the chosen speed is inconsistent with prevailing conditions. These conditions can include road hazards, weather, excessive traffic, the presence of emergency vehicles and so on. You and I as drivers have a right and a duty to control our speed based on prevailing road conditions as well as mot exceeding the speed limit.

The faster driver may not agree with the slower driver’s assessment of prevailing conditions and a following too closely situation might occur. In Maryland it will occur – regularly. It most often occurs if the colloquial speed limit is much higher than the posted speed limit. (And in my view when enforcement is lacking or never present.) It is at this point where we meet the Maryland tailgater and aggressive driver.

Annotated Code 21-310 (a), “The driver of a motor vehicle may not follow another vehicle more closely than is reasonable and prudent, having due regard for the speed of the other vehicle and of the traffic on and the condition of the highway.” The same standard of prudent driver behavior applies to the vehicle that wants to travel faster.

Not all slower Maryland drivers are white-knuckling their way along the highway as I have heard slower drivers described on occasion. When I reduce my speed in driving rain and snow or in other conditions that warrant a slower speed I expect the faster guy to behave. When I drive to cope with prevailing conditions I do not fit the Maryland definition of a driver impeding traffic in Annotated Code 21-804 (a), “Unless reduced speed is necessary for the safe operation of the vehicle or otherwise is in compliance with law, a person may not willfully drive a motor vehicle at such a slow speed as to impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic.” Willful slow driving for no apparent reason is dangerous but driving safely is rational and prudent.

My sense is that faster drivers want to point at the slower drivers as being the problem when in fact it is more frequently the other way around. Driving faster is not better. It is dangerous to drive faster and it is even more dangerous to follow too closely with wanton disregard for the safety of those sharing the highway or living alongside it.

A writer at Business Week wrote back in 2006: “Not going with the flow. Good drivers have one habit in common — they don’t obstruct the flow of traffic by adamantly driving at or below the posted speed limit when it’s clear other cars (and traffic in general) is moving faster. Such drivers mistakenly believe they’re in the right, legally speaking (“I’m doing the speed limit!”) but in fact they are impeding the flow of traffic, which is also illegal in most states. Safe drivers try to drive within 5 mph of the prevailing speed of the cars around them, and yield to faster-moving traffic if they’re uncomfortable about keeping up with the pace or driving a few mph faster than the posted limit.”

This is just nonsense. Speed limits are determined for a reason. Those reasons usually mean the road ahead and normal or even extreme prevailing conditions dictate that the limit on a certain roadway is as posted. Calling out someone for driving fifty in a fifty mile-per-hour zone when the colloquial speed limit for a highway may be an unsafe twenty miles per hour over the limit is moronic, unsafe, and just plain dumb.

Adding an additional five miles per hour is not going to keep the road killers happy either. Unsafe drivers are often unsafe at any speed. Driving fifty five in a fifty will not please most of Maryland’s aggressive drivers. They want to drive seventy miles per hour the rest of us be damned. A study last year in the UK showed that tailgaters tailgate to force drivers in front of them to speed up! The safer driver obeying the speed limit is not impeding traffic. The safer driver is not giving in to unsafe bully tactics that affect everyone’s safety. Impeding the flow of traffic is driving slower than than posted limit when conditions do not dictate a slower speed.

Aggressive drivers do not determine speed limits especially on two-lane highways, the highway department does. What’s next following Business Week’s logic? Are we supposed to drive the speed limit in driving rain and snow? Is the presence of black ice enough to slow us down or do we please the unsafe driver behind us? I intend to drive to live and to obey the law. I will not risk my family’s safety to please a bizarre belief that driving the speed limit is impeding traffic. That’s just nuts.

When pigs drive

Originally uploaded by Gienna Writes

Why safe drivers and concerned pedestrians learn the PORK Maneuver. See the article on Driving to Live for a complete explanation. Thanks to Gienna Writes of Flickr for this great example of what happens when pigs drive.

Keep in mind that when a road killer is behind you you must allow what most safety experts say is twice the safe distance between you and the car in front of you. The two second rule becomes a four second rule. Always make sure it is safe to pull to the right to allow a road killer to pass. As strange as it seems, many of these dim bulbs will follow you off the roadway thinking you have an obstruction ahead. What the road killer does not understand is that his vision ahead is reduced significantly when he is tailgating the car in front of him. Before you pull onto a shoulder make sure there is a safe shoulder to pull on to. When it is not safe the road killer remains behind you until it is safe to allow him to pass. At least while he is behind you he may live longer because you are paying attention and driving safely despite his behavior. Maryland’s two lane highways are not all conducive for a PORK maneuver. Use caution.

Driving to live. I keep these three words in mind when I get in my car to travel. These three words govern my driving behavior and are the reason I drive defensively. These three words are the reasons aggressive drivers may find themselves within a few feet of my rear bumper for long stretches of narrow highway or find themselves in a line of traffic behind me, all of us traveling at a safe speed.

Unsafe drivers are road killers. I want to live so I drive safely and only take safe opportunities to pull over for the road killers or maintain my lawful driving until I can safely let the road killers pass. I call it the PORK maneuver.

Driving to live means that I plan not to find myself in a crash caused by the negligent driver behind or in front of me. It means that I am aware of my surroundings and my options to stay safe and stay alive on the road. It means that I do not react in an unsafe way to the actions of unsafe and/or aggressive drivers; but drive according to the rules.

Drivers that drive to live:

1. Obey the speed laws.
2. Stop for stop signs, obey traffic lights, and other road signs.
3. Remain a safe distance behind the traffic in front of them.
4. Drive safely at at speeds based on the weather and road conditions.
5. Signal for lane changes and turns. Plan merges and lane changes well in advance,
6. Never cut off other drivers.
7. Never use a vehicle to rush to an appointment.
8. Drive defensively, watching out for the irresponsible or negligent behavior of others.
9. Know their surroundings and can anticipate driving conditions ahead.
10. Drive to arrive – alive. Drive to let others live including other drivers, pedestrians, and animals.

When everyone drives to live pedestrians and bicyclists are safer, wild life and pets are safer, as well as other drivers. The risk of injury, death, and property damage is dramatically reduced for everyone. Our police, fire and medical responders can focus on other serious matters besides collisions caused by irresponsible behaviors. When we are smarter about driving we and our communities are better for it.

Drive to live. Take a personal inventory of what you would lose if you died, you were gravely injured, or your unsafe driving caused serious injury to others. Do you really want to drive and die or drive and injure? No, you really want to drive and live. Then do it. Drive and live.

Maryland Route 2 through Anne Arundel County and Calvert County is “THE” Aggressive Driver Highway on Steroids! Travel this highway at the speed limit and see what climbs up your tail pipe! The behavior of the majority of drivers on this highway is ABYSMAL. The behavior of public safety officers even worse. Police run radar but I have never seen an officer react to “following to closely” or other aggressive driving behaviors. You are ON YOUR OWN on this highway, at risk of a violent death, if you or the other driver makes a stupid mistake. Police follow too closely as do most other drivers. It is a statewide standard of driver behavior in Maryland. WATCH and learn.

Do you want safe highways? Start driving like you understand the traffic laws. DEMAND that our law enforcement officers ON AND OFF duty follow the same laws you have to follow and DEMAND that laws against aggressive driving be enforced.

students duplicate the license plates by printing plate numbers on glossy photo paper, using fonts from certain websites that “mimic” those on Maryland license plates. They tape the duplicate plate over the existing plate on the back of their car and purposefully speed through a speed camera, the parent said.

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Tailgating is an aggressive driving behavior that is all too common in Southern Maryland. One would think tailgating is an Olympic sport with the number of aggressive drivers out there practicing various following-too-closely techniques.

Collisions are far too common in our region and not all collisions are attributable to younger drivers, drunk drivers, or seniors. Not all collisions are truly accidents. Most are caused by UNSAFE and AGGRESSIVE driving behaviors and are therefore preventable and NOT an accident! This article at SmartMotorist.com has some amazing statistics that I think match our area quite well. This article is worth reading.

Why would anyone tailgate when the car in front of them is already at the speed limit or there are other cars in front of the car they are tailgating? Why would anyone tailgate while on their cellular telephone? Why would anyone tailgate while transporting a child in their SUV? Why would anyone want to make themselves dangerous on the roadway?

Not a day goes by when I drive here or there that I do not have an aggressive Southern Maryland driver behind me. The BIG surprise is that there are a fair number of drivers using vehicles with public safety vanity plates engaged in the practice. The rest of the state is not about to change their behavior if public safety employees remain part of the problem.

Show your disgust for the tailgating pandemic and observe the three and six second rule. Travel the speed limit, stop at stop signs. Send a message that you obey our traffic laws and that you intend to arrive alive.

Last fall, 13 young lives were lost in Charles, St. Mary’s and Calvert counties as a result of motor vehicle crashes. Serious teen driver crashes in Southern Maryland continue to occur more often than in other regions of the state.

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Starting Monday, Maryland will enforce one of the strictest child-passenger safety laws in the country, requiring children as old as 7 to be fastened in booster seats while riding in cars. The current state law requires children 5 and under to be in a child safety seat.

(Now don’t get me wrong I applaud the new law but it goes a long way toward illustrating a point I have made about Maryland’s approach to traffic safety. Maryland would rather mitigate the carnage than deal with the reckless aggressive driver. Adults vote, seven year old kids do not. It is easier to write a ticket for the seven year old  not in approved car seat than to put a middle-class mother or father in jail for reckless endangerment of a child in a vehicle. We see it everyday in Maryland. Looney mothers and fathers driving well over 70 with little Johnny or Mary in the front or back seat. The officers that write these seat citations will become the new heroes. They still will not have to write citations for the proximate cause of injury. Injury might even go down and statistically Maryland will look squeaky clean until the next highway crash caused by an aggressive driver. Driving in this state is a hell of  a risk but we all have our air bags, seat belts and kids  in car seats. If they can’t hurt us we can drive as we please right?)

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From AOL.com, based on results from the GMAC National Driver
’s Test

10. Maryland
9. West Virginia
8. Louisiana
7. Hawaii
6. Mississippi
5. Georgia
4. Massachusettes
3. New York
2. Washington D.C.
1. New Jersey

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When driving Anne Arundel County roads this Saturday afternoon we were annoyed by the usual high number of aggressive tail-gating morons that consider themselves immune from traffic laws. It doesn’t matter that you are going the speed limit and or a few miles an hour above it, you’re ruining their day so they are going to ruin yours.

Aggressive driving is pandemic in Maryland. We live with this everyday on every highway on every street. It is part of the culture here. Something that truly surprised me after moving to Maryland from California in 2001. Manners do not exist on Maryland’s roads. Safety is irrelevant. When people get into cars they consider themselves immortals.

What’s worse is the bizarre priority law enforcement places on radar enforcement. There were TWO police professionals in patrol cars running radar just before the traffic circle in Deale, MD this afternoon. Their position there just made no sense at all given the horrific safety violations I saw traveling the back road from Galesville to Deale. Where the heck were these guys when… Radar doesn’t worry me since I go the speed limit. I also ignore the tail gaters much to their chagrin, but I am sure these guys got their fair share of average Marylanders and none of the aggressive drivers that deserve tickets for aggressive behavior. No that takes real work.

I didn’t see one patrol officer going after aggressive drivers. Not one. I just saw two officers taking the easy approach to traffic safety at the radar speed trap. The speed trap they probably justify with statistics and traffic studies. I still maintain that despite their studies and priorities the people that drive with wanton disregard for the safety of others are not necessarily the ones driving a few miles per hour over the speed limit. The drivers that are unsafe are the aggressive drivers of which Maryland has more than its fair share a number of which followed me home that afternoon less than a car length from my back bumper at the speed limit.

I can tell you what we did see this afternoon in addition to a speed trap. At about 4:15 PM on eastbound MD Route 2 we did see a Maryland State Trooper a car length or less away from an innocent Marylander going the speed limit. No emergency lights. He just maintained that familiar intimate driving position with which we have all become so familiar.

Tail gaiting and aggressive driving is accepted behavior in Maryland. Speeding tickets are probably just a necessity to justify the existence of a traffic squad.

There may be hope for traffic safety in Maryland. Even during the daily Maryland Tailgating Olympic Trials I actually witnessed a small red sports car with Maryland delegate plates going the SPEED LIMIT. (Thursday afternoon on Highway 4 in Calvert County, MD) Not five or ten above but the SPEED LIMIT. One can only hope Annapolis may finally understand that the greatest threat to Marylanders remains the average Maryland driver. There are too many dead and maimed on Maryland roads and highways. Oh yes and the driver was NOT throwing litter or lit cigarettes from the vehicle. At last an example setter.