The Second Amendment on Wheels

Cars don’t kill, people do. We’re going to be hearing that phrase a lot in the coming days, but you don’t have to get used to it.

If there’s one thing Americans value more than firearms, it’s automobiles. Most of our country is dependent on personal transportation machines built for way more speed than is needed. 

California Senate Bill 961, introduced by Sen. Scott Wiener to address the speeding issue has triggered outrage from the sorts usually found braying about firearms. His office has fielded thousands of calls from people who’ve seen Fox News coverage, warning them about not being able to get away fast enough from a Taylor Swift sighting.   

“Fox News and the Republicans will make culture war out of anything,” Wiener told Politico, “I’m a big believer in freedom, but our freedom ends when our actions put others' lives at risk.”

Fox News host Trace Gallagher prime time coverage of SB 961 included author Peachy Keenan, who summoned up her best cultural warrior rage, declaring “Pretty soon, they’re going to have a device that doesn’t let your car leave the garage unless you’re driving to a Gavin Newsom fundraiser or Planned Parenthood.”

What the fuss is all about is that Weiner’s bill would block cars and trucks from driving more than 10 mph over the speed limit with a special device installed on new vehicles sold in the state. 

It’s at best a long shot to pass this year and get signed by the Governor, who as of late has leaned into dispelling the notion that California is a loony nanny-state.

Government already does regulate autos and trucks with licensing, registration, and financial penalties for abuse of the privilege of using the roadways. And there is increasing interest in tamping down seed limits.

Speeding is already an expensive exercise, with tickets (including fees) costing as much as $490, and a likely 25% to 40% increase in insurance premiums. The big loophole in all this is that savvy speeders challenge their tickets in court, where a law enforcement officer may not be able to appear: 50% of challenged tickets are overturned.

Starting this year, Assembly Bill 645 will go into effect, allowing a pilot program with a limited number of cameras capable of automatically ticketing speeders in Los Angeles, Long Beach, Glendale, Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose.

 A 2016 study cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that after more than seven years of using the speed cameras, 95% of drivers said they were aware of the cameras, and 76% of those drivers slowed down because of the cameras.

AB 645 is a watered down version of what’s already being done in 205 communities in 21 states that are already using speed safety cameras to automatically ticket speeding drivers. Its baby steps are like the compromising we saw with tobacco and continue to see with environmental issues, where-in public safety takes second place over corporate profits. (Or jobs, if you’re a Democrat.)

Via Forbes:

• AB 645 will allow a limited number of cameras in the pilot cities to be placed on high-injury roads, around schools, and on known street racing corridors. Once in use, tickets from the speed cameras would be issued starting at 11 MPH over the speed limit with fines starting at $50 -- far less than a normal ticket issued by a police officer, which typically costs between $238 to $490 in California. 

• Tickets issued would be treated like parking tickets, issued to the owner of the vehicle through the mail with no points on their record, and it wouldn’t affect the owner’s cost of insurance. The first ticket for any driver in a city would be a warning. AB 645 would also allow a legal appeal process as well as a way for those who are low-income to have the fines reduced by up to 80% or even waived instead of community service. 

Speeding was a factor in 29% of all traffic fatalities in 2021, killing 12,330 –an average of over 33 people per day. There were 11,057 fatal motor-vehicle crashes attributable to speeding in the same year.

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If you’ve driven for any length of time on San Diego’s freeways, you will have noticed the faux Le Mans activity wherein several cars weave through traffic at speeds well above those already speeding in the left lane.

From my bedroom window in North Park I regularly see vehicles racing to get to the stop sign at the end of my block. Neighbors have posted signs urging people not to speed, but they rarely last more than a few days, no doubt pulled down by secret agents posing as pedestrians.

Pedestrians of-the-run-over-persuasion are, in fact, the primary reason why lawmakers try to downgrade vehicle velocity. In 2021, according to figures from the UC Berkeley Safe Transportation Research and Education Center, 1,509 people were killed by speeders. That's 35 percent of all traffic fatalities in the state. 

Even with a significant decrease in car traffic volume related to the pandemic, pedestrian and cyclist fatalities have risen sharply. Pedestrian fatalities rose steadily from 2018 to 2020, from 2.48 to 2.56 deaths per 100k residents at the height of the pandemic. In 2021, they rose again sharply to 2.91 pedestrian deaths per 100k residents. 

Bicyclists are a loud and sometimes effective interest group who’d like to see less “zoom-zoom” and more “have a nice day” on our roads. One example of a success story came last year with the passage of AB43, which changes the rules of the game when it comes to setting speed limits.

From Walk-Bike Cupertino:

• Currently, cities are required to set speed limits by measuring the current traffic speed. They then take the speed at which 85% of the traffic is going, and round it up to the next 5 mph. This sets speed limits at the top end of vehicle speed. It does not consider pedestrian and cycling traffic or whether there are other conditions that would make that speed limit unsafe.

• AB43 requires cities to:

• Round down to the nearest 5 mph from the measured 85th percentile vehicle speed, rather than rounding up.

• Consider reducing the speed limit by another 5 mph based on the road’s proximity to vulnerable populations (such as schools or elder care facilities) or bike-ped infrastructure (such as trails or protected bike lanes).

So, why all the speeding? An article at Vox offers up some ideas:

• One theory is that the pandemic, which saw more people staying at home and upended the usual traffic patterns, encouraged drivers to behave more recklessly because the roads were emptier. Another is that the turmoil of the pandemic, plus political and social unrest in 2020, led to a fraying of the social contract, with people — including drivers — acting more aggressive and unpredictable in public settings. A third is that the police, in response to the Black Lives Matter protests and other critiques of law enforcement, have largely given up on enforcing road safety, leading drivers to reasonably assume that they can drive dangerously without facing consequences.

• In a society where the car is so central that most Americans get behind the wheel every day without thinking about the broader consequences of auto dependency, it’s easy to view pedestrian deaths as an unfortunate but unavoidable reality. In fact, the United States has a uniquely terrible track record on pedestrian fatalities, which are continuing to increase here while they decline in many other countries.

My take is that bad driving is directly related to the “me first” culture permeating our society. The ultimate solution is something currently unthinkable to most Americans; ending the auto-centric nature of our society and economy. This goes beyond electric cars and artificial intelligence used to run automatic vehicle control.

Cars are not a “right.” A life not interrupted by personal selfishness is a right.

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Wednesday News Clips

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American Savagery - Capital punishment is a moral stain. Every American should be humiliated and sickened by our country's use of it. By Jill Filipovic 

• The death penalty does not accomplish anything a long jail sentence doesn’t, other than snuffing out another life. The death penalty compromises the agreement governments should have with their populations, which is that, while some people may need to be removed from the population to either punish them or protect others, a government doesn’t kill its own citizens. 

• By executing our countrymen, the death penalty makes all of us complicit in a profoundly immoral, evil act, made all the more horrifying because it’s draped in the language of “justice.” And it allows our officials to do the ghoulish work of insisting that execution is somehow humane.

• You don’t have to defend the moral righteousness of every single person on death row to reject the moral atrocity of the death penalty. This is pretty simple, but we’d all certainly be better off if we killed less, not more. That should start with our own government.

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Stop blaming male alienation on female liberation By Lyz at Men Yell At Me

• It doesn’t take much to get people to opine about the state of men in America. The Washington Post editorial board and David Brooks will all jump to the rescue when the “but what about the men” bat signal is flashed into the sky, eager to blame these perceived losses on men-hating feminists or the #MeToo movement. 

• This “what about the poor lost men?” rhetoric happens in my comments and emails whenever I write about feminism, which is all the time. How can we help men? What about the men? I bet you’ve never thought about men here! These are often questions and comments I hear when I raise the issue of women’s liberation from fear, gender constructs, violence, and oppression.

• Asking “what about the men?” is effective because it reframes stories of female liberation into tales of male alienation. And it positions the two interests as opposed. As if our liberation and our freedoms were not inextricably entwined.

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The Far-Right Is Swiftly Unraveling By Jay Kuo at the Status Quo

• The Trump Campaign apparently is very worried about her potential influence. His allies have pledged a “holy war” against her, and the ex-president has complained that he is actually more popular than she is.

• That “holy war” is playing out in real time in the openly expressed fever dreams of the MAGA influencers.

• But here’s an interesting twist: All this conspiracy nonsense about Swift quickly made headlines at The New York Times, CNN, CBS News, Rolling Stone, the Independent and the Guardian, to name a few outlets. In the past, other wacko conspiracies have largely gone underreported by the media and unnoticed by the public. 

• These attacks upon Swift may prove to be a tipping point for “normal” America to finally pay attention to exactly how crazy and extreme the right has become. 

• And when Swift does actually endorse Biden, and she asks millions of Swifties to help her keep Trump from office, my only thought will be, “Look what you made her do.”

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Today’s lead image snipped from a 1936 Popular Mechanics cover