Thursday Headlines: Need For Speed Edition
Speeding isn’t an outlier behavior in America — it’s the norm drivers have talked themselves into accepting, according to a sprawling new national survey and focus-group study out this month from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. New York drivers, it turns out, track the national mindset almost exactly, which is its own kind of alarming.
Researchers spent 90 minutes at a time letting drivers explain, in their own words, why speeding doesn’t really count as speeding. The rationalizations will sound familiar to anyone who’s testified in Albany for safer street design. Going with the “flow of traffic” is safer than obeying the limit, drivers insisted nationally, even when that flow runs 15 miles over; nearly half of all drivers surveyed agreed it’s safer to match speeding traffic than to follow the posted limit at all. Ten mph above the sign is basically the limit itself, plenty of respondents said — “almost like a common law,” one focus-group participant put it.
New York’s 396 surveyed drivers didn’t break from that pattern in any statistically meaningful way. Support for automated speed cameras in high-risk areas actually ran a touch above the national average — 76 percent versus 73 percent — while support for increased police ticketing in those same areas landed a shade below, 84 percent versus 88 percent. New Yorkers were also slightly more receptive to electronic warning signs (49 percent in high-risk areas, versus 44 percent nationally) and rumble strips, but cooler than the country on traffic circles, at 36 percent versus 40 percent. None of the gaps were large enough to call New York an outlier. Statistically, this state’s drivers are the national average.
Elsewhere in the Empire State:
- Yet another “street takeover” on Long Island, this time in Uniondale, ended in arrests. (Newsday)
- A new state comptroller audit worries that New York City won’t meet its zero-emission goals for its bus fleet. (amNY)
- The lower Hudson Valley’s 17th Congressional District had its first candidate forum between Rep. Mike Lawler (R-Rockland County) and Cait Conley. (The New York Post)
- Poughkeepsie residents want a council member removed after he allegedly hurt his wife in a domestic incident. (WAMC)
- State Sen. Pete Harckham (D-Peekskill) and Assembly Member Chris Burdick (D-Mount Kisco) want Gov. Hochul to sign their bill to mandate changing tables for traveling disabled New Yorkers. (Mahopac News)
- Some district leaders in the Brooklyn Democratic Party want a reformist member ousted over claims of antisemitism. (City & State)
- A new plan to speed up emergency response times in Syracuse could jam traffic without more modifications to street design. (Syracuse.com)
- Cayuga County is eyeing a controversial road use agreement with a clean energy provider. (The Buffalo News)
- Onondaga County’s new Housing and Transportation Citizens’ Advisory Board is prepared to recommend that major county roads have bike and pedestrian accessibility with funding tied to benchmarks of access. (Central Current)
- Buffalo voters have a set of city charter changes to review. (The Investigative Post)
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