-
- Sat 18 May 10:52 PMCitizens First: A Call to Create "Charter" Police and Fire Stations, brought to you by Democrats for Public Safety Reform (DFPSR)
2
by columwhyte - Thu 16 May 11:00 PMBruins Open Thread
5
by jconway - Thu 16 May 10:58 PMPPP: Markey Up by 7
15
by johnk - Thu 16 May 7:37 PMHenry David T vs. Energy (Goliath) Enterprise
12
by mobeach42 - Thu 16 May 3:18 PMBernstein: Gomez using "Victory Fund" fundraising approach against which Mass. GOP railed
1
by fenway49 - Thu 16 May 3:15 PMSenate Ways & Means Budget for FY 2014
3
by massbudget - Thu 16 May 8:15 AMGomez Shopped Around and Rejected Lower Appraisals for his Shady Tax Deduction
5
by johnk - Wed 15 May 3:34 PMCool image from Minneapolis, MN
16
by mike_cote - Wed 15 May 7:58 AMA Call for Change in Boston Election Signature Collection and Qualification Rules
20
by martywalsh - Wed 15 May 6:19 AMYoung Democrats to honor Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Ellen Story, and activist Harmony Wu at Roosevelt After Dark fundraiser to support Emerge Massach
2
by jkleschinsky
- Sat 18 May 10:52 PMCitizens First: A Call to Create "Charter" Police and Fire Stations, brought to you by Democrats for Public Safety Reform (DFPSR)
stomv
Person #151: 30 Posts
Recommended: 80 times
Indeed I did (0 Replies)
although I’m a one man majority every time I dine alone.
I don't doubt that... (0 Replies)
… and therein lies my biggest beef with the way society treats cyclists. We’ve dramatically changed the rules and expectations for auto-bike interactions. We’ve introduced new lane markings, even new rules about opening the car door.
But we haven’t bothered to educate motorists. They go in to the DMV every X years to renew their license, and we don’t even give them a pamphlet, no less make them retake a written test.
Yet we as motorists have no problem complaining that cyclists don’t follow the rules. Motorists by and large don’t even know that they’re not following the rules!
It's not so straightforward (1 Reply)
a study was done in the UK where a professor rigged up his bike with a number of small sensors.
He rode dressed as a man, with a helmet.
He rode dressed as a man, without a helmet.
He rode dressed as a woman, with a helmet.
He rode dressed as a woman, without a helmet.
It turns out that the distance by which cars passed him was remarkably correlated — helmets mean closer passing cars.
Maybe that means more accidents, maybe not. Maybe its different in the UK than in the USA. Maybe cyclists without helmets ride more slowly and carefully precisely because they feel more vulnerable.
Maybe with a helmet law fewer people ride a bicycle, and that decision (in aggregate) makes things safer or less safe for that person or for the remaining cyclists, motorists, peds, etc.
All things being equal, I’d rather have a helmet on my head. But, the mere act of wearing a helmet means that all things are not equal, and that’s why it’s not at all obvious.
I may have confirmed what you "thought" (0 Replies)
but don’t interpret that to mean that I agreed with your post.
When in doubt, assume I don’t. In fact, unless I explicitly state that I agree with a specific post of yours, know that I likely don’t.
5% of SO2 is still a lot (0 Replies)
and then there’s the NOx, the Hg, the coal ash, and the CO2. Then there’s the particulate matters — PM10 and PM2.5. They’re all bad for you, and while less is preferable to more, less doesn’t make it perfectly OK from a health perspective.
That we can capture some of the gaseous air pollutants and trap them in a solid does not make the pollutants any less dangerous in their gaseous form.
Except, they're not (2 Replies)
Unless that rule is:
* speeding, but by no more than 9 more than the limit
* actually stopping when the light is yellow and it is safe to do so, instead of you and the three cars behind you juicing the “orange” light
* double parking, so long as your flashers are on
* pretending not to see that pedestrian at an unsignalized intersection
* using turn signals
* coming to a FULL STOP at a stop sign, every when there isn’t a car coming the other way
We don’t expect or assume that cars are required to obey the rules of the road. We give leeway when we perceive that their violations don’t cause substantial safety hazards. That’s perfectly OK with me by the way. I just think that we should do the same thing for peds (jaywalking and crossing against the light are OK when there’s no car coming) and for bikes (treating a stop light like a stop sign, for example). It’s true that we don’t believe it safe for autos to run red lights, and we expect cops to ticket for that. That collective wisdom comes from decades of experience, and frankly, we don’t have the same kind of data to suggest it’s true for cyclists or pedestrians.
My point is that we do allow discretion (0 Replies)
in right on red, and therefore allowing discretion for cyclists would be no different fundamentally.
As for which is safer — well, they’re both perfectly safe when they’re perfectly safe. Duh. Nobody is arguing that a cyclist should be allowed to baralel through a red light at top speed. That’s a strawman you just set up. The Idaho stop calls for a cyclist to come to a red light, come to a complete stop, and then proceed as if it were a stop sign. That makes it’s requirements very similar to right on red (also requires full stop). Should MA make the Idaho stop legal? I don’t know… I see good arguments from both sides.
My point was merely that david’s argument doesn’t seem to hold water in a state which allows right on red.
This is where it gets tricky (0 Replies)
it’s illegal to ride three wide. It’s also illegal to attempt to pass unsafely.
What happens all the time — both in “peletons” and in city streets — is that the cyclist is familiar with that stretch of road, and knows that motorists like to try to pass there and that it is unsafe. Therefore, in an act of self-preservation, the bicyclist(s) obstruct the lane, because a law-abiding motorist wouldn’t attempt to pass there, but many motorists do anyway.
Now, I’m not arguing that in the particular case being discussed above that the situation I describe is the right one. I am writing that I “take the lane” every single day in a few specific locations because I’ve seen motorists constantly behave far too aggressively and try to overtake me where it simply isn’t safe (for me!) for them to do so. My only three options are (a) be unsafe, (b) don’t ride, or (c) ride in such a way that prevents them from breaking the law, even if it sure looks like I’m breaking the law.
It’s tricky stuff. We all want to get to where we’re going quickly, and we all tend to see the best in ourselves and the worst in others. When the “other” doesn’t look anything like us (6,000 lbs vs. 250 lbs), it’s even easier.
Most coal in New England from South America (1 Reply)
but it’s not a certainty. The rail congestion to get “past” NYC makes South American coal a bit easier. Coal consumption in New England is far lower than it was 10 years ago, and in fact a number of coal stations (like Mount Tom) aren’t even bidding in any more, because they can’t compete with the cheap natural gas.
As for the people working having schedules to keep… so do all the people who don’t work for power plants who get asthma attacks, cancers, or any other host of illnesses caused by or abetted by the coal power plants. Those people have schedules to keep too.
My hope (2 Replies)
is that the forces for good remain well funded, remain strategic, and continue to lay the ground work for bringing those states above to equality in as efficient a means as possible.
And seriously Hawai’i — what’s the holdup? Dem governor, 86% Dem on the lower house, 96% Dem in the upper house [the sole GOP is the senate majority leader. Ha!]. Let’s get some more rainbows out there!
seat belt argument != helmet argument (1 Reply)
For a variety of reasons:
1. The data for seat belt use are clear. The data for helmet use, as it turns out, are far less clear. It’s simply not obvious that helmet use substantially improves safety. As a side note, the data for helmet use on motorcycles are clear.
2. Every single automobile comes with seat belts. They’re in the car. Not so with helmets.
3. A seat belt is designed to fit an extremely wide range of people automatically. A helmet requires correct fitting, and isn’t (can’t?) be designed to simply click on and have a safe fit.
4. Sharing a seat belt is no biggie — sharing a helmet is, well, flat out gross.
5. Relative to the cost of a car, a seat belt is peanuts. Relative to the cost of a bike, a helmet is not. (Don’t use a $5k bike any more than I wouldn’t use a $400k auto for this example)
6. In conjunction with seat belts, we’ve spent the last 100 years building infrastructure to maximize safety for motorists. The techniques have evolved over time, but the intention hasn’t. In America, we’ve spent about 10 years worried about safe infrastructure for bicyclists, and even then only in some places. Seat belt requirements came after we had done loads of other things to reduce both accident rates and accident severity. We haven’t done so for bicyclists.
It’s easy to use the Netherlands as an example, because they’re on the far end of the spectrum. Their head injury rate per 1000 miles of bicycle use is far, far, far lower than tUSA’s, and yet their helmet use is also far lower. It is the operation of motor vehicles and bicycles which has the greatest room to improve safety — and that’s a combination of education and better infrastructure. As for the former — why isn’t bicycle safety a bigger part of getting [and renewing!] a drivers license? After all, every motorist will interact with cyclists, and most cyclists have a drivers license too! As for the latter, clearly marked bike lanes result in better (and more frequently legal) behavior by both motorists and cyclists. It turns out that when the infrastructure makes it clear that bicyclists are members of the transportation community, both the other members and the bicyclists behave more civilly.
See, this is the problem (2 Replies)
christopher — you’re flat out wrong.
Cyclists are not legally nor morally obligated to be on the far right of the road. Cyclists are legally entitled to take the lane. Always. Every single time. No matter what. Even the left lane if there are two lanes in the same direction. Furthermore, there are loads of good reasons for this. Just some of the reasons why I might not be riding against the curb…
* Debris
* Dangerous storm drains
* Potholes or other road damage too far to the right to hinder motorists
* Overgrown vegetation
* Risk of parallel parked car doors opening
* Poorly parked parallel cars
* Doubly parked cars
* Turning left
* Overtaking another bicycle, jogger, etc.
* Too narrow for a motor vehicle to safely pass
* Seeing a motorist approach an intersection or a driveway up ahead from my right
* Knowing that motorists at this particular location aren’t very neighborly about letting me merge leftward, and I’ve got to deal with something in the above list not immediately but soon enough
This entire thread is about bicycle scofflaws, but the reality is that most motorists — including, clearly, christopher — don’t know the motor vehicle laws as they relate to bicycles. This is what cyclists are up against. A few motorists are hostile, most are ignorant. While other bicyclists stopping at all red lights may reduce motor vehicle driver’s hostility toward me*, it doesn’t get at my most common hazard, which is motor vehicle operators who simply don’t know their obligations and my obligations.
* I can control the actions of other bicyclists no more than any other [fill-in-the-blank] can control the actions of other human beings who happen to have one thing in common with this person. A motorist who uses the behavior of other bicyclists to justify being rude or dangerous toward me, or to justify public policy which doesn’t protect me while on the road is, well, whatever. You fill in the blank for yourself.
As a ped and a cyclist and a motorist (0 Replies)
I say hogwash to your last statement.
At unsignalized crosswalks, peds have an incredibly tough time getting a motorist to stop. Autos are 7′ wide. Bicycles are 3′ wide and almost always traveling more slowly. That autos are so much more dangerous keeps the ped’s feet planted firmly on the concrete, but that doesn’t mean that the auto didn’t fail to yield.
I have no problem with a plainclothes officer ticketing every vehicle who fails to yield. I’ll bet dollars to doughnaughts that more motorists than cyclists will violate.
In that case, outlaw right on red (1 Reply)
Making a right on red is exactly the same kind of judgement call you argue bicyclists shouldn’t be allowed to make to cross.
Sure, the actual action is slightly different, the equipment different, etc. Fundamentally, allowing vehicles to turn right on red is no different than allowing cyclists to proceed through an intersection on red.
Stupid HTML (1 Reply)
broken HTML. My error.
Where's next? (2 Replies)
What are the prospects for each of these states, all of which are reasonably “next” or “soon”?
* Hawai’i
* Alaska
* California
* Oregon
* Nevada
* New Mexico
* Colorado
* Illinois
* Wisconsin
* Pennsylvania
* New Jersey
List created using my own instincts having looked at the Same Sex Marriage in the USA wiki page and Nate Silver’s June 29, 2011 article about The Future of Same Sex Marriage Ballot Measures”>. Alaska was a big surprise for me, but there’s a difference between opposing a restriction and embracing equality…
In any case, which states come next? Why?
Is this just Boston, just city council? (2 Replies)
What about other forms of government in MA — aldermen, selectmen, town meeting members?
Well, how about this angle: (1 Reply)
Did Mr. Gomez supply this easement to Cohasset for a related reduction in his assessed property value? After all, if it’s good for Uncle Sam, it’s good for the Assessor of Cohasset, no?
I have no idea if he did or didn’t. I suspect that he didn’t, though it’s easy enough to find out, since it is a matter of public record. I suspect that if Mr. Gomez had asked Cohasset for a reduction in assessed value due to the easement [based on fair market value in MA!], they’d have strained their sides laughing him out of the room. And therein would be the strongest evidence in my view that he knew it was improper… that he didn’t try to use the same easement to reduce his local property tax obligation by ~$3k a year indefinitely. If Cohasset says no way, it’s far more difficult for him to assert that it’s proper, no?
Ill formed question (0 Replies)
I’m not entirely sure what you are asking. Are you asking about Federal deductions? I don’t recall — are those fed deductions on Schedule A or on the 1040 itself or elsewhere?
Keep in mind that the Belmont Hill resident is paying $20k in local taxes *less* about $5k in federal taxes (25% marginal rate might be low, but might be OK)
The Waltham resident is paying $2k in local taxes *less* about $500 in federal taxes.
At the end of the day, the Belmont Hill resident has paid about $15,000 more because of his property tax, and the Waltham stiff has paid about $1,500. Furthermore, don’t forget that the residential exemption is a flat dollar amount, so as a percentage of home value, the Waltham stiff is paying a far lower property tax rate than the Belmont Hill resident, assuming that the tax rate is comparable.
I won’t argue that the tax code in this area is optimal. For example, I find it strange that if a town covers the cost of trash removal in their base services, than the taxes people pay to fund it are tax deductible. But, if a town charges a fee for the service, that isn’t deductible.
Two men with tax problems (0 Replies)
I’m reminded of another man with tax problems, Flavor Flav of Public Enemy. From their album “It takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back”…
“You’re quite hostile.”
“I got a right to be hostile, man, my people been persecuted!”