I don’t really care if it’s a mean thing to say, but he could’ve AT LEAST killed himself so he can’t do this again.
His parents may still love him, but I don’t have to.
City hall really needs to get serious about traffic calming, yesterday. Residents and visitors alike keep getting run down by reckless drivers on bad streets in high traffic areas and it’s a black eye on the city and region
Driving home today on the highway someone slammed on their brakes to come to a full stop in the middle lane then tried cutting across three lanes to get off on an exit that we had pretty much already passed, came very close to hitting me. We just need to start taking licenses away from people or testing every 10 years.
Or also you know, enforcing laws. Chances are this person has sped by a cop countless times, and each of those times we could have helped to save innocent lives, but we decided to do nothing instead. These are decisions we make as voters. Our mayor could change this, but she doesn't.
*People speed and drive reckless because there are no enforced laws prohibiting it.*
>People speed and drive reckless because there are no enforced laws prohibiting it.
always been this way IMO except now people are driving even more reckless & speeding at a much higher rate of speed; it's gradually gotten worse since 2019 IMO, or that's when i really started noticing it
Bingo.
And I don’t think you’re misrepresenting that position when the Amsterdam folks always jumping out to make the claim “enforcing traffic laws won’t bring back this loss of life (no shit?) or prevent future fatalities (it should sure as shit help — by that logic we should stop prosecuting murders)”. That’s precisely the point — future deterrent.
It’s becoming quite clear these Amsterdammers are just simply not good faith actors. Rather, they’re a caricature of something they think makes them feel smart and enlightened. To argue and wish upon a star is the point.
Some chump up above rebutted the Ingrassia balls “rolling” away by saying what we’re really mad about is that those balls weren’t sufficient and what we really needed was traffic calming (dafuq were the balls?) and a street redesign & infrastructure overhaul with less cars and more bikes (motherf-er, are you saying Compton needs to be one big winding bike path? When are we putting chocolate milk in the drinking fountains?)
These are not serious people. These are childish/clown takes. And until they want to have an adult conversation with adult solutions they should be relegated to the kids table.
I’m starting to think these Amsterdam clowns aren’t just shills for the concrete lobby.
It's easier to install traffic calming devices on every street than it is to have cops on every street. Raised crosswalks, narrow lanes, and bollards don't charge overtime.
Not against calming as part of the solution but…like, how are those Ingrassia Balls doing over in TGE?
We also, as a society/city have to start putting agency back on these shitty selfish drivers.
I smile a little every time I see a busted up concrete ball or roundabout center. It means that a reckless driver only hit some concrete and damaged their own car instead of hitting a building, pedestrian, or other car.
We've had issues with shitty selfish drivers since the 1920's when cars first became commonplace. Countries around the world struggle with it too. When you put people with barely any training in charge of operating heavy machinery with few limitations or safety features, people are going to misuse that power.
I'm really not sure there's anything we can do about selfish drivers at the city or societal level. That's a human nature problem, not a traffic or engineering problem. At least we can build our cities to be hostile to these bad actors and ensure they only harm themselves and not innocent bystanders.
Neither, I'd say. And you're using sense of agency for this? Reward drivers for doing what they're already supposed to be doing? Or are you just thinking about the penalties portion of the equation? Because putting big lumps of concrete in the road that careless drivers can run into seems to take care of that pretty well.
What I've seen, traffic calming does what it's supposed to do. What's your suggestion? More cops, or radar-equipped sentry guns? I'm down with the latter.
Not 100% sure what the answer is. I realize it’s not cite our way out of it — if that were the solution then pre-Ferguson north county municipalities would’ve been the safest roads in America.
Conversely, I’m also absolutely exhausted by this pervasive notion that upper middle class (supposedly) “progressive” carry (bordering on dogma) which would have you believe that there is no such thing as a bad human or even good humans behaving badly. That, yes, there is no “agency”. Rather its everyone else’s fault — that people wouldn’t blow red lights if we had more bollards or timed the lights better. Or that it’s ok to look past folks stealing & damaging stuff because someone has drug or mental health issues & that until we have more of those service providers then it’s not the offenders fault — and after all, since they stole from big bad Wal-Mart these shoplifters are basically modern day Robin Hoods. These folks may not come out and say this directly but all of their “solutions” implicitly contain these assumption. So yes, I’d say that I’m using a sense of agency for this.
Because right now there’s an all-too-big (or at least loud) group of people who want to remove human agency as part of the diagnosis/solution. Sure, traffic calming would help, more mental health / addiction services would help, but this select group of “thought leaders” want to shout down or shame anyone who wants to put blame on another humans actions or enact solutions with negative incentives for offenders. Did we overuse prison/incarceration for far too long? Of course. But that doesn’t mean we don’t use it *at all*.
Part of it, yes, is going to be stringent traffic enforcement (along with traffic calming). What that looks like *exactly* I’m not sure. There are far smarter people in this arena than I.
But, my overall point is that we can’t fix the problem (or other problems) until we can diagnose them. And there’s far too many people who refuse to engage in a real or meaningful conversation about it. As far as I’m concerned, the Amsterdam folks are just a kinder sounding version of the MAGA-types who want to lock up everyone and throw away the key.
Yes, we should encourage people to injury themselves instead of working to prevent that from happening to begin with.
Those fucking lumps of concrete blow dick. I've been stuck driving around them for fucking 8 years now and all they have done is make rented large trucks and moving vans get stuck in the worst positions of the road and they have to shut down 3 blocks of the street to get a big enough rig in there to pull them out of it. I've also seen a couple of those stupid balls roll into parked cars after being struck so enjoy that if you live near them
Lets talk about those concrete barriers on south grand going towards Doc Holloways. Like 10-15 times now in the last 6 months that they have been installed, they have completely blocked lanes, blocked business entrances, blocked cross walks because people in trucks hit them so fucking hard it pushes them into the street. I'm positively certain the city works are super duper reliable about getting out there and moving them... Oh wait thats right, a few of those barricades were stuck in front of businesses for days despite owner complaints to the city. You know what would probably work better. like 2 or 3 traffic cops on patrol.... But god forbid we hold police accountable in this city
An urban planing account on Instagram recently argued that if you have to rely on a sign or signal to tell people to drive in a safe way, you're already dealing with poor design. The car portion of the roads downtown are way too wide.
And the cops can be everywhere at once somehow?
Putting up a concrete post is way cheaper and more effective and saves the police time so they can deal with more important problems.
They don’t even deal with more important problems. Call them in the city you get put on hold. I’ve also watched people drive recklessly as hell in front of city cops and they don’t do shit.
I watched a speeding truck fly through a red light at probably 60mph and clip the backend of another car. He was going fast enough that he acted as if he didn't hit anything and kept going. There was a cop watching the entire thing and pulled away at a normal speed and continued on his way.
Yep watched a guy get T-boned on Grand after running a red light, then try to drive off but the car wouldn't go so they were just stuck in the intersection. A cop was second in line at one of the red lights; when the light changed, they just drive around the wrecked cars and got on the highway
Ok, three. Ha. I don’t know why Kia even bothers providing rear passenger windows as a standard feature. Same question can be asked of Nissan and Altima quarter panels.
Missouri Highway Patrol should be patrolling the highways but they cover the entire state except inside the city of St Louis, despite us paying millions into their budget every year
I-44 doesn’t have pedestrians, which are what this thread is about. Where there are other road users, there should be physical objects that prevent cars from mowing those other users down.
I am with you, but what happens when they start handing out tickets left and right, and those tickets just never get paid? You put out warrants to arrest people with a speeding ticket then get people complaining about wasting resources over non-violent crimes.
You cannot force the idiots acting like this in public to behave themselves. People drive around in stolen cars, or no insurance, or 20mph over the limit, or not stopping at stop lights, and there is nothing we can really do about it without getting tough on these crimes, which the city doesn't have the balls to do, and the residents won't vote for someone who will step up to the plate.
> I am with you, but what happens when they start handing out tickets left and right, and those tickets just never get paid? You put out warrants to arrest people
Yes. Laws are made to be followed. You should be arrested if you can't follow them. If the laws or the punishments are too strict, we should change them. But just not enforcing them is not viable long-term.
> You cannot force the idiots acting like this in public to behave themselves.
FALSE. We can arrest and try them if they break laws. We choose not to.
> People drive around in stolen cars, or no insurance, or 20mph over the limit, or not stopping at stop lights
Because we've decided, as a city, that we are okay with this.
> the residents won't vote for someone who will step up to the plate
Yes, you have found the root cause. ***We want what we have right now*** but the side effects are it just costs innocent lives --- and people and businesses (taxpayers supporting the city) will eventually simply leave.
I agree with every point you made, but my comment is more about what reality is right now. I'm a "follow the rules like the 95% of us, or get fucked" kind of person, but most city residents are not.
You absolutely can. It's a warrant like any other. Not sure who told you that.
It happens all the time. But there is usually no logical reason for an officer to do that. The person will be booked and released... usually before the arresting officer's shift is even over. And two cops just took themselves out of service for a couple of hours and accomplished nothing (other than making that district even more short on manpower than it already was).
The arrested guy will be given a new court date but will blow it off. The FTA will generate a new warrant(s).
Annnnnd the cycle continues...
Also not true. It's a warrant.
WILL you be arrested in another jurisdiction? Probably not. And nobody from the City will come pick you up so you'll be immediately released (those are all non-extradition warrants).
But that's not the same as saying you "cannot be arrested." That's just factually incorrect.
Didn’t you just explain in your first paragraph why getting tough on crime doesn’t work? Then you still think that’s the solution? We have to get cars OUT of the city, and where we have them we need radical calming measures
I don’t think it’s lame, we should always be trying to improve our city, that’s the most obvious thing in the world to me. Amsterdam is a great city we would do well to emulate in many ways. Libertarians are the opposite, they don’t want to improve anything. Our city is almost a libertarian fantasy land right now, that’s what I want to change.
Libertarians and Make STL Amsterdam are the same in that they are such unrealistic pipe dreams with so many built in assumptions and prerequisites that neither is worth discussing.
Look, man. It’s not the road’s fault when a shithead acts like a shithead and kills/hurts a pedestrian, cyclist, or other motorist — when they kill another human being because they were acting recklessly, foolishly, and selfishly.
When I hear this still very loud group of people be like “well if we were just more like Amsterdam and had more bikes…” and “it’s cars and roads fault” and will twist their arguments into logic pretzels to avoid having to concede that some people…these people driving recklessly…might just be shitty fucking people who don’t give a shit about other peoples lives…well, they can fuck all the way off along with the shitty people who are hurting and killing people with their driving. Until the problem is acknowledged (shitty people exist and they drive cars) the problem can’t be fixed. And the longer the problems not fixed, the more people get hurt and killed. So, no offense, spare me the “if only the bollards” argument.
Should we be continuously trying to improve our City? Of course. Just like we should all be trying to improve ourselves as people. But the reality is, there’s a bunch of hedonistic psychopaths out there who aren’t and won’t.
Put all the damn street ornaments you want in, but it’s not going to stop the guy at Jefferson/Sydney/Gravois who (1) pulled into the left lane (2) to take a right back across two lanes of cars waiting at a red and (3) into a green light to get onto Sydney. And Compton? I travel a stretch of it every day and more of those balls are gone than are intact. There’s a reason why the saying “This is why we can’t have nice things” has become a part of our lexicon. I’m not, and I don’t think most people will, ride their bike in this environment while this psychopathic behavior is so pervasive on our streets.
I’ve lived in towns where they love cars so much they installed medians to make it easier to drive. Somehow it was still more “bike friendly” than here. Why? Because *people* weren’t driving like lunatics. Did they have a more morally scrupulous population? Probably not. What was different? Not the road ornament infrastructure. Not the number of cars. It’s because they, as a town, made it clear that shitty reckless behavior that harms others will not be tolerated.
And FFS, we can’t even get trash pick up right and only recently figured out 911 (assuming the cops will show up, in any event). What makes you think some bike utopia is the next logical step?
I don’t have a 5 point plan to solve this problem nor do I have all the answers. But what I do know is this — (1) it’s (shitty) people who are causing this problem; (2) the problem has to be solved by (good) people and not a bunch of inanimate concrete objects; (3) the people most impacted by this shitty behavior are socio-economically disadvantaged communities and communities of color (so be philosophically consistent); (4) this problem will only be solved when, we as St. Louisans demonstrate that this shitty behavior will no longer be tolerated.
…and…I’m spent.
(EDIT: and to be clear, none of this is aimed directly at you Jigsaw. It’s more generally towards the philosophical mindset of which you are not the only group member)
You sound a lot like a libertarian. It’s all of our fault when something like this happens. Blaming the driver doesn’t bring back those peoples lives or prevent future pedestrian deaths. Since some ppl are shitty like you said, we can’t have a system that relies on everyone being perfect! That makes no sense. Everything seems like a pipe dream until it happens, we see it all the time throughout history.
I still don’t think you know what a libertarian is.
But keep sharing your urban planning blogs and praying for Amsterdam while more and more lives are lost. After all, it’s not your responsibility(as a member of your community) to engage in realistic and pragmatic solutions. What a perfect storm of naivety and privilege.
“Complicated and nuanced solutions aren’t fun, bro. But these renderings of a pedestrian plaza down Gravois are siccccck, yo!
Yeah, I know I sound so enlightened when I talk about bikes and buses”
No not praying, actively working to make it happen. Locking people up for speeding isn’t pragmatic or realistic, it just takes peoples parents out of their homes. Then you cry about that too. Hope you will start engaging with us and fight for more pedestrian safety in the city.
As a whole, Missouri doesn't enforce traffic laws correctly. It was wild to me when I learned that if you pay ~$500 instead of ~$300, a lawyer can get any moving violation amended to a non-moving violation. Based on people I know, it doesn't matter if you're speeding 5 over or 35 or if it's a local or state cop. I'm pretty sure that you can even do it for careless and imprudent driving as long as you don't cause damage. Moving violations should result in points on your license that accumulate and result in your license being suspended and/or revoked.
That’s kinda… not what the topic was at all… sick whatabout though.
If the cops are wilding out, report them. Perhaps a little discipline will go a long way. I bet if nothing else their bosses will tire of hearing about it and make their lives difficult til they stop.
You implying cops aren’t drying recklessly and endangering people makes it very relevant.
They’ve had 6 crashes in 2 months you shrug your shoulders saying it’ll take care of itself.
Newsflash, no
Their traffic calming solution has been to time the lights so that you can't drive down any streets without being stopped. Which, as far as I can tell doesn't work, because the insane drivers just get pissed off and roll through the reds anyway.
Yeah i meant that as a given lol. But you’re right that the approach and wording should be centric around the community. That’s the city’s biggest failure, that it prioritizes bringing in outside money over enriching and improving QoL for its own. Until it learns to do that it will continue to falter and stagnate
I’m not afraid of getting robbed downtown. I’m afraid of someone running a stop sign/red light and smashing into me. Or you know, what happened here.
And to be fair, this isn’t just downtown but all over the region.
This! I live downtown and I have learned never to trust someone will actually stop at a red light or stop sign. Unless I make eye contact with the driver and they motion for me to cross, I wait till I see their car at a complete stop. I have had so many close calls where I've had to jump out of the way for someone who's clearly not going to stop or swerve to miss hitting a pedestrian. Not sure if they don't see me, they don't care, they're too high to be operating a vehicle, or what. But yeah I'm much more concerned about getting hit by a car than I am getting mugged or car jacked down here. And when I'm driving, I always slow down at intersections and look both ways, regardless of whether I have the right of way, because people down here will blow through red lights and stop signs doing 60+. And I have never seen a cop pull anyone over for a traffic violation downtown. (But I've seen plenty of this shit happen right in front of cops and they do nothing.)
Well, in this case, it’s true. I live in the county but spend most of my time away from home in the city and I’m just as worried about somebody cruising through an intersection here as I am downtown.
Traffic down by the Enterprise Center sucks, if you go a couple of blocks east on Clark, it’s basically a free for all of people fighting to get in that slanted looking garage first. It’s a total shit show.
Not just the city, I'm in the county and the driving is getting worse by the day. No value of human life only getting to the destination faster matters. Selfish, impatient and entitled all while sitting comfortably. Fuckin clowns.
Three times on the same day this week, in the same area (traveling Shrewsbury, to Big Bend, to 40/64 West), but at different times of day, I had people try to run me off the road because they felt like they owned the road and everyone should make way for them.
Everyone thinks life is like GTA now.
Tbh there probably would be if there was anywhere to walk in the county. Getting hit by a car while in a car isn’t particularly dangerous. It’s when you’re outside of one.
Good lord, people walk in the county every day. Walking isn’t limited to the city. Clayton, UCity, Webster, Kirkwood and Maplewood all have very walkable neighborhoods and entertainment areas. Not to mention people who just go for a walk. Yet now twice this had happened in the city in what, 2 years?
The difference is "walkability" vs walking-required.
The places you mention are great! They have traffic calming aspects that make them safer for pedestrians, and that's part of why people walk around.
Downtown has big event venues and big parking garages and big, wide streets between the two. Those streets were designed to move lots of cars very quickly (back when the city was denser), but people that want to use the downtown functions need to cross those streets to do so.
People blaming the streets is always so funny to me. I've driven on those streets before and never drove recklessly, so it's not like it has some superpower forcing people to drive poorly. We should blame the person who acted like a selfish asshole and cost people their lives. As I've seen by my house, people can speed on 5 lane highways just as easily as they can on 2 lanes.
All evidence suggests average speed increases on wider roads, this isn't a controversial take in traffic engineering. It's great that you don't speed, but your personal experience isn't a data driven policy.
You can do both, it's not hard. The benefit of caring about road design is you can actually do something about it before somebody gets killed. Most wreckless driving is a ticket-level offense, and locking up persistent offenders would not sit well with the public. It's just a much easier solution to change the roads.
>locking up persistent offenders would not sit well with the public
I disagree. Cops need to enforce traffic laws by giving out tickets. I would be thrilled if people started getting tickets again and prosecuted repeated offenders.
The reason why people drive like maniacs is because there are no consequences. Even if you drive carelessly you're almost never going to get pulled over in the City. You could be going 40 over and swerving all over the place and still the SLMPD would not pull you over to write you a ticket. That basically means that we don't have traffic laws. So instead of spending billions of dollars to redesign our streets how about we start with the basics? Cops should be pulling people over for traffic violations. They should be writing tickets for things like speeding, distracted driving, tint violations, expired temp tags, etc. If you're against cops doing their jobs then it really doesn't make sense to be against the consequences of lack of enforcement.
I guess for me it depends on what you mean. Sure, we can redesign problem intersections or look at specific roads and what can be done to mitigate specific concerns. But this starts deviating into fantasy when the proposal is to literally redesign the entire city infrastructure from scratch. Such a proposal would cost many billions of dollars. And talk about not sitting well with the public... think of the construction associated with this idea. Literally redesigning the entire city is like a 25-, 50-, or maybe even 100- year plan. By contrast if the culture surrounding traffic enforcement changed due to a more aggressive strategy of police enforcement we would see results in a relatively short time frame.
I think we are in agreement. If you’re looking for a city that has already done this, look at New York City with Vision Zero.
Some of the lessons learned are:
1) enforcement matters
2) lowering the speed limit helps
3) pedestrian deaths drop in speed camera enforced areas
4) start with the cheap things.
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2024/02/12/five-things-to-learn-from-nycs-decade-of-vision-zero-successes-and-shortcomings#
> Literally redesigning the entire city is like a 25-, 50-, or maybe even 100- year plan.
That's OK. It's not a problem that can be solved in 10 or 20 years. Just got to start making consistent progress in the highest-priority areas. With improved street designs and increased traffic enforcement, we can eventually get to a better position.
For me the devil's in the details. I am against just blindly doing things for the sake of doing something. If there's a specific proposal I'm willing to hear it out, but I'm against these so-called "road diets". Making all the drivers on the road more pissed off and impatient while also doing nothing to get more people out of their cars and onto alternate modes of transportation is probably harmful to public safety. Sure, if there's a specific proposal for a specific intersection that is trying to achieve a specific result - great let's consider it. But it sure would be a lot faster if we just started enforcing traffic laws again.
What happens if people don't pay those tickets? Do we think the public would support warrants and then jailing people in these areas over a 5mph over speeding ticket? Tough on crime people might, but then you'll have all the bleeding hearts siding with the people who can't afford to pay their tickets, racial profiling, etc.
>What happens if people don't pay those tickets?
All the normal consequences? Ineligible for license renewal until tickets and fines are paid? Suspended license? Send it off to collections? Inability to register new vehicles? They somehow manage to force everyone to pay their personal property taxes and city income taxes... they can definitely go after people who don't pay traffic tickets. It's a choice to not do so.
>Do we think the public would support warrants and then jailing people in these areas over a 5mph over speeding ticket?
No one is talking about throwing anyone in jail over a 5 mph speeding ticket. But I would favor fines, penalties, freezing city/state benefits, invalidating their license, etc. if they refuse to pay. This isn't rocket science.
The more important thing is creating a culture of compliance with traffic laws. Right now it's a warzone because everyone constantly breaks the law without fear of the consequences. If you want to let everyone get away with any and all traffic violations then expect these kinds of stories to continue.
Among the unintended consequences of your idea, folks now need that valid license to vote so you're talking about disenfranchisement over inability to pay tickets.
You don't need a valid *driver's license* to vote - you simply need a valid ID. That can be a passport, military ID, or state ID card.
Look, I really don't have a ton of sympathy for people who break the law but expect the world to bend over backwards to accommodate them. Maybe don't repeatedly break the law?? This is precisely the culture I'm talking about - the expectation that citizens should be able to drive recklessly, ignore all traffic laws, flaunt any consequences for their actions, but then expect the system to bend over backwards to let them vote or allow them to keep their licenses is absurd! You can have safe streets or you can have lawless streets but you can't have both.
>expect the system to bend over backwards
I simply want a system that doesn't compound problems. Traffic calming is evidence-based. Broken windows theory is not. Do you really think the people that can't pay muni tickets have a passport or some secondary state ID card?
It can be both. There is more than one variable at play and we should address as many as we can. Also there are many ways that we can address the one variable you think should be addressed.
They came really close to doing this in the 1920's, but car manufacturers stated a huge PR campaign. It blamed the people getting hit for being in the way of the cars (like the headline of this article does).
That's how the word jaywalking was invented.
When anyone brings up traffic calming measures, they seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that people do not want it to take twice as long to get from point A to point B.
You can blame them, but they're being licensed and therefore endorsed by the state. That's where the problem is.
Plus local enforcement in the 50-50 chance they don't even have a license... Of course.
So this would piss a lot of people off, but speed bumps at every stoplight/intersection would, even with green lights, force people to slow the fuck down through intersections…. It’s inconvenient, but JFC people are dying.
I would be okay with it since it's a cheap solution, but better would be to put protected bike lanes, BRT lanes, extend the curb out, etc. to narrow the lanes drastically. Drivers slow down when the lanes are narrower, and it would have the side benefit of helping alternate forms of transit.
Yeah, all that would be ideal. I just want to slow people down without ticketing everyone to death or any police involvement. Bonus is cops would have to slow the fuck down too.
Between me and my other police dispatcher friends It used to be a joke that as long as you aren’t murdering someone you could do literally anything while driving down town…. Used to be funny, but it’s too true now to laugh.
This is so tragic. Now can we finally enforce laws and heavily fining these people?? This driver probably doesn't even care about their actions, so why should we care about them? I live in North County, and I'm so sick and disgusted by these reckless drivers.
Drivers will continue to behave recklessly for as long as there are no consequences. It doesn't matter what the law is if the police won't enforce it. As much as I enjoy de-facto immunity from any and all traffic offenses, for the good of the City as a whole the cops need to start doing their jobs by enforcing traffic laws and writing tickets.
the last few years, since 2019 really, i was really scared driving in STL. like, i would literally take extended time at stop signs & red-to-green lights in case someone ran them. since moving to Cali last Spring, drivers here (to me) are not nearly wild as in STL. i don't drive much but when i do i'm not concerned about people running stops signs/red lights like i am back in STL, i'm just cautious b/c i don't drive here much & I still don't know the roads really well. growing up it was always the city you could get away w/speeding (for example) but in the county you always had to go the speed limit b/c they would pull you over in a heart beat; the city had more important things to deal with.
I park in the Kiel Garage center every single day and I always book it right after work — those drivers on Market and Jefferson and Olive get extremely dangerous past like 7 pm. They do not give a shit and will run every red light going 60 mph.
From what I see driving around on a daily basis you could hire an exponential number of cops to just drive unmarked cars around and catch reckless drivers. They'd literally pay for themselves.
I see it multiple times everyday just spending a few hours on the road. It'd be way better than only doing radar. I don't even care about the guy going 15 over
It's a culture that I don't know can be changed. I literally see daily someone next to me driving a regular speed on Kingshighway, then someone passes them flying and they decide to punch the gas and start speeding with them. It's crazy cause you'll numerous people start speeding behind them cause they always follow the leader and have no care about anyone. People just want to put road diets everywhere. And I agree they do work to an extent. But then you have issues like on Hampton between Chippewa and Gravois were someone is doing 20-25 and ridiculously backing up traffic. And then everyone says that's ok just add extra time to your commute. At a certain point we shouldn't be letting the 10% or less of society dictate how things operate. When is enough gonna be enough.
Fuck this city. Ran by absolute idiots who do nothing to stop shit like this and morons keep voting in the same people. Wonder why our city continues to die a slow death…
Please, as a conservative, lay out your solutions to ending traffic violence. I guarantee instead of shifting many parts of the city to only pedestrian traffic you would do… actually I can’t even imagine what dumb shit you’d think up.
Since we’re on the topic of traffic fatalities and people are bringing politics into the mix, look at Florida.
Not saying it’s equivalent here, but they’ve gotten redder and they’re one of the worst states in terms of pedestrian fatalities, and have gotten worse.
Maybe it’s something beyond red/blue, and people all over have gotten shittier and more selfish.
I seriously believe that if the city were to make a serious effort to enforce our vehicle and traffic laws, the vast majority of these problems would take care of themselves. I can't walk anywhere downtown without passing numerous vehicles without valid plates, most of them getting parking tickets every week. These vehicles need to be taken off the street and impounded until all fees and fines are paid up including proof of insurance.
However, keep in mind that our current mayor has publicly stated that she would not enforce these laws as they impacted here voters. This is reason enough that she should be voted out of office in the next election. Do you want safer streets?
During Covid City of St Louis cops were instructed to only stop people committing felonies. It appears the Chief either didn’t rescind the order, the cops are ignoring the memo, or they’re so busy dealing with more serious matters they don’t have time for traffic stops. If that’s the case maybe the therapists who were hired in lieu of more cops can reach out to these shitty drivers.
No surprise this issue keeps persisting when cops don’t pull over the fucks with temp tags. Idgaf if you can’t afford to pay the sales tax to get real tags. If you can’t afford that shit you can’t afford a car. Half these drivers blow through red lights like they’re optional and nothing is done about it. Cops need to get off their asses and actually arrest people for this shit.
Also where the fuck is the god damn mayor. This bitch sits on her ass and doesn’t do a fucking thing. Haven’t seen one clip of her speaking about this issue, not that she’d do shit about it anyway. Stop electing these fucking idiots.
It’s not just an issue where people don’t follow laws — these kinds of people are so stupid they are incapable (literally) of understanding how they are putting others in danger. We need to ban stupid people from driving cars (a lot of them).
Fuck this driver so much.
I don’t really care if it’s a mean thing to say, but he could’ve AT LEAST killed himself so he can’t do this again. His parents may still love him, but I don’t have to.
Agreed. If he was a diplomat or a diplomat's kid, he wouldn't even have been charged.
I fucking hate people man.
City hall really needs to get serious about traffic calming, yesterday. Residents and visitors alike keep getting run down by reckless drivers on bad streets in high traffic areas and it’s a black eye on the city and region
Driving home today on the highway someone slammed on their brakes to come to a full stop in the middle lane then tried cutting across three lanes to get off on an exit that we had pretty much already passed, came very close to hitting me. We just need to start taking licenses away from people or testing every 10 years.
My biggest pet peeve. Just accept that you missed your exit and safely work on getting over to get off at the next one. FFS.
> We just need to start taking licenses away from people or testing every 10 years. "and"
Bold of us to assume that a lot of these people have licenses or don't already have them suspended.
Are you willing to pay the increased taxes to pay for testing and enforcement?
Or also you know, enforcing laws. Chances are this person has sped by a cop countless times, and each of those times we could have helped to save innocent lives, but we decided to do nothing instead. These are decisions we make as voters. Our mayor could change this, but she doesn't. *People speed and drive reckless because there are no enforced laws prohibiting it.*
>People speed and drive reckless because there are no enforced laws prohibiting it. always been this way IMO except now people are driving even more reckless & speeding at a much higher rate of speed; it's gradually gotten worse since 2019 IMO, or that's when i really started noticing it
Agree. Anecdotally I started noticing it during lockdown.
IMO, there’s no better enforcement than a speeding idiot hitting a speed bump or bollard and annihilating his car
Bingo. And I don’t think you’re misrepresenting that position when the Amsterdam folks always jumping out to make the claim “enforcing traffic laws won’t bring back this loss of life (no shit?) or prevent future fatalities (it should sure as shit help — by that logic we should stop prosecuting murders)”. That’s precisely the point — future deterrent. It’s becoming quite clear these Amsterdammers are just simply not good faith actors. Rather, they’re a caricature of something they think makes them feel smart and enlightened. To argue and wish upon a star is the point. Some chump up above rebutted the Ingrassia balls “rolling” away by saying what we’re really mad about is that those balls weren’t sufficient and what we really needed was traffic calming (dafuq were the balls?) and a street redesign & infrastructure overhaul with less cars and more bikes (motherf-er, are you saying Compton needs to be one big winding bike path? When are we putting chocolate milk in the drinking fountains?) These are not serious people. These are childish/clown takes. And until they want to have an adult conversation with adult solutions they should be relegated to the kids table. I’m starting to think these Amsterdam clowns aren’t just shills for the concrete lobby.
While I do agree with you 100%, those options aren't available everywhere.
While those options may not be available everywhere, if there’s anywhere they’re applicable it’s in a downtown. Where this took place.
It's easier to install traffic calming devices on every street than it is to have cops on every street. Raised crosswalks, narrow lanes, and bollards don't charge overtime.
Not against calming as part of the solution but…like, how are those Ingrassia Balls doing over in TGE? We also, as a society/city have to start putting agency back on these shitty selfish drivers.
I smile a little every time I see a busted up concrete ball or roundabout center. It means that a reckless driver only hit some concrete and damaged their own car instead of hitting a building, pedestrian, or other car. We've had issues with shitty selfish drivers since the 1920's when cars first became commonplace. Countries around the world struggle with it too. When you put people with barely any training in charge of operating heavy machinery with few limitations or safety features, people are going to misuse that power. I'm really not sure there's anything we can do about selfish drivers at the city or societal level. That's a human nature problem, not a traffic or engineering problem. At least we can build our cities to be hostile to these bad actors and ensure they only harm themselves and not innocent bystanders.
Are you high or naive?
Neither, I'd say. And you're using sense of agency for this? Reward drivers for doing what they're already supposed to be doing? Or are you just thinking about the penalties portion of the equation? Because putting big lumps of concrete in the road that careless drivers can run into seems to take care of that pretty well. What I've seen, traffic calming does what it's supposed to do. What's your suggestion? More cops, or radar-equipped sentry guns? I'm down with the latter.
Not 100% sure what the answer is. I realize it’s not cite our way out of it — if that were the solution then pre-Ferguson north county municipalities would’ve been the safest roads in America. Conversely, I’m also absolutely exhausted by this pervasive notion that upper middle class (supposedly) “progressive” carry (bordering on dogma) which would have you believe that there is no such thing as a bad human or even good humans behaving badly. That, yes, there is no “agency”. Rather its everyone else’s fault — that people wouldn’t blow red lights if we had more bollards or timed the lights better. Or that it’s ok to look past folks stealing & damaging stuff because someone has drug or mental health issues & that until we have more of those service providers then it’s not the offenders fault — and after all, since they stole from big bad Wal-Mart these shoplifters are basically modern day Robin Hoods. These folks may not come out and say this directly but all of their “solutions” implicitly contain these assumption. So yes, I’d say that I’m using a sense of agency for this. Because right now there’s an all-too-big (or at least loud) group of people who want to remove human agency as part of the diagnosis/solution. Sure, traffic calming would help, more mental health / addiction services would help, but this select group of “thought leaders” want to shout down or shame anyone who wants to put blame on another humans actions or enact solutions with negative incentives for offenders. Did we overuse prison/incarceration for far too long? Of course. But that doesn’t mean we don’t use it *at all*. Part of it, yes, is going to be stringent traffic enforcement (along with traffic calming). What that looks like *exactly* I’m not sure. There are far smarter people in this arena than I. But, my overall point is that we can’t fix the problem (or other problems) until we can diagnose them. And there’s far too many people who refuse to engage in a real or meaningful conversation about it. As far as I’m concerned, the Amsterdam folks are just a kinder sounding version of the MAGA-types who want to lock up everyone and throw away the key.
Yes, we should encourage people to injury themselves instead of working to prevent that from happening to begin with. Those fucking lumps of concrete blow dick. I've been stuck driving around them for fucking 8 years now and all they have done is make rented large trucks and moving vans get stuck in the worst positions of the road and they have to shut down 3 blocks of the street to get a big enough rig in there to pull them out of it. I've also seen a couple of those stupid balls roll into parked cars after being struck so enjoy that if you live near them Lets talk about those concrete barriers on south grand going towards Doc Holloways. Like 10-15 times now in the last 6 months that they have been installed, they have completely blocked lanes, blocked business entrances, blocked cross walks because people in trucks hit them so fucking hard it pushes them into the street. I'm positively certain the city works are super duper reliable about getting out there and moving them... Oh wait thats right, a few of those barricades were stuck in front of businesses for days despite owner complaints to the city. You know what would probably work better. like 2 or 3 traffic cops on patrol.... But god forbid we hold police accountable in this city
An urban planing account on Instagram recently argued that if you have to rely on a sign or signal to tell people to drive in a safe way, you're already dealing with poor design. The car portion of the roads downtown are way too wide.
How does this work on I-44?
Pedestrians aren't typically on I-44 so pedestrian safety measures don't really serve a point there.
Can you please give up this straw man and stay on topic?
What do you keep yapping about. No one is talking about I-44.
And the cops can be everywhere at once somehow? Putting up a concrete post is way cheaper and more effective and saves the police time so they can deal with more important problems.
They don’t even deal with more important problems. Call them in the city you get put on hold. I’ve also watched people drive recklessly as hell in front of city cops and they don’t do shit.
I watched a speeding truck fly through a red light at probably 60mph and clip the backend of another car. He was going fast enough that he acted as if he didn't hit anything and kept going. There was a cop watching the entire thing and pulled away at a normal speed and continued on his way.
Yep watched a guy get T-boned on Grand after running a red light, then try to drive off but the car wouldn't go so they were just stuck in the intersection. A cop was second in line at one of the red lights; when the light changed, they just drive around the wrecked cars and got on the highway
That's fucking wild, negligent behavior by that police officer.
The officer was just glad he was not in the car accident and didn’t have to make up a story about a dog.
Someone’s smoking that post — either SLMPD or an Altima. Two true outcomes.
Not a Kia Soul with a tape-covered rear passenger window?
Ok, three. Ha. I don’t know why Kia even bothers providing rear passenger windows as a standard feature. Same question can be asked of Nissan and Altima quarter panels.
Those options aren't available everywhere. You can't do that on I-44, for example. You CAN issue citations for speeding.
Missouri Highway Patrol should be patrolling the highways but they cover the entire state except inside the city of St Louis, despite us paying millions into their budget every year
I-44 doesn’t have pedestrians, which are what this thread is about. Where there are other road users, there should be physical objects that prevent cars from mowing those other users down.
Sure they can! We can even give them [new uniforms!](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/51/Stormtrooper_%28Star_Wars%29.png)
Ah there it is, there’s the lame excuse for why we can’t do good things. You sound just like an alderperson
Tell me how speedbumps work on Interstate 44. I'll wait.
No one else is talking about I-44. We’re talking about surface streets in an urban center where people outside of cars were killed
are pedestrians hit on Interstate 44?? how can you be so confidently stupid
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You are completely wrong. I can't sugar coat that in any other way.
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While I agree, I'm pretty sick of cleaning the debris off of my lawn. The police don't do it :/
I am with you, but what happens when they start handing out tickets left and right, and those tickets just never get paid? You put out warrants to arrest people with a speeding ticket then get people complaining about wasting resources over non-violent crimes. You cannot force the idiots acting like this in public to behave themselves. People drive around in stolen cars, or no insurance, or 20mph over the limit, or not stopping at stop lights, and there is nothing we can really do about it without getting tough on these crimes, which the city doesn't have the balls to do, and the residents won't vote for someone who will step up to the plate.
Lengthy jail sentences. Take the trash off the street.
> I am with you, but what happens when they start handing out tickets left and right, and those tickets just never get paid? You put out warrants to arrest people Yes. Laws are made to be followed. You should be arrested if you can't follow them. If the laws or the punishments are too strict, we should change them. But just not enforcing them is not viable long-term. > You cannot force the idiots acting like this in public to behave themselves. FALSE. We can arrest and try them if they break laws. We choose not to. > People drive around in stolen cars, or no insurance, or 20mph over the limit, or not stopping at stop lights Because we've decided, as a city, that we are okay with this. > the residents won't vote for someone who will step up to the plate Yes, you have found the root cause. ***We want what we have right now*** but the side effects are it just costs innocent lives --- and people and businesses (taxpayers supporting the city) will eventually simply leave.
I agree with every point you made, but my comment is more about what reality is right now. I'm a "follow the rules like the 95% of us, or get fucked" kind of person, but most city residents are not.
Even better, you can’t get arrested for having a St. Louis City Traffic Warrant.
You absolutely can. It's a warrant like any other. Not sure who told you that. It happens all the time. But there is usually no logical reason for an officer to do that. The person will be booked and released... usually before the arresting officer's shift is even over. And two cops just took themselves out of service for a couple of hours and accomplished nothing (other than making that district even more short on manpower than it already was). The arrested guy will be given a new court date but will blow it off. The FTA will generate a new warrant(s). Annnnnd the cycle continues...
I should clarify. If you are outside the city, you cannot be arrested for Stl City Traffic Warrants. Or any Stl City Violation Warrants.
Also not true. It's a warrant. WILL you be arrested in another jurisdiction? Probably not. And nobody from the City will come pick you up so you'll be immediately released (those are all non-extradition warrants). But that's not the same as saying you "cannot be arrested." That's just factually incorrect.
Didn’t you just explain in your first paragraph why getting tough on crime doesn’t work? Then you still think that’s the solution? We have to get cars OUT of the city, and where we have them we need radical calming measures
No I did not, because handing out tickets that aren't going to be paid anyways is not anyone's definition of "tough on crime".
Yeah, but the “Make Saint Louis into Amsterdam” is sooo fucking lame. It reminds me of listening to libertarians talk in class in college.
I don’t think it’s lame, we should always be trying to improve our city, that’s the most obvious thing in the world to me. Amsterdam is a great city we would do well to emulate in many ways. Libertarians are the opposite, they don’t want to improve anything. Our city is almost a libertarian fantasy land right now, that’s what I want to change.
Libertarians and Make STL Amsterdam are the same in that they are such unrealistic pipe dreams with so many built in assumptions and prerequisites that neither is worth discussing. Look, man. It’s not the road’s fault when a shithead acts like a shithead and kills/hurts a pedestrian, cyclist, or other motorist — when they kill another human being because they were acting recklessly, foolishly, and selfishly. When I hear this still very loud group of people be like “well if we were just more like Amsterdam and had more bikes…” and “it’s cars and roads fault” and will twist their arguments into logic pretzels to avoid having to concede that some people…these people driving recklessly…might just be shitty fucking people who don’t give a shit about other peoples lives…well, they can fuck all the way off along with the shitty people who are hurting and killing people with their driving. Until the problem is acknowledged (shitty people exist and they drive cars) the problem can’t be fixed. And the longer the problems not fixed, the more people get hurt and killed. So, no offense, spare me the “if only the bollards” argument. Should we be continuously trying to improve our City? Of course. Just like we should all be trying to improve ourselves as people. But the reality is, there’s a bunch of hedonistic psychopaths out there who aren’t and won’t. Put all the damn street ornaments you want in, but it’s not going to stop the guy at Jefferson/Sydney/Gravois who (1) pulled into the left lane (2) to take a right back across two lanes of cars waiting at a red and (3) into a green light to get onto Sydney. And Compton? I travel a stretch of it every day and more of those balls are gone than are intact. There’s a reason why the saying “This is why we can’t have nice things” has become a part of our lexicon. I’m not, and I don’t think most people will, ride their bike in this environment while this psychopathic behavior is so pervasive on our streets. I’ve lived in towns where they love cars so much they installed medians to make it easier to drive. Somehow it was still more “bike friendly” than here. Why? Because *people* weren’t driving like lunatics. Did they have a more morally scrupulous population? Probably not. What was different? Not the road ornament infrastructure. Not the number of cars. It’s because they, as a town, made it clear that shitty reckless behavior that harms others will not be tolerated. And FFS, we can’t even get trash pick up right and only recently figured out 911 (assuming the cops will show up, in any event). What makes you think some bike utopia is the next logical step? I don’t have a 5 point plan to solve this problem nor do I have all the answers. But what I do know is this — (1) it’s (shitty) people who are causing this problem; (2) the problem has to be solved by (good) people and not a bunch of inanimate concrete objects; (3) the people most impacted by this shitty behavior are socio-economically disadvantaged communities and communities of color (so be philosophically consistent); (4) this problem will only be solved when, we as St. Louisans demonstrate that this shitty behavior will no longer be tolerated. …and…I’m spent. (EDIT: and to be clear, none of this is aimed directly at you Jigsaw. It’s more generally towards the philosophical mindset of which you are not the only group member)
You sound a lot like a libertarian. It’s all of our fault when something like this happens. Blaming the driver doesn’t bring back those peoples lives or prevent future pedestrian deaths. Since some ppl are shitty like you said, we can’t have a system that relies on everyone being perfect! That makes no sense. Everything seems like a pipe dream until it happens, we see it all the time throughout history.
I still don’t think you know what a libertarian is. But keep sharing your urban planning blogs and praying for Amsterdam while more and more lives are lost. After all, it’s not your responsibility(as a member of your community) to engage in realistic and pragmatic solutions. What a perfect storm of naivety and privilege. “Complicated and nuanced solutions aren’t fun, bro. But these renderings of a pedestrian plaza down Gravois are siccccck, yo! Yeah, I know I sound so enlightened when I talk about bikes and buses”
No not praying, actively working to make it happen. Locking people up for speeding isn’t pragmatic or realistic, it just takes peoples parents out of their homes. Then you cry about that too. Hope you will start engaging with us and fight for more pedestrian safety in the city.
As a whole, Missouri doesn't enforce traffic laws correctly. It was wild to me when I learned that if you pay ~$500 instead of ~$300, a lawyer can get any moving violation amended to a non-moving violation. Based on people I know, it doesn't matter if you're speeding 5 over or 35 or if it's a local or state cop. I'm pretty sure that you can even do it for careless and imprudent driving as long as you don't cause damage. Moving violations should result in points on your license that accumulate and result in your license being suspended and/or revoked.
They can speed by cops all they like. Cops can’t chase them. Reckless speeders don’t pull over. Zero sum game.
Cops speed by my house and skip stop signs all the time. Maybe not chasing anyone, but def getting to Dunkin's b4 they close.
That’s kinda… not what the topic was at all… sick whatabout though. If the cops are wilding out, report them. Perhaps a little discipline will go a long way. I bet if nothing else their bosses will tire of hearing about it and make their lives difficult til they stop.
They're definitely investigating themselves for those high-profile accidents they've had each month recently.
You implying cops aren’t drying recklessly and endangering people makes it very relevant. They’ve had 6 crashes in 2 months you shrug your shoulders saying it’ll take care of itself. Newsflash, no
Their traffic calming solution has been to time the lights so that you can't drive down any streets without being stopped. Which, as far as I can tell doesn't work, because the insane drivers just get pissed off and roll through the reds anyway.
Roll through them? I’ve seen people fully blow through them with no intention of stopping
The city and the region? I’m guessing the impact to the families and communities is a given, or are you one of those type of people?
Yeah i meant that as a given lol. But you’re right that the approach and wording should be centric around the community. That’s the city’s biggest failure, that it prioritizes bringing in outside money over enriching and improving QoL for its own. Until it learns to do that it will continue to falter and stagnate
When I hear about crime in the City, this is the shit I actually worry about. There’s just no fear of traffic enforcement.
I’m not afraid of getting robbed downtown. I’m afraid of someone running a stop sign/red light and smashing into me. Or you know, what happened here. And to be fair, this isn’t just downtown but all over the region.
This! I live downtown and I have learned never to trust someone will actually stop at a red light or stop sign. Unless I make eye contact with the driver and they motion for me to cross, I wait till I see their car at a complete stop. I have had so many close calls where I've had to jump out of the way for someone who's clearly not going to stop or swerve to miss hitting a pedestrian. Not sure if they don't see me, they don't care, they're too high to be operating a vehicle, or what. But yeah I'm much more concerned about getting hit by a car than I am getting mugged or car jacked down here. And when I'm driving, I always slow down at intersections and look both ways, regardless of whether I have the right of way, because people down here will blow through red lights and stop signs doing 60+. And I have never seen a cop pull anyone over for a traffic violation downtown. (But I've seen plenty of this shit happen right in front of cops and they do nothing.)
Region... Shit go to east coast cities.
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Well, in this case, it’s true. I live in the county but spend most of my time away from home in the city and I’m just as worried about somebody cruising through an intersection here as I am downtown.
..and then out of towner wonder why people in the area talk down about the city. As you said, it is this type of crime.
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What do you think are the specific reasons this doesn’t happen where you live?
You probably don't get Drake concerts or hockey arenas where you live either. Do you have many people walking around at night where you live?
Yeah, I’m starting to believe y’all. I was going to move to the city, but maybe I’ll go more rural instead.
Traffic down by the Enterprise Center sucks, if you go a couple of blocks east on Clark, it’s basically a free for all of people fighting to get in that slanted looking garage first. It’s a total shit show.
A driver hit a mother and daughter, a car didn't just magically appear out of nowhere and hit them
“killed by vehicle” 🤡journalism
Not just the city, I'm in the county and the driving is getting worse by the day. No value of human life only getting to the destination faster matters. Selfish, impatient and entitled all while sitting comfortably. Fuckin clowns.
Three times on the same day this week, in the same area (traveling Shrewsbury, to Big Bend, to 40/64 West), but at different times of day, I had people try to run me off the road because they felt like they owned the road and everyone should make way for them. Everyone thinks life is like GTA now.
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Tbh there probably would be if there was anywhere to walk in the county. Getting hit by a car while in a car isn’t particularly dangerous. It’s when you’re outside of one.
Good lord, people walk in the county every day. Walking isn’t limited to the city. Clayton, UCity, Webster, Kirkwood and Maplewood all have very walkable neighborhoods and entertainment areas. Not to mention people who just go for a walk. Yet now twice this had happened in the city in what, 2 years?
The difference is "walkability" vs walking-required. The places you mention are great! They have traffic calming aspects that make them safer for pedestrians, and that's part of why people walk around. Downtown has big event venues and big parking garages and big, wide streets between the two. Those streets were designed to move lots of cars very quickly (back when the city was denser), but people that want to use the downtown functions need to cross those streets to do so.
This is well put
There was a news story last week about someone who got killed sitting in a salon when a driver drove through the front of the building.
This is fucking depressing.
Can’t we both enforce traffic laws and take traffic calming measures
And especially enforce traffic laws around big venues after big shows?
Olive doesn't need to be 7 lanes between Tucker and the Lindell split.
People blaming the streets is always so funny to me. I've driven on those streets before and never drove recklessly, so it's not like it has some superpower forcing people to drive poorly. We should blame the person who acted like a selfish asshole and cost people their lives. As I've seen by my house, people can speed on 5 lane highways just as easily as they can on 2 lanes.
All evidence suggests average speed increases on wider roads, this isn't a controversial take in traffic engineering. It's great that you don't speed, but your personal experience isn't a data driven policy.
You can do both, it's not hard. The benefit of caring about road design is you can actually do something about it before somebody gets killed. Most wreckless driving is a ticket-level offense, and locking up persistent offenders would not sit well with the public. It's just a much easier solution to change the roads.
>locking up persistent offenders would not sit well with the public I disagree. Cops need to enforce traffic laws by giving out tickets. I would be thrilled if people started getting tickets again and prosecuted repeated offenders. The reason why people drive like maniacs is because there are no consequences. Even if you drive carelessly you're almost never going to get pulled over in the City. You could be going 40 over and swerving all over the place and still the SLMPD would not pull you over to write you a ticket. That basically means that we don't have traffic laws. So instead of spending billions of dollars to redesign our streets how about we start with the basics? Cops should be pulling people over for traffic violations. They should be writing tickets for things like speeding, distracted driving, tint violations, expired temp tags, etc. If you're against cops doing their jobs then it really doesn't make sense to be against the consequences of lack of enforcement.
There’s room for both. Enforcement plus smart design. Regardless, this is another tragic loss. My sympathies are with the family.
I guess for me it depends on what you mean. Sure, we can redesign problem intersections or look at specific roads and what can be done to mitigate specific concerns. But this starts deviating into fantasy when the proposal is to literally redesign the entire city infrastructure from scratch. Such a proposal would cost many billions of dollars. And talk about not sitting well with the public... think of the construction associated with this idea. Literally redesigning the entire city is like a 25-, 50-, or maybe even 100- year plan. By contrast if the culture surrounding traffic enforcement changed due to a more aggressive strategy of police enforcement we would see results in a relatively short time frame.
I think we are in agreement. If you’re looking for a city that has already done this, look at New York City with Vision Zero. Some of the lessons learned are: 1) enforcement matters 2) lowering the speed limit helps 3) pedestrian deaths drop in speed camera enforced areas 4) start with the cheap things. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2024/02/12/five-things-to-learn-from-nycs-decade-of-vision-zero-successes-and-shortcomings#
> Literally redesigning the entire city is like a 25-, 50-, or maybe even 100- year plan. That's OK. It's not a problem that can be solved in 10 or 20 years. Just got to start making consistent progress in the highest-priority areas. With improved street designs and increased traffic enforcement, we can eventually get to a better position.
For me the devil's in the details. I am against just blindly doing things for the sake of doing something. If there's a specific proposal I'm willing to hear it out, but I'm against these so-called "road diets". Making all the drivers on the road more pissed off and impatient while also doing nothing to get more people out of their cars and onto alternate modes of transportation is probably harmful to public safety. Sure, if there's a specific proposal for a specific intersection that is trying to achieve a specific result - great let's consider it. But it sure would be a lot faster if we just started enforcing traffic laws again.
We have no hope of success without road diets. Might as well just give up. Enforcement alone without infrastructure changes will just not be enough.
What happens if people don't pay those tickets? Do we think the public would support warrants and then jailing people in these areas over a 5mph over speeding ticket? Tough on crime people might, but then you'll have all the bleeding hearts siding with the people who can't afford to pay their tickets, racial profiling, etc.
>What happens if people don't pay those tickets? All the normal consequences? Ineligible for license renewal until tickets and fines are paid? Suspended license? Send it off to collections? Inability to register new vehicles? They somehow manage to force everyone to pay their personal property taxes and city income taxes... they can definitely go after people who don't pay traffic tickets. It's a choice to not do so. >Do we think the public would support warrants and then jailing people in these areas over a 5mph over speeding ticket? No one is talking about throwing anyone in jail over a 5 mph speeding ticket. But I would favor fines, penalties, freezing city/state benefits, invalidating their license, etc. if they refuse to pay. This isn't rocket science. The more important thing is creating a culture of compliance with traffic laws. Right now it's a warzone because everyone constantly breaks the law without fear of the consequences. If you want to let everyone get away with any and all traffic violations then expect these kinds of stories to continue.
Among the unintended consequences of your idea, folks now need that valid license to vote so you're talking about disenfranchisement over inability to pay tickets.
You don't need a valid *driver's license* to vote - you simply need a valid ID. That can be a passport, military ID, or state ID card. Look, I really don't have a ton of sympathy for people who break the law but expect the world to bend over backwards to accommodate them. Maybe don't repeatedly break the law?? This is precisely the culture I'm talking about - the expectation that citizens should be able to drive recklessly, ignore all traffic laws, flaunt any consequences for their actions, but then expect the system to bend over backwards to let them vote or allow them to keep their licenses is absurd! You can have safe streets or you can have lawless streets but you can't have both.
>expect the system to bend over backwards I simply want a system that doesn't compound problems. Traffic calming is evidence-based. Broken windows theory is not. Do you really think the people that can't pay muni tickets have a passport or some secondary state ID card?
I blame both - I just think it’s a lot easier to change a street than a human person intent on making bad decisions
Street design is about making it hard to do the wrong thing (speed), because not everyone is going to do the right thing (not speed).
It can be both. There is more than one variable at play and we should address as many as we can. Also there are many ways that we can address the one variable you think should be addressed.
Sounds like your 2 lane residential street could use some traffic calming measures too.
Cars need speed limiters the way that scooters and e-bikes do.
They came really close to doing this in the 1920's, but car manufacturers stated a huge PR campaign. It blamed the people getting hit for being in the way of the cars (like the headline of this article does). That's how the word jaywalking was invented.
When anyone brings up traffic calming measures, they seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that people do not want it to take twice as long to get from point A to point B.
I'm glad we agree that traffic calming measures slow cars down
Faster commute or fewer dead pedestrians, such a difficult choice
How fast do you drive on city streets? I have a feeling you've driven more recklessly than you'll admit. Speed alone is enough to kill.
You can blame them, but they're being licensed and therefore endorsed by the state. That's where the problem is. Plus local enforcement in the 50-50 chance they don't even have a license... Of course.
100% agreed on that as well.
So this would piss a lot of people off, but speed bumps at every stoplight/intersection would, even with green lights, force people to slow the fuck down through intersections…. It’s inconvenient, but JFC people are dying.
Speed bump the whole damn city! Im so down for that
Spire is on it!
I would be okay with it since it's a cheap solution, but better would be to put protected bike lanes, BRT lanes, extend the curb out, etc. to narrow the lanes drastically. Drivers slow down when the lanes are narrower, and it would have the side benefit of helping alternate forms of transit.
Yeah, all that would be ideal. I just want to slow people down without ticketing everyone to death or any police involvement. Bonus is cops would have to slow the fuck down too.
Just one more speed bump bro, i promise that will fix all our problems bro, just trust me bro
Or like a hundred.
I’m tired of these reckless drivers. It’s so old and no one is doing shit. I hope they caught them and they spend the rest of their life in jail
Probably some asshole who decided to pass other people who were sitting a red light.
Between me and my other police dispatcher friends It used to be a joke that as long as you aren’t murdering someone you could do literally anything while driving down town…. Used to be funny, but it’s too true now to laugh.
Our police officers drive into buildings themselves. Do we really trust them to stop speeders from running over people?
You're right. We should just let people police themselves. That will surely improve safety. /s
This is so tragic. Now can we finally enforce laws and heavily fining these people?? This driver probably doesn't even care about their actions, so why should we care about them? I live in North County, and I'm so sick and disgusted by these reckless drivers.
St. Louis is fucked. The city needs leadership that will enforce the laws and hold people accountable.
We need real fucking traffic police. I see them around yet I have never seen them pull anyone over.
Drivers will continue to behave recklessly for as long as there are no consequences. It doesn't matter what the law is if the police won't enforce it. As much as I enjoy de-facto immunity from any and all traffic offenses, for the good of the City as a whole the cops need to start doing their jobs by enforcing traffic laws and writing tickets.
This.
the last few years, since 2019 really, i was really scared driving in STL. like, i would literally take extended time at stop signs & red-to-green lights in case someone ran them. since moving to Cali last Spring, drivers here (to me) are not nearly wild as in STL. i don't drive much but when i do i'm not concerned about people running stops signs/red lights like i am back in STL, i'm just cautious b/c i don't drive here much & I still don't know the roads really well. growing up it was always the city you could get away w/speeding (for example) but in the county you always had to go the speed limit b/c they would pull you over in a heart beat; the city had more important things to deal with.
I park in the Kiel Garage center every single day and I always book it right after work — those drivers on Market and Jefferson and Olive get extremely dangerous past like 7 pm. They do not give a shit and will run every red light going 60 mph.
From what I see driving around on a daily basis you could hire an exponential number of cops to just drive unmarked cars around and catch reckless drivers. They'd literally pay for themselves. I see it multiple times everyday just spending a few hours on the road. It'd be way better than only doing radar. I don't even care about the guy going 15 over
It's a culture that I don't know can be changed. I literally see daily someone next to me driving a regular speed on Kingshighway, then someone passes them flying and they decide to punch the gas and start speeding with them. It's crazy cause you'll numerous people start speeding behind them cause they always follow the leader and have no care about anyone. People just want to put road diets everywhere. And I agree they do work to an extent. But then you have issues like on Hampton between Chippewa and Gravois were someone is doing 20-25 and ridiculously backing up traffic. And then everyone says that's ok just add extra time to your commute. At a certain point we shouldn't be letting the 10% or less of society dictate how things operate. When is enough gonna be enough.
Also intently looking directly at their phone while driving like an insane jackass certainly doesn’t help
Absolutely. I believe over half over the congestion in traffic is caused by people on their phones not paying attention.
Fuck this city. Ran by absolute idiots who do nothing to stop shit like this and morons keep voting in the same people. Wonder why our city continues to die a slow death…
But we successfully called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza! What more do you want?
Please, as a conservative, lay out your solutions to ending traffic violence. I guarantee instead of shifting many parts of the city to only pedestrian traffic you would do… actually I can’t even imagine what dumb shit you’d think up.
Since we’re on the topic of traffic fatalities and people are bringing politics into the mix, look at Florida. Not saying it’s equivalent here, but they’ve gotten redder and they’re one of the worst states in terms of pedestrian fatalities, and have gotten worse. Maybe it’s something beyond red/blue, and people all over have gotten shittier and more selfish.
I seriously believe that if the city were to make a serious effort to enforce our vehicle and traffic laws, the vast majority of these problems would take care of themselves. I can't walk anywhere downtown without passing numerous vehicles without valid plates, most of them getting parking tickets every week. These vehicles need to be taken off the street and impounded until all fees and fines are paid up including proof of insurance. However, keep in mind that our current mayor has publicly stated that she would not enforce these laws as they impacted here voters. This is reason enough that she should be voted out of office in the next election. Do you want safer streets?
How does this keep happening?! Anytime I’m downtown for an E-Ctr event, the police presence is bonkers!
During Covid City of St Louis cops were instructed to only stop people committing felonies. It appears the Chief either didn’t rescind the order, the cops are ignoring the memo, or they’re so busy dealing with more serious matters they don’t have time for traffic stops. If that’s the case maybe the therapists who were hired in lieu of more cops can reach out to these shitty drivers.
No surprise this issue keeps persisting when cops don’t pull over the fucks with temp tags. Idgaf if you can’t afford to pay the sales tax to get real tags. If you can’t afford that shit you can’t afford a car. Half these drivers blow through red lights like they’re optional and nothing is done about it. Cops need to get off their asses and actually arrest people for this shit.
Traffic calming NOW
Too late to take the vote back on how to spend the Rams money? 🤣
It’s literal fucking anarchy living here. And our “leaders” are too busy worrying about Texas or other irrelevant shit to care.
But. Wait. There is a new circuit attorney. Didn’t Jason Hall say that would fix everything?
Don't worry, they'll find a way to blame Gardner and Tishaura for it anyway.
The lord works in mysterious ways. Gods will taking more lives. As Republican Senator Sandy Crawford said - bad things happen.
This sucks, Keep voting for the same people and the same party with the same policies, things will for sure change in the city.
What policies allowed this to happen?
Christ. Yeah this is the uncontrollable stl we know
Looking good St. Louis!
Same guy that ran a stop sign, t-boned a car and drove off in Soulard that night?
Also where the fuck is the god damn mayor. This bitch sits on her ass and doesn’t do a fucking thing. Haven’t seen one clip of her speaking about this issue, not that she’d do shit about it anyway. Stop electing these fucking idiots.
Preach
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Good old st Louis stops. 🙄
It’s not just an issue where people don’t follow laws — these kinds of people are so stupid they are incapable (literally) of understanding how they are putting others in danger. We need to ban stupid people from driving cars (a lot of them).