It was an honor to participate in last week’s concert and silent auction for my friend Hannah Somers-Jones, a talented young musician who suffered serious injuries in a November car accident. Her medical bills will be in the many thousands of dollars, and her physical recovery will be even more painful.

I don’t want to turn this into a polemic on car accidents. What happened to Hannah could happen to anyone. She wasn’t even driving. She was riding in the back seat of a car that was run off the road by an oncoming vehicle.

When I’m out on my bicycle, I’m as vulnerable as anyone in a car. I ride shotgun with my girlfriend all the time. Sometimes I even drive. Even walking isn’t safe. If you live in the American car culture, as virtually all of us do, you run the daily risk of violent injury or death.

And yet when we tally the cost of the car culture, we tend to downplay the cost of car accidents in lost and interrupted lives, as well as the strain on our health care system. According to the American Automobile Association, car crashes cost nearly $300 billion per year in this country alone. Some 2.5 million Americans – nearly 7,000 per day – are treated in emergency rooms due to car accidents.

Driving has become marginally safer in recent years. Traffic deaths peaked in 2005 at just over 43,000. Now the figure is around 33,000. That’s a significant reduction. Despite the relentless drumbeat of car advertising, Americans, for the first time in a couple of generations, are driving less. Cars are getting safer, thanks to innovative technology that allows the vehicle itself to sense and avoid danger. Both approaches are commendable. In tandem, they can continue to reduce the carnage of the car culture that we accept too readily.

Humans are poor judges of comparative risk. We worry about flying in airplanes when the most dangerous part of flying is driving to the airport. Driving feels safer because many of us do it every day. Kids get licensed to drive at 16, but only a small percentage of them will ever get a pilot’s license. Driving a car gives you the illusion of control, but in a plane you are at the mercy of the pilot.

sildenafil generic sale Medicines usually advised are Tenuate, Bontril, Didrex and Xenical. Well-equipped infrastructure and well-qualified doctors http://raindogscine.com/?attachment_id=45 buy cheap levitra make a hospital ideal for trauma treatment. Proponents of cialis ukgue that the reports of the remedies are very encouraging. Quite frankly no levitra without prescription raindogscine.com one wants to go bald, except by choice. I’ve been a driving fool this darkest week of the year. I drove to Belfast and back on Monday for a dentist appointment. I rode down to Brooklin on Wednesday with my son to visit my folks. When we got back to town, I borrowed my girlfriend’s car to do some last-minute Christmas shopping.

Technically, the only one of these three trips for which a car was necessary was the middle one. I could have used a bus to get to my dentist’s office, and I’ve done that in the past, but it requires spending the day in Belfast. (The reverse isn’t true, by the way: a resident of the mid-coast cannot travel to Bangor and home again by bus on the same day.) And I could have gone out on foot in search of that final gift, but it would have taken a lot longer.

Some readers might claim that this recent relative driving binge undermines the premise of this blog. But as I’ve said many times, I’m not a purist. I’ve renewed my driver’s license twice since I stopped owning cars. We all live in the American car culture, whether we like it or not. Anyone who seeks to influence change in the world must first acknowledge the reality on the ground.

I think about this during those rare occasions when I’m driving in a vehicle alone. I have to remind myself that most of my friends do this on most days of the year. It’s absolutely normal and unremarkable to them. That was my reality, too, for most of my adult life.

I do believe that we have too many cars on the road, and that we should pursue policies that encourage alternatives to driving. Does that make me a hypocrite every time I slide behind the wheel of a car? I don’t think so. All I’m trying to do is start a conversation.

Especially at this time of year, we should remember that we’re all in this complicated world together. Sometimes we seem to be in complete control of our lives, hands on the wheel and the road wide open. But it only takes a second to shatter that illusion.

[wpdevart_like_box profile_id=”slowertraffic” connections=”show” width=”300″ height=”550″ header=”small” cover_photo=”show” locale=”en_US”]

Imagine that:
An endangered bat
Got in the way of a highway that
Shouldn’t ever be built.

It’s a lot easier to live with the consequences of bad poetry than of bad traffic planning. When I read that a proposed extension of Interstate 395 could be held up, or perhaps derailed completely, to protect the habitat of the northern long-eared bat, my sympathies naturally lay with the furry little night fliers. It could be a case of the blind leading the shortsighted.

The proposal in question is a bypass that would steer truck traffic away from residential streets in the Bangor, Maine area, by linking the Interstate Highway System to Route 9, a two-lane highway between Bangor and Calais that leads to the Canadian Maritimes. It might seem like a good thing to get the trucks out of town, but like most road expansion proposals, this one rests on a foundation of shaky assumptions.

In 2008, for the first time since the 1950s, Americans drove fewer miles than they had the previous year. Part of this was due to a spike in gas prices, but part of it was also due to a growing consciousness that we cannot continue to saturate the world with automobiles and automobile infrastructure. People are looking for alternatives.

We see evidence of this growing movement in the push for pedestrian-friendly downtowns, bicycle lanes, and improved public transportation. There is renewed interest in train travel. Long-distance trucking companies are having difficulty finding young drivers.

Yet public policy continues to promote more road building, which in turn encourages more driving, which exacerbates already dire environmental and economic problems.

Amongst all the drugs available in the market such as Kamagra, levitra 40 mg ,and a lot more. You levitra without prescription http://amerikabulteni.com/2011/10/03/cinsel-taciz-kurbanlarindan-new-york%E2%80%99ta-%E2%80%98surtuk%E2%80%99-yuruyusu/ need to be patient as natural treatments will take some time before you see any significant result. For the young women’s anemia, some of them are due to psychological issues where the individual suffers from mental pressure, depression commander viagra cases, risk based worries, tension, stress and mood pressures. Some of these are the levitra cost of sales tablets, jelly, and Kamagra gels. And it’s not that no one has seen this coming. In her seminal 1997 book, Asphalt Nation, Jane Holtz Kay wrote:

For decades traffic experts have observed the capacity of more highways to simply breed more traffic. “If you build it, they will come,” is the bleak truth confirmed by science and history. “Generated traffic” is the professional phrase used to describe traffic generated by increased roads.

In other words, you can’t build your way out of traffic congestion, because as soon as you build a new road, new drivers will show up to quickly fill it to capacity. We’ve seen this happen time and again. Interstate 495 around Boston has worse traffic than the city it was built to steer traffic away from. Building new roads encourages people to drive instead of seeking alternatives. It’s an unimaginative approach that no longer works, and in fact creates its own problems, from suburban sprawl to air pollution to loss of animal habitat to reduced quality of human life.

Instead of paving the way for more cars and trucks, we need to focus on creative, forward-looking solutions that reduce the number of vehicles on the road, and thus reduce the need for new road construction. Were challenged to maintain the roads and bridges we already have. Why add to a problem of our own making?

For similar reasons, the long-discussed east-west highway across Maine is a bad idea whose time has passed. The ports of Atlantic Canada are already linked to the American heartland by rail, over much the same route. Moving freight over long distances is much cheaper by train. “Intermodal” transportation, in which truck trailers can be directly loaded onto and off of rail cars, saving trucks for shorter, local trips, is the wave of the future. The American Association of Railroads has estimated that if just 10% of current truck volume were shifted to intermodal, more than a billion gallons of fuel would be conserved each year.

I remember when a Canadian passenger train plied that route, with stops in Brownville Junction and Greenville in the wee hours of the night. In the morning you’d be in Montreal. Franklin Roosevelt came up to Eastport on the train on his way to Campobello. Cars and trucks haven’t ruled for very long. We should not plan future transportation projects on the assumption that they will rule forever.

More importantly, Maine must not yoke its future to wasteful and costly modes of transportation when better alternatives are just over the horizon. We need to stop building new roads and fix the existing ones. We need to stop yanking up railroad tracks to create recreational trails. We need to continue the movement away from a car for every adult American.

Every road not built encourages us in a better direction. So I say bravo to the bats, for hanging in there.

[wpdevart_like_box profile_id=”slowertraffic” connections=”show” width=”300″ height=”550″ header=”small” cover_photo=”show” locale=”en_US”]

 

São Paulo, Brazil is the largest city in the Western Hemisphere and the 13^th most populous city in the world. It has also been, until recently, “a case study of dystopian sprawl,” according to a recent feature story by Simon Romero in the New York Times.

But Romero reports that a new mayor with a vision is changing things.

“Drawing inspiration from policies in New York, Bogotá, Paris and other cities,” Romero writes, mayor Fernando Haddad has “embarked on the construction of hundreds of miles of bicycle lanes and corridors for buses to blaze past slow-moving cars, while expanding sidewalks, lowering speed limits, limiting public parking and occasionally shutting down prominent avenues entirely to cars.”

I’ve never been to São Paulo, but the principle of “traffic calming” has applications worldwide, including here in Maine, where the renovation of Bangor’s Main Street is already enhancing safety and quality of life.

Most definitions of traffic calming, according to the web site trafficcalming.org, focus on engineering measures that change driver behavior. Rotaries are an example of this. In my old hometown, Blue Hill, a rotary has replaced an intersection once notorious for gruesome accidents. In Bangor, the raised islands on Main Street give drivers something to look at besides other cars. They slow down as a result. Not only does the former four-lane strip look a whole lot better than it did a year ago, it’s a whole lot safer, too.

Traffic designers all over the world are discovering that a mixture of automobiles, pedestrians, bicycles, buses and trains makes communities more efficient and more livable. Still, there’s a learning curve for drivers accustomed to having everything designed around the car. Some drivers respond angrily when they can’t find a parking space, or when they have to cede a lane to a bicycle. In São Paulo, Romero reports, results have been mixed. Accidents are down, traffic is flowing a little less sluggishly, but incidents of road rage are common.

In her book Divorce Your Car! Katie Alvord poses the question: Why is there no pedestrian road rage? A British study suggests several answers. The inside of a car straddles the line between public and private space; we’re on our best behavior in one but not the other. When you’re stuck in a traffic jam, you’re stuck, unlike pedestrians and cyclists, who can simply go around; impotence leads to frustration. Drivers can’t directly communicate with each other beyond easily misconstrued gestures; it’s easier to apologize or express good will face-to-face and on foot. Driving is stressful; walking releases stress. And so on.
Whatever may viagra canada overnight be the demand of the clients, Saudi Dutest has the capability to provide the best relief from body pains, besides bringing down the blood sugar level. Step 2: invigorating spleen for diuresis is to promote the absorption of generic price viagra hydrops. These non-drug, alternative medicine treatments may also help with you could check here ordine cialis on line angina, high blood pressure and other cardiovascular problems, according to the study, which was paid for by the patient. Going for generic kinds of such drugs is the optimum choice but this anti-impotency drug is expensive and not always successful. pill sildenafil
Traffic calming is designed not only to make driving less stressful, but also to encourage people to explore alternatives. For decades, public traffic policy has meant building more roads and parking lots, while public transportation and pedestrian infrastructure languished. Drivers and car owners have become accustomed to having it their way, like a hamburger handed out a drive-through window in less than a minute. That is beginning to change, and some people don’t like it.

I was once asked by a friend I’d invited sailing: “Are you one of those nice guys on land who turns into Captain Bligh on his boat?” No, but I have been Jekyll and Hyde behind the wheel. I’ve experienced road rage. So have most drivers, at one time or another.

I’ve screamed at engines that wouldn’t start. I’ve flipped people off in traffic. I’ve leaned on the horn when the cars ahead of me won’t move. I behaved badly at times in my driving life. I’m not normally that way. Most people aren’t. A car seems to convey a degree of immunity from the norms of everyday behavior: courtesy, and respect for one another.

But that’s what the car culture hath wrought: a harried world where we’re all in a hurry to get somewhere. It’s more important to get from driveway to drive-through to office than it is to stop and greet a neighbor, or look at the trees.

Alvord’s author picture shows her on a bicycle towing a trailer, wearing a tee shirt that reads: One Less Car. It’s a reminder that every bicyclist – along with every bus passenger and pedestrian – potentially removes an automobile from the traffic mix. This means less crowded streets, less demand for parking, fewer traffic jams, fewer opportunities for road rage.

The next time you’re driving – or walking, or bicycling, or riding a bus – down Bangor’s Main Street, take a moment to admire the surroundings. Slow down, look around. Beautiful, isn’t it: the river, the new buildings, the autumn leaves? And the street itself looks good. The traffic seems… calmer, somehow.

[wpdevart_like_box profile_id=”slowertraffic” connections=”show” width=”300″ height=”550″ header=”small” cover_photo=”show” locale=”en_US”]