Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Another cause for concern …

… Pedestrian Fatalities, Sidewalks, Race | by Rus Bowden | Jul, 2021 | Medium.

Well, I started life in North Philly and my family drummed into me how important it was to be careful when crossing the street. I noticed that when my daughter Jennifer's two sons were younger and would meet me in Center City (they live outside the city) that they didn't even look at traffic lights. I have also noticed that one must be especially careful these days, what with drivers gabbing on their phones and sometimes even texting while driving. A couple of years ago, I was crossing the street not far from where I live and a guy making a turn didn't even notice me until the person sitting next to him alerted him. More people should be ticketed for blocking crosswalks.  I could go one, but I think everybody will get the idea,

14 comments:

  1. Sometimes a careless driver strikes a pedestrian, and sometimes a careless pedestrian steps in front of a moving car. And sometimes both driver and pedestrian are blameless, but a pure accident happens. Statistics are unlikely to tell us how many of each kind of case -- not even if all the circumstances could be known, which is generally impossible.

    But then, on top of all that, to blame traffic accidents on racism really takes the booby prize.

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  2. If you’ve ever hit a pedestrian or you’ve ever been hit, you know that the driver is nearly always at fault.

    When a driver intentionally bumps off a black pedestrian, you cannot get more racist than that.

    If you do not think that it’s systemic racism that has led to conditions for blacks such that they are twice as likely to be killed for taking a walk, for all the centuries they have been living in the country, then there’s a booby prize waiting. Now that we know, it surely is systemic racism backed by racist decision makers, not to make it right.

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  3. Why did this double up? Must be the phone. Anyway, discussion much appreciated.

    Thanks for your take too, Frank

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  4. "If you've ever hit a pedestrian or you've ever been hit, you know that the driver is nearly always at fault." How being involved in one collision fills you with this miraculous certainty about what "nearly always" happens, is something you do not and cannot explain. Like your other conclusions, including the ones about racism, you pretend to know what you merely wish to believe.

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  5. Hi Baceseras,

    Talk to your lawyer about this. The insurance companies decide that the driver is at fault. That's almost invariably our system.

    This information becomes disseminated to anyone involved in an accident. It begins with going to the doctor, who cannot bill your health insurance. The system insists on billing the auto insurance of the driver who hit you. Obviously, this goes on the driver's record and effects his or her future rates. It is possible that a lawsuit could go beyond the driver's insurance coverage and into his or her own checking account.

    And I'll take an aside here to issue this as a warning and guidance to anyone who is hit or who hits: exchange phone numbers. In my case, I was hit in the back by a truck and pushed forward into the air, landing on my feet, miracles of miracles. I did not feel anything was wrong at the time, and thought that there was no need to get the driver's phone number, and some of this has to do with the shock of the moment -- but I remembered his name and was able to look him up. When I was sore the next day, I went to my doctor's office to get checked, where I found out about the procedure of the driver's insurance paying, that my insurance would refuse.

    Next step. The insurance company calls to settle, in my case, not vice versa. This is what led me to call my lawyer, what they obviously wanted to prevent. This is where one finds out, that the system is almost all in favor of the pedestrian. And think about it. If you're driving down the road and hit a pedestrian, what possible circumstance could have led to your not being at fault. Why were you not just more careful? No matter your answer, you were not careful enough -- unless a sharp suicidal, able-bodied pedestrian leaped in front of you. And if you kill that person, and your lawyer gets you off, I suggest you will still be asking yourself for the rest of your life, how could you have prevented it. Why were you not more careful?

    I was in the street walking, because there was no sidewalk available. The snow was not removed and had been used for snow piles. This was on a state route, no less. I did not pursue any lawsuit against the property owners, so do not know how that may have turned out.

    On race and racism. I need to direct you to my wording in that paragraph, "Two points about race and racism," I said. There is certainly the case that when a white driver bumps off a black pedestrian thinking she is a (N-word), we have racism. That's not a wish to believe. It is, however, a wish to believe otherwise if you do not believe it. I also mentioned the racism of redlining. Redlining is racist and happened. It is a wish to believe otherwise for anyone to ignore this.

    Let's be very clear here. I wish to believe that very few white people have not been around white supremacists, that we know how black jokes are taken seriously by far too many, that we have all heard racist comments come out of white acquaintance's mouths. You may wish to believe that those people do not act on their racism, but they do.

    That said, not all black pedestrian deaths are racist, surely. Half of their numbers equal the rest of us, dead from plain bad driving for the most part. What are you wishing to be the explanation of twice as many Black Non-Hispanics dying this way? You make no point on the subject unless you explain yourself, other than to attack the messenger. And I understand you may be at your genesis point of working through this situation, which I appreciate, which is why I wrote the piece.

    Let's move forward. You do not need to wish anything, in order to fix the sidewalks for everyone. I mean everyone, so we do not act racistly again.

    Rus

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  6. I'm 68 years old and have been walking around outdoors since a very young age, since before I can remember in fact. Mostly in the city, but "sometimes I live in the country," and I've walked there too. I've never been hit by a car (nor, when I drove, did I ever hit anyone), although there have been some close calls. Now, I would never assume that real traffic accidents, the ones that actually happen, were just like my close calls, only minus the happy endings. They may be precisely that, but I don't know it; my experience doesn't reach that far, and I don't have a god's-eye view. I could try to fill the gap by reading court cases, but not all cases come to court, and of those that do, not all are decided rightly, "but time and chance happeneth to all."

    If I had a worldview like yours which would be advantaged by making all mere facts conform to it, I might (like you) unscrupulously guess that all things are just as I wish to believe them; and assert them to be so. Why not? My right to guess and assert is as good as anyone's. But that still isn't knowing.

    You still haven't offered any grounds for "knowing" what you claim to know about racism. Your own experience is insufficient basis. Unless you've held back something compelling -- any surprises in store for us? If not, to your lack of experience you add the citing of a few dubious and tendentious "studies," and too-familiar rhetorical tricks: innuendo, emotionally loaded phrases, slippery definitions. It's not very impressive.

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  7. Hi Baceseras,

    You have refuted nothing in all your responses. You've supplied no valid argument, no salient information, but want to attack me with assumptions. I do not want to talk about me, nor attack you back, but want to stick to the point: dead pedestrians, and then: far too many dead black pedestrians.

    Let's get down to talking about why, if you were a black man, your walks through your life would have been twice as perilous. Not all walks are equal to yours, not all walkers are equal, are they? Why so? You offer no explanation for this, even though I have to keep coming back to the point.

    Here is a study done in 2015: Racial bias in driver yielding behavior at crosswalks. Read the study, and without making assumptions about how I think and why I think it, argue only against the study if you can or accept it.

    Rus

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  8. I see only an abstract of the so-called "study"; I'm not going to purchase the pdf. What is displayed in the abstract is pseudo-scientific. The authors got three white stooges and three black stooges to pretend to try to cross the street at a marked crosswalk without traffic signals. An observer timed them to compare how long it took to get across. The participants may have also told the "investigators" afterward what subjective feelings they had while going about it. (If the investigators prompted how they were to respond on this latter point, they omitted to mention that detail in the abstract, and maybe in the full-length version too.)

    I call it pseudo-scientific because such observation doesn't observe "racism" or "racial bias" in any way that can give useful or replicable knowledge. When crossing without a light, pedestrians and drivers alike rely on eye-contact (not always obtainable); on small behavioral cues (often instantaneous, and "tacit" in the sense described by Polanyi); and on surmises about one another's intentions. It can't be stated from this kind of observation that bias was definitely present or absent: or, if present, in what degree; or what other factors contributed to decisions made by the drivers or the pedestrians. It would take a sociological Henry James to adequately convey what went on in the minds of those taking part in the crosswalk negotiations. But I believe a Henry James could find something better to do. I'll go with him.

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  9. Hi Baceseras,

    It says, "Black participants were twice as likely as Whites to be passed by two or more cars." Wow!

    With such an "instantaneous" look, as you say, the drivers would be unable to determine that the planted subjects were stooges, only the color of their skin and possibly the eyes too. So let's stop the insults. The subjects were not stooges and the scientists were not "pseudo-scientific."

    "Twice as likely" -- a phrase that applies to racial bias in consideration for pedestrians at a crossings. "Twice as likely" also applies to the GCSA study in regards to dead black pedestrians. Either and both are extreme results that deserve explanation from anyone who wants to take a devil's advocate position that racism (or racial bias) does not apply.

    Do not dodge the issue any longer, or just fold. You must address why blacks are twice as likely to die from taking a walk. What is your explanation for this fact?

    Rus


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  10. Of social observation: as long as society has existed, people have observed and reflected upon the interactions of individuals and groups. To do this more than casually, more than just for one's own time-passing: to observe our social life well enough to amass teachable knowledge about it, takes great sympathy, intuition, imagination. And what can be taught then must still be hedged with ifs and buts, and perhapses and then-toos. Despite your seeming wish to "solve the question of Life, and get it over with!", it remains a belle-lettristic question, not a scientific one. Pretending to more certainty than we're capable of is vanity at first: a minor vice -- until vanity acquires credentials and seeks authority: then it's pseudo-science, or to be blunter, fraud.

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  11. Hi Baceseras,

    A fancy way to say, "See no evil", so do thing.

    To get out of seeing anything, you then want to assert that I must be wrong, that it is not scientific. Yet I have cited just two of the papers that bring the issue to the fore in slam-dunk fashion.

    In the mean time, black people are getting struck and killed by cars -- twice as fatally, twice. What a horrible legacy for us to leave behind, all of us here in this discussion seniors -- also an over-represented group. Let's do something for the kids who will be walking in our shoes before they sleep in our coffins.

    Here is another study, which will interfere with your approach to the problem (or non-problem as you seems to see it): Dangerous By Design 2021.

    What these studies do, is heavily support my brief paragraph on race and racism. You've done nothing to refute it. Yet you have allowed a delving with your devil's advoacy. I appreciate the conversation. If you think as you do, there are probably many others, and nothing will change until we see the problem for what it is.

    Rus

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    Replies
    1. "Here is another study," you say, but the link goes to a newswriter's grab-bag of loose talk about your loosely defined problem. Some of the talk comes from what are called "experts," as for instance a professional engineer, who is quoted speaking about racialism, in which he is not an expert. He may have his opinion of course, and his opinion is worth as much as anyone else's. Exactly so much, and no more.

      The article then paints a picture of typical "black and brown communities," a picture so fanciful and false in its woebegoneness that it can only have been devised to gull the most insular of white audiences. (The painter of the picture in this case turns out to be president of a political advocacy group; maybe he has an agenda.)

      You, Rus, started with a presumption of racism and looked for studies to support that; but the studies also started with the presumption of racism. Nothing is supported. It's invisible turtles all the way down.

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    2. I'm sorry, what was your explanation for the rate of deaths for black pedestrians being twice that of everyone else?

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  12. I had been aware of the Portland racial bias research (linked to above), where it was found that crosswalks are more treacherous for blacks. Here's a follow-up by the same research source: Walking Whiile Black: Racial Bias at the Crosswalk.

    Turns out, Portland beefed up the crosswalks, "installed signage and crosswalk markings" since the last polling, such that the researchers a few years later, could compare data. Drivers, when they stop for blacks, leave them less room, come to find out.

    There is also the idea in agreement with my piece, that traffic lights are needed as well. I know this, along with most, from experience. There's a crosswalk nearby, where there was never one before. My Mary, a black woman, who walks with a rollator, was unable to cross Hildreth Street to get to the supermarket. I called the town, and a yellow-painted crosswalk was installed. Yet, we still talk how a flashing light would do wonders to get drivers to stop.


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