The D-Words

Not much about driving correctly and thus avoiding penalties.

Black Drivers Matter

“We felt the brunt of it the way white people didn’t,” said Olatunji Oboi Reed, a long-time activist for racial equity in transportation in Chicago who has received a handful of camera tickets over the years.

Not making the case he thinks he is.

It seems Black drivers simply speed more often than White drivers. There you go, Chicago, solved it for you. Cameras are colour blind you; do reaise this I hope?

…Mr Rodney Perry, whose photograph accompanies the piece…

Last year, Perry received three tickets for running red lights and eight for speeding. Of the speeding tickets, five were for going just 6 or 7 mph over the limit — speeds that would not have triggered a ticket before Lightfoot lowered the threshold for tickets.

Yes, Lori Lightfoot, noted member of the Yte Cis-patriarchy, is keeping the BIPOCs down.

He paid some off, but the penalties eventually added up to more than $700, money he said he did not have. He tried to get on a city payment plan but said he couldn’t figure out how to do that online.

Seems reasonable. Wait, this just in…

The 28-year-old entrepreneur quit his job at a logistics firm last spring to build a digital marketing and production company.

Can’t figure out a website, building a digital company. OK, I am starting to see why interpreting speed limit signs, traffic lights, and speedometers might be a problem.

So when Lightfoot proposed an expansion of the city’s speed-camera program in October 2020…

Damn wipipo.

In other news, I’ve just finished compiling tomorrow’s Ephemera. I made myself laugh.
Which I probably shouldn’t admit, but there we are.

“The root cause of traffic violence in our society that is disproportionately impacting Black and brown people is structural racism.”
“Traffic violence”. People getting injured or killed because someone was speeding or ran a red light. This is reduced by enforcement of laws against speeding or running red lights; such enforcement is also structural racism.

I have seen who drag races/speed races their sports cars down the residential/university neighborhood streets around here (2 lanes, speed limit 25 mph, scads of pedestrians). It ain’t white frat boys. Some of these cars are quite new but show extensive body damage, so they have been involved in accidents as well as racing. The city police don’t patrol here, but the university police do sit on one of the streets that gets raced down, and even put up one of those “Your Speed Is” radar signs, to no avail. So far no students have been killed, so the racing will probably continue. The U prez put out a multi-paragraph email after St George ODed/was knelt on, full of sniveling about systemic racism here at the U, and how he will do better yadda yadda, wank, wank, wank, so even a death probably wouldn’t change anything.
Interestingly, my Middle Eastern colleague’s wife won’t drive in this town because she is afraid of “how the black people drive”. BAME on BIPOC racism, man. Say it isn’t so!

It seems Black drivers simply speed more often than White drivers.
And, in general, drive more aggressively: tailgating, weaving in and out of traffic, road rage, and so on. White people do these things, too, but less than blacks.

@CLR
“they have been involved in accidents”
You misspelled ‘crashes’. Sorry, one of my pet peeves.

…we’re told that Mr Perry, quoted in the piece, “takes responsibility” for his habit of dangerous driving…And yet he seems quite keen to minimise his own role and to solicit sympathy.
“Taking responsibility” in da hood, from felony bond court in Chicago:
Judge: Sir, you are charged with aggravated robbery…
Defendant: Yeah, I do that, so what?

He’s almost a martyr.
Far more likely to create a few than to become one himself. Pedestrians don’t generally benefit from airbags.

“Because every stone must be upturned in The Great Unending Search. Every crumb. Every atom.
You’re not exaggerating. Just google “[anything] is racist.” Literally anything. Bicycles. Spoons. Shoes. Salt shakers. Cars. Socks. Forks. Computers.
After a while you just shake your head and say, “Oh come on.”

explanations are searched out, including the width of a given road, the effect of passing vacant lots, and the geographical distribution of grocery stores.
My nearest grocery store is about two miles away. Didn’t know this meant I could run red lights.

Ah, but it’s structural. As everyone knows, whites in the United States tend to live in high-density downtown areas where they can take public transport to work and walk to the store. Blacks, on the other hand, have been driven by white violence into the exurban sprawl, with no public transport, no walkable corner stores, long commutes to work, and children having to be driven to all of their activities.

Uh-oh. Insty spotted incoming… *ducks out back door*
(well, Ed)

Siri will tell you as you drive if you need help. The speed limit is posted plus 5.
Minorities can’t afford iPhones! WHITE PRIVILEGE! 🙂 🙂 🙂

Let’s compare how race breaks down among the victims of those who commit moving violations. It might be that when you compare the ticket distribution to the victim distribution that there are not enough tickets given out in minority neighborhoods.

Fetch the good china. Not this chipped rubbish you’ve been using.
Are you insane? Have you read the Insty comment threads? You should put out unbreakable plastic stuff instead.

Red light cameras were banned in Texas. They made a lot of money for the companies that installed them but studies showed they caused more accidents. In addition, a requirement was that an officer appear in court if the defendant chose to fight the ticket. But officers often did not show up or tickets were given where no police officer actually witnessed the red light being run when the photos were processed. Defendants were deprived of their right to face their accuser.

There’s plenty of WTF in this article, for sure, but it does get one thing right: NEVER underestimate the City of Chicago’s ability to stick it to its residents for a dime. Because that’s exactly what lowering the speed limit on fines was all about. If they gave a toss about safety they would prosecute violent criminals and not let them out on bail.

[ Leaves recent end-of-year round-up to poke at: ]

The year began with an oddly specific medical diagnosis courtesy of the Guardian, where Afua Hirsch informed us that boob eczema is caused by “racist microaggressions.” Readers were left to suppose that the condition might only be resolved by lengthy grumbling about “structural racism” and the oppressive nature of “whiteness.” More prosaic solutions – say, a change of detergent, or indeed bra, were not explored. “Whiteness” also bedevilled Ms Cristina Beltrán, an associate professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University, who was both mystified and aggravated by the existence of non-white Trump supporters, and who identified “multiracial whiteness” as the only conceivable explanation. For Ms Beltrán, non-white voters who prefer to be engaged with as individuals, as opposed to racial mascots, are merely surrendering to “whiteness” and “white supremacy.” And so, Ms Beltrán bemoaned racism and “the debasement of others” while casually erasing agency from anyone brownish who happens to disagree with her.
Meanwhile, academics at the University of York were rendered fretful and distraught by an image on the website of an art history conference – specifically, of the seventeenth-century Buddhist figurine, the three wise monkeys – which, via much focussing of intersectional lenses, was construed by our academics as a caricature of black people, and therefore oppressive. And denunciations of “whiteness” and “white supremacy” also featured in a mandatory course at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine. On grounds that, in order to be a dentist, you must first submit to condescension and insults, and accusations of being either a bigot or an enabler of bigotry, based solely on unchangeable aspects of your appearance.

Oh there’s more, with links a-plenty. A whole year of woke contortion.

I’m with the woke on this one. F*** traffic cameras. If the cops want to give a traffic citation they can haul their ass out to where the traffic is.

“Hours of fun for the whole family!”
No refunds. Credit note only.

…Or have these certain individuals been taught that law breaking is their right and are upset that these cameras do not acknowledge that special privilege?
There is an element of that: First, the subculture asserts the right to engage in grossly antisocial behavior. And second, liberals assert that blacks are victims who cannot be expected to behave responsibly…because #equity.
But also consider: There is a correlation between low IQ and inability to foresee the consequences of one’s actions, inability to plan ahead, and even inability to empathize with others and think about how one’s actions might harm them. Given the black-white IQ gap, it should be unsurprising that there is a black-white crime gap.

I’m with the woke on this one. F*** traffic cameras. If the cops want to give a traffic citation they can haul their ass out to where the traffic is.
I am against traffic cameras on the same premise that Dustinator above pointed out – you are deprived of facing your accuser, and the red light ones do tend to cause more crashes (from the law abiding).
But human cops are already under the gun for supposedly stopping blacks more because of “racism”, while letting white people speed. So a radar camera would only be concerned with the speed of the vehicle, not who was driving it. And they were fine with that until they looked at who kept getting caught. You have BLM and the St George celebrations, DIE admins poking around in every corner of existence (except the ‘Hood), Defund the Police and the auto-excusing of black people’s misbehavior, traffic cameras in downtown Chicago, and what did they think was going to happen? You have a segment of the population that is not expected to obey rules or laws, but you didn’t tell the cameras that. The cameras were not programmed to ignore cars driven by this particular segment of the population, assuming they even could be.

In other news, is he soon to be “The Rape Artist Formerly Known as Prince“?

With tinted windows even worse.
Has anyone ever attempted to study the demographics of who buys tinted windows? Race, sex, age, income, criminal history, etc, etc?
I do get the impression that drivers with tinted windows tend to be more aggressive/break traffic laws more frequently.

On tinted windows.
Well, lots of factors play into that. I drive a ferocious muscle car, a Challenger Hellcat; my own windows aren’t tinted, but many Hellcat drivers and other fast-car enthusiasts like the tinted windows for a fashionably aggressive look. But I observe that in states like Texas and Florida, soccer moms will almost always have tinted windows on their slow-moving SUVs and mini-vans, to keep the interiors from becoming boiling hot during even the shortest grocery stop.
Most US states permit window tinting on the sides and rear windows, but the front windshield must be untinted, or tinted only for a few inches at its upmost bound.
But to return to the root issue: When a cop turns on the lights to pull someone over for speeding, they usually only know the make and model of the car, at best. And haven’t had anything like a clear look at the driver. It would take some strange and even dangerous driving by cops to try to achieve “equity” in pull-overs. Are they supposed to chase down drivers, pull alongside to identify their race, and then turn on the lights?

A traffic camera will give you a ticket for a right turn on red, but not because of your race.
This is becoming self-parody (everything is racist) but since the woke have no sense of irony or humor, self-parody goes right over their head.

Ah, but it’s structural. As everyone knows, whites in the United States tend to live in high-density downtown areas where they can take public transport to work and walk to the store. Blacks, on the other hand, have been driven by white violence into the exurban sprawl, with no public transport, no walkable corner stores, long commutes to work, and children having to be driven to all of their activities.
Between this and all the bicycle theft I think reparations have already been paid.

Red light cameras were banned in Texas. They made a lot of money for the companies that installed them but studies showed they caused more accidents.
Traffic tickets should be about enforcing laws that make the roads safer. NOT about revenue. Many red light cameras seem to be installed for the purpose of collecting more revenue, and the penalties get raised for the same reason. I have seen “no turn on red” enforcement in locations and times of day that were devoid of traffic.

Either:
– the traffic guys install more cameras in black neighborhoods (so only black people get caught) or,
– the people who decide speed limits set them lower where black people drive or,
– the people who decide where to put traffic lights put more of them where black people drive or,
– black people are bad are concealing their license plates or,
– the cameras are racist, they wait for black people to drive by (so order the “biased against white people” cameras) or,
– after noting a violation the camera deletes records for white people (how do it know?) or,
– the people who review the records and decide who to ticket are racists (a white guy and a black guy both ran a red light, send the ticket to the black guy) or,
– black people violate the law more often so they get more tickets.
Are there other choices?

To quote Jim Carrey from Liar Liar in response to an repeat offender client of his after he was “cursed” with telling the truth:
“STOP BREAKING THE LAW ***HOLE!”

It appears 1o times in the article quoted above, excluding variations… See also the words disparate, disparity and disparities, which occur no fewer than 22 times.
Repeating them doesn’t make it true.

They chose poorly.
As a pin-up for victimhood, an object of our pity, it’s not a great choice, no. And remember, these are presumably the best candidates that the article’s authors could muster.
And so, we’re expected to sympathise with Mr Perry, our habitual lawbreaker, on account of his difficulty paying the $700 fines that resulted from his repeated law-breaking. As if the consequences were inexplicable and somehow unforeseeable. But it seems to me that not being in the best position to pay the fines that normally result from such law-breaking is a pretty good reason to avoid said law-breaking – specifically, repeatedly running red lights and thereby endangering other people’s lives.
At which point, it’s perhaps worth noting that many of the, as it were, racially insensitive cameras are located near schools.

And remember, these are presumably the best candidates that the article’s authors could muster.
That.

cyclists who choose to ride on the pavement [sidewalk], illegally.
And often do so very aggressively. If you merely look shocked to see a punk on a bicycle zooming towards you at high speed, he is likely to immediately threaten you.
So yes, there is something deeply wrong with “urban black” culture. Such words as “sociopathic” and “evil” and “depraved” are entirely apt, albeit unfashionable among the Smart Set.

@pst314
“Traffic tickets should be about enforcing laws that make the roads safer.”
IMNSHO, speed radar is the worst thing to have happened to road safety. Sit at the side of the road, wait for the ‘ping’, write ticket. Cameras are just an extension of this.
Tailgating? Unsignalled lane changes? Burned out lights? Eh, whatever, maybe later.

MNSHO, speed radar is the worst thing to have happened to road safety…
You have a point. Although there is some correlation between speeding and the other violations you mention.

You can’t imagine how amused I was when the terrible movie came out featuring well-dressed spies with tactical umbrellas. (Kingsmen? I think that was the title.)
I have an umbrella in the traditional English wooden handle, black fabric, “brolly” style, but the handle unscrews and there is a thin rapier-type blade attached to it. Of course in the heat of battle, I wouldn’t be able to get the blade out in time, so the rod mod the Guv did to his is a far better option. I need to modify an umbrella like that. A bowler hat like Oddjob from the Bond film, and the deadly ensemble will be complete!
I think you’re right about Kingsmen – a movie which had the obligatory Evil Christians that need to be mass murdered scene, but it also had Samuel L. Jackson as the bad guy – and featured the exploding heads of many a world dignitary (including Obama, if I remember right). So it was equal opportunity in that regard, which was unusual.

“I replaced the wooden staff of my umbrella with a steel rod of similar diameter.”
Blueprints, pls!
*Imagines all David’s middle-aged male followers spending Saturday in the shed, converting umbrellas into deadly weapons*

So, it’s racist to enforce the law equally because certain individuals feel entitled to break those laws more than others? Or have these certain individuals been taught that law breaking is their right and are upset that these cameras do not acknowledge that special privilege?
Well, it seems we’re supposed to believe – and believe quite emphatically, indeed indignantly – that Mr Perry and Mr Reed, our candidates for victimhood, are being induced to break the law and to drive in ways that are dangerous to others, including repeatedly running red lights, because of “fewer pedestrians and more vacant lots.” Cyclists and dog walkers are also invoked as possible factors, along with the claim that a black person may have to drive to the nearest grocery store, a feat rarely undertaken by people of pallor, obviously.
And all of this is presented as if the gentlemen’s behaviour, their choices, could only have external causes. Other variables apparently being unworthy of consideration. And so, Mr Reed, an “activist for racial equity,” expects city officials to “eliminate any racial… disparities in camera ticketing,” while avoiding any mention of behaviour and personal responsibility. “The root cause of traffic violence in our society that is disproportionately impacting Black and brown people is structural racism,” says he.
As LW notes upthread, the default narrative is a little odd. Namely, if black people are being injured or killed as a result of reckless driving, often by other black people, this is “traffic violence” and “structural racism.” But attempts to enforce the law and reduce the number of such incidents are also “structural racism” and must therefore be done away with. And this mindset is being cultivated and encouraged by Mr Perry and Mr Reed, and by the authors of the piece quoted above.

And all of this is presented as if the gentlemen’s behaviour, their choices, could only have external causes. Other variables apparently being unworthy of consideration. And so, Mr Reed, an “activist for racial equity,” expects city officials to “eliminate any racial… disparities in camera ticketing,” while avoiding any mention of behaviour and personal responsibility.
That.

Or, “Yes, he’s robbin’ y’all. OH WELL.”
“The victim shouldn’t have shot him. He should have just called the police afterwards.”
“The police shouldn’t have shot him when he shot at them.”
“The police shouldn’t have chased him when he fled the robbery.”
“The police shouldn’t have piled on him when he resisted arrest.”

I’m vacationing in my home town and here it’s even more apparent how f’d up and backwards everything is. Went to my high school’s basketball game last night. This was a school that when I graduated was about 12% black, ??? Asian and Hispanic (mostly Cuban and a Peruvian guy), significant Jewish minority this being south Florida, predominantly white culture. There had been racial tension the year before I got there but this was ironed out by broadening the Homecoming court by creating about 5 other similar things (Basketball Queen, Miss Hurricane, etc.). Last night my wife and I were the only white adults excepting the three referees and maaaaybe one faculty member. The team we were playing was from a school that in my day was faaaar more white than we were. But their demographics were similar to ours last night. The thing that got me was how few people were there for a school of 1600 students (about 3000-3500 in my day). The students who were there, overwhelmingly black…maybe two white kids, seemed mostly respectful and into the game but I suspected by the small size they were only there because they were friends or relatives of the kids on the team. Practically no girls there. A couple of moms and grandmas. There was zero school spirit. No band (we usually had a small contingent for basketball…basically the 1/3 of the kids who could actually play anything), no cheerleaders, no alma mater sung (though the lyrics were still posted on the wall). Security had a wand metal detector, no cash entry (schools are going to touchless payments even up in the GA mountains but I don’t think touchless was the driving factor last night), no concession stand. When I got home I looked up the demographics. This is a school, as back in my day, whose boundaries draw from extremely wealthy areas and some lower income areas, but not poverty stricken and not (to my knowledge) crime ridden…well, relatively speaking. Multi-million dollar homes with million dollar yachts on the Intracoastal Waterway. I went to school with kids whose parents were doctors, plumbers, pool cleaners, lawyers, judges, mechanics, car salesmen, etc. A broad mix. When we got home I looked up the data on the school today. Essentially the same boundaries. The thing is though that everyone I still know here, even people of moderate means, scrape all they can to send their kids to private schools. The current racial mix is, if you check niche.com, 42% Hispanic, 36% Black, 17% white. Though according to Wikipedia, they combine the white and hispanic to call it 60% white. And the grade they give it for “diversity”? An ‘A’!

Heh…yeah…sorry about that. It all kinda bled together. I was going one direction then this other thing popped up in my head and then this other seemed to fit in there, then dammit I had to get the statistics that I remembered seeing last night from…what website was it…
Part of my writing problem is I can think of a dozen different ways someone will misinterpret what I’m trying to get at, especially with a sensitive subject, so I start piling on context to qualify my point and before I know it, I have a mess.
I also can’t bloody spell anymore, not that I was ever a good speller but damn…I misspell stuff now that I never used to have a problem with. I get really frustrated when spellcheck can’t help me with something I’m only one letter off from. But that sends me off on a tangent. Probably the biggest thing I miss about work is it kept my thinking disciplined. Actually, that’s about the only thing.

Having done field research on police DWI/DUI enforcement I feel qualified to make the following assertions:
1. Police generally choose the easiest route to quitting time, involving the least work and inconvenience while still performing required duties.
2. Between the hours of 8 pm (start of shift) and midnight, traffic is heavy making identification of impaired drivers difficult. Stopping a nonimpaired driver and issuing a nuisance ticket – such as excessive speed, illegal turn, lane restriction, improper display of license, etc – is a waste of time. Officers handling DUI/DWI enforcement do not receive accolades for ticketing from their superiors because grant renewals which fund their jobs depend on DWI/DUI arrests.
3. Between 8 pm and midnight, officers often engage in “cooping” – that is, hanging out at a friendly business such as a towing company for free food and coffee. After midnight, spotting impaired motorists is much easier because virtually every vehicle that is speeding, making illegal turns, running stop signs, or failing to use headlights, etc is being operated by an impaired driver.
4. Police have no thought of the race or gender of drivers when making a stop. It is not a factor in their decision. I observed white officers stopping white, black, male and female drivers at about the same frequency as their black colleagues.
The passage of time has made possible the telling of these never-before-revealed stories:
Number 1: A man was sleeping in the back seat of his car in a parking lot. A driver missed a turn, jumped the curb and slammed into the sleeping man’s car. Police arrived and ordered breathalyzer tests on both men – the driver and the sleeper. The driver was ticketed for the accident and reckless driving – his breathalyzer score was below the threshold for DUI – and released. The sleeper – trying to do the right thing by not driving while impaired – was arrested for DUI when his breathalyzer score was above the DUI limit.
Number 2: A DUI officer stopped a vehicle for several infractions around 1 AM – speeding, no headlights, failure to stay in lane. The driver was an attractive blonde female about 22 years old. Her breath test exceeded the DUI limit. The officer also tested her companion – an equally attractive female – who also exceeded the limit. The officer released the women conditionally: They were to walk across the street to a coffee shop, have coffee and something to eat and wait until 2 AM when he would check on them. They agreed.
I doubt this has any bearing on automatic tickets issued by red-light cameras in Chicago, but I will add that the subjects in the first story were black and those in the second story were white. The officers in both stories were white. Make of this what you will.