Tennessee Center for Policy Research sounds like a sage, learned organization interested in scholarly analysis and fact-finding.
That would be wrong.
The center with the highbrow name is really just a right-wing hit group with a neocon agenda.
And, there’s nothing wrong with that, except that the center’s officials falsely try to portray an image of nonpartisan public service despite the targets of its reports and findings always being Democratic or liberal.
Sometimes the center has produced some good information, but it is hardly nonpartisan and it is sometimes questionable in its conclusions and study.
The hatchet job it tried to do on red-light cameras last week was a case in point, basically charging governments who have introduced such systems were just out to “make a quick buck.”
The center also claims the camera systems don’t reduce accidents at intersections, saying while right-angle crashes are reduced, rear-end crashes are increased.
It cites a federal report and a report by former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Arney, one of the firebrands for the right much like Barney Frank is for the left, to prove its point.
Except the federal report doesn’t prove the center’s argument.
That fed study found right-angle crashes were cut, and rear-end crashes rose but in conclusion noted an overall positive final result (See conclusion pasted in below.)
And, that doesn’t factor in the life and limb element. T-bone crashes are much more likely to kill people.
But the Policy Center doesn’t care about that, nor even disregarding the truth about why governments install red-light cameras that is, at least in Murfreesboro, because people were absolutely clamoring for something to be done about red-light runners.
And, let’s be clear.
Red lights aren’t being run because we don’t have enough roads or too many cars on them, or poor traffic systems, or whatever.
Anybody who drives in our city knows red-light runners run everything all the time.
The majority of us who try to obey the laws kept complaining and city officials reacted, as they should have.
Making gross assumptions like the Policy Center, I guess their officials just ride around in limos and don’t have a clue about what’s occurring on their roads. The limo part might be wrong, the clue part isn’t.
The Policy Center also claims governments are just trying to “make a quick buck,” but puts the lie to its own charge by making a big deal about most of the red-light ticker revenue going to those who make and operate the camera systems.
Apparently at the Policy Center two and two equals red.
Murfreesboro could make the cameras a revenue stream but chose instead to only charge $50 a ticket which some ague is too low to stop the light runners.
The center’s alternative suggestion is to make yellow lights longer as though scofflaws are running red lights because they didn’t know the light was going to change.
The problem is too many motorists are intentionally running lights that have already changed because they just don’t want to be inconvenienced by stopping.
Enough tickets will provide a counterbalance to that inconvenience.
If the Policy Center folk had left their high-dollar tower up in Nashville and just drive around a little bit and maybe talked to some regular folk, they would have found most people want the red-light cameras as at least an effort to stop signal runners, recognize it’s not a revenue stream but aren’t worried if it is as it is a self-imposed penalty and don’t need a bunch of Nashville idealogs telling us what’s happening on our roads.
Federal Highway Administration, Safety Evaluation of Red-Light Cameras—Executive Summary
Even though the positive effects on angle crashes of RLC systems is partially offset by negative effects related to increases in rear end crashes, there is still a modest to moderate economic benefit of between $39,000 and $50,000 per treated site year, depending on consideration of only injury crashes or including PDO crashes, and whether the statistically non-significant shift to slightly more severe angle crashes remaining after treatment is, in fact, real.
Even if modest, this economic benefit is important. In many instances today, the RLC systems pay for themselves through red-light-running fines generated. However, in many jurisdictions, this differs from most safety treatments where there are installation, maintenance, and other costs that must be weighed against the treatment benefits.
The modest benefit per site is an average over all sites. As the analysis of factors showed, this benefit can be increased through careful selection of the sites to be treated (e.g., sites with a high ratio of right-angle to rear end crashes as compared to other potential treatment sites) and program design (e.g., high publicity, signing at both intersections and jurisdiction limits).
•••
TV announcer on USC’s defense during Thursday night’s game: “… what we thought was the best defense in the nation.”
Why do we even have announcers? They’re always ridiculous unless it’s John Madden.
How about just giving us the runner/passer/kicker, tackler, down and yardage and just shut up.
And if Lou Holtz is talking, I turn the channel to the jewelry-shopping network.
Anyway, probably four defenses in the SEC are better than USC’s. LSU, Auburn for sure, probably Georgia and maybe Alabama. Now the Trojans have probably the best collection of athletes, but in football it’s football players, not athletes, which ultimately decide games.
More importantly, it’s about team.
Oh, yeah, No. 1-ranked USC lost to that game powerhouse Oregon State.
•••
The debate, to be kind, at the end of last week’s City School Board meeting about the appropriateness of a new Hispanic character, a puppet mind you, for the superb children’s show, “Murphree’s Burrow,” on the city’s Channel 3 was the most asinine discussion you are likely to see.
Whether a burro is appropriate for a cartoon show is a pretty silly debate item, but the discussion really became absurd when the two members who seemed to have a problem with the idea kept talking.
The two board members doing all the talking appear on a single-minded mission to be confrontational each and every meeting, but sometimes when you don’t really have a clue what you are talking about maybe it would be better to just be quiet rather than looking like a couple of jackasses talking about burros in the ‘Boro.
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