YOU'LL GET BETTER ROADS WHEN YOU GET BETTER DRIVERS.

The relatively new mayor of Milwaukee seeks citizen participation to reduce the pedestrian carnage.  "Milwaukee wants you to help create a plan to eliminate traffic deaths."  I'm being snarky because the call for participation starts in the wrong place.

Jessica Wineberg was hired to lead that effort in the summer of 2023. Her first task is developing a Vision Zero Action Plan. Wineberg says perhaps the highest hurdle will be changing behaviors.

"Hopefully we can have some sort of cultural change where following the speed limit and yielding to pedestrians becomes the norm again," she said, reflecting on the task ahead. "And to do that we'll have to make a lot of policy changes and put a lot of time and effort in. But I just hope everyone knows — by you, yourself driving the speed limit and not being distracted and yielding to pedestrians — you are part of changing what's normal and what's acceptable."

It's true that there's carnage like a Waukesha Christmas parade massacre every summer weekend in town.  And look who turns up in that post, and what she says.

Note, above, that quick release of bad drivers doesn't strike the locals as a blow for social justice.  Dive deeper into those statistics, dear reader, and you might find senior citizen pedestrians, or moms crossing the street with their kids on a walk light, or prime-age adults who happened to be in the wrong place when a speeding motorist disregarded the signals.  "Jessica Wineberg, who is Deputy Director of the Wisconsin Bike Fed and founder of MilWALKee Walks, says one of the biggest issues is getting drivers to yield to pedestrians. 'Often, pedestrians are hit in crosswalks following traffic lights,' said Wineberg. 'It’s very rare the pedestrian made the critical error.'" That is, there might be more at work than the wrong visual cues the stroad design gives drivers.  Although the Urban Milwaukee post makes all the proper nods to limited-access highway design in thickly settled areas, some of the crash investigations in Milwaukee suggest there are reckless drivers even where the visual cues are missing.

That's right, I called attention to the stroad environment in the neighborhoods where the carnage continues.  Search that report in vain for any evidence that the visual cues matter.

"We do know overall that crashes in the city, especially those with deadly or serious outcomes, really impact certain neighborhoods the most," said Wineberg. "So we are focusing our outreach efforts in those neighborhoods. That's part of why our meetings are where they are because those are communities that really feel the burden of this issue and we want to hear their voices."

I'm hoping the residents will have some say in how the traffic is tamed.  I also hope someone will bring up the importance of traffic taming measures, which might have more success in changing behavior than efforts to change the culture.