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DCR starts work to make deadly stretch of Memorial Drive safer, maybe a couple weeks too late
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Comments
High cost improvements
It truly sucks that it often costs somebody's life to push badly needed safety improvements across the finish line.
Edit: We also STILL need to know who killed John Corcoran!
Had the weapon been a gun ….
… instead of a Mercedes, we would likely know.
Anyone know how to scrape vehicle ownership data?
Could be a fun time connecting the public record statie's payroll data base and/or a list of state officials with scraped ad or Mercedes service data indicating likely owners of Mercedes SUVs in Eastern MA.
I’m glad they are finally
I’m glad they are finally doing something here, but wish they would do it right, with concrete barriers to protect cyclists and pedestrians. And no, flexible plastic posts which in the Boston area get described as making a bike lane “protected” do not protect a car from drifting out driving into people, they just fall over. They protect drivers cars from getting scratched or dented when they drive into the bike lane but that’s it. The amount of destroyed flex posts all over the area is a testament to their total uselessness in protecting people from drivers.
does a speed limit matter if not enforced?
Has anyone ever been pulled over or seen someone pulled over for speeding on DCR roads? Jamacaiway, storrow, mem drive, etc all have relatively low limits that are just ignored. I've tried doing the limit occasionally and it is not comfortable with everyone else screaming past.
Is there a State vs local PD enforcement issue?
I rarely see local PD on DCR roads except for emergency situations. Who is responsible for enforcement on DCR roads and could local PD step up without inciting a turf war.
Not just in Boston but throughout MA.
My understanding
Either can issue traffic citations but they leave the river and other major state roads to the MSP.
Traffic enforcement is almost shockingly minimal across MA compared with other states. Cambridge does occasionally pull people over but it's normally a preplanned focus of one intersection rather than cops out on patrol for it.
A few of the smaller towns are pretty strict (Petersham comes to mind) but it's not the norm.
Traffic cameras won't solve these problems 100% but they are effective at lowering speeds overall and don't require police involvement.
traffic cameras are required
Police departments are struggling to hire and pay for enough police for minimum coverage. It will 100% solve the problem with enough coverage. The situation is very different than when camera enforcement was invented.
Cameras aren't perfect
If you look to NYC and DC which both use cameras, some of the problems are lack of enforcement to actually collect the money and people obscuring their license plates so they can't be read. Both city still have bike and ped fatalities.
In DC there are people with $10,000 worth of fines (literally) because the city doesn't have a good way to collect on out of District plates. They need to boot the cars but so far haven't done that.
And some people just don't care about the fines.
But the cameras aren't biased and don't need to work a construction detail. Even if they only slow 50% of cars down, it's a big improvement. And having a paper trail of speeding violations shows who to really go after.
So many obstructed plates.
It is very weird to me that this is allowed. It seems that parking enforcement should exclusively focus on that in NYC until it is stops. It should void your registration.
Of course it is not perfect, but it saves lives.
And still
We have to take the police's word for it that they are actually continuing a sincere investigation of the killing
Anyone have any confidence that this is going to go anywhere?
Not much.
Maybe the Stoughton and Canton police departments can lend a hand.
/s
"Investigation"
Sure, not right away, but it will eventually go straight into the circular file. First they have to maintain silence on it until it has cleared out of the local media.
You'd think
Eventually they'd run out of room under that rug