Mayor declares all out war on scooters, ATVs; proposes law to ban stunt driving on Boston streets

they had a whole new lot of ATVs/mopeds/etc within a week after the raid. unless they magically applied for and received the necessary permits within a week - seemed like a pretty in-your-face f.u.

Do Boston drivers run red lights? Only when the light has just turned red, or occasionally when the light is about to turn green and the driver is taking a left. I've seen these sophomores gun through lights that have been red for a while on Columbia Road.

Do Boston drivers go the wrong way down the street? Rarely, while these guys will drive on the wrong side of a 2 way street, right into traffic.

Maybe you don't want the mayor to do something that affects the quality of life of the city. Perhaps you want the city to be trashed. So be it. Thankfully the mayor wants to clean up the trash, and we thank his for that.

People doing tricks, much like those driving fast are usually paying far more attention than the ones bored, talking or texting. Two problems though: tricks can go bad, and others get spooked by them and do dumb things in reaction or simply get distracted watching them instead of their own driving.

The practical issue is not one of license or even vehicle type -- Boston streets are mixed-mode traffic. Rather, the issue is one of flow and predictable behavior, on which safety depends. When you're using the streets in whatever mode you use, you depend on other road users to behave in a somewhat predictable manner -- that's what lets you share the road with them without incident. The more they behave in unexpected ways, the less you will be able to accommodate them -- not because you don't want to or aren't willing to, but due to the, "Wait, what?" factor. Driving down a street and another vehicle comes down it going the wrong way, in your lane by definition -- there's a momentary "wait, what?" before you switch over to "oh, selfish shithead driving/riding the wrong way", and then you have to dig into your bag of tricks to deal with it. If you use the roads every day, you're used to certain behaviors and you can react quickly and safely to certain things -- a car changing lanes without signaling, for example, while a moving violation, is probably well within the realm of what you're used to dealing with. But someone blasts down the street in front of you on a quad, and all of a sudden the thing is cutting across traffic on two wheels, you're in "wait, what?" mode, and the outcome might not be pretty.

I suppose that you have never heard of stunt drivers? That's a job.