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Another motorist drives into the Charles from Memorial Drive and is also rescued by a passing crew team

For the second time in a little over a month, a Memorial Drive motorist wound up in the Charles River and was rescued by a crew team that happened to be right there.

Cambridge Police report a man drove into the Charles River from Memorial Drive at Flagg Street around 7:30 p.m. He was was able to get himself out of his sinking vehicle, police say.

WBZ reports the man suffered some sort of medical incident and that he went into the river near a motorized boat carrying Northeastern crew coaches.

The Cambridge Fire Department reports he was not seriously injured.

On Aug. 24, another driver plunged into the river from Memorial Drive in the same stretch. He was also pulled out of the water by a passing crew team.


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Comments

Terminate his license. He could have killed multiple people. If you can’t safely operate a vehicle then you can’t have the privilege of having a drivers license.

Oh and just another reminder of why putting roads next to the river was a terrible idea. Make it all land for parks.

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Do you 'spose the horse 'n buggy crowd used to have these problems back in the day? The River Roads were horse paths and wagon tracks originally, the horses were probably smart enough to say "nope, we're not going aquatic."

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You've got to understand, if you are a river, cars are going to hit you. -- Marty & AEG, probably

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Make sure you turn yourself in at the local constabulary office.

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We have no idea what "medical incident" he had. If he had a transient ischemic attack, he wouldn't have known it was coming, it would have disabled his ability to do anything, and then he would have recovered to get out of the car.

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It's Car And Driver - he thinks JFK deserved it because he was riding in a vehicle with a combustion engine.

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a good reason to move away from letting people drive their own vehicles if such an event is possible?

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Sure, it sounds like a great reason! One that's been there ever since the first Edsel and beyond!

Now, do we just ban all vehicles until self-driving ones are perfected or do we live with the rare occurrence of medical emergencies until such time that we have a better system in place?

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That our society just doesn't care about lives more than it does about convenience? The COVID death tally didn't give you the hint?

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In a slightly different world, I would be your fervent ally. I believe that it’s an enormous mistake to have focused public infrastructure spending on facilitating automobile traffic the way we have. I believe the impact on our environment, on the fabric of our cities, on our economy, our politics, and on our society itself have been enormously problematic. I believe we should vigorously change course. I believe we don’t do nearly enough to hold criminally bad drivers accountable for the mayhem they create…

… but you’re so goddamned shrill about it that you lose me completely, to the extent that I want nothing to do with you and your cause.

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Also, yeah, there's a lot of damn idiots on the road and we should do something about people improperly operating two-ton death boxes, but it also happens that capable responsible people sometimes experience sudden medical issues, and this person (may they recover fully and quickly) doesn't need to see the internet jumping to conclusions and trash-talking.

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of their two-ton death boxes...maybe we shouldn't have so many people out there operating their own two-ton death boxes?

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Compared to other road risks, such as distracted/texting drivers, habitual repeat offender drunk drivers, or criminally aggressive drivers, the incidence of otherwise healthy people having a sudden health issue and losing control of their cars is so small as to be statistically insignificant -- something that we can reasonably ignore in formulating public policy.

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I blame a great deal of our traffic troubles - including not keeping up with public transport and rail systems - on that devil spawn, Robert Moses.

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Maybe if we were in Suffolk County, NY...

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His policies were so contagious everyone started thinking "why do we still need these raggedy old tracks, rip them up, we have cars now!" Federal funding for trains etc all but dried up. He spread like a fungus! (I'm oversimplifying but there are so many things I can blame on Robert Moses)

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