True Warrior Tactics #10: No Reason to Rush Change
It cannot be said too many times: The goal of all True Warriors for Automobile Transportation to the preservation of the auto-dominant status quo. The status quo faces numerous challenges, one of which is Chicago transportation commissioner Gabe Klein's stated goal of reducing Chicago's pedestrian fatalities to zero within the next decade. Zero! That does not leave of lot of room for error, and it certainly presents a grave threat to the status quo, which resulted in 48 pedestrian deaths last year. How can we possibly get from 48 deaths to zero? It does not take a genius to realize that it is impossible to do without seriously inconveniencing drivers. In fact, when you hear the quinoa-loving, skinny-jeans-wearing "sustainable" transportation crowd discuss this goal, it becomes apparent that they intend to reach it by making driving so unattractive that people do so much less frequently! One way they plan to make driving less attractive is by forcing drivers to pay attention to the road the entire time they are driving. They don't understand that drivers like me concentrate hard at our jobs all day long, and the last thing we want to do at the end of the workday is continue to concentrate on not killing people! The truth is, life has risks of all sorts - why should driving be any different than, say, drinking carrot juice, which also has a risk of death associated with it? These anti-car nuts seem to think that if I have even a scant 1/100 chance of killing someone driving on my way home, I should opt to take a train instead!
The other thing that regular readers know about True Warriors is that, in all of our fights for the status quo, we can never admit to the general public that our motivation is our convenience over of the lives of others. I hope that in my catalogue of True Warrior Tactics, I have presented you with an arsenal of rational-sounding arguments that you can use to mask such motivations. Clearly, when challenging a goal of zero pedestrian deaths, we must tread carefully. After all, who but a monster would oppose fewer deaths? Unless we're talking about Nazis. Or zombies. Or Nazi-zombies, which when you think about it could only come about as a result of the deaths of Nazis, which may have policy implications I don't want to think about, so let's get back cars and how great they are, even though they occasionally kill people. The sad truth is that if the city accepts the goal of zero pedestrian deaths, change is inevitable, and we cannot credibly oppose that change without tarnishing our reputation. And if there's one thing we know better than the red-light running cyclists that infest our city, it's the value of an untarnished reputation. So what are we left to do? What anyone does in the face of apparently inevitable change: delay, delay, delay!
Even though the goal is ten years, the anti-car fanatics are showing their impatience - they're asking for changes that will inconvenience drivers to be made right now! Witness all the grousing about IDOT's delay of allowing protected bike lanes on its roads or the rush to install speeding cameras.
Our opposition has learned one unfortunately effective tactic in getting so-called "safety" improvements made without delay: changes that simply increase "driver compliance". For example, those obnoxious "stop for pedestrian signs" or speed bumps do not actually change the laws in the places they are used, so they can typically go in without the public meetings and transparency that something like a new bike lane entails. However, imagine that chaos that would occur if "driver compliance" actually reached 100%. If drivers came to a complete stop at every stop sign or for every pedestrian in a crosswalk; if they stayed at the speed limit everywhere, even where it's 20 or 25 miles/hour; or if they spent minutes searching for a parking spot when there's an open bike lane nearby, this city would grind to a halt! No one would be able to get anywhere because traffic would be moving so slowly! We allow all sorts of silly laws, especially pertaining to "pedestrian rights" only because we know they will never be enforced. If they are, then the social contract is broken! Beware of anything touted as a minor change just because it does not change the law.
It seems to me that if we are actually going to get those fatalities down to zero in a decade, we have no reason to hurry, and then we can at least enjoy another decade of unimpeded movement throughout the city in our cars! Of course, the real benefit of putting off any day of reckoning is that by doing say, we may prevent that day from ever arriving. In ten years, not only will Gabe Klein have moved on to another office or another city, but most of those anti-car nuts who currently demand more driver inconveniences with every single pedestrian death will have moved on in their lives as well. By then, they'll have real jobs, mortgages, kids, and - most likely - cars of their own. In other words, they'll have grown up, and they'll likely move through the city like grown-ups do: in their cars!
