Archive for March 2nd, 2009

As if drivers on cell-phones weren’t a big enough problem already, this one takes it to a new level. Via Jezebel:

Genine Compton of Dayton, Ohio, was pulled over on Thursday morning after police spotted her breastfeeding her baby (and talking on her cell phone!) while driving her other children to school. “If my child’s hungry, I’m going to feed it,” Compton, who is facing 180 days for child endangerment, says.

Jezebel notes: “Genine! If your baby needs to eat, that’s fine. But it’s probably best for both of you if you stop the car and get off the phone first, no?”

Yeah, and it’s, uh, also better for everyone else outside of her car.

Gary Richards solicits driving-on-cellphone horror stories.

The worst incident I came upon was about five years ago as a newspaper reporter in Anderson, when a young women was on a cell phone when she pulled out in front of a large truck. She was at a stop sign and stopped. But, for some unknown reason, she pulled out into the traffic, which was traveling around 55 mph. The truck had no time to stop and crashed into her. The girl died instantly. It was a very sad incident.

Newsweek surveys NYC’s new pilot project for Broadway (with a nice nod to Traffic).

When it comes to New York traffic, Broadway has long been identified as a key culprit. In 1811, urban planners laid out Manhattan’s grid of north-south avenues met by east-west streets, an efficient system of right angles. But those mapmakers left Broadway slicing diagonally through the city, and it’s caused havoc ever since. “Every time Broadway cuts through the grid, it delays traffic,” says Janette Sadik-Khan, New York’s transportation commissioner. It’s especially bad at Times Square, where drivers on Broadway and Seventh Avenue meet heavy crosstown traffic—along with 356,000 daily pedestrians.

Up in Boston, a different idea is being floated: Reopening Downtown Crossing to cars.

Indeed, Downtown Crossing remains one of the last vestiges of a largely discredited idea, the American pedestrian mall, which municipal planners once believed would help cities compete with proliferating suburban malls. In the 1970s, at least 220 cities closed downtown thoroughfares, paved them with bricks or cobbles and waited for them to take hold as urban destinations. Since then, all but about two dozen have reopened the malls to traffic, as planners, developers, and municipal officials came to believe that the lack of cars had an effect opposite of what they had intended, driving away shoppers, stifling businesses, and making streets at night seem barren and forlorn.