Wednesday’s Headlines Are Helmets Optional
Cities repealing their helmet laws, which are inconsistently enforced and can actually make biking more dangerous by discouraging people from riding.
By
Blake Aued
12:00 AM EST on January 18, 2023
- Bike helmet laws are going by the wayside as cities realize that requiring them discourages biking, which in turn makes biking more dangerous because drivers pay better attention when there are more cyclists on the road. Plus, the laws are disproportionately enforced. (Slate)
- Most transportation engineers are actually civil engineers who have very little training in transportation, which explains why they love to build roads so much. (Next City)
- U.S. DOT officials recognize the need for stronger partnerships with their state and local counterparts to solve the “crisis” of traffic deaths. (Smart Cities Dive)
- Yonah Freemark catalogued all the transit projects worldwide that opened in 2022 or are set to start construction in 2023. (The Transport Politic)
- The CEO of European automaker Citroën says that electric vehicles will spell the end of the SUV because of the massive range penalty for huge trucks that require huge batteries. (Clean Technica)
- Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp — who once cut a campaign ad promising to round up immigrants in his “big truck” — is making a conservative argument for EVs by casting the conversion as a jobs rather than a climate change issue. (Politico)
- Wyoming Republicans are owning the libs by proposing (apparently tongue in cheek) to ban EV sales in 2035 — the same year California plans to phase out internal combustion. (Washington Post)
- Instead of merely prosecuting drivers who kill pedestrians, Indianapolis has established a commission to investigate fatal crashes and recommend ways to make those roads safer. (City Lab)
- Four of the 18 fatal crashes in Stamford, Connecticut, over the past five years were on six-lane Washington Boulevard, but the city is powerless to fix it without state assistance. (Greenwich Times)
- In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Omaha grew along its streetcar lines, and so it could be again. (World-Herald)
- A 75-year-old Denver woman who uses a wheelchair convinced the city to spend $400,000 to fix the sidewalks in her neighborhood. (News 9)
Blake Aued has been doing Streetsblog's daily national news digest for years. He's also an Atlanta Braves fan, which enrages his editor in New York.
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