Posted on 03/30/2004 6:01:05 AM PST by Flyer
Police reports for the first 25 vehicle accidents involving the Metro light rail reveal only one fact for certain: Aries are the safest drivers.
The collisions began Nov. 19 although the light-rail system didn't open to the public until Jan. 1. The list keeps growing -- it hit 31 Monday -- but this roundup focuses on the 25 pioneers, a diverse group.
Officers don't ask for drivers' horoscope signs, but a check of birth dates reveals no Aries among the crashers. But it seems Geminis like to drive on the wild side.
There are two Marys and a Maria in the stack of police reports. Also, contrary to water-cooler speculation, there's only one guy with the middle name Wayne. But there's also one named Dwayne, and everyone knows that a Dwayne is worth five Waynes.
A couple of errant drivers pulled out of driveways into the trains and someone ran a red light, but most of the crashes were due to illegal left turns. Repeat: illegal left turns.
Metro spokesman Ken Connaughton definitely sees a pattern: "People aren't paying attention."
Here's a look at the numbers.
What's your sign?
Gemini (5)
Pisces (3)
Virgo (3)
Scorpio (3)
Cancer (2)
Leo (2)
Libra (2)
Sagittarius (2)
Taurus (1)
Capricorn (1)
Aquarius (1)
Aries (0)
How many thought there would be more women than men?
Men (16)
Women (9)
White guys are in the majority.
White males (13)
White females (6)
Black females (2)
Black male (1)
Asian female (1)
Asian male (1)
Hispanic male (1)
Most of the wreckers were ages 32 to 59, but a septuagenarian from Angleton managed to find the side of a rail car. Note: no reckless teenagers!
24-29 (4)
32-39 (6)
41-49 (7)
50-59 (6)
64 (1)
71 (1)
It's probably best to avoid the rail line at certain times. Time of accidents:
8:20-9:35 a.m. (3)
10:17 a.m.-10:38 a.m. (5)
11:50 a.m.-1:47 p.m. (9)
2:10-4:30 p.m. (5)
6:18-7:47 p.m. (3)
Avoid Main Street on Fridays. The light rail is particularly attractive to cars just before the weekend. Crashes by day:
Sunday (1)
Monday (4)
Tuesday (5)
Wednesday (4)
Thursday (1)
Friday (7)
Saturday (3)
Sixteen drivers were from Houston. Nine towns had one offender each. No Groesbeck jokes, please.
Angleton
Beaumont
Hillsboro
Groesbeck
Grapevine
Humble
Kingwood
Sugar Land
Knoxville, Tenn.
A Channel 2 reporter started the crash parade in November. One woman said she had no occupation. Driver job descriptions:
Manager (3)
Student (2)
Construction (2)
Nurse (2)
Retiree (2 )
None
Self-employed
Driver/guard
Electrician
Engineer
Galvanization operator
Geophysicist
Hair dresser
Insurance agent
Musician
Rail repair
Reporter
Unemployed
Welder
It's a bland parade of vehicles, especially if you lump the first three colors together.
White (5)
Gray (4)
Silver (2)
Black (4)
Green (3)
Blue (2)
Brown (2)
Red (1)
Tan (1)
Maroon (1)
A guy who said he was a manager probably said "darn" when he crashed his 2004 brown Ford F-150. The crumpled vehicles:
1981 Chevrolet truck
1984 Chevrolet Suburban
1988 Ford Crown Victoria
1989 Dodge Dynasty
1990 Mercedes
1992 GMC pickup
1992 Toyota Previa
1996 Toyota 4Runner
1997 Mercury Sable station wagon
1997 Nissan pickup
1997 Toyota Land Cruiser
1998 Dodge Stratus
1999 Jeep Cherokee
1999 GMC C7500 utility van
1999 Toyota Sienna
2000 Chevrolet Astro van
2000 Chevrolet Venture van
2000 Ford Explorer
2001 Pontiac Grand Prix
2002 Acura RSX
2002 Mercury Sable
2002 Toyota Camry
2003 Dodge Durango
2003 BMW 330i
2004 Ford F-150 pickup
Wrong. The simple laws of physics distinguish metrorail from most old-style streetcars in one key way: momentum. Metrorail may not travel any faster than those streetcars and it may cost 100+ times as much to operate, but its momentum is substantially higher, thus making it more difficult to stop. Most streetcars are about the size of a bus. This thing is the size of, well, a train.
You'll also note that other cities with light rail systems also have high accident rates every single year. Portland, Oregon - the favorite model light rail system of every smart growth nazi in this country - obliterates about 40 cars a year.
You got that right. I would also add the unspoken dirty little secret of Houston government to the list of affirmative action babies: Metro, as in the sum of the transit agency's employees. It doesn't take long to figure out what that agency really is and is not. It is not a transportation service in any normal sense - it's a government jobs program for unqualified affirmative action recipients who would get fired from anywhere else. If you or anybody wants proof of this go drive over by UH or in downtown or down Richmond or practically anywhere inside the loop at about 2 AM on any given weeknight. You will see completely empty Metro busses making their normal rounds and stopping at the stops every 15 to 20 minutes like it was broad daylight with rush hour approaching. They literally drive empty busses around in the wee hours of the morning to invent employment for people and soon will be doing the same thing with the trains as they approach something akin to 20 out of 24 hours a day operation.
Now - look at the statistics for Metro's employee demographics. At last release, a certain unnamed constituency that makes up about 20% of the Houston population holds some 65% of the jobs at Metro. That constituency outnumbers both the majority demographic and another larger minority demographic in employment - a breakdown that is statistically impossible (as in about 1 in a million chance) to achieve when drawing from a population breakdown like Houston's...unless you have a clear and conscious policy of employment favoritism to that certain demographic group over all others. Put another way, Mayor "Speaking Lessing's" largest voting constituency got rewarded for all those years of loyalty at the polls with cushy jobs behind the wheel of a death train.
At least one (where the train was joyriding at excessive speeds on a test track in the presence of a known track repair crew - i.e. speeding in a construction zone). Maybe two due to the driver's failure to alert a disabled pedestrian with his horn. But you are still asking the wrong question. The real issue is as follows: how many of the accidents were caused or substantially contributed to by design flaws in the train's track location, operation capabilities, or signalling systems?
I'd estimate the answer to that question to be somewhere between half and three fourths. Case closed.
I'm a Scorpio,
White male,
49 years old,
I live in Houston,
I'm self employed,
My vehicle is red,
And it's a Jeep Cherokee.
Every train has my name!
And one train operator has Bobbyd's name!
If there was a 7 mile stretch of road with this accident rate you can bet there would be some changes.
Oh, and why is Metro making plans for improvements in the signage and signals?
Actually some of them were. Several more of them were driving through what they innocently thought was a green light (yes, that's right - metrorail's flawed signal system simultaneously gives drivers a "train approaching" light and a green traffic light indicating "go" - a glitch that has gone uncorrected and virtually unnoticed by the incompetent transit agency for three months). And a local news crew even videotaped a driver sitting in one of those designated left turn lanes when a train approached him from behind, forcing him to enter oncoming traffic on a red light in order to escape being rear ended.
Previous articles on this issue identified them as idiots attempting illegal turns.
Those "previous articles" almost all come from the Houston Chronicle, which adheres to an overt, stated, and malicious policy of promoting Metrorail through its news coverage and downplaying its flaws. To give you a case in point, the Texas Transportation Institute released a report for Metro containing recommendations that they fix their signalling system and some crossing guards to prevent wrecks. Part of the report was downright scathing and contained predictions that a fatality would occur in the near future if corrective modifications were not made to the signalling system by Metro. All the local news stations ran articles quoting from this report and noting the flaws it said were in need of correction. The Chronicle's story claimed the exact opposite - that the report had vindicated Metro and found no significant flaws in the system! It did not provide a single quote from the report itself and instead only sought self-congratulatory spin from Metro director Shirley DeLibero.
Anyway, WRT the "illegal left turn" citation - that is Metro's blanket ticketable "offense" for practically any collision with the train. It is used to describe both real illegal left turns in the normal sense or simply being in the turn lane when metrorail is approaching. They have adopted laws that essentially make it impossible for Metrorail to be at fault in any accident, thus the automobile driver will always be cited. The Metrorail driver could literally be doped up on crack, flying past stations without stopping, and tripping out behind the wheel but the second he collided with a car the car would be at fault because that is how the law is essentially written. The system is rigged in favor of metrorail.
And that design is fundamentally flawed, thus by operating as it is designed metrorail crashes excessively.
Blaming it on the train is like blaming it on the gun instead of the person pulling the trigger.
No it isn't. Last I checked, guns don't float down the middle of major roadways emptying their contents into any vehicle or person that crosses into their paths. The fundamental nature of traffic on any roadway is the ability of drivers to adjust their patterns, speed, and behavior to compensate and account for the actions of other drivers. Metrorail, due to the physics of momentum, operator incompetence, and simple bad design, lacks this capability. It cannot rapidly adjust to the patters of other drivers and thus is prone to accidents.
Think about it another way: suppose you are driving 65 mph on a freeway and you approach an on ramp. Just as you are a couple hundred feet before the point where it merges with the freeway an old lady comes off the on ramp in front of you at a speed of 45 mph. Now we can probably agree that she is definately in error for not speeding up to merge before pulling in front of you. The question however is what you will do. Do you declare "by golly, I was here first! Who cares about granny since she is in error - I am going to continue at 65!" If you do, you rear end her in a major collision. Once you are in that collision the officer will arrive and give you a ticket for that collision because you hit her even though she made the initially unsafe driving decision of merging onto a freeway at a speed that was too slow. Even though she is a bad driver, the cause of the accident ultimately is not her bad driving but your failure or refusal to compensate for the scenario she created by entering the freeway ahead of you. This is also why most states, Texas included, have laws that place virtually automatic fault on the driver who strikes the rear bumper of another car.
On the other hand, if you see her entering and reduce your speed by only a slight ammount you avoid the collision entirely and everybody goes home happy. As noted, the physics of momentum, combined with driver incompetence and flaw in the track design, makes this second option impossible in most cases for metrorail, thus collisions occur. Now my question: If the law makes you at fault for a collision as previously described even though that collision was indirectly precipitated by a case of substantial driver error by granny as she entered the freeway, why doesn't it do the same for Metrorail? And if the law also says you are at fault under virtually any circumstance if you speed through a designated highway repair zone and hit one of the workmen, why doesn't it do the same for track repair crews and Metrorail? The answer is that the law is flawed and substantially biased towards protecting Metrorail from fault.
Always treat the track like it's loaded
That'd be fine advice except for one problem: this track isn't locked in a gun safe under daddy's bed and it isn't at a separated grade from pedestrian and vehicle traffic. It's out in the open with the safety off and a bullet in the chamber, sitting on the coffee table next to a stack of magazines where anybody can access it at any time with almost certain injury from doing so.
The more severe damage done in Portland is to the affordability of housing, due to a combination of no-growth policies, light rail and the severe zoning restrictions that are designed to make it more "sustainable."
As far as fatal accidents go, LA's Blue Line still has the record, and many of those victims were pedestrians. On a passenger-mile basis, though, it isn't that bad. I think Denver holds the record on fatalities/passenger mile, but SLC can't be far behind.
Houston is just getting started, and the Chronically Wrongicle won't be publishing humorous reports of drivers' horoscopes and hair color once the fatalites begin stacking up.
From Randal O'Toole, at Reason Public Policy Institute:
Rail lines, especially light rail and commuter rail, are also dangerous. Between 1992 and 2001, Los Angeles' commuter-rail trains have killed five times as many people per passenger mile carried as either buses or urban interstate freeways, while light rail has killed nearly nine times as many people per passenger mile as buses or urban interstates.
(The linked report, Great Rail Disasters, is packed with tables and charts that prove just what an unmitigated disaster LRT has been in most of America's cities where it's been built. The railfans will hate it, of course, because the truth sometimes hurts.)
"Tables and charts" are
just data. They don't prove cheese!
Just as easily
one could say (I would)
that these numbers prove how dumb
modern citizens
have become, and light
rail is like a spotlight that
illuminates our
impulsive, thoughtless
range-of-the-moment rock-heads
as they pay the price.
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