The last two days have been a stark illustration of the quagmire the City of Portland finds itself in when it comes to the war on traffic deaths.
On Wednesday as I packed for a Portland Police Bureau press conference about the disturbingly high number of fatal crashes so far this year, we received word of yet another person who was killed while walking on our streets. 67 deaths so far, the PPB says, and the 24th person who was on foot when it happened.
75-year-old Hong Huynh was walking southbound across SE Division at 109th when he was hit and killed by a driver. Huynh was in a crosswalk and had made it across three of the four general traffic lanes. As Huynh approached a median on the southern side of the intersection — a median installed in 2022 with the expressed purpose of making people like him safer — a driver slammed into him. I looked beyond yellow police tape in news photos and saw Huynh’s shoes and winter gloves lying in the street.
At the press conference held just four hours later, a PBOT spokesperson and the leader of the PPB’s Traffic Division tried to convince the assembled press corps that they care deeply about safety and are doing everything they can to prevent deaths and serious injuries.
For their part, PBOT can say they did do a lot to prevent this latest death on Division. They spent $11 million in 2022 on the Outer Division Safety Project, which (in tandem with TriMet’s FX2 transit investments) aimed to improve safety on one of the most notorious arterials in the city. Huynh crossed at a location with a center median island and two yellow caution signs warning drivers of the presence of pedestrians. The robust center median filled in what used to be a center turn lane.
But it wasn’t enough.
Huynh also crossed at a location without a marked crosswalk or signa. And he had to cross four driving lanes, the same number that existed before PBOT’s “safety” project. And with a posted speed limit of 30 mph, the driver would have had to begin braking nearly half a block away to avoid killing Huynh. According to PBOT traffic data, 73% of people at driving eastbound on SE Division at 109th drive over the speed limit (image, right). That’s over 20,000 speeding drivers every day.
Yesterday I heard from Scott Kocher, a Portland-based lawyer and advocate who specializes in traffic law. “Recent PBOT projects on this stretch of outer Division did not address high speeds, doubled car lanes, and missing crosswalks,” Kocher shared. He said Division’s long straightaways and high number of speeders means it still has too many unsafe crossings and its design was “predictably deficient.”
“Division is nowhere near a Vision Zero facility,” Kocher added. (It’s also notable that Huynh was hit just a few yards from where PBOT removed a section of the center median one year ago in order to restore a center turn lane after an adjacent business owner complained.)
PPB Sergeant Ty Engstrom mentioned the SE Division collision at the press conference Wednesday. And even though Sgt. Engstrom knew very little about what happened out on that road a few hours earlier, he went out of his way to absolve the driver of responsibility. “The driver of the vehicle did not appear to be going… uh, speed did not appear to be a factor. They stayed [at the scene]. They were cooperative. No impairment appeared to be a factor in this particular case.”
No one asked Sgt. Engstrom about the crash or the driver who hit Huynh. He offered those details unsolicited.
When I got back to work from the press conference and watched video footage of the crash shared by KATU-TV Wednesday afternoon, I saw the driver plow into Huynh with what appeared to be very little to no braking and at a relatively high rate of speed. I immediately thought of how Engstrom’s comments at the press conference painted a much different picture.
And it turns out the driver wasn’t as innocent as Engstrom made them out to be. Yesterday the PPB said the driver, 38-year-old April Oneal, has been cited for careless driving.
Less than 24 hours after Huynh was violently killed by a careless driver, PBOT posted a video on social media reminding walkers to look both ways before crossing the street. The video is set to throbbing music and features two people dancing to the rhythm. It’s done in the cute style of trendy online content. This blame-the-victim framing flies in the face of the “Safe Systems” approach to traffic safety PBOT claims they adhere to. That alone would be offensive and inappropriate. But given what happened to Mr. Huynh, comments made at this week’s press conference, and words PBOT’s lead Vision Zero staffer shared at the World Day of Remembrance event last month — it’s unfathomable why PBOT uploaded that video.
What’s even harder to believe is that even given all those factors— and the dozens of people who’ve expressed concerns about it via social media comments — the video remains up as of this morning.
With the daunting task of eliminating deaths and serious injuries on our roads staring them in the face like never before, PBOT and the PPB have taken refuge in deflecting responsibility away from their organizations — and away from the most dangerous users of the road. Both agencies say they could achieve Vision Zero with more funding and both agencies say a fatality-free future depends on a “culture change” and people taking responsibility for their actions.
But as Mr. Huynh’s tragic death shows, the City’s business as usual response, means people will continue to die as usual.
PBOT and the PPB do a lot and it still isn’t enough. I see two lines on a graph where one line for our car-centric system, dangerous driving and all its consequences spikes way up — and the other line for the City’s incremental improvements ticks up just slightly. The gap between the two is where people are killed. We must close that gap. Putting a hand out for more funding and pointing fingers doesn’t meet the moment.
I agree we need to remind every Portlander that we are all in this together, but we must not lose sight that “all” includes government. To quote a church sign marquee I’ve seen for years while riding up North Williams Avenue: When it comes to changing culture on our roads, the City of Portland should use a mirror, not a telescope.
Thanks for reading.
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Agree that PBOT & PPB need to look at themselves as part of the problem and not continue to blame external forces (it was the pandemic, it’s like this everywhere, but we spent a lot of money…etc).
I do have to quibble with you on this assertion:
“PBOT posted a video on social media reminding walkers to look both ways before crossing the street. The video is set to throbbing music and features two people dancing to the rhythm. It’s done in the cute style of trendy online content. This blame-the-victim framing flies in the face of the “Safe Systems” approach to traffic safety”
Is reminding people to look both ways “blaming the victim”? Wouldn’t you recommend this to your kids? I do…and I do it myself when crossing the street.
Seems quite hyperbolic to call this PSA “victim blaming”. Just my 2 centavos.
I hear you. These ideas are nuanced. I don’t think it’s inherently wrong to share safety messages for pedestrians, but I’m looking at the broader context. As I state in the post, the timing and style is tone deaf. And keeping it up after so much blowback erodes trust and credibility at PBOT — something that is essential for them to take the bold steps required to achieve vision zero.
I’ve never heard of government moving quickly on anything. My guess is that PBOT made plans to put up the video 6-12 months ago and finally carried it out – the tone-deaf timing was coincidental – and it will take several studies and work orders to take the video down.
How would removing a ped safety video be handled in Utrecht? QUICK! Call the travel office and get us on a KLM flight tomorrow morning! Four star hotel suite for a couple of weeks, too. We really need to be thorough.
Not following you here.
You are getting ahead of yourself. You skipped the steps of forming a multi-cultural racially-diverse stakeholder advisory committee, with one member nominated by each city councilor, the mayor, and the city administrator, which meets monthly at 10 am at the PBOT Conference Room on every 3rd Tuesday.
There’s also the side trips to Copenhagen, Ghent, and Paris to see how they make decisions to remove media content.
It is also a budget issue and probably a leadership and city council issue.
For at least the last two years, Mayor Wheeler directed all bureaus to take 5%-8% cuts except public safety and fire. There was not a 40 cent per hour parking meter increase this year because of Mayor Wheeler, two other commissioners and downtown lobbyists. instead it was 20 cents, and downtown is still full of parked cars! let’s bump up at least another 20 cents or change to prices based on demand!
metered parking Supply is plentiful, price is cheap, Demand is too high.
PBOT is doing the best they can with the budget that Commissioner Mapps requested. If Mr Mapps would have requested more money for vision zero and less money for IBR or Rose Quarter or some other large stroad project then maybe we might be seeing less fatalities.
The city budget is an expression of what the city values.
The mayor/commissioners/city administrator chooses which projects to budget for and which ones to cut. If they had more money, then more could be done.
We will have a new council in January and public budget hearings in the Spring. We need to show up to these hearings and demand a budget for safe streets or else we will get more pickleball courts because they showed up and we didn’t.
https://www.portland.gov/budget/join
https://www.portland.gov/budget/2025-2026-budget/development/preparation
https://www.portland.gov/budget/documents/fy-2025-26-budget-guidance/download <- from Mayor Wheeler
PBOT needs more revenue and/or fewer giant road projects.
Trying to do more with less is really not possible.
We cannot install 10 traffic signals with only the money for 8 signals.
We cannot install 5 miles of bike lanes with only the money for 3 miles.
We cannot do more with less, we can only do less with less.
https://www.portland.gov/transportation/budget/overview#toc-how-is-pbot-funded-
Tell me honestly that you think someone who wouldn’t look for cars before they cross a street is going to see this video, in a sea of more interesting videos, and decide to start looking both ways. And in the rare chance that this video is even remembered or changes any behavior at all, that this minuscule change will amount to preventing an injury or death.
What is does accomplish, however, is reinforcing the narrative that pedestrians are to blame for deaths, because the experts at PBOT have put out this video. And that narrative affects how people vote and feel about changes in infrastructure that are required to make streets safer.
Let’s break this down. Is this PSA going to revolutionize pedestrian behavior? No, it’s not TikTok viral material. But dismissing it entirely is a stretch. Even if it helps a handful of folks make safer choices, that’s a win. Education and awareness campaigns, no matter how basic, are just one piece of the puzzle.
Now, about ‘victim blaming.’ Pedestrian safety is a shared responsibility. While poor infrastructure absolutely needs fixing (and I’ll be the first to say PBOT could do more there), personal vigilance still matters. Encouraging individuals to stay alert doesn’t absolve policymakers of their duty to design safer streets—it’s about tackling the problem from multiple angles.
If the fear is that this PSA will skew public perception, let’s push back with better advocacy, not by nixing basic safety messages. Both better infrastructure and smarter behavior save lives. It’s not either-or—it’s both.”
It’s not going to help a handful of folks. It’s not going to help anybody. It’s a clear waste of resources and shows how clueless parts of PBOT are about vision zero.
Hey SD I generally agree with you on this occasion. And road safety education is often construed as heavily non-driver directed, while “shared responsibility” in a pedestrian plaza and “shared responsibility” on a freeway are clearly different animals. Also, there’s not much evidence to support a lot of education-based programs vis a vis safety, so there’s that.
However, (and I say this with a grain of salt) as an educator I do think being explicit about the expectations helps. A lot of people learn stuff in different ways or assimilate information better when it includes more than one sense. Some people intuitively learn the typical social rules, while others (e.g., people with disabilities like autism) require a more explicit approach to learning the rules of how to behave in public. If you’ve been on the MTA, the manspread posters and unwanted touch posters are good examples of this (god I love those posters).
Again, all this is not to say that I think PBOT or ODOT’s typical means for educating the public on road safety are remotely effective. I think this gets at a broader social problem: how do we effectively provide simple, and objective behaviors for road users (regardless of mode) using methods that have a research base? And how do we provide crash reports that give state and local police forces the means to ask more objective/salient questions related to those rules devoid of mode?
Anecdotally, I was sideswiped by a turning driver in NY years ago and one of the first things the officer told me (and it was meant to express sympathy BTW) was to “wear a helmet.” That is clear and expected bias from a person who sees everything from inside of a car and does not know or care if helmets are required by law (they’re not for adults).
I do like Jonathan’s suggestion to create a cheat sheet or madlib of sorts that give statements/questions that are related to law and not to social expectations or bias. It would be a good start in any case.
No, it reinforces the narrative for people crossing streets to look both ways to be safe.
Or are you saying we shouldn’t inform people about what simple things they can do every day that helps them be safe? You’d let kids play with knives because, after all, it would be victim blaming if you told them not to and they ended up cutting themselves.
C’mon, Solar – you’re missing the point. Human vs car/truck interactions are inherently asymmetrical. Yes, humans need to do everything they can to stay alive on our inherently unsafe streets. But it wouldn’t have mattered if the man had looked cuz the car wasn’t stopping anyway.
The driver of a car or truck has the awesome and inescapable responsibility for the safety of everyone else on the road – not the other way around!
You believe people don’t look for cars before they cross the street?
I think Jonathan’s point was that the messaging is one-sided (pedestrians, fear for your lives!). PBOT doesn’t spend much effort on reminding drivers to slow down, put their phones down, or remind them that people walking/biking/rolling are human beings instead of just obstacles. The only recent thing I can think of that did speak to that is the “Slow the Flock Down” campaign. Sure, it’s cutesy, but it’s still pretty milquetoast. It may be dark, but I think they should try more to be heavy hitting, blatantly obvious messages that speeding and distracted driving kills kids, your neighbors, your own family and friends.
“Slow the Flock Down” did nothing but make drivers scoff.
The crash site happens to be near a long-closed Bike Gallery. It’s also part of the 100s bikeway.
Not speeding, not driving impaired, and not fleeing the scene of a fatal crash are pretty low-bar behaviors.
It would have been nice if Engstrom had at least followed up with, “Nevertheless, the driver killed Mr. Huyhn, who himself was crossing legally in a legal crosswalk with signage and a street light directly overhead.”
And “speed did not appear to be a factor” is dubious. How do the police now the driver wasn’t speeding–because he said so? Because another driver on a street where most people speed said he wasn’t? And speed can definitely be a factor even if someone isn’t going over the posted limit–especially at night.
And how do the police know “no impairment appeared to be a factor”? Because the driver didn’t look drunk? Did they check phone use? Did the driver have a dashboard touch-screen?
Tiresome.
It’s pro-car and pro-driver bias. That’s all it is and we need to be very clear about that. And we need to understand its consequences.
Exactly. And the next thing the police do regularly (as you’ve so often reported) after saying the driver cooperated, etc. is say the pedestrian or cyclist victim was “wearing dark clothing”, “was not wearing hi-viz clothing”, “had no rear light”, “had no helmet”, etc.–all things that aren’t required by law, but that sound like they are because the police are pointing them out.
Yet I’ve never once seen a police statement saying that the driver’s vehicle lacked anything that wasn’t required: “The car lacked a backup camera, ABS brakes, traction control….”. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a report mentioning a legal problem with the car, other than no license plate: “The car’s headlight was burned out, the tires were bald, the windshield was darkly tinted, the mirror was missing, the side window was obstructed….”).
Comment of the week! (oh – I guess Lisa isn’t collecting them since she left?).
Hi. I am still hoping to do COTW each monday. So yes thanks for nominating this one!
My hope that some day in the future, when there are predictable and well-managed speed cameras placed at high crash intersections, that show in this instant that a driver was indeed speeding, that driver should carry the majority of fault immediately regardless of the context. At present the evidence of speeding is lacking in most cases because the only witness is the driver, and very often Police officers tend to (or must) take the available evidence at hand. I am supportive of some of the PPB just as I am supported of some NYPD, particularly those officers that go out of their way to use the available evidence, and do not jump to conclusions regarding causality/liability. Unfortunately, jumping to conclusions does happen.
As our culture grapples with the clear video (e.g., cell phone) evidence of police shootings and deaths, we will equally begin to struggle with the clear evidence that more collisions than most people expect are indeed contributed by speeding above the posted limit. That should reflect an instant violation/liability as it is with many countries in Europe. Drivers who speed are abusing a privilege. In the US that is still a very blurry legal area.
Personally as a tepid behaviorist I know that punishment does not work even close to as well as reinforcing desired behavior. My wish for the PPB is to proactively reinforce desired behavior through programs that offer drivers who regularly follow the speed limit some benefit for their behavior. In the same way, when people in cars choose to travel above the speed limit, that behavior should be consistently expected to have a consequence as the result of video evidence.
When I read many postings here people call for “police enforcement,” but that has never been a consistently effective tool against speeding and traffic violations in the US. People point to a time when traffic enforcement was effective. But it was never effective. Deaths rose steadily up until the 70s and gradually tapered down and are now going back up. Manned enforcement alone is not effective because it is too infrequent and too inconsistent in its reinforcement schedules. Police have an integral role, but it is not regular traffic stops.
The advent of traffic cameras has had an unbelievably dramatic effect in NYC in just the few years they were installed along traffic corridors near schools. That correlates with other programs around the world, where drivers consistently expect a consequence for a behavior. My hope is that Portland prioritizes schools first (as kids and elderly are most vulnerable), and makes traffic cameras as ubiquitous and as predictable as seeing a pedestrian on the street.
The assumption is often that in the absence of objective evidence of speeding, then speeding was not a factor. How often do people drive over the speed limit? I think we can all assume “speeding” is a very subjective and troublesome term, which is why someone like Engstrom might shrug at 5mph (or even 10mph) over the speed limit and someone like me might say, “objectively, that’s speeding.”
With the advent of speed cameras we do often have objective evidence of speeding (despite their inherent but slightly inexact measurement), but forensic reports can and do sometimes estimate speed. It’s just not often done or taken as evidence for fault, because ya know, everyone kinda speeds right?
Engstrom is super car-brained and it shows in pretty much every situation where he opens his mouth.
PPBs attitude towards traffic violence is one of the main barriers to improving traffic safety here, but that’s just a general theme with any crime in Portland. Oneal killed a person who had already crossed three lanes of traffic. There is no situation where it isn’t her fault yet Engstrom realllly didn’t want people to think it’s her fault.
It reminds me of when the cyclist was killed up on N Portland Road and the motorist straight up told the cops he was going the speed maximum or above the maximum in foggy, dark early morning conditions and the police juts shrugged and said he hadn’t done anything wrong. He didn’t even get a ticket.
There is also the utter insanity of this being a reckless driving charge instead of manslaughter. Oneal ended a mans life through her negligent operations of her vehicle and she will at most get community service.
Motorists are not going to magically get better and if cops like Engstrom can’t figure that out and hold motorists accountable, we need to develop a new system where they aren’t in charge of investigating road incidents.
This institutional “contra Safe Systems thinking” that CC-Rider mentions… reminds me of the time a Vancouver Police Officer comforted a driver with the comment “sometimes good drivers make mistakes” as I sat on the curb waiting to go to the hospital…the same driver who drove into me and knocked me down as I walked across a downtown marked signalized crosswalk.
Why don’t we try this? Any stretch of street on which a vehicle’s driver injures or kills a person is closed to all traffic for three months, with the installation of traffic lights timed to intentionally stop the flow of traffic at every intersection, and cameras to automatically ticket those who speed or run the lights. It’s just an experiment, but perhaps we will find that it reduces deaths and injuries. I guess it would be worth trying, if we valued human life and well being, instead of valuing the rate at which vehicles move.
Talk to your new city council members. They’ll tell you why.
Because they are invertebrates?
Yes, let’s do as the IDF does and engage in collective punishment. We can close off double-laned outer Division and re-route its 48,000 vehicles per day onto already congested outer Powell (a main street, US 26, with only one travel lane in each direction) to the south, and to the neighborhood 4M bikeway along Market, Mill, Millmain, and Main Streets. Then when several more people are killed on those streets, we can close them too, shift traffic generated by inner Portland and Gresham ever northwards and southwards until all of East Portland becomes a traffic-free paradise. It should only take 34,000 deaths or so, but it won’t be genocide, and the means justify the ends, don’t they?
It’s not collective punishment when safety infrastructure is installed and a road closed for the construction. Are people being collectively punished when a bridge is closed for maintenance? No. It’s just fixing the bad infrastructure.
You don’t need to close a street for 3 months to install traffic lights and cameras. The road closure is the entire point of the suggestion.
Closing the street is just part of needed changes to address a safety concern. Interpreting it as “punishment” is in the similar line of nonsense as claiming “war on christmas” because someone says happy holidays. Punishment would be fining everyone or something. This suggestion isn’t a punishment any more than stop lights and speed limits are punishments, that’s ridiculous.
Thanks, John. It’s amazing how many people believe that any attempt to protect human life can be twisted into being represented an unfair punishment of the things that threaten human life. Guess what — safer communities benefit everyone! Dangerous communities endanger everyone! If fewer motorists killed people, your insurance rates would go down too!
“but it won’t be genocide“
No, it won’t be. Just a lot of dead people.
How are you doing David? This is a strange one even for you.
I’ve been very busy. When I lived in East Portland (2007-15) I mostly did passive advocacy. I very likely helped get this particular crossing to be put in by talking with PBOT officials, community organizers, and state legislators. Now in Greensboro NC I do a different type of advocacy, much more direct, by running a bike coop, writing grants (some of which get funded), helping to organize community rides (including our local version of Critical Mass), and helping get bikes to people who need them (about 400 bikes/year).
I still help run our local bike coop we started nearly 3 years ago, from a dilapidated city Parks Dept building. Financially we are doing fine, but we are having the usual volunteer drama and periodic insurrections that are apparently common with all bike coops. I’m the treasurer, main grant writer, parts sorter, and the guy who keeps the shop layout useful for users – there’s others who have to try to resolve the personnel issues, fix bikes, and so on.
We started doing local critical mass rides on the last Friday of every month starting in September (we got T-stormed out in August) with 39 riders in Sept, 50 riders in Oct, and just 11 riders in Nov due to chilly 35 degree conditions. All the rides start at 6:30 pm from a popular downtown park. A real mix of folks – helmet riders with lights, those without either, blacks, whites, Latinx, about 50/50 women & men (plus several thems), even a guy on roller blades. The police here ignore us. I help with route planning and corking, but actually lead the ride in November.
We had a recent ped death, he was crossing an old-style expressway that are common here on the East Coast, not quite a freeway but more than a highway, where it’s extremely dangerous for pedestrians and bicyclists, but they aren’t legally banned. It goes straight through a huge and poor black section of the city (the East Side), a bit like I-205. What was unusual about this hit was the driver, he was (and unfortunately still is) a sheriff’s deputy, off-duty during the hit, speeding (of course), and using a county-owned automobile. He stopped, called 911, our city police came out and are launching the investigation with the help of the state highway patrol, since no one really trusts our county sheriffs dept for an honest investigation, not even their own officials. Naturally the pedestrian came out of nowhere.
I’m sorry to hear about the pedestrian death. Each person violently lost can be a heavy burden for those left behind. Especially when such apparent official corruption is involved.
The critical mass rides sound amazing! It raises my spirits knowing people are still getting out there and telling the world cyclists exist and belong.
I was in Alabama and Georgia for awhile and although not as far east as you remember how the weather can get strange very quickly. I do enjoy reading of the exploits going on over there as it highlights the universality of cycling so much and unfortunately some of the hazards faced.
I once visited the bike coop in Birmingham Alabama and got a lot of excellent advice from the executive director there. She told me about fundraising strategies, how to pick board members, and that coop romances aren’t nearly as disruptive as coop-romance-breakups. I’ve also visited Tuscaloosa (home of the U of A), which has a lot of experimental protected bike lanes and intersections, plus some narrow streets that deliberately control car parking to create chicanes, something I think would be ideal in Southwest Portland.
I liked my visit to Atlanta in spite of the mid-July heat, very urban with a nice subway, but didn’t get a chance to visit any bike coops there, but the city is building some progressive bike infrastructure. I’ve also visited Savanna, but not by bike/train, my usual mode of travel.
Raleigh & Durham also have regular CM rides that I know about, probably other SE cities too.
Yeah, the rain here. I miss Portland rain, you can never get soaked in it, just moderately miserable. The rain here comes in these huge drops, usually warm water – I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve been thoroughly soaked, like riding in a swimming pool, but with lots of lightning. On the other hand, the trees here can sometimes provide a surprisingly dry shelter. And rain jackets here are utterly useless, even Gortex gets saturated by the rain and hot-weather sweat – so you get soaked, then wait a bit, and already your clothes start to dry after the storm.
I was near Columbus during summer and I don’t think I stopped sweating the entire time 🙂 I had been training in Lake Oswego (love their trail system) since spending Jan and Feb south of Jacksonville. Getting off the plane at Atlanta in June after enjoying pleasantly mild pnw humidity was……startling.
It’s a little bit how I would imagine a fish feels… You’re underwater but can somehow breathe.
It took me about 3 years before I started to get used to the weather here and another 2 years before I started to enjoy it. The 3 months starting in mid-June through mid-September are a bit like riding in a sauna every day, all day, and even on many nights when it fails to get below 70 degrees – I still need A/C in my apartment but I know many people who don’t have it or no longer use it – and eventually you get acclimatized to 93 degrees with 93 percent humidity and sudden T-storms. April, May, and October are the best times to visit the Southeast – it’s like a Midwestern summer here, dry warm daytime air, cool nights – but even in midwinter after a couple weeks of freezing dry temperatures we’ll get into the humid 60s for a few days, then more dry cold, usually in 3 to 4 week cycles. We get as much snow as Portland (as in rare) and we too wait for it to melt. Hurricanes and tropical storms are exciting but very brief, they tend to blow through within 12 hours, then we get several days of gorgeous dry weather.
For what it’s worth, 93 degrees and 93% RH is basically deadly. You can’t cool down, the wet bulb temperature is above human body temperature. People don’t acclimatize to that, swamp coolers or sweat don’t work. You need AC.
But I realize you’re probably just using hyperbole.
Thank you for the chart and I really like how it incorporates the humidity. The back story is tragic indeed. Living (even for short periods of time like Ariel) in the desert is brutal and unforgiving and shapes the way a person thinks and views the world.
Our government’s heat warnings just focus on the heat itself unfortunately. Heat Category (Heat Cat) 5 is great when in the states, not a whole lot of work gets done and being miserable is a fair trade off for some sham time. When in inhospitable countries though, one just has to be as careful as possible and drink as much of the bottled water as possible that had been sitting out in the 100+ degree sun melting microplastics into the water.
People survive without A/C although once out in the hinterlands its very dangerous. I certainly wish Ariel’s tour had taken it easy, but one of the dangers of heat exhaustion is the decreasing ability to rationalize.
https://safe.menlosecurity.com/doc/docview/viewer/docN6ED6022C9A26a80c6a9e5c2243fcc925ff0b6679a0a9b353a4ae41ae4961f9047d2c1daaecd8
No hyperbole, the 93/93 is quite real and extremely common for millions of people in the SE USA, pretty much all summer long – you do in fact get used to it – and for many poor people, the A/C doesn’t work or isn’t affordable. You do sweat a lot, drink lots of fluids (water is ideal, but soda/pop/coke is unfortunately more common as is beer, which tends to accelerate the processes of obesity and/or diabetes), wear wet clothing, visit friends with A/C. Quite sultry. And yeah, you are right, people do literally get sick from heat-related illnesses, dehydration, heat stroke, and have major mold and bug issues – there’s a lot of open poverty here aside from the homeless – and it’s even worse in rural areas. On some weeks we get even higher temperatures, with heat indexes into the 120s and 130s, and the city and county open “cooling shelters” at schools and rec centers. We also get periodic droughts, forest fires, and flash floods. The worst rain I’ve experienced was not a fall hurricane but 9″ of rain in a two-day summertime storm.
The index is interesting, but it’s for a desert region (Israel) and where I live is humid subtropical with 4 distinct seasons (fallwinterspring/Dec/Jan/Feb, summer/Mar/Apr/May, ungodlyhot/Jun/July/Aug, summer/Sep/Oct/Nov).
David,
I don’t think you understand the definition of genocide.
noun: genocide; plural noun: genocides
Words matter.
Go ahead and delete this please. It’s not very constructive.
If active transportation supporters don’t demonstrate any strength and power to protect their own lives and self interest no one in the halls of power will do it for them. That’s been shown over and over the 16 years I’ve followed this blog.
Another person walking or cycling, trying to go about their day carelessly and pointlessly killed repeated over and over. Each time the crazy ideas to outlaw all cars, shut whole streets down or randomly ban all parking. Hand in hand with that are the angry questions of how this can still be happening. Then the active transportation folk go back to their weekend fun rides, their drinking and cavorting all while more people die.
We all saw what happened during 2020. The protestors demonstrated strength and lo and behold things changed and funding got moved around and the protesters (that were of course mostly peaceful) generated talking points still discussed.
Heck, even the street racers close off streets and do what they want because they show coordination and strength.
It really is going to take some of that kind of energy to get anything changed because it’s clearly not getting any better and there is no reason to expect it will on its own.
Sure – blame the activists for not being good enough at activism. Nice one.
There’s no activism as far as I can see compared to 2020. I will blame the activists for not doing anything because they aren’t. A person killed that pedestrian with their car and there will be no protests, no streets seized, no critical mass ride, no inconvenience for the bureaucrats and elected officials who allow this year in and year out.
Correct. I will not be coming out to protest each and every road death.
And I say this knowing I could be the next one.
I appreciate that we agree about something. The not protesting aspect, not the you could be next part.
I think NYC recently legalized “J-walking,” which is…as a long time colleague and former PDOT staff person once told me… the safest way to cross any street. We error in underestimating the impacts of the pandemic; some scholars point to the Black Plague as key to understanding the disruption of life in the late middle ages that led to the Renaissance and Reformation. Hold on to your hats, slow down and look both ways!
I was recently in a big city and I tried mid-block crossing. It’s magic! – so much safer, since you don’t have cars turning into your crosswalk.
“Speed wasn’t a factor”. Jesus. If speed wasn’t a factor than Mr. Huynh would still be alive. 30 MPH is still a deadly speed.
And why do we care about 30 MPH? If we made that 20 MPH people would still get to where they are going and it would be very hard for anyone to die. The capacity of 2 lanes at 20 MPH is 8000 vehicles per hour, which is still far above and beyond the capacity of ANY intersection along it (way under 2000 vehicles per hour). All 30 MPH does is get people to the red lights faster. It would make no economic impact or significantly impact anyone’s schedule for every single non-separated roadway in our Metro to be 20 MPH. And no one would die.
Source: https://youtu.be/kqOxBZJ6c1g?si=MXtVVwtdoeGhzRMn
That’s a great video! I’ve done some studies on the safety of stroads (they’re terrifying). I knew that intersections were the bottleneck (and not lane throughput like ppl think) but I didn’t realize how big the discrepancy was.
Whoever handles PBOT’s social media should be ashamed of themselves – and should be fired.
Very likely a 20-something part-time intern who is going to school at PSU, poorly paid and limited to 800 hours per year. By the time they get “fired” they’ll already have left, having used up their hours, and will likely take an internship at Metro or ODOT next.
in addition to everything else wrong about PBOT’s video–which was taken by somebody standing illegally in the street–shows the two pedestrians crossing illegally:
https://www.oregonpedestrianlaw.com/oregonpedestrianlawsexplained
I noticed that too and interpreted as explicit permission for me to cross with the blinking hand, as I often do, like everyone else. Thanks PBOT.
Can somebody please explain to PBOT & PPB that as organizations charged with the responsibility for public safety that is funded by taxpayers that their actions and/or lack of greatly determine the culture of lawlessness by motorists.
This isn’t the f’ing! Boy Scouts nor is it the majority of motorists. This is about a small amount of people that have no regard for laws, no interest in nor notion of public safety and think that they can do whatever the f! they want on our streets. The streets that we live on, commute to work on, streets that we cross to take our kids to school & our dogs to the park.
They’ve let the inmates take control over the asylum and we’re all paying the price for this absolute f’ing insanely dangerous behavior by a handful of scofflaw motorists who won’t take any responsibility for their actions until the are held criminally liable when they break our laws.
I’ll add one more real life example to the ever growing mountain of examples. A friend of mine was blind-sided in his car by another motorist near SE Holgate & 72nd. It was dark & raining, and the motorist that him him, speeding down SE Holgate as he pulled out into the intersection, didn’t have their headlights on. A Trimet bus driver, saw the whole thing as they we’re behind my friend. they turned around and told my friend they’d be a witness. He and the other driver exchanged info, except the info the other driver gave to my friend was all BS!. Unfortunately like many other working people in our country these days, he made a tough decision to save some $ and cut back his insurance coverage to just the minimum required coverage. His car was totaled. He got nothing and this f’ing dangerous criminal, who probably either was driving a stolen car or a car with stolen plates is still driving on our streets.
Sequoia,
We have generally elected people that don’t support enforcement, adequate police staffing or having consequences for not adhering to the social contract. IMO opinion until that changes livability and safety in Portland is going to be an uphill battle. It’s really on the voters.
About a month ago I was hit by a car walking on NE Broadway and 14th exiting the Peet’s Coffee. I was very lucky (honestly I don’t know how) I didn’t get hurt since he hit me directly in the knee and ran over my foot. He just rant thru the red to make a left turn. left me feeling pretty conflicted because the guy who hit me started crying since he didn’t have insurance. But thankfully for me I was mostly fine. It’s seriously so depressing to see people be so careless because so often the people hit aren’t as lucky as I got. Wrote more about it here: https://inaction.substack.com/p/a-car-crash-or-a-happy-accident
New article from the NYT’s about what happened when the police scaled back enforcement of traffic laws. We did this in Portland. Why would the effect be any different in our citY? This is yet another example of the detrimental effects of misguided approaches to promoting “racial equity”. Jonathan I challenge you to post this article on your “news stories of the week” weekly post.
“Dec. 8, 2024, 3:00 a.m. ET
In July 2023, New Jersey state troopers who patrol the state’s busiest highways and remote rural roads suddenly began writing far fewer traffic enforcement tickets. The next month, citations for speeding, drunken driving, cellphone use and other violations plummeted by 81 percent across the state compared with the year before.
The sweeping slowdown in enforcement continued for more than eight months and coincided with an almost immediate uptick in motor vehicle crashes, records obtained by The New York Times show.”
Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll add this to the roundup. One thing to keep in mind is that you see the cause of this decreased enforcement as the fault of racial justice/equity activists… but another big cause is officers making personal political decisions about how they do their jobs.
Do you really believe the pullback of Portland traffic enforcement was the result of “personal politics” and not a decision from the mayor about what to prioritize given available resources?
I believe it was the combination of a lot of things. There’s a lot of blame to go around. PPB chose to pull back. City gov’t said to decrease some types of enforcement. This is a layered issue without simple explanations IMO
“This is a layered issue without simple explanations IMO”
It certainly is. Some people like to make simplistic accusations like “the cops are on strike” without any substantiation. The mayor approved disbanding the Traffic Division, and as the most senior elected official in the room (and their boss), the consequences of that decision are on him, regardless of the political outlook of individual cops.
Jonathan must not be aware of the Ferguson effect. The Ferguson Effect is the idea that police pull back on proactive enforcement—like traffic stops or arrests—because they’re worried about public backlash, accusations of racial profiling, or getting caught in controversy. When this happens, the theory goes, crime tends to rise.
In Portland, it’s been pretty clear. Traffic stops have dropped dramatically over the years, partly to address racial disparities, but also because officers don’t want to risk being accused of bias. Sounds good on paper, but the roads now feel like the Wild West, and traffic deaths are way up.
Then there were the 2020 George Floyd protests. Police were under intense scrutiny and criticism, and proactive policing essentially came to a halt. At the same time, homicides and gun violence skyrocketed, hitting record highs in 2021 and 2022.
And morale? It tanked. Officers left in droves, and the ones who stayed often hesitated to act proactively, worried they’d end up in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.
So yeah, Portland’s experience with the Ferguson Effect shows how good intentions can sometimes lead to unintended consequences—and some serious public safety challenges.
Is it “personal politics” or a common sense reaction for police officers to not do something (traffic stops/enforcement) that is being discouraged and limited by their superiors and local political leaders? Why would they continue working aggressively enforcing the law in an environment where they will be put under a microscope and scrutinized for any perceived grievance? Easier and safer for them to just do less.
Yeah it’s all that.
Because they get paid to and it is their job.
Employees don’t make the rules.
And they have to follow orders they receive.
The current mayor ordered them to stop doing traffic stops in the early days of Covid and hasn’t reversed that order yet.
Hopefully the new mayor will.
Don’t hold your breath. Did you see who Wilson chose for his chief of staff? Yikes.
Key player in FTX $500k cover-up named PDX mayor-elect’s chief of staff
https://oregonroundup.substack.com/p/key-player-in-ftx-500k-cover-up-named
Yikes!
The PSA and comments miss an important point. Chances are that he did look both ways before crossing. In the video referenced, the victim, 75-year-old Hong Huynh appears to walk slowly across the street as an older person might. The driver had ample time to see him-he didn’t dart into traffic.
Mr. Hong, an elderly pedestrian, should have been safe crossing the street in the manner he did. Our streets must be safe for all.
It’s not victim blaming to remind people to look both ways and to keep paying attention as they cross streets. I’ve seen countless pedestrians crossing streets and never looking either direction as they do so, even as they are sometimes jaywalking across busy roads. Happens all the time in my neighborhood of St Johns. And just the other (rainy) night a pedestrian was in the middle left turn lane of NE Columbia Blvd about 100 feet east of NE 11th Ave when I drove past him, I didn’t see that guy until I was driving past in the left hand westbound lane as it was dark, rainy and the guy was in dark clothing. If I’d decided a couple seconds earlier to turn left there onto 11th, I almost certainly would have plowed right into that guy — and it would have been his fault and he’d probably be dead.
Pretty simple: Slow everyone down to 20, maybe 25. Enforcement cameras galore with substantial fines.