Cyclists on the Roadway

This is muggy Florida but a lot of it is pretty universal in the United States. Unfortunately the militant road hog cyclists latch on to the TAKE THE LANE statements….
The emphasis on People is what I think is most important.

Leadership or Tribal Ideology

After the state cut funding for County, Township & Municipality service - funding put in place when enacting an income tax, safety became an issue. The local governments lost money that went to pay highly skilled, highly paid personnel.
One of the changes in law enforcement & public safety that's come about over the years is the use of relatively inexpensive electronic surveillance devices.
The state who in their great wisdom forced local safety agencies to tighten their belts has decided that using inexpensive tech to augment their services is a non starter. They want to outlaw traffic cameras completely.
Wouldn't it make more sense for Seitz, Mallory & the rest of the unholy cabal in Columbus to regulate rather than ban these modern systems?
When Cincinnati looked at red light cameras, they made an effort to not make the mistakes other cities had made before. The fear mongering lies spouted by COAST & the NAACP put the kibosh on one of the best planned systems in the country.
But the state of Ohio could demand:

• All citations must be issued by a local police officer
• Service providers cannot profit from issuing more tickets - flat fees only
• The presence of cameras must be announced via signage
• Only traffic & Police can pick the locations of cameras to avoid politicizing their use

I'm sure there's all sorts of other crap they could do and, with their disdain for the local governments of Ohio, they could easily wipe out any local bans on the use of this cost saving, life saving tech.

Four in one turn

Here's an idea - blow through a stop sign at a fairly blind intersection & see what happens!
Well, when the approaching truck nails you & pushes you into 3 pedestrians…
There's easier ways to meet people, folks.

Fishwarp story about the latest dumbass Cage Jockey's wake of destruction here.

Bear Bagging

A black bear has been sighted for several days slowly meandering towards downtown Cincinnati. No doubt headed for Fountain Square for a refreshing dip.
So how come the cops haven't been able to tranq the guy & haul him off to wild & wooly Warren County? Muskingham county cops managed to slaughter 50 exotic animals in the time it's taken Hamilton county cops to let the bear wander into bucolic Oakley.
Never a dull moment…

Engineering Safety

There's an intersection in Cincinnati that folks have identified as being clearly engineered poorly.
Two neighborhood/light industrial streets with plenty of screwed up pavement from utility work, they have 25 MPH speed limits (ignored) and the east west street has a standard stop sign. Traveling east from the intersection leads to a dead end.
Bothe streets are flat & they intersect at right angles.

Looking east

Looking north

Looking west

Looking southA clear engineering failure and an obvious calamity waiting to happen.
The American auto lobby would tell us to widen the streets and raise the speed limits. Holland would tell us to get rid of the stop signs. Folks in the neighborhood who routinely complain about the rough roads want speed bumps AKA, nicely paved rough roads that are a disaster for bicyclists & snowplows.
One way to draw attention to the intersection would be to install a dozen girls marching in a circle in the intersection wearing cowboy boots, glittery swimsuits and waving flags, singing & shooting pistols in the air.
The thing is - why do we see it as an engineering problem?
When people misuse guns, there's no shortage of folks screaming to take away guns. When people misuse their cars - it's a traffic engineering problem. I don't get it.
How about yanking more drivers licenses? If people prove they cannot use a deadly machine on public roadways, don't let them !
Meanwhile, we can work on engineering safer guns.
I guess...

Enjoying the "protected" bike path

From a bike cam we can see in jittery detail the bedlam a "protected" bike path will unloose. But, at least ut protects the cyclist from an accident that rarely happens…

Motorist gets two with one turn

An inattentive motorist turns left in front of an oncoming motorcycle with 2 onboard. Both were hospitalized. The motorist is AOK.

Fishwarp article that asks if the motorcyclists were wearing helmets, if anybody was intoxicated or driving too fast - doesn't ask if the auto driver was wearing a seatbelt or was just an idiot here

Heroin & Tolls

As the talk about building a new bridge between Covington & Cincinnati that would require tolls for financing goes on (&on&on&on) there's another discussion about heroin abuse, an epidemic that has people crossing state lines over the existing bridgs.
What would tolling the bridges, existing & new due to the cross state heroin trade?
Tolls for the imagined bridge would all need to go to that bridge but tolls on the other bridges could go to not only the new bridge & existing bridge maintenance but some could go to chemical dependency programs as well.
Of course, getting stuck in traffic on the bridges would also afford a guy a great opportunity to shoot up…

The Dummy Convention

You'd either love this or run away screaming but Vent Haven is hosting a ventriloquist convention July 16-19 at the posh Airport Marriott, 2395 progress drive, Hebron, KY

Home

Asphalt Abattoir

We need to face facts, the experiment has failed. The idea of the average citizen rolling around in a ton of steel wielding the power of hundreds of horses on city streets might have sounded great - but it doesn't work.
Besides the astronomical death rates, the maimings & crippling injuries, there is also the physical costs of obesity, heart disease, diabetes & such. Add to that the psychological cost of social isolation and the damage of talk radio taking advantage of that isolation. The automobile experiment has been a colassal failure & can probably be blamed for much of our society's ills.
They don't work - we need to remove them from America's roadways.
The damage in the picture above happened when a motorist cavalierly turned left in front of an oncoming cyclist who crashed int o the passengr side door face first.
While she will require extensive reconstructive surgeries, she is lucky she didn't lose her eyes or get her neck broken. The motorists inattentativeness also resulted in injuries to the passenger. A driver is responsible for his passengers.
Get cars off the road. Lets bring roadway deaths back to the 100s, away from the current tens of thousands.

Fishwarp article here

Voting

Voter turnout in the latest Afghanistan presidential election was roughly the same as the last US presidential election of about 60%.
In Afghanistan about 50 people were murdered while trying to vote. That would be about 500 on the US. Pretty much nobody gets murdered trying to vote in the US. Probably the most common cause of death in voting in the US is people crashing their cars.
Sad that Americans, in their apathy, can only muster the same voter turnout as a country where the voters are threatened by terrorist violence.

Get a Horse

If you have cars, you can't have nice things. Motorists careen into themselves, pedestrians, cyclists, buildings, monuments... Their lust for carnage is unquenchable.
In 24 hours, motorists have struck 2 horse drawn carriages on an Ohio River bridge sending drivers & passengers of the carriages flying across the span high above the river.
This must stop. We need to ban automobiles on the city streets. Relegate their use to the interstate highways. Install governors to keep them from going over 35 MPH.
This nonsense needs to stop.

Fishwarp report here

Cincinnati For Sale

For sale:

• The Warner Bros building at Liberty & Central Parkway
• The Brighton German Bank at Central and Harrison and Central Parkway and the Brighton Approach and Colerain
• The Baldwin Building
• Great American Tower
• 4339 Crawford
• Park Chili

So Why is everybody selling?
John Cranley?
or is that just a coincidence?

Mobility Demobilizes

Horror sells again...
I hate calling people on their mobile phones when I think they are driving and I REALLY hate talking to them when they are driving. I always imagine loud sounds & then the phone going silent.

Mann Tackles Scalping

Cincinnati had an anti-scalping law but repealed it in 1982 - when Mann was in office. Why he's all hot on scalping now is anybody's guess.
Ohio has no anti-scalping laws & lets cities do what they want. Cincinnati quasi bans street scalping & requires some kind of license to resell from an office but internet sales go beyond the city's reach.
Scalping in Cincinnati went big time in the 90s when Bill Meister took to hiring people to buy tickets that he would resell. This came to a head when he managed to score almost half the seats for a Prince Purple Rain show.
Nowadays you just write/buy a program and bypass the pesky employees.
The current Lumenocity fracas was kind of inevitable & unfortunate but the only way to get around it is for the people to just not buy from scalpers. Of course then Prince would have played to a half empty arena & Washington Park would be about half empty for Lumenocity 2014, so…..
But I have no idea what Mann intends to do NOW. He's been around for all the other scalping controversies. He's been in legislative positions during those issues. How did he vote on repealing the anti-scalping law that was in place in the 80s?
Dude's weird...

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from his hand?

Bill Seitz is, apparently, able to see into the hearts of municipal legislators & see them for the greedy liars that they truly are.
After Columbus stripped cities of funding used to cover police & fire departments, they now want to put further burdens on them by outlawing technology that frees up police & cuts down on emergency runs by the fire departments.
And what will the costs to society be when the cameras with proven track records of improved safety be?

In 2007, 90 crashes occurred at the 10 intersections with red light cameras. In 2012, the number dropped to 48 crashes.

The legislation would cost cities across Ohio about $77 million to keep their programs operational.
Mr Seitz - the blood and carnage will be all yours.

Frogtown News Sun article here

Low Voter Turnout?

Brain damaged Cecil Thomas narrowly edged out ethically challenged Dale Mallory for the Democratic nomination for an Ohio Senate position and will likely win.
The Republicans installed a 'placeholder' and now the mentally challenged self help scammer, Charlie Winburn has slimed his way into the position.
It's pretty much Tweedledee & Tweedledum for that district senate seat.
Then, of course, there's the question of who would take Winburn's seat on city council. Very likely Sam Malone would finish out the majority of Winburn's term.
So, what's the point of voting?

Downtown Bob City

When I was a teenager, this is what my hometown downtown looked like. There's a building there now.
The building on the left is gone and replaced with a 7/8 scale hotel & the building center right is gone. The building on the right in the foreground is fairly abandoned & the tall building on the right is about condemned.
The Clark County Historical society is in the center left building in bustling heart of the city center.

Net Neutrality

One of the bitches about this is that there is a third party, the content owners who don't want you to have tapes & disks in your hot little hands. They want you to stream their stuff so you can't steal it from them - like they are great conservators of their own stuff.

Bodybags Redux

Last summer there was a case where an Ohio woman used a Kentucky funeral home to cremate her son & had the funeral director split the ashes into 4 bags. The woman was infuriated that he used leftover WalMart bags while the funeral director was kind of freaked out about splitting up the remains.
How the laws in Ohio & Kentucky apply here, I don't know. I couldn't find anything in Ohio about splitting up cremated remains.
You cannot commingle multiple people's remains but you can scatter ashes where other people's ashes have already been scattered which sounds like commingling to me but what do I know?
In Florida the court recently ruled that cremated remains are not 'property' and, as such, cannot be divided. That makes sense to me but then I am more into burial so maybe that influences my opinion as I wouldn't dream of being chopped up and sending an arm here & a leg there.
Meanwhile, I think Ohio should go back to the drawing board.

Florida case here

Ohio/Kentucky case here

Previous blogpost here

Character is Destiny

Heart of Balchik
Character is destiny.
I bless you, dear Romania, country joys and sorrows of my beautiful country you live in my heart and whose paths I've known all. Beautiful country that I saw whole, whose fate I was allowed to see it fulfilled. Be eternally abundant you be great and full of honor, lofty ever sit among the nations, to be honest, loved and understanding. "Queen Marie can I help you?"

OK, I'm going with Google Translate here…
So, apparently this town, Balchik, on the coast of the Black Sea, has gone back & forth between Romania & Bulgaria a number of times but was under Romanian rule while Queen Marie was around & she really like the place.
Looks like someplace out of a fairy tale. Anyway, pretty picture, pretty song...

HamCoDems get their own 'Tea Party'

It appears the local Democratic Party is getting sort of Tea Bagged by the younger members who are more interested in policy than partisan power mongering.
HamCoDem Chair Tim Burke doesn't get it. Neither does Tom Luken who fired off this LTE complaining about being marginalized by non-senile people who don't shout at the sky.
Younger people are asking who ARE these people named Tillery, Reece, Mallory, and Luken who hold so much power in the party seemingly by just name recognition. Maybe they are the ones who know where the bones lie…