Dash cam, unlucky number 13: Two hits and a miss

From the recent local news, the sad story of a motorcyclist, a military vet and former police officer, who was killed in a hit-and-run accident a few miles south of here in La Marque.  Statements from the family suggest that, had this not been a hit-and-run, had he received prompt medical attention, he might have survived. 

 

What piqued my curiosity was the fact that the perpetrator was tracked down using video footage - mysterious video footage that was obtained HOW?? 

 

It took a bit of digging to come up with this interview by Galveston County Daily News.  It seems to imply that some of the video was captured by a nearby hotel security camera.  But at the 52-second mark of the interview, the officer clearly says "we've got footage from our motorcycle...".   It sounds like the deceased man may have installed a dash cam on his bike. 

 

And speaking of dash cams being used to assist law enforcement, we had a doozie of an experience the other night, one which I communicated to Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia directly, and with dash cam pics as evidence.  I was driving my family northbound on IH-45 feeder just south of El Dorado, and a Sheriff's Deputy was stopped in the traffic lane assisting a disabled motorist.  I slowed WAY down (a) because that's the law and (b) it's overwhelming common sense on a road that has no shoulder: this motorist and officer were directly in the path of oncoming traffic.

 

So as soon as I slow down to pass safely, a driver comes roaring up behind me.  It's only a two-lane feeder, so he cannot pass.  He goes into road-rage mode and starts flashing his lights and surging forward aggressively, literally right up to my bumper, threatening to ram my car!!  Nevermind that there's an officer right there and that people are standing in the roadway. 

When we both came to the El Dorado overpass, I didn't pull up along side him, for fear that he'd take out a gun and shoot us... because we slowed down to pass a peace officer safely.

That gap between me and the white truck ahead of me is for safety.

Anyway, one of the neat things about a dash cam is that you don't have to distract yourself with taking notes or writing things down, because they record audio as well as video.  You can just talk the whole incident through as it's happening and then transcribe it later or save the video for future use in case it's needed.  I was able to call out the license plate on this idiot's truck and then get it off the recording later, so that I could relay that to Sheriff Garcia.  And I saved the video segments before putting the thing back into continuous-loop recording mode. 

 

And in other theme-related news, last night I went to Burger House, a wonderful little place (so much better than junk food chain restaurants) just north of Centerpointe on Main Street (FM 518) between Calder and Highway 3.  There were two LCPD cars in the parking lot taking a report from a driver who had just been the unlucky subject of yet another hit-and-run.  The driver had pulled the semi-functional car into the Burger House parking lot to get it off the street.  Nobody appeared hurt, but a fine mess was made of the car.  A dash cam might have helped with that investigation.   In the fluster of the moment, the driver might have been able to at least call out the plate number, and of course there would be footage of the fleeing vehicle.  I've been in those kind of wrecks and they can be extremely scary and disorienting.  There's little chance of someone remembering or writing down a license plate in such an upset frame of mind.   But the dash cam can almost do it all for you. 

 

I'm looking forward to the day when dash cams are standard equipment in all cars.  They may not save your life, but they might help convict the person who killed you, who road-raged on you, or who destroyed your property. 

 

And there you have it, A Tale of Three Motor Vehicle Bastards, for this Thursday morn. 

Dash cam, Part 5: Revenge is tweet

Our stats blew up last week, and it took me a few minutes of research to determine why in the heck we were getting so many visitors from outer space, er, I mean, places other than our own tiny subdivision:

This blog is neither commercial nor monetized,
but still, it's useful to monitor its visitor traffic
as a source of general feedback on effectiveness.

But seriously... Kuwait?!  New Zealand??

So we have had visitors from these nine countries...
now if we could just encourage readership
from all nine sections of Centerpointe,
we'd really be cookin'!
:-)

It turns out that a syndicated journalist had tweeted Dash Cam 3, where I went into detail regarding the intentions behind leveraging a dash cam to influence public behavior, and why maintaining respect and order on "the little things" like driving habits can resonate with a disproportionately-positive effect through an entire community.

Good.  I hope those hundreds of remote visitors were able to glean a few ideas that they can take and apply in their own communities.  It is important for ordinary people to make attempts like this, whether via blogs or dash cams or other methods.  You can forget about relying on the federal government, the local police, or any other public entity for problem-solving when it comes to many aspects of crime and cultural deficiencies.  No goverment program, grant, or subsidy could ever hold a candle to actual citizen involvement when it comes to shaping better communities.  (And be assured that I'll rant more about that in future posts).

The fact that anyone would even want to tweet content from a micro-micro-blog is noteworthy in itself.  It derives from a grassroots movement to restore a greater sense of community to American suburbia.  Decades ago, of course, everyone knew their neighbors, and a collective sense of awareness and safety derived from that interconnected knowledge.  But these days, many subdivisions across the country have become the proverbial nameless faceless cultural wastelands, where nobody trusts anybody and children no longer play outside because nobody trusts anybody and because so many people drive their cars like freakin' brain-diseased idiots, with no regard for the safety of anyone. 

Centerpointe already had a running start on bucking that trend, with its very active Property Owners Association, and through the networking and newslettering done by our community coordinator.  By the time my family had moved here, microscopic Centerpointe, with fewer than 400 families, had already created the largest National Night Out celebration in Galveston County, with its population of about 290,000 people.  It was my intention to expand upon that running start with this blog, but it's cool that some material herein is potentially useful to other far-flung communities as well! 

So with those thoughts, I'll leave you with this morning's dash cam disaster: yet another ode to the infamous El Dorado freeway exit, showing two separate gap-shooters filmed just 81 seconds apart:

Dash cam, Part 2: Flying down the freeway

I kicked off my dash cam series with video footage of two sign-runners, with the intention of using the dash cam to call out local dangerous drivers.  But sometimes the things that transpire in the public right-of-way cause me to yell, "HOLY COW!!" for reasons that have nothing to do with motor vehicles.

Such was the case late yesterday afternoon when this behemoth buteo rose up startlingly in front of me:

Based on its distinctive underwing pattern, this appears to be a Swainson's hawk, possibly a migrant en route through Houston from Argentina, bound for a more northerly nesting site (if it's NOT a Swainson 's, someone please email Centerpointe.blog@gmail.com and edify me!!). 

From http://www.peregrinefund.org/explore_raptors/hawks/swainson.html

According to the URL above, "This hawk can be found in open grasslands, prairies, farmlands, and deserts that have some trees for nesting."  Well, that certainly describes the areas around Centerpointe: lots of open, mowed fields flanked with trees and awaiting commercial buyers. 

The Houston Audubon website also notes that small numbers of these hawks nest in the Houston area. 

What amazed me about this encounter was the degree to which this raptor appeared "at home" in this unlikely venue, having landed in the narrow swale between feeder and mainlanes.  I am accustomed to seeing red-tailed hawks in close proximity to humans (in fact, last month, I blogged about seeing them in the neighborhood), but it surprises me to see this rarer species right on the freakin' freeway with its deafening roar and hoardes of cars blasting by. 

You can see from the screengrab above that he had something in his talons, but the resolution of the dash cam wasn't good enough to reveal what.  Perhaps it was a snake similar to what this guy had:

From http://www.outdooralabama.com/watchable-wildlife/what/Birds/ospreys/sh.cfm

So there you have it, another existential vignette from another day in suburban paradise (and you thought it was just sterile empty sprawl!!).  Keep your eyes peeled for this magnificent creature each day as you exit at League City Parkway after your hard day at the office, and always remember the immortal words of Ferris Bueller: 

"Life moves pretty fast.  If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

Dash cam, Part 9: Municipal shame

This is the ninth entry in my "dash cam" blog series, in which I'm using a continuous-loop digital video recorder (DVR) mounted inside my car to capture the dangerous situations that put the citizens of greater Houston at unnecessary risk.  Today's entry focuses on pedestrian perils, but this time the risk derives not from dangerous drivers, but from municipal shortsightedness. 

Here in the tony NASA community of Clear Lake, we've managed to put men on the moon and space shuttles in orbit, but we can't seem to put sidewalks beneath kids.  This dash cam screengrab tells that sorry tale:

El Camino Real southbound opposite El Camino Village Drive, within the city limits of the City of Webster, Texas,
in a mixed middle-class residential and retail area less than one mile from Johnson Space Center,
May 8, 2011, about 12:50 PM

Here you see a boy who appeared to be 10 to 12 years of age, walking at the edge of a road that doesn't have a sidewalk, or even a shoulder.  I inserted a red arrow to draw attention to the boy's right foot, which slipped off the curb just before I was about to pass him.  His body teetered toward the roadway as he threw his arms into the air to regain balance.  For one heart-stopping moment, I thought he would tumble beneath my wheels, but thankfully he managed to recover himself.

This right here is why people don't walk in our communities.  This is a big reason why parents don't let their children play outside, the children who grow increasingly fat as they sit for hours each day in front of video games instead.  This is no joke - it's dangerous for kids to venture outside in areas where appropriate infrastructure does not exist.  If this stumbling boy had fallen into the traffic lane, he would have been killed instantly - and by me, a driver who tries harder than almost everyone else to protect cyclists and pedestrians. 

Twenty-five years ago when I first set foot in America as a young university student, I was awed by the great displays of wealth that are everywhere, but horrified by the absence of municipal planning.  I was dumbfounded to see a lack of pedestrian access in so many areas. Like many bootstrapping immigrants, I'm a staunch conservative, bordering on libertarian. I'm a minimalist on issues of public spending, but there are basic necessities that governments must provide (or require developers to provide) if societies are to prosper, and diversified transportation systems are solidly on that very short list. When I first saw residential areas like this one above constructed without sidewalks, I had a "red alert" reaction. I knew instantly that this shortsightedness would come back to haunt America in ways that nobody was imagining in those years.

And today America struggles with epidemic levels of obesity, its comorbid diseases, and associated insupportable health care costs. We failed to sow sidewalks and other infrastructure and lifestyle precedents that accommodate normal outdoor physical activity, and now we are reaping the natural results of those policies. 

A quarter century after I first witnessed scenes like that dash cam screengrab above, my "red alert" is stronger than ever, because we have not reached a tipping point of improvement.  In many new and redeveloping neighborhoods, developers are now compelled by law to include sidewalks, but not in others, and municipalities themselves are still coming up shockingly short where infrastructure is concerned. 

In this City of Houston "tear down" neighborhood shown in aerial and street views, prices for condominiums start at about a half million dollars, and some include backyard swimming pools.  But no pedestrian improvements were required to be included in this less-than-ten-year-old redevelopment. 

Much closer to home, in fact, right across the street from our own neighborhood here in the south Clear Lake area, we see a League City-owned park constructed between 1995 and 2000 (per historical aerial photos).  This is a MUNICIPAL property, a PARK, and still, a simple sidewalk was not required as part of its substantial construction.

Doesn't it speak volumes that the only safe way to access a public facility ostensibly devoted to physical fitness is by motor vehicle?!

But of course, it doesn't end there where lack of accommodation to public facilities is concerned.  This is a view of Walker Street looking east, with most of the League City municipal complex at photo left.  Local children travel down this street to get to the city library.  This road frontage also represents the only access to the city swimming pool. 

Let me say that again for emphasis:  We don't even have a sidewalk to the basic amenities of public library and swimming pool.  In order for a pedestrian to get to either venue, it is necessary to (1) walk in these traffic lanes, or (2) dodge cars in the municipal parking lots, or (3) trudge through the grass.  Think about it.

Today as I watch local quality-of-life advocacy groups fight to achieve even modest gains in bicycle and pedestrian access, I still wonder:  How will history view these priorities, this abject transportation poverty in the midst of all this wealth?  It's great that our communities were so instrumental in America's launch into outer space, but can we please not forget our many citizens who still do not have access to the safe pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure that should be non-negotiable here in our community space?

Low-resolution screengrab on the morning of May 9, 2011 from the League City page describing planned sidewalk and trail projects, as seen at:

  http://www.leaguecity.com/index.aspx?NID=1551
 
A computer glitch, no doubt, but an eerie one.

Dash cam, Part 3: Butterfly effect meets Broken Windows

Yesterday I was contacted regarding my first dash cam video which shows flagrant disregard for traffic control signs, and from that anonymous feedback, I realized the extent to which I've sorta put the car before the horse, here.
(Get it?? the car before the horse??  Arf!!). 

I launched into the dash cam video series without fully explaining the motivations and intentions behind it.  Therefore, I'd now like to back-track and cover that ground, because what I'm driving at here has significant ramifications not just for our neighborhood, but for our entire nation. 

Seriously, to say the same thing a different way, I (we) are not just old gray-haired eccentrics with nothing better to do with our time than to get all dramatic because some of our local residents are pathologically reckless drivers.  The wider impacts of this behavior are utterly profound.

Let me begin that explanation with one of my favorite proverbs, a bit of high wisdom that dates back to at least the 14th century (legendarily, Benjamin Franklin re-stated it formally in the year 1758):

FOR WANT OF A NAIL

For want of a nail, a shoe was lost

For want of a shoe, a horse was lost

For want of a horse, a rider was lost

For want of a rider, a battle was lost

For want of a battle, a kingdom was lost

All for the want of a horse shoe nail.

This proverb is a metaphorical restatement of the butterfly effect, the observation that final outcomes can be exquisitely sensitive to starting conditions. 

If we take the ancient horse shoe proverb and re-cast it in terms of contemporary motor vehicles, this is the type of butterfly effect that falls out of that:

FOR WANT OF TRAFFIC CONTROL

For want of traffic control, a kid's freedom to run and play safely outside was lost

For want of safe outdoor play, a kid's most natural fitness outlet was lost

For want of fitness outlet, a kid became obese and his long-term health was lost

For want of good health, the obese kid grew to become a less-productive adult whose net-positive contributions to private health care and Medicare systems were lost

For want of widespread net-positive contributions, America's financial strength was lost

For want of financial strength, America's position as a world power was lost

And all for the want of traffic control.

Is traffic control the ONLY factor in that causality?  Of course not - but nevertheless, it is one very REAL contributor.  Contrary to popular media hype, most parents today severely restrict their kids' abilities to run and play outside NOT because they are afraid of child-killer abductions, which are almost nonexistent, but because driving habits simply make it unsafe.   And now we have absolutely astonishing accelerations in national obesity rates despite the proliferation of organized sports for children (there seems to be something about free play that provides benefits to physiological regulation that structured sports do not, and I'll also post more on that topic later).

In his book "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference", writer Malcolm Gladwell touches upon Broken Windows: a criminological theory which asserts that signalling has a dramatic effect on behavior.  Because of this, minor social disorder manifesting as broken windows, graffiti, and (I would argue) unchecked traffic violations provide a signal to people that the system has already broken down.  Internalizing this message, people then proceed to behave accordingly - with even greater degrees of disorder.  And pretty soon under such conditions, kids can no longer play outside, and their view of the world shrinks even as their waistlines balloon. 

If you want a real eye-opener, read pages 141 to 147 of the paperback version of "The Tipping Point", where it describes how New York City did an about-face on its crime wave, not by going after serious felons, but by refusing to accept minor infractions of the law and thereby stopping the progression of crime in its tracks. 

The lesson:  seemingly insignificant quality-of-life crimes are "tipping points" for more severe social degradation.  More than once, our local Chief of Police Mike Jez has gone on record as stating, "The police department would prefer not to write speeding tickets".   I realize that budgets are limited and yes, we have many crimes in our city that, on their face, are more urgent and serious than moving violations, but I find Mr. Jez's assertion to be short-sighted and an inappropriate social signal because, from those little things the big things flow, both in terms of crime and lifestyle and everything else that springs from them:

For want of traffic control, ...

***

So there's the first part of my larger dash cam rationale, and I will close this post with another 30-second video clip.  This one shows the impossible conditions that exist IH-45 northbound at the El Dorado Boulevard exit.  Because IH-45 is woefully underbuilt through north Clear Lake, people tend to treat the feeders as mainlanes, driving on them en masse at speeds up to 70 mph despite the 35 to 45 mph posted limits.  To compound this misery, the El Dorado interchange is an antiquated cloverleaf that cannot be safely approached at prevailing illegal feeder speeds.  Here you see me initially hit the exit ramp while INCREASING my speed off the freeway, because that's often the only way to achieve a merge.  But then I realized that I couldn't possibly merge in time for the exit, so I had to slow down abruptly to about 15 mph.   That's a very dangerous situation to be forced into when people are approaching from behind at up to 70 mph, but there's often no other way to access the exit.  Note that the four cars that blasted by on my right side were both lane-jumping AND driving faster than the cars in the freeway mainlanes to camera left!

Dash cam, Part 4: T-bone treachery

Ancient suburban proverb say: dash cam tell no lies.  Note that I'm going to no special effort to get any of this material.  It's just the status quo of what happens on our local roads, with life-threatening near-misses multiple times each day. 

FM 518 at Calder, heading south across the intersection.  It was 7:31 pm, so the sun was getting low and the resulting overexposure of the dash cam washes out my traffic light, but you can see the opposing traffic light quite clearly. 

As I waited for my green, a white Jeep proceeded through the intersection on his yellow... no big deal with that.  It turned red before he cleared the intersection.

Then, a full two seconds later, this guy in the maroon truck ran the red light.  Notice that his wheels look more blurry than those of the Jeep.  That's because the Jeep was proceeding at speed limit, but this maroon idiot was blowing down FM 518 and through the red light at about 60 mph (speed limit on that segment is what - 35 mph?  45 mph?).

In other words, running the light wasn't an accident - it was a conscious decision.  (S)he did not care about that decision's potential consequences for me, a mother returning from Walgreens with prescription medicine for a sick child.  People like this only care about their own pathetic asses. 

Fortunately, none of us had jack-rabbited the intersection, so nobody was hit by this idiot.  You'll see this type of scene routinely at Calder - people will hesitate to proceed, because they know how dangerous FM 518 is.  In the words of my former Driver Ed teacher, "Green never means 'GO' - green only means 'GO if it is SAFE to go'."  At Calder, 'safe' takes careful verification.

Dash cam, unlucky number 13: postscript

So, one day after I publish a post describing two recent hit-and-run car accidents, someone hits my husband's car, and leaves the scene. 

My husband was not IN the car at the time, so even if he'd HAD a dash cam, it wouldn't have done any good because it would have been switched off. 

But in this case, two eye witnesses got the license plate # and a description of the offending vehicle as it left the scene.  So that's worth observing: eyes are also very, very good things to have around.  Eyes can be made to work very well in situations where dash cams really can't get the job done.  Point noted.
:-)

Local fright-seeing

My job has taken me all over Houston these past couple of days, and I thought I'd take you on a little fright-seeing, I mean sight-seeing, tour of some of the stuff I have encountered.

Sometimes I use a dash cam to record what I see as I'm traveling around, and I've made a number of historical posts based on that very revealing little tool.  But a dash cam is characterized by a very inconvenient limitation: the technology at my price point is still very crude.  The resolution is not sufficient for capturing vital details. 

And sometimes I need absolute proof of details, such as license plate numbers.  I used to also keep a pad of paper and pencil on the center console of my vehicle.  When I would see something really atrocious, I would grope for the pencil and scribble down the license plate number without taking my eyes off the road, and also any other details such as name of the company if the roadway incident involved a commercial vehicle. 

But even this additional measure hasn't proven to be sufficient for my purposes.  Case in point.  One day a few years ago, I saw a big rig driving very dangerously in Pasadena - so dangerously that it blew my mind.  I wrote down as many details as I could, and then I pulled into a parking lot and called the company whose name was painted on the truck cab.  As I was describing what I had witnessed, the company representative on the phone became increasingly frightened.  I finished my story by saying, "I'm just relating these things to you so that you can discipline your driver."  The panicked person at the other end then replied, "But you don't understand:  we don't have any assets anywhere in the state of Texas.  What you saw was someone who had counterfeited a truck to make it look like one of ours, and God only knows what illegal cargo they hauled through Pasadena today."

There's some merit to all that rhetoric that comes out of Homeland Security, eh? (See also local resources here).  Ordinary citizens really are in the best position to spot what's wrong out there in our daily world.  I'm not talking about paranoia - I'm talking about being in a situation where you know there's something wrong, such as the incident described above. 

Given that it was their corporate identity that was infringed upon, I left that company to pursue this truck-spoofing issue with the authorities, but at that point I resolved to do a better job of capturing the details of what I see as I'm out there on the road.  Much of the time, I now travel with my DSLR right in my lap.   I can't take my eyes off the road, but I can raise the camera up much the same as I would lift up a can of soda, and I can just start taking pictures blindly when I see something interesting or dangerous.  If I simply take many, many pictures, one or two are bound to come out clearly. 

So let's focus on a phenomenon that I encountered yesterday afternoon.  This next series of photos shows one example of a disturbing trend I've noticed lately on the freeways: Truck drivers intentionally frightening motorists for sport. 

The usual disclaimers apply:  As with everything else I write on this blog, what I'm presenting here are my opinions as to what transpired in this event.  I saw things happening that involved me, and I interpreted those events within the context that made maximum sense to me.  I intentionally took pictures to document what I observed, but I'm not a police officer and no crime has been proven to have been committed here.  Other people might look at these same events and photos and reach different conclusions. 

The driver of this truck drew the focus of my attention because he literally and intentionally forced me out of my lane with his hyper-aggressive driving (in my opinion).  This is not the first time I have seen this occur.  What they do is "gun" their engines and run up behind you as if they were going to ram you.  At the last second, they slam on their brakes to avoid a collision, but even then, they often tailgate at absurdly close range. 

This is what I observed this trucker initially doing to me (I could not take pics of that part because he was behind me).  He forced me to take evasive action.  But after I had vacated this lane, I followed him, because I knew without question that he would proceed to inflict the same dangerous game upon another chosen motorist.

IH-45 SB inside Houston's Loop 610, 20130130 2:30 PM.

Where he had a bit of straightaway at his disposal, he was driving like a bat out of hell, so there was some lag time for me to catch up with him and his next chosen victim. 

Sure enough, he got onto the back of yet another unsuspecting target, in this case, a little passenger vehicle painted bright colors to represent a commercial company.  Do you see how severely he is tailgating that vehicle right in front of him?  In some moments, I saw that there was barely a car length between them, with both traveling at 65 mph.

IH-45 SB near the Wayside exit, obviously.

Here's another shot as we were approaching the South Loop.  Now you can get a clearer peek at the car in front of him that he had targeted (in my opinion).  Do you see how his brake lights are illuminated here?  That's because he was in the process of feigning the ramming of that little commercial vehicle (in my opinion).

Close-up screengrab from the photo above.  Don't simply accept my opinion.  See the lack of separation between these two vehicles.  See these other vehicles in the same field of view with appropriate high-speed separation among them.  See the brake lights illuminated on the truck.  Draw your own conclusions about what was going on here. 

Finally the little commercial vehicle in front of him had had enough, and he gunned his own engine to put space between the two of them, jumping into my lane to evade this trucker, the very same evasive manoeuvre that I myself had been forced to take only minutes before. 

Minutes before I fell back to his flank and took this photo series, that is.  This is just so incredibly wrong.  We should not be forced to take flee like this for no reason other than we just happen to have been a random sport target for some sonofabitch trucker (as I interpret it).   

As I was watching this whole spectacle unfold, I wondered what in the hell could motivate any trucker to risk his life, risk other innocent drivers' lives, and risk his own livelihood for the sake of this dangerous entertainment (as I personally interpret it). 

It wasn't until I got home and examined these photos blindly taken that I began to formulate a theory.  This guy is from Laredo (a fact I did not realize at the time because I was watching the road, not my camera).  Even if someone were to report his dangerous driving to the authorities, by the time word gets out, he's probably long gone from our freeways.  I'm wondering if he's thinking he's simply unaccountable, above the law, when he's having fun at our collective expense way up here in good ol' Houston, Texas. 

But guess what, Jorge?  You, too, live in the Information Age.  The good people of this world may not be able to pin any specific incident such as this on you, but sooner or later, you will get your just deserts. 

And now I will do what I have done at previous times:  I will take this material and forward it to the law enforcement agencies that might have an interest in it.  Occasionally in the past, very interesting developments have occurred after I have done that kind of thing. But I won't go into those details here. 

Dash cam, Part 8: Unsafe at any speed around our schools

All those dangerous drivers you see on our freeways and local public streets - do you suppose for one minute that they magically transform into safe drivers once they get anywhere near a public school campus?

Ri-ight.  I mentioned in Dash cam Part 1 that most of my motivation for buying a car DVR in the first place was to raise awareness about child-endangering traffic violations that I witness around our schools.  And as predictably as the sun rising in the east (with or without sundogs), so it was that a near-miss was recently caught on video:

To protect privacies, information about the individuals, location, specific ISD, date/time of incident, and certain other circumstances will not be published.  

Suffice it to say that a student was walking near the front of a bus when a driver veered sharply around the left side of the bus, almost striking the student. 

I released the full video to the ISD in question, and the response was immediate and comprehensive.  Procedural controls are being developed to minimize the conspiracy of circumstances that led to the situation represented in the redacted screengrab above.  They're doing a wonderful job of responding to this with a rigor analogous to what would be applied if this had been a near-miss that occurred in an industrial setting. 

I don't envy ISDs in dealing with things like this.  Nobody will ever convince me that any of our local ISDs employ a single person who isn't absolutely passionate about protecting children from dangerous drivers.  But they are in the business of education, not traffic enforcement, and their personnel can't be everywhere at once.  There's only so much any of us can achieve when it comes to minimizing the impacts of unsafe driving, but if each of us does what we can do, there will be a cumulative positive effect, and progress will occur. 

The particular scenario represented in the example above is of personal significance to my family.  Many years ago, one of my relatives was killed in precisely this manner.  An aggressive motorist peeled out from behind a school bus, striking her directly in front of her devastated brother and all the other schoolchildren who were heading to class on that fateful morning.  She died of internal injuries from the blunt-force trauma.  This one is for you, Barbara.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world."

- Mahatma Gandhi

Dash cam, Part 1: Centerpointe sign-runners

Have you ever witnessed dangerous behavior in traffic and thought, "OMG, nobody would ever believe me if I told them that I actually saw someone do that!"  And then you wonder what you might do to help counteract the likes of it. 

I had an epiphany after witnessing two separate child-endangering traffic violations committed by parents dropping kids at Victory Lakes Intermediate School for the morning WAVE bus pick-up.  Of all people, you'd think WAVE parents would have better judgment, as higher intelligence is rumored to run in the families of GT kids.  But of course, intelligence is not always correlated with either common sense or politeness.

So with this epiphany, I decided to try something more proactive than griping about flagrant violators.  For sixty bucks, I bought a dash cam: a DVR that looks much like a radar detector but is actually a faithful e-sentinel, looping through a continuous video recording of everything that transpires in front of it.

This video clip below shows my approach to the neighborhood northbound on Walker, followed by not one but two successive stop sign runners - a gold sedan at Walker and Centerpointe followed by a black pick-up truck just fifteen seconds and one block later at Centerpointe and Willow Pointe:

(Sorry about the Gaye DeLorme tune blasting in the background!

And this was shot March 24, not March 1 - I need to change the date stamp)

Neither of these drivers so much as slowed down at their respective intersections.  Many years ago when I first got my license, drivers at least had the courtesy to "fake it" by coming to a rolling stop rather than a full stop.  Not these days - they just blast right through the signs as fast as they can without skidding out. 

This is only my first day's DVR trial, and running stop signs is by no means the most egregious violation someone could commit, but this video speaks to attitude:  the majority of suburban drivers now disregard traffic controls signs, period.  I could go out there right now and shoot another thirty seconds that would show basically this same scene.  The majority of drivers speed, and the majority of drivers ignore signs.  No exaggeration: A 2010 Houston Chronicle investigative report found that 92% of drivers were speeding on Clear Lake City Boulevard, an arterial that has an unusually high speed limit to start with!  

So for all of you who feel that local, state, and federal regulations do not apply to you personally, I say this:

Go ahead, make my automotive day.  Keep doing the ignorant things that you do, and you might find yourself to be the next blog-embedded neighborhood YouTube star.  You might not end up in a Court of Law because of it, but in certain instances the Court of Public Opinion might prove to be comparably unpleasant, because there are many of us who are fed up with the hell-on-wheels behavior to which our neighborhood is subjected on a daily basis.  Perhaps the peer pressure of knowing that "candid car camera" is out there can help to stimulate the type of compliance and courtesy that regulation, law enforcement, and personal conscience are obviously all failing to inspire. 

Dash cam, Part 6: Enforcement passive and active

I have spent almost 20 years working as a regulatory affairs consultant.  I could write a book (and just might) about the burdensome imperfections in our regulatory system and what could be done to improve our framework as it currently stands. 

My point in making that claim is as follows:  I tend to take a hard line on traffic regulation not because I'm a naive advocate of mindless conformance, but because experience tells me that traffic laws represent one of the most functional, finely-tuned sets of operating parameters that we have achieved in our society.  For the most part, traffic laws are not some disaffected bureaucrat's wet dream about what magical individual rights restrictions could be imposed bring about some utopian mass behavioral result.  No.  For the most part, our traffic laws represent the simple, objective codification of common sense. 

Let me give you an example.

West Walker Street, right behind the Harvard Pointe cul-de-sac, at about 9:30 a.m. this morning

Here above we see LCPD having pulled over a motorist.   Common sense dictates that, when you encounter this type of situation, you should slow WAY down and give the officer a safe berth.  

As an accoutrement to common sense, Texas has a law requiring just that - it's called the "Move-Over Act" and it requires motorists to change lanes if possible, or to slow down to 20 mph below the prevailing speed limit.  So in order to legally (and sensically) pass that particular scene, you'd need to drop to 15 mph, being careful not to run into anyone head-on as your left two wheels are across the yellow line while proceeding around that blind curve.    

And speaking of slowing down...

About a week after I began dash-cam blogging, this speed trailer appeared near the League City municipal buildings about a half-mile northeast of Centerpointe.  This is likely just a coincidence, but it's a cool one.
:-)

Dash cam: Epiphany

We live in an unmanageably complex society and one of the pitfalls of doing so is that it's very difficult for most people to weigh the importance of all the different risks that this society poses to them. 

Nowhere is this more true than with respect to what risks are posed to physical safety - life and limb.  A big deal was made recently of the one home invasion that occurred in Centerpointe (and it probably wasn't intended to be an invasion per se - the perps probably thought nobody was home, such that they could commit a simple burglary).  So much room was devoted to that topic in the most recent neighborhood newsletter that it had to be chopped into two halves for distribution.  And I also added a blog entry devoted to it. 

As near as I can deduce, this was the only life-threatening event of that criminal type to have occurred here.  I mean ever, in the history of the neighborhood. 

Most of the time, you won't hear me saying much about crime, other than to relay routine statistics that mostly have to do with petty theft and the odd family-violence-inspired punch in the face.

But what you WILL hear me harping about is the risk posed by road hazards.  From hyper-aggressive drivers threatening the lives of motorists and peace officers alike, to local children playing in traffic because there's nowhere else for them to go, to physical road hazards caused by careless drivers,  to people driving dangerously ON OUR SCHOOL CAMPUSES, to people flagrantly ignoring traffic control regulations both outside and inside our subdivison, I've used a dash cam to expose it all.

But up until now, there wasn't much I could offer in the way of this risk's big picture.  I could tell you, for instance, that an average of about 360 people die on Harris County roads every year...

Excerpted from:
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/departments/nrd-30/ncsa/stsi/48_TX/2010/48_TX_2010.htm

...but there was no way to actually give a perspective of that in an immediately-accessible format.

Well, there is now.   A group called ITO World has produced a map that shows all U.S. auto-related fatalities during the period 2001 - 2009. 

Screengrab of their blog entry announcing the map.
http://www.itoworld.blogspot.com/

Through some miracle of technology, these guys have managed to plot all 369,629 (!!!!) automobile-related deaths that occurred in America during that period of time.

So let's cut to the chase, zoom in and take a look at the area surrounding Centerpointe:

Icon format:
Upper left corner: Age at death.
Lower left corner:  Year of death.
Avatar: Male or female
Color: Mode of death (legend at left)

Conveniently, the map covers approximately the same period of time for which Centerpointe has been in existence.  And during that period of time, within about two mile of us, a dozen people have been killed in automobile events (I won't call them "accidents" because most of them are not "accidents" - they are the result of ignorance and recklessness). 

A DOZEN PEOPLE KILLED, just within this one unremarkable little area.  Their average age at death was just 34 years.

How they died is extremely telling:  only 17% of them were vehicle occupants.  The other 83% were traveling via less-protected means in the open air - on foot or by bicycle or motorcycle.   This is occurring in large part because we lack complete streets in our area - for the most part, we have no bike lanes and few sidewalks.  The lack of reasonable infrastructure coupled with ignorant drivers is a proven deadly combination. 

And of course, our area is not unique.

NINE PEOPLE killed in the vicinity of the NASA Road 1 intersection.

SIX PEOPLE killed in the vicinity of the El Dorado intersection.  A year or so ago, I actually wrote to TxDOT pleading with them to upgrade this antiquated intersection because it's so obviously dangerous.  It's a decades-old cloverleaf that was never designed to accomodate the volume of traffic it now must handle.  I wrote that letter to TxDOT BEFORE I knew that six people had died here in recent years.

And it doesn't stop with fatalities.  Remember also that for every automobile fatality, there's something like three times as many permanently-disabling injuries and ten times as many less-serious injuries and significant property losses (smashed cars; I've read this, but can't find the reference right now).

Moral of this story: home invasions and burglaries may grab our immediate attention, but they are not what pose the greatest risks to our physical being.  Of external physical threats, risks associated with automobiles win, hands-down.  For this reason, if you feel an urge to modify your behavior based on your perception of physical risk, you should actually feel less urge to fortify against burglars, and more urge to respond to the dangers posed to you by the carnage that continues unabated on our public rights-of-way.

Houston, we have a problem.

Annual POA meeting, Part 3: Traffic issues

An interesting story on the front page of this morning's Houston Chronicle provides a great lead-in for this next topic which was covered during Centerpointe POA's annual public meeting on March 26, 2013, because we are up against this same issue of dangerous driving (as is every subdivision in greater Houston).

According to the internet, this nonprofit group represents a slew of subdivisions and businesses in the Copperfield area.  Screengrab of text from Houston Chronicle. 

I find it a amazing that so many people are so passionate about traffic violations and yet at the same time, a significant majority of people are so passionately opposed to the idea of automated traffic enforcement.  I'm not sure if we're dealing with different sub-populations or what, but B doesn't always seem to follow A. Part of me wanted to stand up in that POA meeting and ask, "How many of y'all voted against red light cameras, now?  Can we have a show of hands?  And yet here we are having a detailed discussion on how to improve traffic compliance?!" 

But I didn't do that because I didn't want to distract from the specific solve-able issues that people were raising. 

Anyway, as the story was reported by Chron, the president of that nonprofit watchdog got into some kind of suburban road rage incident with one alleged sign runner.  This led to vehicle damage and an arrest.

If we wanted to make a meaningful dent in the number of stop sign runners within Centerpointe, I estimate that it would require at least six people working full time - either that, or a computerized camera system that issues tickets automatically - duh!! 

The fact is, people run stop signs here more often than not.  Recall this random dash cam video segment that I first embedded in a post back in March of 2011: 

That was just two sequential vehicles chosen at random - and they both barely slowed down for their respective stop signs.  This is entirely typical of what happens here. 

As of right now, Centerpointe doesn't have a formal group that performs a similar function as the Copperfield Coalition. 

We do have one vocal dash-cammer in the form of yours truly, and a couple of other residents began voicing specific concerns to League City's Assistant Chief of Police in the POA meeting.

A few of those issues I'm not going to comment on yet, because we need to advance the progress of those issues before I have a more complete story to convey.

However, one resident's complaint is worth talking about in terms of the work-arounds and countermeasures that are and are not feasible. 

Reportedly, there's a teenaged driver wreaking havoc with dangerous driving on his or her particular street segment, where many small children play outdoors.  None of the opposition mustered by the impacted residents has abated this behavior to date.  What fell out of the resulting discussion with LCPD is the following:

• It's not lawful for citizens to put their own cones or other traffic impediment devices in the public right-of-way for the purposes of traffic control. 
• It's not lawful for citizens to park their vehicles in such a way as to intentionally restrict traffic on a public street.  However, if there is a perceived situational need for residents to be parking their cars directly opposite each other on the street... as long as it's not done for traffic control purposes, that's another matter, because it is legal to park on our public streets.  Both sides thereof. 

Do you get the picture on that second point?  It's extremely difficult for motorists to proceed with excessive speed between two opposing cars, because our subdivision streets are not that wide.  It's usually necessary to slow down in order to pass between two opposing vehicles safely. 

The LCPD representative encouraged contacting the police where dangerous driving is perceived to occur.  That's what the police are there for.  Your tax dollars at work. 

Anyway, I'll have more later on the other traffic issues that were raised.

How often do you see this happen within Centerpointe - a 25 mph motorist?
Very rarely, in my observation. 

Dash cam, Part 7: No hiding behind a smokescreen

When you see situations like this...


Sorry about the crummy resolution,
but do you see that gray cloud behind the white pickup, a cloud engulfing the car in the right-hand lane?
IH-45 southbound at Baybrook Mall, 4:45 PM today.

 ...you have the option of completing this:

Click here for the reporting URL.
The screengrab shows you what info you would need to collect in order to make a complete report.

My chief concern is with dangerous driving, but there's a strong correlation between extreme recklessness and other unlawful behaviors.  In this case, I could not acquire the license plate of the offender because to do so would have involved driving in such a manner so as to risk the lives of about a dozen innocent other drivers, including myself, because this smoke-belcher was speeding and weaving like crazy.  But in those cases when you are in a position to get the plate number, this reporting URL provides a convenient means of focusing enforcement attention upon nasty people who deserve to feel some heat.

Dash cam, Part 12: Smoke over Centerpointe

For posterity, I thought this screengrab should be included: Centerpointe against the backdrop of the smoke from the tri-county fire which, as of Friday, had consumed seventy homes and eighteen thousand acres north of Houston, one of four hundred eighty fires currently burning in Texas.   

Driving northwest on Walker near SH 96.

One may wonder what inspires me to talk about improving landscaping while we are subject to water restrictions and the worst drought in recorded history. 

Well, is it preferable to invest at the bottom of the stock market, or the top of the stock market?  Nobody knows exactly where we are in relation to our current climatological analog to a stock market, but I'm fairly certain of one thing: we're nowhere near the top. 

Plus at a certain point, it becomes a matter of principled defiance.  As contrarian philosopher (and Carl Rogers disciple) Richard Farson memorably said (and apparently Clarence Darrow before him), lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for. 

Dash cam, Part 10: What the...

Have you ever found yourself driving serenely down the road, only to come upon something like this?!

State Highway 96 eastbound, descending from the rail bridge at State Highway 3.

At first I thought it was a small refrigerator but perhaps it was a bookcase or filing cabinet.  Whatever it was, it surely didn't belong in the middle of the highway where someone could more-easily-than-not hit it while going 55 mph.

And then as I was slam-on-the-brakes circumnavigating this potential disaster, a thought occurred to me: We're not in Houston anymore, Toto.  I didn't know what number to call.  Response to this type of situation is urgent but not exactly an emergency, so 911 does not seem like the best choice.  Does League City have 311 service?  Not from my cell phone - I tried.

It turns out that LCPD does answer their landlines.  I dialed 281-332-2566 (then press 1), and a real live human being answered promptly.  Might be a handy number to enter into your contact databases.

Yesterday must have been my particular day to dodge road hazards, because several hours after my close encounter with the above-referenced filing cabinet, the scene was this:

Clear Lake City Boulevard westbound, west of State Highway 3.

That dark thing in the right hand lane appeared to be a large section of St. Augustine sod pieces having fallen off a pallet truck.  Except this one was in Houston, Toto!
:-)