Posted on 05/03/2012 11:50:50 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Traffic injuries are four to six times higher in low-income areas of Montreal, compared with wealthy neighborhoods. Researchers find that better road designs could reduce those disparities
Approximately 40,000 people will die on U.S. roads this year, and thousands more will be injured. A disproportionate number of those traffic injuries will befall people from lower-income communities. According to new research, pedestrians in the poorest neighborhoods of Montreal were six times more likely to suffer traffic injuries than pedestrians in the wealthiest neighborhoods. Bicyclists and motorists in poorer neighborhoods were also at greater risk; they were four times more likely to be injured on the road.
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
Depends into which state Montreal will be annexed.
What is so shocking about this fact. Low income cities do not have the money to put into infrastructure, such as sidewalks, cross walks and other traffic safety measures. That would seem to be pretty darn obvious. Maybe I am missing the main point of the article.
LOL. And people who live in better neighborhoods also have a sense of responsibility and fear of losing their livelihood through stupid accidents. We tend to not get into our punked up cars and speed through the neighborhood for attention. Another no brainer, common sense issue given research money.
But here is the part that is totally brilliant:
“These results are part of a growing body of literature that shows road design has an impact on safety”
Now I never would have guessed that.
That is not a valid response. Come on, let us keep this a serious discussion.
Women and Minorities Hardest “HIT”
Poor = Black
Don’t the doom and gloom hand wringers know we have figured out their code-talk?
I’m so old, I remember when Scientific American was a journal of SCIENCE.
What rules out this hypothesis?
Some of it may be lack of funds to modernize the infrstructure. But part of it may be devil-may-care idiots on the streets.
Black people like to walk in the street even if there are sidewalks. I wonder...
I live near an inner-city and it’s amazing: the residents will cross against the light, in the middle of the street, with children in tow! When I questioned a friend about this, he said: they think they own the streets and you’re an interloper.
Yup, I'd never seen anything like it till I lived in the city for a while. About 10 years ago, a young mother and her baby were struck by a car and killed (this was in Buffalo.) The media spent days deploring the condition of city curbs and crosswalks and oh dear, oh dear, what can we do?
They never once mentioned that she'd been walking in the street on a dark, rainy night. You can't fix stupid.
Your observations coincide with mine. In addition the local grocery or Walmart stores frequented by people from poor neighborhoods are dangerous places traffic-wise. Maybe the study should do a demographics study to coincide with the road study.
That study would be too un-P.C.!
There are many, many factors that come into play regarding accident statistics, with street design being only one of them. As soon as I saw "Montreal" in the title I knew where this was going. That's an old city with many narrow streets and a driving population filled with people of marginal driving skills, so it's no surprise that pedestrians (the particular group discussed in detail in the article) don't fare well in the older parts of the city.
Well, there might be a point there from a purely statistical standpoint ... but I'm not sure the author's recommendations (improve streets, add landscaping, eliminate four-way intersections where possible, etc.) will do anything in the long run. If these measures are adopted, the city's poor neighborhoods will become more attractive places to live ... and they won't be poor neighborhoods anymore. Then the whole process will start all over again. Eventually, the streets in the poor neighborhoods of Montreal (wherever they are in 50 years) will still be less safe than the streets in the wealthy neighborhoods. Then there will be another "crisis" to solve -- even if those poor neighborhoods 50 years from now are safer than wealthy neighboroods are today.
Poor neighborhoods tend to be older, where streets and buildings date back decades before wide streets were common, before digital traffic signs and handicap ramps. Wealthier tends to be newer and/or revitalized and updated.
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