The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) wants to improve safety? REALLY?!!???!!!!

My skepticism about the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s proposal to improve traffic flow on the Parkway East (Interstate 376, from downtown Pittsburgh to Monroeville) arises not from the substance of the proposal itself—in isolation, it seems eminently sensible—but rather the context to which it would be introduced. I disagree that drivers are complying with work zone speed limits—some are, but also, many are not—and this undermines the premise that drivers will comply with variable speed limits that are one part of the proposal.[1]

The problem with driving safety in the Pittsburgh area is that what would be reckless in California is routine here. I don’t actually know that in California, your drivers license can be suspended on the spot, that you might not even be allowed even to drive home, but that is the impression I have had and which I convey to people I talk to to underline the severity with which California white supremacist gangsters[2] view the sort of driving I see so frequently here.

To give you an idea, one day, I was on an on-ramp to Highway 101, probably at the north end of Ukiah, a small-to-medium sized city in California. A truck cut me off so I couldn’t easily merge on the the freeway, arguably forcing me off the road. And there was a California Highway Patrol unit swooping in to pull the truck over. It doesn’t happen often that there’s a white supremacist gangster right when you need one, but it has happened for me a couple times in California.

Not once have I seen this in Pennsylvania, where reckless driving—let’s pretend we’re flying Jedi Starfighters, shall we?—is just how driving is done. If PennDOT is serious about improving safety, then there’s going to have to be some enforcement and that enforcement is going to have to be about safety rather than about race.[3] It’s also going to mean dropping some white Christian nationalist (Pennsylvania state[4]) legislative reticence about allowing local communities to use speed enforcement to raise revenue[5] and allowing white supremacist gangsters to be less popular—oh gee, I bet some of those “thin blue line” flags and “back the blue” yard signs come down—when they start going after white males in testosterone trucks[6] driving like assholes and “rolling coal.”[7]

Of course, none of this that actually needs to happen will happen. It would, among other things, require white supremacists to stop being white supremacists and we certainly can’t have that. So instead, PennDOT will pretend to care with message boards, lane closure indicators, and variable speed limits.[8]

  1. [1]Ed Blazina, “PennDOT considers variable speed limits, ramp gates and message boards to improve Parkway East traffic,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 24, 2022, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2022/05/23/penndot-parkway-east-traffic-improvements-variable-speed-limits-message-boards/stories/202205230094
  2. [2]David Benfell, “Stephen Zappala’s resignation would be nowhere near enough,” Not Housebroken, January 4, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/06/03/stephen-zappalas-resignation-would-be-nowhere-near-enough/
  3. [3]David Benfell, “Hey cops! Do you know what year it is?” Not Housebroken, August 27, 2019, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/08/27/hey-cops-do-you-know-what-year-it-is/
  4. [4]Holly Otterbein, “Pennsylvania GOP pledges full allegiance to Trump,” Politico, January 26, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/26/pennsylvania-republican-party-trump-support-462843
  5. [5]Associated Press, “Senate OKs local police using radar for speed enforcement,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, June 23, 2021, https://triblive.com/news/pennsylvania/senate-oks-local-police-using-radar-for-speed-enforcement/; Thomas Fitzgerald, “Speeding tickets and crashes fell after enforcement cameras came to Roosevelt Blvd,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 10, 2022, https://www.inquirer.com/transportation/roosevelt-boulevard-speeding-enforcement-cameras-crashes-deaths-20220510.html; Jason Laughlin, “Speed cameras for Roosevelt Blvd. face hard road in Pa. legislature,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 25, 2018, https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/pennsylvania/philadelphia/speed-cameras-roosevelt-boulevard-traffic-fatalities-legislative-approval-20180125.html; Anne Shannon, “Proposed legislation could make Pennsylvania last state to allow local police to use radar,” WGAL, February 14, 2020, https://www.wgal.com/article/proposed-legislation-could-make-pennsylvania-last-state-to-allow-local-police-to-use-radar/30799636
  6. [6]David Benfell, “Hate, Pittsburgh Style,” Not Housebroken, February 26, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/04/06/hate-pittsburgh-style/; Angie Schmitt, “What Happened to Pickup Trucks?” CityLab, March 11, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-11/the-dangerous-rise-of-the-supersized-pickup-truck
  7. [7]Michael Ballaban, “The EPA Just Said That This Whole ‘Rolling Coal’ Thing Is Illegal,” Jalopnik, July 8, 2014, https://jalopnik.com/the-epa-just-said-that-this-whole-rolling-coal-thing-is-1601808499
  8. [8]Ed Blazina, “PennDOT considers variable speed limits, ramp gates and message boards to improve Parkway East traffic,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 24, 2022, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2022/05/23/penndot-parkway-east-traffic-improvements-variable-speed-limits-message-boards/stories/202205230094

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