The Forest For The Trees

The Sacramento Fire Department responds to over 3,600 traffic accidents each year. That the city is under a budget crunch there is pending legislation in the city council chambers to impose a crash tax, where those at fault are charged for services.

I'm not terribly concerned either way regarding how to pay for this, whether through taxation or direct levies. What bugs me is how the city/fire department tacitly create streets that encourage excessive speed, leading to accidents, leading to the fire department response. If they didn't require such big fire trucks, forcing every residential street to take on the geometry of the Texas Motor Speedway, there'd be far fewer accidents that require their services. That is, I maintain that our street designs call for accidents. They call for firemen not to fight fires, but to rescue dumbass drivers who can't stay in their lanes, can't keep under the posted speed limits, and who feel safe driving 62mph down a 55' wide collector road yet still manage to plow into parked cars and power poles.

That's over 10 calls every day, just in Sacramento. Why are they even called firefighters? They are traffic accident handlers who just happen to douse the occasional fire.

It's the fire department that bitches the loudest over traffic calming devices. You can understand why. Without these 10 calls each day their usefulness to the city becomes arguably questionable. Of course, their argument is always framed around response times to fires, and what city council member would risk the political fallout if one crippled woman gets third degree burns that could have been prevented had the department's response time not been worsened by speed lumps? It would indeed be ironic if that same woman had become crippled due to a previous auto accident, wouldn't it?

I find this amusing, because we again fail to see the forest for the trees. These trees -- the trees on streets are removed due to their presence as "fixed traffic hazards," when in reality the more "friction" a street has, the slower drivers drive. Trees are friction. So are parallel cars, narrower streets, lane markings, chicanes, and a host of other devices and methods that lend to safer streets, yet the fire deparment can't navigate their damn trucks through these so they are outlawed. The most dangerous streets are those that feel safer to drivers...