Ragebait trumps reason

Journalistic malnutrition will prevent streets from getting a good diet

"If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed."

—Mark Twain

This week, Washington Post associate editor Marc Fisher published an opinion piece that shows he’s either terrible at pursuing truth or excellent at dodging truth.

Even with access to hundreds of case studies published on the internet, Fisher wants you to believe that traffic calming is a weapon in a race war rather than a tool to build healthy neighborhoods. (And they wonder why trust in corporate media is at an all-time low.)

Here’s how he introduces his version of truth:

The District’s planners are intent on putting many of the city’s most important streets on what’s called a “road diet,” which sounds healthy and nutritious but is actually a recipe for traffic constipation and commuter headaches — and maybe a stealth mechanism for encouraging a wholesale shift in race and class in certain neighborhoods.

He doesn’t pause to define road diet for his readers, but opts for the approach to tell them how to feel about road diets: “You guys, it sounds healthy but it’s actually bad for you. And not only is it bad for you, it’s a trick to relocate people who aren’t white or who aren’t rich.” If this was a high school student’s first attempt at an op-ed, I’d probably chalk it up to naiveté. But an editor at the Washington Post? Gross.

He goes on:

So who are these lanes for? A Virginia Tech study found that White people accounted for 88 percent of all bike trips in 2008 — about double the proportion of White residents in the city.

He won't address the proven safety benefits. He can’t address safety. He can’t go to the source, Washington DC’s Department of Transportation, because they would say what the US Department of Transportation says:

To focus on safety would mean that the entire race war angle was nothing more than ragebait. (I mean, in Fisher’s defense, he did successfully bait me.) Back to The Post:

…this squabble reveals an essential truth about bike lanes as weapons of civic planning: They are often installed...to make car traffic worse enough that people will be discouraged from driving.

It's no secret that road diets slow drivers, reduce crashes, making it safer for drivers. The streets also become safer for people riding bikes. But these facts will remain a secret to anyone who expects The Post’s editors and columnists to tell them the truth about contentious topics.

Even the older style road diets with not-great bike lanes have a remarkable safety track record.

Through the entire article, there's not a single reference to the proven safety benefits of road diets. No mention of USDOT’s strong encouragement for the use of road diets. No questions about case studies tracking the social, economic, health, and safety impacts of road diets. And no hint of curiosity about whether saving lives might be more important than people wanting to drive dangerously.

Marc Fisher isn’t alone, of course. Our modern culture of Motordom cares more about personal convenience than public health and safety.

In affluent upper Northwest, residents and business owners have pummeled the city with protests against narrowing Connecticut Avenue to install bike lanes. For the moment, the people are winning.

His point is that a democracy means the people vote on how streets are designed. If car-oriented infrastructure prevails over human-scale design, “the people are winning.”

Treating street design that’s proven to reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities as an attack on democracy is a sort of temper tantrum. The toddler doesn’t want vegetables, he wants candy, and if he can’t get candy he’s going to cry about it. As if the life of any Washington, DC resident or visitor should be up for discussion or a vote.

If that’s the case, be honest and say, “We thought about supporting safe street design, but some people would rather drive dangerously. Good luck out there.” Every week you can read another story of a safety improvement killed by popular vote.

One last bit of fussiness from Fisher:

What doesn’t make sense is to hand car lanes over to cyclists when your real motive is to gum up traffic to discourage people from driving. That’s not an honest way for government to push its goals. It’s just trickery, targeting the very residents whose taxes pay for such high-handed manipulation.

It is possible to change culture. It is possible to calm people down when they’re behind the wheel. It is possible to eliminate life-changing traffic crashes on city streets. But one important step is intellectual curiosity—a willingness and even enthusiasm to find out how.

Since an editor at one of the most prestigious newspapers clearly wants to keep readers from knowing the truth about traffic safety, I can’t help but think of Saul Alinsky’s advice: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. (Rule #5 in Rules for Radicals.) Fisher isn’t presenting himself as someone interested in the truth, but as an influential voice that deserves to be bombarded with ridicule.