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Citizen complaint of the day: Influx of cops directing traffic failing to control road-ragey Hyde Park Massholes

A disgusted citizen files a 311 complaint that all the cops who now stand in the middle of some Hyde Park intersections at rush hour due to the closure of the River Street Bridge have done nothing to tamp down the outrageous aggressiveness of local drivers:

It doesn't matter how many cops you have directing traffic in this neighborhood -- Austin and West and/or Hyde Park Ave and West, the aggressiveness of drivers is out of control. A woman passed me on River Street (the sun was in my eyes -- her eyes too, I had just passed an ambulance double parked, and a man had opened his door into oncoming traffic in front of me). She passed me and slammed on her brakes to get into a spot, so I had to slam on my brakes. How do they get driver's licenses?

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Comments

Though verbose and hard to follow, the 311 complainant is not wrong. I wonder who is enforcing traffic laws.

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Put a set of cameras where all the data shows accidents occurring due to people thinking red lights and stop signs are just suggestions and then cite them with stiff fines based on the evidence. They've been doing this in Rhode Island to much success. We don't have the man power to pull all these assholes over. George Orwell would understand, especially if he was driving these days.

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I've seen it done in the Alexandria VA area near the Pentagon.
Very embarrassing to have an orange envelope taped to your door.
Everyone knows it's a traffic violation backed up by some video surveillance evidence.
I bet those tickets are paid more often than ones left on windshields.
Public Opprobrium works.

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But this is not the 1950’s, and people today have no shame. Republicans still lie every single day about the 2020 election results, and then lie about lying. Regular citizens go on national television and appear almost proud to discuss their arrests, infidelities, and worse in lurid detail.
Nobody in 2022 is embarrassed by receiving a traffic ticket. Nobody.

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I agree. Now suppose they have to ask their neighbors for rides because their license is suspended for, IDK, 90 days sounds about right. For the first offense. In today's USA losing your driving privileges is probably a massive humiliation.

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Great examples in NYC, where motorists will put up fake placards to park illegally or deface and block parts of their license plates to skirt the traffic cameras. And even some cops do it on their personal vehicles, a shocker I know!

https://twitter.com/placardabuse
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/17/nyregion/license-plate-vigilantes.html

(And for the resident whataboutists, don't worry, I saw a cyclist run a red light today and wagged my finger harshly at them)

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I'm more concerned with tailgating, changing lanes too closely, and distracted driving. All of which need to be enforced by humans rather than cameras.

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.

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I’m reading his “The Road to Wigan Pier” which has a lot of statistics though not about traffic.

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I've never seen a detail cop in the Boston area do any effective directing of traffic. Usually they're sitting in the car or standing around looking at their phone. Occasionally they try to direct traffic but don't use standard hand signals, yet alone one of those stop/slow signs professional flaggers use in other states.

Last week I saw a cop who double parked his car at the detail site, obstructing traffic. Clearly worse than having nobody there at all.

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Thankfully only on foot.

Sometimes even having the cops at West/HPA and West/Austin seems like overkill, but other times the cops are doing a good job keeping things flowing. And yes, even the cops that appear to be there for show are out of their cars.

So, if you want to see cops effectively directing traffic, go between 7 (I assume) and 9 in the morning and again for the PM rush and check them out.

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I've never seen a detail cop in the Boston area do any effective directing of traffic.

I once had a cop direct me to turn left directly in front of an oncoming MBTA bus on Brighton Ave. So doing nothing (their usual MO) could actually be preferable.

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The situation between Hyde Park Ave, West Street, and Summer/Austin is an incredible mess at the moment. Some days people trying to get onto West street back up on Summer all the way to Gordon Ave (about a half mile), and people trying to get onto West street from Hyde Park Ave back up there as well - this creates a huge traffic flow problem on Hyde Park Ave, delaying the 32 bus and lots of other commuter traffic trying to use that road already.

It's a disaster for people who commute this way, as well as the people who live on Summer and Austin - they can barely leave their driveways sometimes. I don't know what the answer is, but as the bridge isn't going to be fixed until 2025 (we'll see how long that stays on target) the city needs to get some traffic and planning engineers to figure it out.

They still haven't bothered to adjust the traffic lights at River and Gordon, which are timed based on the traffic flow for the bridge and now have endless redlights for the still active streets. People are starting to simply ignore them, which is not going to end well.

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Probably passthroughs to Roslindale.

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