The estate should sue the engineers for negligence in failing to install a proper crosswalk. Car-supremacist thinking is pervasive within the industry (I say as a former traffic engineer, BTW) and the only way to get some of them to change is to hit them in the P.E. license.
Well it’s not exactly the traffic engineers at fault, no? It’s stupid politicians. But I do get your point.
Victims of car accidents should be able to sue the city for damages. It would definitely help in getting safer infrastructure.
Yes, it is exactly the traffic engineers at fault! They’re the ones who sign off on and take legal responsibility for the design! That’s the entire point of engineering being a licensed profession in the first place.
Let me make this very clear: every licensed engineer has an absolute moral and legal obligation to refuse to sign off on any unsafe design, no matter what some fucking politician wants. Period, end of. And designs that are not Complete Streets, with sidewalks and crosswalks, are inherently unsafe. Also period, end of.
Every pedestrian killed by the lack of a crosswalk should result in a traffic engineer permanently losing their license and being forced to change careers. It is only through that threat that they will begin to take pedestrian lives seriously!
How do I copy and paste this a million times in front of everyone. The politicians have intentionally put both all blame and all power on the engineers. The engineers need to use that power to say no. The politicians control the budget and the what they want done, but not everything they want can be done.
Disregard my other comment.
What happens to engineers who refuse to sign off?
Fired? I still stand that daddy boss is ultimately responsible for these decisions but yeah engineers do have professional responsibilities too
The engineer is the “daddy boss!” Every. Single. Fucking. Time. It is literally the law!
Looks like they do have decision making authority but without budget control that’s kinda “ownership without agency” type situation
Again, that’s what licensing is supposed to solve. The politicians should not have the ability to say “okay if you won’t do [this unsafe thing] then I’ll just replace you with someone who will” because literally every licensed engineer should also refuse to do it.
Either the project gets built properly or it should not be built. It is every licensed engineer’s professional responsibility and legal obligation to ensure that is the case, regardless of political pressure.
Capitulating to pressure to build an unsafe design is literally criminal negligence and should be adjudicated as such.
I agree with you 100% but I have so been around the block enough to know that there is the law and then there is practice.
So figuring out how things are done is best way to make the law work.
Systems are designed with “good” intetions but in practice we aee that wage slaves even pro grade type are just wage slaves who got families to feed.
Do engineers make these decisions though?
I ain’t here to doen play their roles but from organizational perspective ain’t they essentially tell daddy boss best way to do it then daddy boss tells them to get fucked and it will be done this way or a highway generally due to corruption/politics.
Under this fact pattern while engineers are responsible to protest, I would posit the ultimate discioson maker should be held criminally liable first then we can talk about engineers proffesional responsibilities.
Do engineers make these decisions though?
Yes.
The way that it works is that the plans for every construction project like this must be stamped by a licensed engineer, or else they cannot legally be built. Then, the construction itself must be supervised by another licensed engineer, to ensure that the as-built condition conforms to the plans or that changes are properly vetted for safety.
Under this fact pattern while engineers are responsible to protest, I would posit the ultimate discioson maker should be held criminally liable first then we can talk about engineers proffesional responsibilities.
That “fact pattern” is false. The ultimate decision maker, the person who should be held criminally liable, is the principal engineer who stamped the plans.
This is what licensing engineers is for!
Fair but practically how would such refusal would play out?
Firing or some shiti office transfer?
Yet again: the way it’s supposed to work is that retaliating against the engineer would be pointless because every possible replacement would stand on principle just the same.
Hey, this is great citizen journalism.
It would be nice if the roads that lacked a crossing weren’t so lethal to pedestrians. Maybe remind drivers that other people use the road as well as them?
The problem is that they don’t care. If anything is impeding their travel from A to B, drivers get angry at it. Doesn’t matter if it’s someone going the speed limit or a pedestrian. It’s in the way, therefore it’s bad.
The number of people who creep forward and honk at seniors crossing a street at a crosswalk while they have the signal is absurd. Imagine being so impatient that you nearly run over your own grandmother to shave 5 seconds off your travel time.
I specifically try to never let a car take my right of way while crossing, too often i see people just wave a left turning car through then 5 other cars go and now the crossing is red and you have to wait another 5 minute for a safe chance to cross.
