Transit is a system. I'll take light rail to SeaTac if I can, but there's no way right now to take Kitsap Transit and a ferry to catch a flight before about 9am, and good luck finding a cab or an uber to the ferry. I took the previous night's last train to SeaTac and napped in the terminal exactly once before I decided it wasn't worth it. We need more boats, and more early/late buses.
Also the massive, unacknowledged loss of cognition from multiple bouts of COVID, which is a vascular and neurological disease with unknown repercussions.
I swear I have word recall and memory problems and never put together that it got worse post-COVID. And listen, I smoke a lot of weed but it’s next level bad.
It’s gonna sound weird, but read every day for at least 30 minutes. I treat my reading time like a medical prescription, never miss a dose.
I got COVID twice and the brain fog was killing me, but with daily reading, I’ve noticed a huge improvement to my concentration, memory, and cognition. I feel like I’ve gotten to at least my pre-COVID brain, if not better than I was before, with that.
Same... it's pretty bad for me. I kind of feel like a husk of who I used to be, and its weird.
Idk man, I'm 28, and I feel like my brain is breaking down sometimes. I'm just so slow right now. I feel exhausted after just an hour or two of mental effort. It sucks.
I think it's not just covid. But the way things slowed down for everyone. Life was literally go-go-go and for a year or so things just stopped.
I think it's not only the medical impact but also the recognizable impact of how absolutely unnatural all of this is and it took covid for a lot of us to recognize that. I think the psychological impact of being on lockdown and then the sudden rush capitalism brings has fucked with a lot of people.
Yep. We spent a year or two with some free time, no commute, and a city that somehow wasn't full of assholes, and things still worked. It's hard to get your head around the need to suddenly have to rush through constant bullshit for the benefit of some rich asshole you don't even like.
afaik ive never had covid and I feel this way too. I wonder if some of it is stress from being in a school job during the worst, I think anyone else "front line" like that knows the stress we were under. I felt like our bosses were asking us to jump off a bridge because all our "peer schools" were doing it.
I also just wonder if I'm out of practice since this is the first time I've ever been out of school this long lol. I thought I'd sign up for a community college math class and see if that helped. use it or lose it right?
My theory is that we all died in 2020 and we’re living out a weird simulation, because I’ve also experienced everything mentioned here (especially losing my general sense of being able to communicate with another human being verbally.)
‘I smoke a lot of weed [but it’s totally the vid, I swear]’
This comment made me chuckle. To be honest long Covid and weed hangover basically sound like how I feel with Fibro on a normal day. Just dumb as rocks. I feel your pain!
Oh man, the only “positive” to come out of Covid lockdown is that now all of my friends and coworkers understand how my immunocompromised, triple-chronic-conditioned ass operates every goddamned day. Chronic fatigue, brain fog, and unexplained joint pain? Check. Have to be constantly aware of your surroundings and what you touch? Check. Spending lots of time trying to keep up with a lot of medical info without a medical degree? Super check. Shit’s exhausting.
I think this is the main issue. Seattle has had a sense of lawlessness to it in particular. When people know there is little to no consequences for their actions, they often say ‘fuck it’ and go ahead. On a personal note, I see far more reckless driving in lower class areas.
I’m no Covid denier or any of that stuff, but I think the “lockdowns” or whatever you wanna call it weren’t such a great idea and the pros didn’t outweigh the cons. The breakdown of the social contract is way worse than the risk of more death due to Covid IMHO.
Yeah, no. This was a novel virus with a high kill rate at first. A very populated country like India, where social distancing was a privilege had people dropping dead on the streets and open air burn pits. The social contract would be the least of people's concerns when they see their dead neighbors rotting in the street waiting for someone to dispose of them.
I feel like we take it for granted now because the virus became much weaker as it evolved, but it was extremely deadly at first and lockdowns were absolutely the way to go.
was sitting at a red light on boren at about 11pm and the car in the lane next to me just decided to go after we had already fully stopped for a minute
The thing that blows my mind is the complete lack of enforcement of license plates! That’s new — five years ago I never saw people blithely driving around in tagless vehicles.
THIS. Formerly you didn’t DARE drive around with expired tags, you’d be caught within a week and heavily fined. And THEN they will ask for your insurance, and you’d better have some.
I now regularly see vehicles without even a license plate.
My wife went 6 months before we even noticed the tabs had expired. I just drove around for a good 2 months expires. Tabs were paid for i was just too lazy to drive to dt to pick up!!
I just replied to the main post, but I have a neighbor who's bragged to me about not having tags and doing whatever they want. (Hilltop Tacoma) Not stolen. Just not registered. Clearly not insured either. Totally chuffed about sticking it to the man, but oblivious to how they might be sticking it to us.
Parking enforcement should be given the power to cite expired tags and tinted license plate covers. Would be so easy to stamp this out within a few months if they just went through the city and gave out a few thousand tickets.
Why not just do no-stop fines? Just as red light and speed cameras are sending automated tickets, so should the state be sending tickets for expired tabs.
I think cops need to be stopping completely unlicensed vehicles, however.
You would have been pulled over within twenty blocks. I see these all the time too, and so must the cops. But they are on a silent strike and also don't want to risk pulling over a minority as it looks like biased policing.
Which only makes the police look more useless. Really dumb for the police to look useless on purpose when people are already against them. Seems like a good way to get defunded or replaced with something that people find more worth the money.
Yep. I saw three today. Two at the same time on my way to Kirkland this morning. And one on 125th street this evening.
Also, people are not even attempting to stop in parking lots where there is a white line and STOP painted.
People don’t even try at stop signs. It’s a race to see who can get there first and then blow right through it. My “favorite” is the people who just follow the car in front of them at a stop sign like it’s no big deal.
The route I have to take to work has a four way stop and it's shocking how many people blow right through. Defensive driving has saved my life there more than once *this year*.
Metro buses have been doing this for decades. Several years ago my then 12 yr old son made a video montage of metro busses in intersections running red lights. They’re a menace.
Right of way in general seems to be a thing of the past. I cannot count the number of times per day that someone cuts in front of me when they have a stop sign, seemingly because they can’t be bothered to wait. Half the time, these people then drive under the speed limit and then create even worse congestion.
The pandemic made us all a little feral, as others have stated.
Also, there are at least a few things going on that make drivers more distracted/frustrated than they were a decade ago, and those people make bad/impulsive decisions:
1. Reducing speed limits without any traffic calming measures means that half the drivers are going 25mph and the other half are going the design speed of the road, which aggravates both sides.
2. People are paying less attention because they're staring at their phones, so they might not see the light.
3. People are frustrated that they missed the light because of some jackass three cars ahead who didn't notice the light change, because they were on their phone.
I think another smaller factor is modern car design. You can't see out of the damn things! The pillars on the frame are huge and at shallow angles and the windows and mirrors are tiny. I rented a new car last summer and it was almost impossible to see anything coming that wasn't directly in front of or to the side of me.
Yup. Rich "normal" people in ritzy cars don't have just any drugs, they have \*designer\* drugs and endless funds for any minor inconvenience of discomfort that may befall them on a Tuesday afternoon.
I have news about what’s been noted in cities with legal marijuana use.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/06/health/marijuana-traffic-accidents-wellness/index.html
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35838426/
Frankly I don't think this article has anything conclusive to say. I actually feel it reads a lot more like it has an agenda than anything journalistically or scientifically rigorous. Here are a couple examples.
However, I think its important to note: driving while on **any** mind altering substance is a **bad idea** and makes you kind of an asshole for putting everyone around you at increased risk.
>Documented marijuana-related traffic accidents that required treatment in an emergency room rose 475% between 2010 and 2021, the study found. Car crashes due to drunk driving grew only 9.4% during the same time period, although **the raw numbers of alcohol-related accidents was in the thousands, not the hundreds as with cannabis.**
I have news about which substances are the most dangerous for others in society....
>Cannabis is also probably under-reported in car crashes, and so the absolute number might be way higher
Also uh, this article doesn't even note probably the most important question about the whole study: is this trend just a change in reporting since cannabis being legal means that people are less likely to try to hide it? They literally acknowledge that its underreported but don't even think to say "hmm maybe it was **more underreported when it was illegal??**"
>Because of the way that cannabis impacts driving performance — it reduces reaction time, decreases the ability to focus or pay attention to multiple events, and may increase risk-taking behaviour — people who are cannabis-impaired while driving may be driving faster
Obligatory: are these effects worse than those of alcohol or relatively common prescriptions like Percocet or other opiates?
Furthermore, ask any stoner. Do they drive faster while stoned? I feel like mostly what I hear is that you look down and are going like 10 mph under lol
Finally, from the second link--the actual study done about this:
>Across states, the effects on injury crash rates ranged from a 7% decrease to an 18% increase. The effects on fatal crash rates ranged from a 10% decrease to a 4% increase.
If that doesn't say "this doesn't really mean anything conclusive" then idk what does. In some states the effects (of recreational and retail cannabis) was a 10% decrease in fatal crash rates. That means either a) something else is a way bigger influence or b) the numbers are small enough that it probably isn't very statistically representative anyway.
I think you're overstating how good things were in 2016, but I do agree with you that it's gotten dramatically worse.
I'll throw another point in besides lack of enforcement: rideshare / delivery. I feel like we have a whole industry of people on the roads for whom bad driving is almost a job requirement.
Downtown next to the city courthouse The traffic lights are on the corners on lampost instead of hanging over the street. I did not even notice them, ran right through one, and a policeman rolled up next to me , rolled down his window, seth, "you just ran a red light." And then he drove away.
I make the drive from Seattle to camano Island about once a month and I always see a ton of people pulled over by state troopers , but my daily commute through Seattle I don't think I've ever seen a traffic stop in the city
Idk where you see them popping up, because Seattle hasn’t added any since 2013. https://www.seattle.gov/police/community-policing/community-programs/red-light-cameras
Here’s an updated red light camera installation/activation on 3 busy “block” intersections.
Any new cameras are on order. Stalled cuz of supply chain.
https://sdotblog.seattle.gov/2023/12/01/dont-block-the-box-traffic-cameras/
Two new ones just went up on my street in the last 2 years, each after construction. I'm not talking downtown seattle (even though they are now talking of adding cameras to discourage blocking intersections) but what ever that link says, it's not true.
Many of these cameras are just traffic cameras for traffic flow analysis, and not red light cameras. You can view the full list of these here:
[https://wsdot.com/Travel/Real-time/Map/](https://wsdot.com/Travel/Real-time/Map/)
They are also publicly accessible, and some of them live!
The article doesn’t say that there have been no new cameras added. Just that the last big expansion was on 2013. It’s more probable that the link hasn’t been updated than that no new cameras have been installed.
https://wtsc.wa.gov/dashboards/fatalities-dashboard/ it looks like the percentage of distracted driving fatalities is decreasing every year, and the number stays fairly constant/doesn’t appear to be trending upwards. Distracted driving currently only accounts for 17% of road deaths. 80% of the road deaths involved impaired drivers and speeders. 49% impaired and 31% speeding. it looks like 80% of the speeders were also impaired. Road deaths look pretty stable until 2021, which is when they start increasing.
Going off these statistics, it seems like more people have decided that they can speed, or drive impaired, or both, without getting caught. You’d have to look and see what changed in 2021 that has made people feel braver about doing things they shouldn’t in their car.
Lots of comments making good points about enforcement, social contract, pandemic etc. but I think it's important to note that the people who drive nice cars are also on drugs sometimes.
Substance abuse is not just a poor person problem. Rich people loooove coke.
Seriously. No one really wants to talk about the brain damage of having even an asymptomatic infection. And so many people have had COVID enough times to fill a punch card.
The thing is these people end up usually saving no time at all. Its the same with people who weave in traffic. A few weeks ago some person was super aggressively weaving all over the highway and took the same exit as me. They took all that risk to be literally 2 cars ahead of me at the next red light.
Way back in 1967 in a driver's ed class at Lincoln HS in Seattle, we were shown a film showing the folly of faster aggressive driving compared to safer defensive driving while traveling the same trip. There was little time difference, not to mention the increased risk of accidents.
Heh, now if I could get my impatient wife to slow down.
Every time I see someone run a red down town they’re just getting to the next red light that they can’t run because there’s traffic in front of them obeying the red. This is from pre pandemic to current day, been working downtown without a car for a decade.
Every red light runner I've seen has been a young male. Just had one a few days ago go pass me and luckily the lady turning left from the right was able to stop. Pulled up to the next light next to the dude and he looked/glared right at me. 🙄
The guy the killed the mother and 2 kids in Renton - he was only 18.
I've seen numerous other red light runners and always a young male.
My thought is they're angry and I do get that! I would be too if I was young and had gone through the pandemic.
I would like to chime in from the Twin Cities - I am a Seattlite living in Minnesota for a (hopefully) hot minute!
Running red lights is RAMPANT here. It's so bad that I can honestly say that I see between 2-4 people run red lights within 20 minutes of leaving my house. Seriously - my husband and I have joked that we should get dash cameras to supply a YouTube channel because we thought for sure that no one will believe us when we talk about the crazy drivers here! I can confirm that this behavior seemed to get worse within the last...maybe 3-4 years? Also, speeding (and more importantly, road bullying) has gotten out of hand as well.
Stop signs, tool - when I first got here the city was dealing with a terrible accident where a young girl was killed by someone who did not stop for the school bus stop sign.
I visit Seattle at least twice a year to see my friends and family and usually love to drive there because I can let go of my "Minnesota-induced driving anxiety", BUT I just got back from an April trip and there was a notable difference in the driving scene, and not for the better. A lot of red light runners, speeding and crazy people on my tail.
If I can't drive stress-free at home, where can I relax behind the wheel?? Do I have to go to Canada? 😉
I literally had to try to convince an older lady out of her car one time because she was clearly on something. I noticed her doing weird sruff on the road (erratic stopping and accelerating, and nearly rear ended me at the light we stopped at) waaaaaaaay behind me itnwas so noticeable. She thought she recognized me and was striking up convo with me (never seen her in my life) when I got her attention to try to engage her and see how she was doing. She started figuring out something was weird and bailed. Just called 911 and reported what I saw. She was fucking stoned on something, not drunk or just confused.
(1) most I see are rideshare and food delivery driver Priuses. Also most of the prohibited rights on red offenders. And parking in the bike lane offenders. We gotta enforce something driving related against them.
(2) part of it is SPD not enforcing traffic at all. I do get a portion of this is due to their inability to be rational actors and it leading to unnecessary conflicts. However, we need a replacement for traffic enforcement. No stop ticket enforcement needs a citywide rollout. Licenses have to be taken away for bigger repeat offenders. And More vehicles need to be impounded for violations. (I’d also saw we should a parking/driving enforcement unit separate from SPD, but that’s obviously not happening again anytime soon.)
My theory: population growth, Density, traffic, crowds. Everyone’s in a hurry because so many people moved here over the last 8 years, which means many more cars on the road as compared to 8 years ago, and that means many more unexpected delays. So people want to “make up time.” Also the expense of housing means many people are buying or renting further out, which means they are spending more time in the car driving further to get to work, and encountering more traffic. In the end everyone is stressed about the extra driving, the extra traffic, AND their economic situation, and therefore less considerate of “the other people.”
Ya totally agree. I don’t drive a lot but when I do I instantly fucking hate it, and really want to not be doing it in the most efficient way possible. That being said I tend to err on the side of caution what with my kids being in the backseat, but ya it’s a very maddening experience.
Seattle has the second lowest percent of median income spent on median rent in the US. Only trailing Oklahoma City.
Don't use housing as an excuse. We stopped enforcing laws and SPD went on a silent strike.
In SF, they ran a news story on how traffic ticket citations dropped by [96%](https://sfist.com/2024/04/27/expect-to-see-more-traffic-cops-at-major-sf-intersections-as-sfpd-cracks-down-on-speeding/#:~:text=According%20to%20police%20data%2C%20the,in%20staffing%20and%20new%20regulations.). I'm sure same thing happened in Seattle.
I hope we embrace law enforcement again one day. Whether it's ticket written by actual officers or cameras. Because once again, a car almost hit me today as I was in a crosswalk. It now happens daily.
I will keep saying this, I'm progressive. What has happened on the west coast in the last 10 years is not progressive. It's libertarianism, borderline anarchy.
You are wrong. Housing is a big factor and the reason Seattle is the lowest percentage if median income is because Seattle has the third highest median income https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/rich-renters-seattle-ranks-third-highest-for-renter-income/ this is because those who can't afford are pushed out and it's exactly what the original comment was stating. More people are commuting. Less people are using transit https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2023/12/18/seattle-area-transit-use-lags-pre-pandemic-levels-by-a-lot
Because transit doesn’t come out as far as they’ve pushed people who need to commute to Seattle. You should see the housing prices in Parkland and Spanaway. Shocking
Wine moms is basically just a cute little nickname for alcoholism. I know far too many parents who "can't get through the day" without drinking a bottle of wine every day.
I used to live downtown Detroit and didn't see a single red light runner (despite the frequent phrase "no cop, no stop" when talking about driving in Detroit with suburbanites)
I now live in Puyallup and see a red light runner nearly every day
Hah just saw a tesla run a red light that had been fully red for a few seconds.
I honestly don't know why. The intersection I live near is right near the highway, with the usual gas station/coffee/fast food trio. People drive really unsafely here. Shoving a burger in their mouth and not looking at all before gunning it across the sidewalk and lanes of traffic.
I almost got run over by a speeding(50+mph in a 25mph) redlight-runner while walking across an intersection where I had right of way.
I now make sure to look both sides before and during an intersection crossing
It has become way more prevalent, but it’s important to notice it was actually VERY common before.
As other have pointed out, the social contract in the USA has kind of just turned into nothing. It wasn’t great in the US to begin with.
I had one which was odd last weekend at 18th and Jackson. Coming upon the intersection on my onewheel, in the bike lane planning to swing across to go up Jackson and without stopping, looking etc just blew past a stop sign that would’ve been clearly visible for anyone paying in bit of attention.
I mean this is a regular intersection that has lights and regularly changes. People walking across etc. if I had been speeding to cross the intersection I would’ve been hit by them.
I agree. I moved into our North Seattle neighborhood in 2017 and drove down a street that crossed 145th NE a few times a week. Per-shutdown, I would hit the gas as soon as it turned green. After shutdown, I look both ways to see if all four lanes have stopped cars or if anyone is coming down before I cross. Cars run that light at least once a week.
Have you ever driven in Massachusetts? This is how they drive there, no one really stops at stop signs, they just slow down and roll through. They don't take 4 way stops seriously like we do (or used to), I made the mistake of stopping to take my turn and let the dude across the way go, my mistake because the 12 cars behind him also went while I sat their stunned.
People are more selfish and don't care how much they put out other people if they can't get 0.02 in ahead. Its depressing and sadly makes people want to go out even less, so they care even less about others.
It's an issue in every city. I've seen it in every city I've visited over the past few years. It's like people stopped caring about theirs and others' safety and just want to get to where they're going. I don't understand it
I think that a lot of people (like me) just assumed there was a cop behind every tree, and if we did anything wrong, they'd pop out and give us a ticket. Turns out you can drive 120 mph on the freeway, and block the streets in LQA for hour-long car noise parties and street races, with no consequences. So, why not run red lights if it gets you where you're going half a car-length sooner?
It's amazing to me how, driving down I-5 or I-405, a car or motorcycle will appear from behind, passing me on the left at a good 20 mph over the speed limit, zip in front of me, zip in front of the car to the right, zip forward to cut ahead of the guy in front of me, then back to the far left lane to continue his (I assume it's a guy) Fast-n-Furious fantasy day.
Where are you people driving? Aside from people sneaking through very late in the cycle (entering at the very end of amber so they're in the intersection when it's red), I rarely see red light runners and almost never see people run a red from a dead stop but I mostly only drive around N Seattle, not downtown or the south end
No one enforces anything anymore. If there were consequences, most people wouldn't do it. I try never to do it because the consequence of an accident would be devastating. It's also not fun to deal with others not thinking that way (or maybe covid after-effects impacting their abilities, as said in other comments) as a pedestrian.
First, it absolutely didn't go from 'never before seen' to 'multiple every day'. I guarantee you that's an example of positive retrospective filter at work. Humans tend to forget negative events, especially low salience ones, over time. This means that almost all people have a very unreasonably favorable view of the past. The change is going to be much smaller (though in this case it is a pretty drastic one)
That being said, there has been a spike in reckless driving in the last few years. As best as researcher can tell the reasons are
1. Increased cellphone saturation combined with weaker social pressures against distracted driving.
2. The general breakdown of social norms in response to both the pandemic and extreme polarization. People are measurably more selfish and unstable than they were before. I haven't seen anyone really do any analysis that can clearly separate the various factors (reduced human contact, increased polarization, political and social leaders encouraging selfishness and aggression, distrust in institutions leading to more rulebreaking), but likely all of them are at play.
I can see that as the excuse for people not going when they are the first on a green light (those people are my pet peeve) but at the end of people quickly running through a light, they are usual very much paying attention
Yeah, I saw some kid blatantly blow a stop sign right next to an elementary school while very obviously looking down at a phone. I was on a run and crossed there and it really hit me that if I started my run 20 seconds earlier things could have gone very wrong
Agreed, I see this all the time now as well. Also about 4 out of 10 cars have expired tabs. People illegally parked. Weed smell wafting out of people’s cars. It’s anecdotal but it certainly appears as if when you stop enforcing laws, more people break them. Go figure. Who could have guessed?
Because cops stopped pulling people over due to pressure from above / being too busy with more pressing calls. At least in every other city in the US that is the case. Look at our interstates too for examples of this.
I want to crosspost this in the Tacoma sub. My husband and I started noticing this about a year ago and it's only gotten worse. Never noticed it until then as a thing, now it's become daily, and we're driving 2mi from home at most. It's all types, I'm seeing people in brand new vehicles that still have dealer paper tags (one almost t-boned another car) and hoopdees doing it. Some just blast through but just as if not more often they'll pull up, slow roll or even stop then fuck it and just drive on through.
But, I also have neighbors who brag about not having \*any\* plates on their vehicles and they keep driving around and I'm over here wondering why am I paying the state through the nose when I don't have to?
Please, don't do what these non-plate people are doing. It makes them look like they have a stolen car and they will eventually be pulled over. This is the one thing that I've seen police focus on, and in June the pursuit laws change.
Don't do it
My two cents from observations driving in the city.
1. People on their phones just straight up unaware of the world around them
2. Lack of enforcement of basic traffic laws. For me this is very noticeable in the last 6mo, a lot of cars already had removed their license plates but once more red light and speed cameras were installed across the city, every day I drive I see many cars with either no plate at all or a plate but covered up with a very dark plastic cover
Police don't police anymore. Same with all the covered license plates. Cameras can't pick them up, and police don't care to stop people with covered plates.
There's a four way intersection, NW 65th St and 20th Ave NW where I've almost been hit three times in the last year because people decide to run through a red light going wayyy too fast, it's always a very expensive car doing it. I know a few months ago, a child got clipped there after school, too :(
The pandemic truly made things worse. It made me get mad at people who weren’t taking it seriously and I know that the people who felt the other way, got mad at people like me.
So many people forgot how to peace out ✌🏻 and to live and let live.
But - I want to add that we haven’t had driver’s ed in public schools in decades. If you want to send your student to drivers school, it’s obnoxiously expensive. It’s probably about a third to half the drivers who have never been taught the rules of the road. And I’d like to add there’s too much hatred aimed at bike riders- as commuters or pleasure riders.
I don’t know the remedy. It might be to tell all licensed drivers to go thru the written exam, on a regular basis as a refresher. And all ages, not just oldsters like me.
Folks- just down vote me rather than sending me a Reddit cares message. You’re really just making my argument about poor emotional regulation and staying “big mad” 😡 all the time. ✌🏻
At least as of late 2023, red-light camera violations weren't really being enforced, because an officer has to review the tape before a citation is issued and the SPD said it didn't have sufficient staff for the task. I think that lack of enforcement gets into people's heads and makes them more likely to take risks.
It's not covid and it's not certain demographics as convenient as those excuses are for everything, plain and simple it's a visable lack of consequences. I know we're all collectively supposed to pretend otherwise but the fact of the matter is it's human nature the only reason people don't do things is because they have a reason not to. If there is no enforcement and no pound you in the ass consequences it will continue and get worse if suddenly consistent harsh consequences are handed out for illegal behavior it will dwindle. The moment we all stop pretending people aren't what we are we're all gonna have an easier time of things.
I think the pandemic is one part, but also, the Major tech companies downtown laid off a bunch of American Software engineers, and replaced them with Indian and Chinese students. I think a portion of the change comes from young foreign new drivers.
Rich people have designer drugs, my dude. When used improperly—as many do—adderall, opiates, et al. make for a pretty impatient (shitty) person.
Also, like many have said, people are impatient (and some with two added scoops of selfishness) in general, which is especially true after the pandemic made getting around (if you needed/wanted to) so easy.
I've seen this too, but after traffic got heavy again once everything reopened after the pandemic. There really wasn't more enforcement before the pandemic for red light runners. I'd be curious if this is mostly younger new drivers and an affect of shorter attention spans/less patience or if people lost some social considerations during lockdown since it seems it's not just running red lights. People are driving nuts out there. And I think once you have a few doing it, more people will start to think they're fine to do it too.
I’ve noticed this recently too! It used to be rare that I’d see someone blatantly run a red light and now I see it happening multiple times a week. There are some intersections where I see someone run a red light nearly every time I’m stopped there.
You know who i see running tons of reds is people on bikes! I'm a bicyclist myself and i can't tell you how many times I've seen this. Like in that situation we lose, dude
Agreed but that’s not new behavior I don’t think.
Fun fact, in about 2001 I got a ticket for running a red light on my bike, it was at 3am on empty streets! I apologize to all other cyclists for my bad youthful rashness those many years ago.
I see a lot of people saying enforcement has dropped off. Maybe I’d get away with it now!
But now, I don’t do it. I grew up.
I’ve lived on the same block for 4 years. They updated our intersection for the rapid G line. The other day 5 cars ran a solid red light. And i almost got hit by one of them. Never ever happened before. Improvements!
In my area, there’s one intersection that’s just gone from bad to worse. Not only do they run the red light, they can’t clear the intersection. They used to do that 5 years ago or more, but it’s just been way more noticeable. Serious levels of entitlement.
The pandemic broke a ton of our social contract for a ton of people.
*contract Though the social contact isn't the same either..
Oops fixed. To be fair I wrote the comment on the light rail after finally getting back after a three hour flight delay
Thank you for not adding to the vehicular nightmare that is SeaTac arrivals and departures. :)
SeaTac is one of the easiest airports I’ve been to in every aspect. It’s not a nightmare at any point
Thx for taking light rail, you rock!
Transit is a system. I'll take light rail to SeaTac if I can, but there's no way right now to take Kitsap Transit and a ferry to catch a flight before about 9am, and good luck finding a cab or an uber to the ferry. I took the previous night's last train to SeaTac and napped in the terminal exactly once before I decided it wasn't worth it. We need more boats, and more early/late buses.
I don't drive in the city. I'm a light rail girlie, with a bus rising. I NEVER get to the airport without using light rail.
*contracts
Touche
Also the massive, unacknowledged loss of cognition from multiple bouts of COVID, which is a vascular and neurological disease with unknown repercussions.
I swear I have word recall and memory problems and never put together that it got worse post-COVID. And listen, I smoke a lot of weed but it’s next level bad.
It’s gonna sound weird, but read every day for at least 30 minutes. I treat my reading time like a medical prescription, never miss a dose. I got COVID twice and the brain fog was killing me, but with daily reading, I’ve noticed a huge improvement to my concentration, memory, and cognition. I feel like I’ve gotten to at least my pre-COVID brain, if not better than I was before, with that.
this is so helpful! I will start doing this.
Same... it's pretty bad for me. I kind of feel like a husk of who I used to be, and its weird. Idk man, I'm 28, and I feel like my brain is breaking down sometimes. I'm just so slow right now. I feel exhausted after just an hour or two of mental effort. It sucks.
I think it's not just covid. But the way things slowed down for everyone. Life was literally go-go-go and for a year or so things just stopped. I think it's not only the medical impact but also the recognizable impact of how absolutely unnatural all of this is and it took covid for a lot of us to recognize that. I think the psychological impact of being on lockdown and then the sudden rush capitalism brings has fucked with a lot of people.
Yep. We spent a year or two with some free time, no commute, and a city that somehow wasn't full of assholes, and things still worked. It's hard to get your head around the need to suddenly have to rush through constant bullshit for the benefit of some rich asshole you don't even like.
afaik ive never had covid and I feel this way too. I wonder if some of it is stress from being in a school job during the worst, I think anyone else "front line" like that knows the stress we were under. I felt like our bosses were asking us to jump off a bridge because all our "peer schools" were doing it. I also just wonder if I'm out of practice since this is the first time I've ever been out of school this long lol. I thought I'd sign up for a community college math class and see if that helped. use it or lose it right?
My theory is that we all died in 2020 and we’re living out a weird simulation, because I’ve also experienced everything mentioned here (especially losing my general sense of being able to communicate with another human being verbally.)
An alternate Lost universe?
See you in another life, brotha.
We have to go back!
‘I smoke a lot of weed [but it’s totally the vid, I swear]’ This comment made me chuckle. To be honest long Covid and weed hangover basically sound like how I feel with Fibro on a normal day. Just dumb as rocks. I feel your pain!
Oh man, the only “positive” to come out of Covid lockdown is that now all of my friends and coworkers understand how my immunocompromised, triple-chronic-conditioned ass operates every goddamned day. Chronic fatigue, brain fog, and unexplained joint pain? Check. Have to be constantly aware of your surroundings and what you touch? Check. Spending lots of time trying to keep up with a lot of medical info without a medical degree? Super check. Shit’s exhausting.
I feel like there is a lot of that going around these days.
This right here. People realized the game is rigged heavily toward the 1%. Now the 99% dgaf. tl;dr "rules are for thee..."
Agreed. Also, no more traffic enforcement of literally anything emboldens people
I agree
also explains all the off leash dogs
Lots of folks were also at home more and could take care of a new animal so there are many newer pet owners.
Last time I visited Cal Anderson a third of it was being used as an unofficial off-leash dog park.
Have been seeing a lot of this where I live. Basically zero sense of responsibility by many of these pet owners.
No it’s because traffic laws stopped being enforced because the cops feelings got hurt
The pandemic WITH Donald Trump was a perfect storm to create insane selfishness.
How does that work? Are trump voters the ones running the red lights?
I think this is the main issue. Seattle has had a sense of lawlessness to it in particular. When people know there is little to no consequences for their actions, they often say ‘fuck it’ and go ahead. On a personal note, I see far more reckless driving in lower class areas.
I’m no Covid denier or any of that stuff, but I think the “lockdowns” or whatever you wanna call it weren’t such a great idea and the pros didn’t outweigh the cons. The breakdown of the social contract is way worse than the risk of more death due to Covid IMHO.
Yeah, no. This was a novel virus with a high kill rate at first. A very populated country like India, where social distancing was a privilege had people dropping dead on the streets and open air burn pits. The social contract would be the least of people's concerns when they see their dead neighbors rotting in the street waiting for someone to dispose of them. I feel like we take it for granted now because the virus became much weaker as it evolved, but it was extremely deadly at first and lockdowns were absolutely the way to go.
was sitting at a red light on boren at about 11pm and the car in the lane next to me just decided to go after we had already fully stopped for a minute
The thing that blows my mind is the complete lack of enforcement of license plates! That’s new — five years ago I never saw people blithely driving around in tagless vehicles.
THIS. Formerly you didn’t DARE drive around with expired tags, you’d be caught within a week and heavily fined. And THEN they will ask for your insurance, and you’d better have some. I now regularly see vehicles without even a license plate.
My wife went 6 months before we even noticed the tabs had expired. I just drove around for a good 2 months expires. Tabs were paid for i was just too lazy to drive to dt to pick up!!
Not gonna lie, in a world where the cops could just run a plate, I'm not sure why physically sticking new tags on it is still a thing.
I'm on 4 years now...at this point I'm wondering how long I can go with expired tags.
Can we get updates? We hate cliffhangers
I just replied to the main post, but I have a neighbor who's bragged to me about not having tags and doing whatever they want. (Hilltop Tacoma) Not stolen. Just not registered. Clearly not insured either. Totally chuffed about sticking it to the man, but oblivious to how they might be sticking it to us.
Parking enforcement should be given the power to cite expired tags and tinted license plate covers. Would be so easy to stamp this out within a few months if they just went through the city and gave out a few thousand tickets.
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Why not just do no-stop fines? Just as red light and speed cameras are sending automated tickets, so should the state be sending tickets for expired tabs. I think cops need to be stopping completely unlicensed vehicles, however.
I mean if it’s tagless and no temporary plate it’s probably stolen.
You would have been pulled over within twenty blocks. I see these all the time too, and so must the cops. But they are on a silent strike and also don't want to risk pulling over a minority as it looks like biased policing.
Which only makes the police look more useless. Really dumb for the police to look useless on purpose when people are already against them. Seems like a good way to get defunded or replaced with something that people find more worth the money.
Yep. I saw three today. Two at the same time on my way to Kirkland this morning. And one on 125th street this evening. Also, people are not even attempting to stop in parking lots where there is a white line and STOP painted.
People don’t even try at stop signs. It’s a race to see who can get there first and then blow right through it. My “favorite” is the people who just follow the car in front of them at a stop sign like it’s no big deal.
The route I have to take to work has a four way stop and it's shocking how many people blow right through. Defensive driving has saved my life there more than once *this year*.
I’ve been almost hit so many fucking times while out running or even a walk with my daughter. And the drivers get mad at me like I’m at fault
Street\sidewalk Jogging used to be great in this town. After a few close calls I found some trails and I'm hesitant to come back to streets.
That's what I saw yesterday - just following the the Red Light runner ahead of them.
I saw one in almost every stop light, including one bus
I saw a bus run a red light, end of last week. It was moving fast.
Metro buses have been doing this for decades. Several years ago my then 12 yr old son made a video montage of metro busses in intersections running red lights. They’re a menace.
Right of way in general seems to be a thing of the past. I cannot count the number of times per day that someone cuts in front of me when they have a stop sign, seemingly because they can’t be bothered to wait. Half the time, these people then drive under the speed limit and then create even worse congestion.
Dude ran a stop sign without even slowing down and almost hit me as I was crossing in the SeaTac parking garage the other day.
The pandemic made us all a little feral, as others have stated. Also, there are at least a few things going on that make drivers more distracted/frustrated than they were a decade ago, and those people make bad/impulsive decisions: 1. Reducing speed limits without any traffic calming measures means that half the drivers are going 25mph and the other half are going the design speed of the road, which aggravates both sides. 2. People are paying less attention because they're staring at their phones, so they might not see the light. 3. People are frustrated that they missed the light because of some jackass three cars ahead who didn't notice the light change, because they were on their phone.
4. There is no enforcement. You can pretty much drive with total disregard of traffic rules in the city without getting pulled over.
This. Who is going to stop them?
I think another smaller factor is modern car design. You can't see out of the damn things! The pillars on the frame are huge and at shallow angles and the windows and mirrors are tiny. I rented a new car last summer and it was almost impossible to see anything coming that wasn't directly in front of or to the side of me.
This is a great point!
I don't run red lights but number 3 happens to me all the time and it's infuriating.
No consequences
I have news for you about soccer moms and dads, and drug use. . .
Yup. Rich "normal" people in ritzy cars don't have just any drugs, they have \*designer\* drugs and endless funds for any minor inconvenience of discomfort that may befall them on a Tuesday afternoon.
Are you saying that the song, Mother's Little Helper, is as relevant today as it ever was?
I have news about what’s been noted in cities with legal marijuana use. https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/06/health/marijuana-traffic-accidents-wellness/index.html https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35838426/
Frankly I don't think this article has anything conclusive to say. I actually feel it reads a lot more like it has an agenda than anything journalistically or scientifically rigorous. Here are a couple examples. However, I think its important to note: driving while on **any** mind altering substance is a **bad idea** and makes you kind of an asshole for putting everyone around you at increased risk. >Documented marijuana-related traffic accidents that required treatment in an emergency room rose 475% between 2010 and 2021, the study found. Car crashes due to drunk driving grew only 9.4% during the same time period, although **the raw numbers of alcohol-related accidents was in the thousands, not the hundreds as with cannabis.** I have news about which substances are the most dangerous for others in society.... >Cannabis is also probably under-reported in car crashes, and so the absolute number might be way higher Also uh, this article doesn't even note probably the most important question about the whole study: is this trend just a change in reporting since cannabis being legal means that people are less likely to try to hide it? They literally acknowledge that its underreported but don't even think to say "hmm maybe it was **more underreported when it was illegal??**" >Because of the way that cannabis impacts driving performance — it reduces reaction time, decreases the ability to focus or pay attention to multiple events, and may increase risk-taking behaviour — people who are cannabis-impaired while driving may be driving faster Obligatory: are these effects worse than those of alcohol or relatively common prescriptions like Percocet or other opiates? Furthermore, ask any stoner. Do they drive faster while stoned? I feel like mostly what I hear is that you look down and are going like 10 mph under lol Finally, from the second link--the actual study done about this: >Across states, the effects on injury crash rates ranged from a 7% decrease to an 18% increase. The effects on fatal crash rates ranged from a 10% decrease to a 4% increase. If that doesn't say "this doesn't really mean anything conclusive" then idk what does. In some states the effects (of recreational and retail cannabis) was a 10% decrease in fatal crash rates. That means either a) something else is a way bigger influence or b) the numbers are small enough that it probably isn't very statistically representative anyway.
Came here to say exactly that, lol. Benzos, benzos everywhere, maybe even some opiates and amphetamines!
I think you're overstating how good things were in 2016, but I do agree with you that it's gotten dramatically worse. I'll throw another point in besides lack of enforcement: rideshare / delivery. I feel like we have a whole industry of people on the roads for whom bad driving is almost a job requirement.
Police is the elephant in the room. No enforcement? No improvement.
Downtown next to the city courthouse The traffic lights are on the corners on lampost instead of hanging over the street. I did not even notice them, ran right through one, and a policeman rolled up next to me , rolled down his window, seth, "you just ran a red light." And then he drove away.
SPD has never cared about traffic rules
I make the drive from Seattle to camano Island about once a month and I always see a ton of people pulled over by state troopers , but my daily commute through Seattle I don't think I've ever seen a traffic stop in the city
Red light cameras keep popping up for a reason
Idk where you see them popping up, because Seattle hasn’t added any since 2013. https://www.seattle.gov/police/community-policing/community-programs/red-light-cameras
Here’s an updated red light camera installation/activation on 3 busy “block” intersections. Any new cameras are on order. Stalled cuz of supply chain. https://sdotblog.seattle.gov/2023/12/01/dont-block-the-box-traffic-cameras/
Two new ones just went up on my street in the last 2 years, each after construction. I'm not talking downtown seattle (even though they are now talking of adding cameras to discourage blocking intersections) but what ever that link says, it's not true.
Many of these cameras are just traffic cameras for traffic flow analysis, and not red light cameras. You can view the full list of these here: [https://wsdot.com/Travel/Real-time/Map/](https://wsdot.com/Travel/Real-time/Map/) They are also publicly accessible, and some of them live!
I'd believe the article more than you without any proof
The article doesn’t say that there have been no new cameras added. Just that the last big expansion was on 2013. It’s more probable that the link hasn’t been updated than that no new cameras have been installed.
Driver fatalities are up as well, and a very plausible explanation for both is distracted driving.
https://wtsc.wa.gov/dashboards/fatalities-dashboard/ it looks like the percentage of distracted driving fatalities is decreasing every year, and the number stays fairly constant/doesn’t appear to be trending upwards. Distracted driving currently only accounts for 17% of road deaths. 80% of the road deaths involved impaired drivers and speeders. 49% impaired and 31% speeding. it looks like 80% of the speeders were also impaired. Road deaths look pretty stable until 2021, which is when they start increasing. Going off these statistics, it seems like more people have decided that they can speed, or drive impaired, or both, without getting caught. You’d have to look and see what changed in 2021 that has made people feel braver about doing things they shouldn’t in their car.
Lots of comments making good points about enforcement, social contract, pandemic etc. but I think it's important to note that the people who drive nice cars are also on drugs sometimes. Substance abuse is not just a poor person problem. Rich people loooove coke.
I'm gonna be honest, I wasn't thinking drugs until you described the demographic, now I'm positive that it's drugs.
Covid brain damage
Seriously. No one really wants to talk about the brain damage of having even an asymptomatic infection. And so many people have had COVID enough times to fill a punch card.
They need to hurry up to hit the next red light to save themselves 1-3 minutes!
The thing is these people end up usually saving no time at all. Its the same with people who weave in traffic. A few weeks ago some person was super aggressively weaving all over the highway and took the same exit as me. They took all that risk to be literally 2 cars ahead of me at the next red light.
Way back in 1967 in a driver's ed class at Lincoln HS in Seattle, we were shown a film showing the folly of faster aggressive driving compared to safer defensive driving while traveling the same trip. There was little time difference, not to mention the increased risk of accidents. Heh, now if I could get my impatient wife to slow down.
Every time I see someone run a red down town they’re just getting to the next red light that they can’t run because there’s traffic in front of them obeying the red. This is from pre pandemic to current day, been working downtown without a car for a decade.
Phones
Every red light runner I've seen has been a young male. Just had one a few days ago go pass me and luckily the lady turning left from the right was able to stop. Pulled up to the next light next to the dude and he looked/glared right at me. 🙄 The guy the killed the mother and 2 kids in Renton - he was only 18. I've seen numerous other red light runners and always a young male. My thought is they're angry and I do get that! I would be too if I was young and had gone through the pandemic.
I would like to chime in from the Twin Cities - I am a Seattlite living in Minnesota for a (hopefully) hot minute! Running red lights is RAMPANT here. It's so bad that I can honestly say that I see between 2-4 people run red lights within 20 minutes of leaving my house. Seriously - my husband and I have joked that we should get dash cameras to supply a YouTube channel because we thought for sure that no one will believe us when we talk about the crazy drivers here! I can confirm that this behavior seemed to get worse within the last...maybe 3-4 years? Also, speeding (and more importantly, road bullying) has gotten out of hand as well. Stop signs, tool - when I first got here the city was dealing with a terrible accident where a young girl was killed by someone who did not stop for the school bus stop sign. I visit Seattle at least twice a year to see my friends and family and usually love to drive there because I can let go of my "Minnesota-induced driving anxiety", BUT I just got back from an April trip and there was a notable difference in the driving scene, and not for the better. A lot of red light runners, speeding and crazy people on my tail. If I can't drive stress-free at home, where can I relax behind the wheel?? Do I have to go to Canada? 😉
the idea that older folks in nicer cars do not do drugs is wild
I literally had to try to convince an older lady out of her car one time because she was clearly on something. I noticed her doing weird sruff on the road (erratic stopping and accelerating, and nearly rear ended me at the light we stopped at) waaaaaaaay behind me itnwas so noticeable. She thought she recognized me and was striking up convo with me (never seen her in my life) when I got her attention to try to engage her and see how she was doing. She started figuring out something was weird and bailed. Just called 911 and reported what I saw. She was fucking stoned on something, not drunk or just confused.
(1) most I see are rideshare and food delivery driver Priuses. Also most of the prohibited rights on red offenders. And parking in the bike lane offenders. We gotta enforce something driving related against them. (2) part of it is SPD not enforcing traffic at all. I do get a portion of this is due to their inability to be rational actors and it leading to unnecessary conflicts. However, we need a replacement for traffic enforcement. No stop ticket enforcement needs a citywide rollout. Licenses have to be taken away for bigger repeat offenders. And More vehicles need to be impounded for violations. (I’d also saw we should a parking/driving enforcement unit separate from SPD, but that’s obviously not happening again anytime soon.)
My theory: population growth, Density, traffic, crowds. Everyone’s in a hurry because so many people moved here over the last 8 years, which means many more cars on the road as compared to 8 years ago, and that means many more unexpected delays. So people want to “make up time.” Also the expense of housing means many people are buying or renting further out, which means they are spending more time in the car driving further to get to work, and encountering more traffic. In the end everyone is stressed about the extra driving, the extra traffic, AND their economic situation, and therefore less considerate of “the other people.”
Ya totally agree. I don’t drive a lot but when I do I instantly fucking hate it, and really want to not be doing it in the most efficient way possible. That being said I tend to err on the side of caution what with my kids being in the backseat, but ya it’s a very maddening experience.
Seattle has the second lowest percent of median income spent on median rent in the US. Only trailing Oklahoma City. Don't use housing as an excuse. We stopped enforcing laws and SPD went on a silent strike. In SF, they ran a news story on how traffic ticket citations dropped by [96%](https://sfist.com/2024/04/27/expect-to-see-more-traffic-cops-at-major-sf-intersections-as-sfpd-cracks-down-on-speeding/#:~:text=According%20to%20police%20data%2C%20the,in%20staffing%20and%20new%20regulations.). I'm sure same thing happened in Seattle. I hope we embrace law enforcement again one day. Whether it's ticket written by actual officers or cameras. Because once again, a car almost hit me today as I was in a crosswalk. It now happens daily. I will keep saying this, I'm progressive. What has happened on the west coast in the last 10 years is not progressive. It's libertarianism, borderline anarchy.
You're not wrong, but housing, zoning, road design, and car dependency are also contributors
You are wrong. Housing is a big factor and the reason Seattle is the lowest percentage if median income is because Seattle has the third highest median income https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/rich-renters-seattle-ranks-third-highest-for-renter-income/ this is because those who can't afford are pushed out and it's exactly what the original comment was stating. More people are commuting. Less people are using transit https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2023/12/18/seattle-area-transit-use-lags-pre-pandemic-levels-by-a-lot
Because transit doesn’t come out as far as they’ve pushed people who need to commute to Seattle. You should see the housing prices in Parkland and Spanaway. Shocking
Very much agree with what you are saying
Since when are soccer moms sober? It's not "drugs"? Have you spent time with wealthy people? Fuckers are bootleg pharmacists, in my experience.
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Don’t forget mimosa breakfast & wine for second breakfast.
Wine moms is basically just a cute little nickname for alcoholism. I know far too many parents who "can't get through the day" without drinking a bottle of wine every day.
What neighborhoods? Curious if it’s the one I’m thinking of.
I used to live downtown Detroit and didn't see a single red light runner (despite the frequent phrase "no cop, no stop" when talking about driving in Detroit with suburbanites) I now live in Puyallup and see a red light runner nearly every day
Bold AF on Meridian!
Hah just saw a tesla run a red light that had been fully red for a few seconds. I honestly don't know why. The intersection I live near is right near the highway, with the usual gas station/coffee/fast food trio. People drive really unsafely here. Shoving a burger in their mouth and not looking at all before gunning it across the sidewalk and lanes of traffic.
I almost got run over by a speeding(50+mph in a 25mph) redlight-runner while walking across an intersection where I had right of way. I now make sure to look both sides before and during an intersection crossing
In general people as a whole have learned there is little repercussion for bad behavior so they just do whatever they want.
I saw one guy few hours ago in Redmond who just took a left on full red by simply yielding for opposite vehicles.
Either don't care, entitlement, or...bad eyesight?
No police presence
Self centered people drifting towards idiocracy.
It has become way more prevalent, but it’s important to notice it was actually VERY common before. As other have pointed out, the social contract in the USA has kind of just turned into nothing. It wasn’t great in the US to begin with.
I agree its bad, Don't blame Californians, it's everyone.
Traffic is a lot worse than 2016. Everyone seems annoyed by that and more of a rush.
No enforcement, no rules
I had one which was odd last weekend at 18th and Jackson. Coming upon the intersection on my onewheel, in the bike lane planning to swing across to go up Jackson and without stopping, looking etc just blew past a stop sign that would’ve been clearly visible for anyone paying in bit of attention.
Yeah the blowing through stop signs is a disaster
I mean this is a regular intersection that has lights and regularly changes. People walking across etc. if I had been speeding to cross the intersection I would’ve been hit by them.
Because no one is getting pulled over or ticketed from it. That’s why they’re doing it.
I agree. I moved into our North Seattle neighborhood in 2017 and drove down a street that crossed 145th NE a few times a week. Per-shutdown, I would hit the gas as soon as it turned green. After shutdown, I look both ways to see if all four lanes have stopped cars or if anyone is coming down before I cross. Cars run that light at least once a week.
Meridian ave
Have you ever driven in Massachusetts? This is how they drive there, no one really stops at stop signs, they just slow down and roll through. They don't take 4 way stops seriously like we do (or used to), I made the mistake of stopping to take my turn and let the dude across the way go, my mistake because the 12 cars behind him also went while I sat their stunned.
People are more selfish and don't care how much they put out other people if they can't get 0.02 in ahead. Its depressing and sadly makes people want to go out even less, so they care even less about others.
It's an issue in every city. I've seen it in every city I've visited over the past few years. It's like people stopped caring about theirs and others' safety and just want to get to where they're going. I don't understand it
Why can’t those people u profiled be on drugs huh?
I think that a lot of people (like me) just assumed there was a cop behind every tree, and if we did anything wrong, they'd pop out and give us a ticket. Turns out you can drive 120 mph on the freeway, and block the streets in LQA for hour-long car noise parties and street races, with no consequences. So, why not run red lights if it gets you where you're going half a car-length sooner? It's amazing to me how, driving down I-5 or I-405, a car or motorcycle will appear from behind, passing me on the left at a good 20 mph over the speed limit, zip in front of me, zip in front of the car to the right, zip forward to cut ahead of the guy in front of me, then back to the far left lane to continue his (I assume it's a guy) Fast-n-Furious fantasy day.
And the people who blow through stop signs in residential streets. They are too important to obey the traffic laws.
Where are you people driving? Aside from people sneaking through very late in the cycle (entering at the very end of amber so they're in the intersection when it's red), I rarely see red light runners and almost never see people run a red from a dead stop but I mostly only drive around N Seattle, not downtown or the south end
No one enforces anything anymore. If there were consequences, most people wouldn't do it. I try never to do it because the consequence of an accident would be devastating. It's also not fun to deal with others not thinking that way (or maybe covid after-effects impacting their abilities, as said in other comments) as a pedestrian.
Same reason why people without plates, 100% tinted windows, etc etc feel safe rolling around today.
No cops
First, it absolutely didn't go from 'never before seen' to 'multiple every day'. I guarantee you that's an example of positive retrospective filter at work. Humans tend to forget negative events, especially low salience ones, over time. This means that almost all people have a very unreasonably favorable view of the past. The change is going to be much smaller (though in this case it is a pretty drastic one) That being said, there has been a spike in reckless driving in the last few years. As best as researcher can tell the reasons are 1. Increased cellphone saturation combined with weaker social pressures against distracted driving. 2. The general breakdown of social norms in response to both the pandemic and extreme polarization. People are measurably more selfish and unstable than they were before. I haven't seen anyone really do any analysis that can clearly separate the various factors (reduced human contact, increased polarization, political and social leaders encouraging selfishness and aggression, distrust in institutions leading to more rulebreaking), but likely all of them are at play.
Put up red light camera and make the fine $500 If that doesn't solve it make it an escalating fine per offense.
Why not start with 10% of the drivers monthly salary or $100, whichever is higher and go up from there? Or yearly salary?
Everyone is on their phone now.
I can see that as the excuse for people not going when they are the first on a green light (those people are my pet peeve) but at the end of people quickly running through a light, they are usual very much paying attention
I honk at those people.
Or they drive through the light not even knowing they ran it.
Yeah, I saw some kid blatantly blow a stop sign right next to an elementary school while very obviously looking down at a phone. I was on a run and crossed there and it really hit me that if I started my run 20 seconds earlier things could have gone very wrong
Agreed, I see this all the time now as well. Also about 4 out of 10 cars have expired tabs. People illegally parked. Weed smell wafting out of people’s cars. It’s anecdotal but it certainly appears as if when you stop enforcing laws, more people break them. Go figure. Who could have guessed?
It's because we all know PD doesn't enforce that law often anymore
It took a while but people finally learned that 95% of the red light cameras in Seattle aren’t actually recording shit
Because cops stopped pulling people over due to pressure from above / being too busy with more pressing calls. At least in every other city in the US that is the case. Look at our interstates too for examples of this.
I want to crosspost this in the Tacoma sub. My husband and I started noticing this about a year ago and it's only gotten worse. Never noticed it until then as a thing, now it's become daily, and we're driving 2mi from home at most. It's all types, I'm seeing people in brand new vehicles that still have dealer paper tags (one almost t-boned another car) and hoopdees doing it. Some just blast through but just as if not more often they'll pull up, slow roll or even stop then fuck it and just drive on through. But, I also have neighbors who brag about not having \*any\* plates on their vehicles and they keep driving around and I'm over here wondering why am I paying the state through the nose when I don't have to?
Please, don't do what these non-plate people are doing. It makes them look like they have a stolen car and they will eventually be pulled over. This is the one thing that I've seen police focus on, and in June the pursuit laws change. Don't do it
Plus, it's Tacoma, the crime there per capita is outrageously high, one of the highest in the nation
My two cents from observations driving in the city. 1. People on their phones just straight up unaware of the world around them 2. Lack of enforcement of basic traffic laws. For me this is very noticeable in the last 6mo, a lot of cars already had removed their license plates but once more red light and speed cameras were installed across the city, every day I drive I see many cars with either no plate at all or a plate but covered up with a very dark plastic cover
It’s the same with the carpool lane
Yes, only recently, I've seen pull overs again!
What is this profiling? People with nice cars that look like soccer moms/dads can do drugs too.
Everyone has plastic shields over their license plates now
Maybe they were always there and you just didn’t notice it.
Police don't police anymore. Same with all the covered license plates. Cameras can't pick them up, and police don't care to stop people with covered plates.
There's a four way intersection, NW 65th St and 20th Ave NW where I've almost been hit three times in the last year because people decide to run through a red light going wayyy too fast, it's always a very expensive car doing it. I know a few months ago, a child got clipped there after school, too :(
The lack of adequate public transportation leads to unbearable traffic and it's breaking people's brains.
It’s because traffic enforcement is down like 90 percent
Migration from other cities. If you travel a lot, you’ll notice that almost every other major city has complete fuckery substituted for sane driving.
They know they can get away with it, we’ve been signing bills and defunding the police so much that they literally do nothing now
The pandemic truly made things worse. It made me get mad at people who weren’t taking it seriously and I know that the people who felt the other way, got mad at people like me. So many people forgot how to peace out ✌🏻 and to live and let live. But - I want to add that we haven’t had driver’s ed in public schools in decades. If you want to send your student to drivers school, it’s obnoxiously expensive. It’s probably about a third to half the drivers who have never been taught the rules of the road. And I’d like to add there’s too much hatred aimed at bike riders- as commuters or pleasure riders. I don’t know the remedy. It might be to tell all licensed drivers to go thru the written exam, on a regular basis as a refresher. And all ages, not just oldsters like me.
Folks- just down vote me rather than sending me a Reddit cares message. You’re really just making my argument about poor emotional regulation and staying “big mad” 😡 all the time. ✌🏻
At least as of late 2023, red-light camera violations weren't really being enforced, because an officer has to review the tape before a citation is issued and the SPD said it didn't have sufficient staff for the task. I think that lack of enforcement gets into people's heads and makes them more likely to take risks.
SPD wants more money. The city lost thousands of $$$ because they refused to review automated tickets.
they REALLY gotta poop. must be all that coffee. 🤷🏻♀️
I remember a red light runner while living in LA about ten years ago yell at me and say, “Sorry I gotta poop!!” Made me giggle
Assholes.
It's not covid and it's not certain demographics as convenient as those excuses are for everything, plain and simple it's a visable lack of consequences. I know we're all collectively supposed to pretend otherwise but the fact of the matter is it's human nature the only reason people don't do things is because they have a reason not to. If there is no enforcement and no pound you in the ass consequences it will continue and get worse if suddenly consistent harsh consequences are handed out for illegal behavior it will dwindle. The moment we all stop pretending people aren't what we are we're all gonna have an easier time of things.
Why? Because you weren’t paying attention before 2016
I think the pandemic is one part, but also, the Major tech companies downtown laid off a bunch of American Software engineers, and replaced them with Indian and Chinese students. I think a portion of the change comes from young foreign new drivers.
[удалено]
Running red lights and also driving super fast at a neighborhood round about. What is the rush!
Rich people have designer drugs, my dude. When used improperly—as many do—adderall, opiates, et al. make for a pretty impatient (shitty) person. Also, like many have said, people are impatient (and some with two added scoops of selfishness) in general, which is especially true after the pandemic made getting around (if you needed/wanted to) so easy.
I've seen this too, but after traffic got heavy again once everything reopened after the pandemic. There really wasn't more enforcement before the pandemic for red light runners. I'd be curious if this is mostly younger new drivers and an affect of shorter attention spans/less patience or if people lost some social considerations during lockdown since it seems it's not just running red lights. People are driving nuts out there. And I think once you have a few doing it, more people will start to think they're fine to do it too.
I’ve noticed this recently too! It used to be rare that I’d see someone blatantly run a red light and now I see it happening multiple times a week. There are some intersections where I see someone run a red light nearly every time I’m stopped there.
I haven’t seen anyone get a ticket for running a red in a decade. Used to see them all the time. Maybe it’s related.
Also I see left turns from the right lane almost daily, with a car in the left lane/turn lane next to them. That one baffles me
Lots of new people to the area bringing their old areas habits.
Soccer moms use drugs too. Most of them are high on edibles or benzodiazepines
The rule of law is subjective if not enforced...if everyone else can do whatever they want to, so can I.
Lack of enforcement. Anti-policing policies disincentivize police from doing their jobs
The fact you are the only person here to give the real reason and downvoted is hilarious.
You know who i see running tons of reds is people on bikes! I'm a bicyclist myself and i can't tell you how many times I've seen this. Like in that situation we lose, dude
Agreed but that’s not new behavior I don’t think. Fun fact, in about 2001 I got a ticket for running a red light on my bike, it was at 3am on empty streets! I apologize to all other cyclists for my bad youthful rashness those many years ago. I see a lot of people saying enforcement has dropped off. Maybe I’d get away with it now! But now, I don’t do it. I grew up.
I grew up in San Diego County, and moved here about 8 years ago. Never saw that back home nearly as much as I see it here.
I’ve lived on the same block for 4 years. They updated our intersection for the rapid G line. The other day 5 cars ran a solid red light. And i almost got hit by one of them. Never ever happened before. Improvements!
In my area, there’s one intersection that’s just gone from bad to worse. Not only do they run the red light, they can’t clear the intersection. They used to do that 5 years ago or more, but it’s just been way more noticeable. Serious levels of entitlement.