Only Massachusetts requires police details at road work sites. Boston drivers are from Massachusetts. Coincidence? Risking a lifetime of tickets for riding their bikes on the sidewalks and for missing license plate lights, DLA researchers take a look at paid police details.


A dream police detail:  Ensuring public safety in front of Dunkin' Donuts!
Photo Credit: DLA Labs 

On March 12, justanothertrooper posted this entry on the MassCops.Com blog (a web site for New England law enforcement professionals): “NECN is reporting on detail pay for BPD (Boston Police Department).....can always tell when spring is here!”

Can’t argue with him there. Local and state police salaries, swollen by overtime “detail” pay (directing traffic at street or highway construction, special crowd details, etc.), draw the focus of media and (much less frequently) politicians on a perennial basis. The issue is always simmering in the minds of the motoring public since virtually every trip to D’Angelos Marketbasket includes dodging an open manhole or a DPW backhoe digging up a storm sewer…always under the careful supervision of a state or local police office. But it moves to the front burner with the annual news story reading something like “Police Top State’s Highest Paid List”, or –in the case of the Boston Herald—“Cops Cop Top Take-home!”

And so it was earlier this month when the Globe and other news media....

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Electronic toll collection makes so much sense…which, of course, is why Ass-Like Drivers don’t use it.

Last month a friend offered to drive me to New York in her spanking new Prius, of which she was enormously proud and, in an effort to minimize her already dwindling carbon footprint by pursuing some sort of gas mileage record, she had taken to coasting whenever possible. Despite a somewhat erratic driving style, I was impressed with her enthusiasm and commitment, and those quiet, gravity-powered, battery-charging interludes began to lull me into a world far removed from the venalities of Boston driving.

Boston drivers, eschewing all things logical and reasonable, hurry to get in the Cash Only lines
Photo credit: DLA Research Labs

As we approached the Mass Pike toll booths, all the “Get Ticket” lanes were backed up hundreds of yards. The FAST LANE lanes were either wide open or blocked by drivers who didn’t remember that they didn’t have a FAST LANE pass until they were ten feet from the gate and were now trying to squeeze left or right while digging quarters from under the seat.  My friend pulled into a “Get Ticket” lane.

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I couldn’t make this stuff up. Well, I suppose I could but what would be the point: it’s so much easier to simply collect data.

Making U-turns in Cambridge: Source: drivinglikeass.com Labs

My brother—like many other people when I tell them about this blog—is quick to tell me that I have too much time on my hands which, of course, is the always the first reaction of people who wish THEY had thought of something first or, more often, of people who, upon finding themselves with time on their hands, haven’t the slightest idea what to do with it. What my brother does not understand is that studying and writing about driving behavior in Boston (he calls it ranting, but what does he know? He lives in Racine! That’s in Wisconsin! Talk about having too much time on your hands!) takes almost no time at all because the streets are awash with research inspiration . Any intersection is a day-long parade of driving like ass on display.

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There is almost nothing about driving that doesn’t send a bee up somebody’s butt. Below is a small list of sites and blogs from the polar extremes of the RLC issue. They are provided not for any relation they may have to driving like ass but, as they say, “as a contribution to the literature”, such as it is.

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Coming to an intersection near you, the nemesis of evil-doers and ass-like drivers everywhere—the Red Light Camera—wants to take on Massachusetts’ driving anarchy. Drivinglikeass.com thinks it hasn’t got a prayer.

On the issue of red light cameras (RLC), the opposing teams line up like this: For? Insurance companies and highway safety organizations, a few revenue-strapped municipalities, and camera system vendors. Against? Just about everybody else.

Nonetheless, State Rep Kevin Honan of Brighton has introduced two bills that would allow cities and towns in Massachusetts (H.3512) and Boston and Cambridge (H.3513) to deploy “traffic control signal violation monitoring system devices as a means of promoting traffic safety.” At first blush, this sounds like a real winner: using technology to nab traffic scofflaws, anywhere, 24-7. But, once again, technology and logic will remain powerless against the innate obduracy of driving like ass.

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