Hey, this is great citizen journalism.
this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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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.
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.
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.
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
Hi I’m someone else, I’m an architectural technologist and used to work at a structural engineering firm.
The engineers don’t have professional responsibilities they have financial and familial obligations that are threatened by the kinds of people who have too much power and not enough brains. They don’t owe their employer fucking diddly-squat, especially if that employer is asking them to endanger others. It is unfortunate that 90% of the construction industry is pretty backwards.
As for the being fired for upholding a legal and moral responsibility I’m literally doing nothing on my couch on a Monday morning because some very fragile people didn’t like that I refused to draw up plans for an illegal stair(I have a certification in the building code). They got mad at me based solely on their woeful misunderstanding of the applicable code(they literally didn’t even know they had to update their physical copy every year and fought me on it). Unfortunately it’s hard to prove so all I could really do was take screenshots before I lost access and send them to the province’s professional engineering association to at least get them into some kind of trouble. They took the case but it was probably just a “they’re stupid and it’s a first reported offence so we’ll give them a warning” kinda thing, but still.
I would do it all again, too, because fuck that guy and fuck anyone who tries to scare me into compliance. I’m one of not many people who can weather the storm of unemployment and I’m not going to disrespect those who can’t risk fighting back by being a coward.
Yes this is my experience and that's why I was poking around with the other poster.
We can all agree about standing tall when corruption comes but all know most people living hand to mouth wont do it.
And state and corps know this BC they designed the system to work like this
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.
Look, here's how it actually works in practice:
- The politicians approve a budget for a project.
- The project is managed by the state/county/city DOT, with the project manager being a licensed Professional Engineer (PE).
- The design of the project is contracted out to a private engineering firm, where the engineer in charge of the design is a PE (and the people working under him who actually do most of the work are either also PEs, or are at least licensed Engineers In Training (EITs)).
- At least at the firm I worked at, the CEO of the company was also a PE.
- The construction is contracted out to a private construction firm, where the engineer in charge of construction is a PE.
Except for the 10,000-foot level budgeting, everyone with a position of authority over the project is a licensed PE. It's PEs all the way up. The buck stops at the PEs.
The problem here is not that PEs are being bullied by someone else into not doing their jobs properly. PEs are not victims in this scenario, not even a little bit.
The problem here is that PEs don't think they have an obligation to make streets that are safe for anyone but drivers, because the entire industry standards of practice are wrong.
The problem here is that PEs don't think they have an obligation to make streets that are safe for anyone but drivers, because the entire industry standards of practice are wrong.
OK this one landed.
Very valid point and thank you for crystalizing this.
Reminds of law and medicine tbh. It seem to be a structural issue where proffesions are captured by Brian rot who cares more about money, careers and good connections over doing their jobs.
So from that perspective, yes, we should start with people owning this.
Thank you for enagaging.