Good morning, RVA: Engagement, beat-up signs, and beautiful photos

If you can’t be bothered not to run over a yellow, several-foot-tall,
stationary object, maybe you shouldn’t be driving?

Good morning, RVA! It's 31 °F, and we are, technically, under a winter weather advisory until 9:00 AM for light freezing rain with “total ice accumulations of a light glaze.” Seems pretty dry in my neck of the city at the moment, but there’s still plenty of time to glaze things over, I guess. If you need to move about the region this morning, take it slow!

Water cooler

Yesterday, despite the river of good jokes on social media, the CDC did not tweak their newish guidance on when folks can end isolation if they test positive for COVID-19. As of right now, at least, if you test positive you need to isolate for five days and if you are fever-free for 24 hours (without any fever-reducing medication!), you can go about your business in the wide, wide world as long as you wear a well-fitting mask for five more days. Here’s the bit they did add: “If an individual has access to a test and wants to test, the best approach is to use an antigen test towards the end of the 5-day isolation period...If your test result is positive, you should continue to isolate until day 10. If your test result is negative, you can end isolation, but continue to wear a well-fitting mask around others at home and in public until day 10.” If I were to guess, I’d say the national scarcity of tests (which feels like it’s getting a bit better) made the CDC real hesitant to require testing as part of the process to end isolation. Maybe this changes if President Biden’s proposal to ship free tests to everyone gets off the ground?

And, because it’s not all cynicism and anxiety, my favorite newsletter epidemiologist, Katelyn Jetelina, has a special good-news post today that you should read if your insides feel like a gray, featureless expanse stretching endlessly forever in every direction. The miraculous vaccines we have work really well! Omicron could have gone a way different direction! Etc!

Oof, this thread by Twitter user @jessiehartsyou. They took the time to check in on all 74 locations where the City installed those hi-viz “STATE LAW 🛑 FOR 🚶” signs—you know, like the one on Brookland Park Boulevard that became a recurring character on reddit as it was run over by drivers again and again and again? Jessie’s findings are dark: 46 signs ripped out or completely destroyed, 15 badly damaged, 4 removed for repaving and not replaced, 8 hit but in decent condition, 1 had no sign of ever being installed.” Basically out of 74 signs, eight remain? About 10%? These signs are the size of a small child and located at known dangerous intersections. If these signs were a small child, that child would be dead. To me, then, the takeaway from Jessie’s work is not “these signs are useless” it’s “our streets are incredibly dangerous as proven by these signs.” At each location, where drivers couldn’t be bothered to slow down and not run over a stationary object several feet tall, we should install cheap, temporary infrastructure that forces slower, safer speeds. We knew these intersections were dangerous and now have physical, documented proof of that. Now we should get out there and infrastructure our way out of this!

The City announced that they’ve hired Petula Bucks to lead the Office of Public Information and Engagement, which itself is a pretty new office in the City’s org chart. We’ve got no shortage of projects that need thoughtful and thorough community engagement—City Center, Diamond District, Marcus-David Peters Circle, zoning reform, and the new citywide transportation plan are all easy examples—and I’m excited to see how Bucks starts to get involved. Even before this hire, though, the City really has made big improvements to how it plans and executes community engagement starting with Richmond 300 and the Dreams4RPS Strategic Plan. I’m glad that the City is spending the money to keep that momentum going.

Oh snapdragons! City Council has a new special meeting on their calendar for this evening where they’ll introduce the legislation to accept the Robert E. Lee statue and associated detritus from the State, which, as we all know, is valued at $12 million. Youngkin be damned! We’ll get this thing from the Commonwealth yet!

I just realized I can share aerial shots of Monument Avenue again, now that the racist garbage is gone. These drone photos, by Creative Dog Media, of a snow-covered Richmond (from above!) are lovely.

This morning's longread
Big Cars Are Killing Americans

No matter what your personal degree of #bancars—even if it is zero!—I think we can all agree that American car companies have flooded our streets and neighborhoods with fleets of irresponsibly and dangerously designed trucks. These vehicles are, literally, killing machines and need to be regulated out of existence.

After a decade of steady increases, the newest Ford F-250—part of Ford’s F-Series of pickups, the No. 1 selling vehicle model in America—measures some 55 inches tall at the hood. That’s “as tall as the roof of some sedans,” a Consumer Reports writer remarked in a recent analysis examining the mega-truck trend. This height would easily render someone in a wheelchair, or a child, totally invisible at close range. If I, a tallish woman at 5 foot 6, were hit by a new F-250, I would be struck above the chest. The face, head, neck: These are not great places to suffer a forceful blow—like the kind that an up-to-7,500-pound F-250 can deliver.

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