{"id":9096,"date":"2010-11-14T09:48:49","date_gmt":"2010-11-14T09:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2010\/11\/14\/death-vs-taxes-during-a-storm\/"},"modified":"2010-11-14T09:48:49","modified_gmt":"2010-11-14T09:48:49","slug":"death-vs-taxes-during-a-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/14\/death-vs-taxes-during-a-storm\/","title":{"rendered":"Death vs. Taxes During a Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday in Minnesota, 546 vehicles drove off the road and 461 vehicles crashed into something (often, another vehicle) due to storm conditions.  In one of those incidents, a person died.  In neighboring Wisconsin, there were over 400 crashes and two dead.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><script type='text\/javascript' src='http:\/\/video.minneapolis.cbslocal.com\/global\/video\/videoplayer.js?rnd=930135;hostDomain=video.minneapolis.cbslocal.com;playerWidth=450;playerHeight=375;isShowIcon=true;clipId=5290851;flvUri=;partnerclipid=;adTag=Weather;advertisingZone=CBS.MINN\/worldnowplayer;enableAds=false;landingPage=null;islandingPageoverride=false;playerType=STANDARD_EMBEDDEDscript'><\/script><\/p>\n<p>If this was a disease epidemic over the same time period, it would be way worse than the H1N1 flu or the cholera epidemic currently hitting Haiti. Yes, yes, I get that this is a temporary short term phenomenon, but if we put all the stormy weather end to end in time it would be an event of a week or two duration (depending on the year). Imagine an event that takes two weeks, kills 25 people in Minnesota, 50 in Wisconsin, a high proportion of those injured or killed being the Venerated First Responders, and damages or destroys 10 thousand vehicles, that could have been prevented with a different strategy.<\/p>\n<p>And yes, there is the potential for a different strategy.  While all this mayhem was in progress, I was speaking with a friend who drives a plow.  The storm had been going for 12 hours, and he had not been called in yet, so I asked him why.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They wait until the cops start complaining about accidents, then they call us in, and in a few hours we&#8217;ve got the streets cleaned.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So, it would appear that the public works professionals are unaware that between 3 and 15 inches of snow cause hazardous driving conditions, and need to re-learn this every storm.<\/p>\n<p>Well, to be honest, they do know know about the hazards of the storms. They are just using a strategy of dealing with the storm that saves money.  That&#8217;s taxpayer&#8217;s money, and we wouldn&#8217;t want taxpayers to pay for something they don&#8217;t have to.  Several thousand accidents and a dozen or two dead (over a season) is a low price to pay for an extra dollar a week or so in taxes to fund a snow clearing operation more like they have in New York or Massachusetts, where plows clear snow from beginning of the storm to the end (or at least, that&#8217;s how it was done when I lived there).<\/p>\n<p>Here in Minnesota, a &#8220;good snow day&#8221; is one in which 36 hours of havoc is followed by 10 hours of towing cars away and plowing.  That is the standard:  You wait until the snow ends, or the cops start complaining that too many of their own were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/stories\/2010\/03\/01\/national\/main6256013.shtml\">almost wiped out<\/a> while helping a stranded motorist, then &#8220;snow emergency parking&#8221; rules go into effect, and you plow.<\/p>\n<p><a href='http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com'>Watch CBS News Videos Online<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday in Minnesota, 546 vehicles drove off the road and 461 vehicles crashed into something (often, another vehicle) due to storm conditions. In one of those incidents, a person died. In neighboring Wisconsin, there were over 400 crashes and two dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5020],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-2mI","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9096"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9096\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}