To the Editor:
Re “Traffic Stops Fell in Pandemic, and Didn’t Return” (The Upshot, front page, Aug. 1):
Thank you for highlighting the public health crisis that is the rise in traffic deaths across the United States. One point not made is the burden on our children. Motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death of children, second to firearms. In my city, Philadelphia, five children, on average, are hit by a car every week.
As a pediatric resident physician, I see the devastating outcomes of these statistics in the emergency room and intensive care unit. I advise children to wear a seatbelt, look both ways before crossing a road and wear a helmet when cycling. But people are getting killed even when they do everything right.
Plastic bollards separating a designated bike lane don’t work when drivers are willing to barrel over them.
We need an evidence-based approach to this public health crisis. Safe road design saves lives. We need to invest in Vision Zero programs to fund structural changes, including speed cameras and physical barriers between cyclists and drivers. Cities need to invest in public transit systems.
Culture change takes time. Structural change in the meantime is evidence-based and will work to make all Americans, including our children, safer.
Allison Neeson
Philadelphia
To the Editor:
The degree to which American drivers have been ignoring traffic laws over the past several years is mind-blowing. Speeding on highways and parkways is out of control and makes driving an exercise in avoiding catastrophe. It seems as if every other car is drag racing or trying to set a new speed record.
These cars seemingly appear out of nowhere, and “nowhere” also describes where the cops are; I have yet to see one of these offenders pulled over. Between these scofflaws and those who think nothing of cruising right through a stop sign or red light (or turn right on red, even when a “No Turn on Red” sign is directly in front of them), it’s no surprise that road fatalities are up.
Alice Tenney
Mamaroneck, N.Y.
To the Editor:
Re “So Far, 2024 Is Deadliest Year for Traffic Deaths in a Decade” (New York Today newsletter, nytimes.com, July 30):
James Barron does well to highlight the dangers for pedestrians and cyclists in New York City, but speeding and cars parked too close to intersections are not the only ones.
Consider bikes, e-bikes and scooters in bike lanes and streets that go way too fast, in the wrong direction and ignoring traffic lights. And, too, the poor condition of sidewalks and streets that make walking to the grocery hazardous, especially for seniors and handicapped pedestrians.
Taxis and car services regularly block crosswalks around train stations, and the explosion of scaffolding and construction barriers and fencing obscure more corners than a parked car and make pedestrian routes an obstacle course.
Traffic cops will stop cars trying to make an illegal turn but not a cyclist going the wrong way right in front of them.
More attention must be paid to these other dangers.
Denise Yaney
New York
Neo-Nazis in Nashville and the Speech Question
To the Editor:
Re “What Can a City Do When Neo-Nazis March Its Streets?” (news article, Aug. 2):
Your reporter quotes Carly Wasserman, who has protested against the marching by neo-Nazis in Nashville: “There’s freedom of speech, and there’s hate speech.”
One cannot blame Ms. Wasserman for being upset at the open display of antisemitic and racist hate by those who seem sympathetic to the barbarians who nearly wiped out Europe’s Jews during World War II. However, the fact of the matter is that “hate speech” is as constitutionally protected as “love speech” or any other speech.
The Constitution, in its first and, in the view of many, most vital amendment, does not differentiate nor categorize speech. The Supreme Court, during periods of both liberal and conservative ascendance, has been consistent. All speech is protected with very few exceptions (e.g., defamation, falsely yelling fire in a crowded theater, speech aimed at provoking imminent violence and credible threats).
Indeed, “hate speech” deserves protection for one additional reason. It is useful for one to know who hates him or her; that is the individual on whom one should not turn one’s back.
Harvey A. Silverglate
Cambridge, Mass.
The writer, a criminal defense and constitutional rights lawyer, is a co-founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
To the Editor:
Nazis murdered 22 members of my family, including my parents’ three children conceived before I was born. Saying that Nazis promote “hate speech” sanitizes their intentions: The goal of Nazism is to promote and commit murder.
Given its history and objectives, promotion of Nazism in any form should be banned everywhere in the United States, as it is in Germany and other European countries.
Allen Hershkowitz
Ridgefield, Conn.
The writer is the author of “Finding My Father’s Auschwitz File.”
Vance vs. the Rule of Law
To the Editor:
Re “To Vance, Gaining Power Means Breaking the Left” (front page, Aug. 5):
Let’s be clear. When JD Vance suggests that a future Trump administration should ignore judicial rulings, politicize the Civil Service and weaponize the powers of government against political opposition and civil society, he is not advocating “breaking the left.” He is advocating breaking the rule of law and our constitutional order, and replacing our system of checks and balances with one of raw, untrammeled power.
A political system that is ruled by power, rather than by democratically mandated institutions, is a totalitarian system.
The prospect of changes to our fundamental political norms should, indeed, make conservatives “uncomfortable,” as Mr. Vance notes that it does. There is nothing conservative about this program. It is in fact the exact opposite of every idea of conservatism, as these ideas have come down to us from Hume and Burke, Smith and Reagan, Hamilton and Thatcher.
True conservatives are an indispensable part of the coalition that will — that must — finally defeat Trump and Trumpism.
Jesse Larner
New York
The writer is the author of “Forgive Us Our Spins: Michael Moore and the Future of the Left.”
A Ban on Masks?
To the Editor:
“Masks Could Be Banned in Public in Nassau County, With Some Exceptions” (news article, Aug. 7) quotes a Republican legislator, Mazi Melesa Pilip, as saying, “This legislation was written for one single purpose: to keep our residents safe.”
Which residents? Allowing masks only for “health or religious reasons,” as you report, and leaving it “up to police officers to decide whether that is why a given person is masked” is bound to discourage mask wearing by people with minimal Covid symptoms or those who are uncertain whether they have Covid at all. This endangers the old and immunocompromised people to whom Covid is still a mortal threat.
Civil rights organizations should be opposing a policy that is so harmful to America’s most vulnerable residents.
Felicia Nimue Ackerman
Providence, R.I.
The writer is 77 and a bioethicist.