A little bit of this, a little bit of that

Jon - any attempt to improve the tone of the discussion should be welcomed, but I fear that the horse may have left the barn a long time ago. I think that a lot of people who might have wanted to participate in the SMDJ online discussion are already discouraged by the tone of comment section contributions and may not come back for some time.

This tone sadly is reflective of the state of our country at large and sanctioned at the top with the latest example occurring at the White House during the Trump, Zelensky, and Vance exchange yesterday. (By the way - I watched the entire press conference on C-SPAN to avoid prejudicial video clip selection, and it seemed to be going reasonably well until Vance jumped in about 39:50 into the video - see https://www.c-span.org/program/white-house-event/president-trump-meets-with-ukrainian-president-zelensky/656418 )

If you try to correct insulting behavior in the SMDJ comments section, I guarantee that you will be accused of “censorship.” Vice President Vance is currently delivering exactly this message to several of our NATO allies when clearly the biggest such offender in terms of censorship is “President” Putin.

However, as editor of the paper, it is your job to decide what to publish. Those who disagree with you have the right to take their patronage elsewhere.

Changing the suggestion "Be nice" to a mandatory "Keep the discussion civilized" is a great move. Thanks, Jon. Everyone can still express their POV, but the focus will have to be on positions not personalities. Maybe a hundred years ago, Albert C. Nock encouraged young journalists to have a point and to make sure their pieces were well-written in idiomatic English. DJ readers can do the same without insults.

Jon, I hope you take the additional step and disallow aliases - the two anti-Semitic smears aimed at me within the SMDJ comments section was someone who felt comfortable doing so because he was hiding behind an alias. I truly don’t think that would happen if everyone’s name is clearly visible.

The key sentence is "as long as it’s enforced".

The only possible solution to traffic safety is real "Vision Zero", which San Mateo is bragging to have adopted since 2015 (with little physical evidence to prove it exists here).

Vision Zero states that "education", "enforcement", even well meant PSAs cannot lead to success as people will always, always, always make mistakes.

Reducing Speed:

There is a law that allows the city to reduce speeds around schools to 15mph very easily. It's been on the books for maybe 15 years already.

There is a new law (I believe AB43) that would make it even easier to do this around schools, business centers, basically almost anywhere in most cities.

Few San Mateo cities are using it. And since San Mateo cities have kind of given up on traffic enforcement, it wouldn't matter to much.

The only viable solution is reducing speed through engineering. And you need to do this through solid traffic engineering - not just speed humps.

Separating Speed:

Workplace Safety programs show over and over again, heavy machinery and vulnerable workers don't mix well, so they get separated as much as possible. The same is true for traffic safety. Heavy, oversized, tuned-up machinery does not mix well with vulnerable road users. They are constantly overlooked - especially with distracted driving going up not down.

The only possible solution for Humboldt Street bike lanes is to keep the bike lanes and enforce municipal codes. Landlords have transformed their garages and driveways into living and storage space and now want society to pay for their car storage on public property. Municipal codes encourage residents to store at least 4 vehicles on their own property and only a few households have more than that.

If municipal codes would be enforced in this neighborhood, children could keep their Safe-Routes-To-School.

So in the end the key sentence is still "as long as it’s enforced".

Thanks for your column today, Mr. Mays, passing along a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It is amusing to hear folks are complaining about photos of Trump and Musk. I never really thought about it. Maybe to ease some of the complaints, Trump’s mug shot photo can be used. I wasn’t surprised you would raise some hackles with your 80 mph “recommendation” although in reality, we do see many freeway drivers at that speed. 75 mph would have been a good compromise. Perhaps you can expand these new online rules to LTE’s. Else you may begin receiving more “insulting” LTEs from contributors rather than online comments. Regardless, I look forward to this new “golden age” of online commenting.

Can I still insult Kevin Mullin though? (Kidding- I wish him the best in his recovery and I'm sure he will be back soon to voting the exact opposite way I wish he would on all legislation.)

I agree with your new policy and hope it is applied fairly to all commenters regardless of political opinion (including DJ writers if they choose to wade into the comment section.) The comment section can take a very negative turn and I have not always been at my best either. But I hope we can all try to debate issues using facts and well reasoned opinions, not insults.