10 hours ago
- Automotive
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: DuSable Lake Shore Drive has become unsafe. Let's do something about it.
On a lengthy list of bills Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law Friday was a measure authored by state Sen. Sara Feigenholtz to address what has become one of the true hazards of life in Chicago: driving on DuSable Lake Shore Drive.
The law will have the Urban Transportation Center at the University of Illinois Chicago do a study on whether cameras using artificial intelligence technology can make DuSable Lake Shore Drive safer.
In an April 4 statement, Feigenholtz, a Democrat representing a North Side district, said, 'The high number of crashes due to dangerous and distracted patterns demands urgent action. We need research-driven solutions that improve safety outcomes without imposing overly punitive measures.'
AI cameras are being deployed on expressways in this country and abroad to identify unsafe practices such as failing to wear a seatbelt and texting while driving, as well as speeding. Some jurisdictions are studying how the technology can be used. Others outside the U.S. are going so far as to allow the cameras to generate evidence for ticketing drivers. In this country, some states are using the technology to give police patrolling the roads a heads-up on drivers coming their way who are breaking laws on distracted driving and speeding.
Fierce debates are occurring already, as you might imagine, around privacy. We share those misgivings.
But without a doubt, something must be done about driving behavior on DuSable Lake Shore Drive. Anyone who's been on the drive in recent months — really any time since the pandemic — routinely encounters reckless driving. Speeds at 90 mph or more are a common sight. Hazardous lane changing occurs regularly.
In our experience, the issue is worse on the southern stretch of the drive, perhaps because it is more lightly traveled than North DuSable Lake Shore Drive, which abuts more densely populated neighborhoods. But both ends of the iconic roadway currently aren't safe enough for law-abiding drivers to use.
On South DuSable Lake Shore Drive, it used to be that regular patrolling by the Chicago Police Department kept drivers from channeling their inner Mario Andretti. CPD patrols these days are an infrequent sight, and predictably the speed demons feel liberated.
We see nothing wrong with studying the use of AI-enabled cameras on DuSable Lake Shore Drive. In the future, there may even be an argument for speed cameras on the drive given their proliferation on far less dangerous city streets where increasingly they are more a source of revenue for a revenue-starved city government than anything else.
But in the meantime, how about returning to a tried-and-true method of keeping DuSable Lake Shore Drive safer? That is, regular patrolling by CPD.
We understand police resources are stretched, and we sympathize with arguments that cops need to be focused mainly on violent crime. But people are dying on DuSable Lake Shore Drive as well, and we'd argue that a few regular patrols armed with that trusty old-school technology — the radar gun — are well justified by the future lives that can be saved.
