Just Push It Once … and Move On

The letter from Ronald Rickey from the Sept. 13 edition [Letters, “Coming Soon to a Newspaper Near You: Blood on 41st Street] highlights a basic misunderstanding of traffic light functions that many people seem to share: Pushing the button to cross the street does not make the light change any sooner — it only makes it stay changed longer so pedestrians can cross.

Pushing the button a thousand times does nothing that pushing it once doesn’t do. Many of these are the same people who evidently think pushing the elevator button a few dozen times will make the elevator come faster to pick up all those people who seem to be waiting downstairs. Not!

Now that we understand the primitive “brains” of these contraptions, we come to realize the true purpose of those buttons: to occupy the uninformed while they wait for the light change or the elevator to arrive at the same time it would have as part of the regular cycle.

Pat Michaels

Miami Beach

 

The Hazards of Speeding

This is about the article you published on June 7 titled “Motorcycle Madness.”

I am a motorcycle rider, too. I am 45 years old and I never had an accident on a bike. But, on April 23 at about 12:05 a.m., I was driving my Ford F-250 Super Duty at 35 miles per hour northbound in the left lane of Southwest 107th Avenue, when I felt a huge impact on the rear of my truck. The impact was so big that it actually moved my truck from the back. I have big mirrors on both sides and a panoramic mirror on the windshield but I saw nothing on my rear capable of causing such a big impact. I thought that it was a major mechanical problem related to my rear differential or something. So I took all the necessary precaution and stopped in a safe manner.

When I left the truck to inspect the rear end, I saw a bike in the front of a BMW that was driving behind me. I thought that the BMW struck the bike so I went back to the truck and made a U-turn toward the place of the accident so that I was not more than 100 feet away. On my way back, I saw the motorcycle rider, Chavez, laid down on the center of Southwest 107th Avenue. So I positioned my truck to assist Chavez, intentionally blocking the oncoming traffic with my truck to protect him.

I immediately called 911 and started asking questions to Chavez to see if he was awake. I took his pulse from the left hand and I informed the 911 operator that he was alive but he wasn’t answering my questions, like “What is your name?”

The Miami-Dade Fire Station was only two blocks away so the rescue arrived within two to three minutes. He died before they showed up.

The guy from the BMW who was driving behind me and had a clear view of what happened stated that the motorcycle passed him at tremendous speed, not less than 75 or 80 mph because we all were driving around 30 mph. Once the bike passed the BMW, it lost control. The bike started spinning while Chavez flew and ended up about 70 feet away in the center of Southwest 107th Avenue. He stated that Chavez never touched my truck but the bike itself caused $2,500 damage to my truck.

I never went to the hospital because I didn’t want to bother my insurance, but I still have a pain on the neck as a result of the impact. Thank God I was wearing my seat belt. I believe if I were driving a small car, I might not have survived that impact.

I believe that 80 mph is a very conservative assumption because it takes a huge force to bend my rear alloy rim and insert plastic pieces of the motorcycle into my 10-layer wheels. I believe that Chavez was driving at 100 mph. I am not exaggerating; my Suzuki GSX 600 F can go from 0 to 100 in first gear in almost one block.

I am glad to see articles like this because speeding is lethal. If a person speeds, that person has great chances to kill himself or kill others.

George Fleites

Miami

 

The Science of Making Noise Violations Stick: Break Out the Calculators

Having been a player in the local anti-noise game since the early ’90s, I regularly get e-mails from Miami Beach residents complaining about excessively loud music and the failure of the city's Code Compliance Department to suppress noise by issuing prosecutable citations.

What those residents may not know is that the City Commission, under pressure from the hotel and entertainment industry, mandated that Code Compliance must first issue three written warnings before it can issue a prosecutable citation under Miami-Dade Sec. 21-28. Second, they may also not be aware of a report issued several years ago which showed that only 22 percent of all resident complaints about excessive noise eventuated in a prosecutable citation. (Please do not rush to formulate accusatory explanations about Code Compliance's operations. This is not the full story.)

When I mentioned these two facts to a computer scientist-mathematician who is a politically naive friend of mine, he sat silently for a few moments. Then he said, “It’s a perfect problem for the binomial distribution,” and walked over to his computer to do some calculations. That's when I left.

The next day, his e-mail arrived. Using the binomial and the data shown in the second paragraph, he had solved the enforcement problems in Miami Beach: More people had to phone in noise complaints to produce prosecutable citations. But the implications of his calculations were surprising.

In plain English, his calculations showed that if zero legal warnings were required, it would take 10 complaints about a specific noise source to produce one citation with a probability of 91.66 percent. Thus, if Joe Resident wanted to ensure, with a fairly high degree of certainty, that his noisy neighbor got a prosecutable citation, nine of his vocal neighbors would have to join with him and also officially complain.

Turning to the actual situation in Miami Beach, which now requires three warnings prior to the issuance of a legal citation, his binomial analysis showed that if Joe Resident wanted to ensure that one citation was issued to his noisy neighbor with a probability of 90.83 percent, he needed the vocal support of 28 of his neighbors!

In other words, the current policy of requiring warnings tripled the degree of social support a complainant needs to get the city's noise law enforced.

Later, my computer scientist-mathematician friend, reflecting on noise issues in Miami Beach, said that the mathematical analysis of local problems obviated the need for concerned residents to attend public hearings at City Hall, send e-mails to city commissioners and city officials, join a neighborhood association, give money to political campaigns, vote and write letters to the editor. That's when I left.

Morris Sunshine

Miami Beach