Senior Driver Debate, Winter Olympic Students, & More
Around the College Towns: Links and commentary related to urbanism and higher ed for the week of Feb. 3 - Feb. 16.
Note: Around the College Town is my weekly-ish links roundup article on urbanism and education. These posts mostly cover news that may have fallen through the cracks rather than the big events.
Last week in my Crash Analysis of the Waymo that hit a child walking to school, I juxtaposed the incident with a tragedy down the road where an elderly woman crashed her car into a grocery store, killing 3 people. I also mentioned in that article that something similar happened in another part of LA, with an elderly driver killing a pregnant mother on an e-bike. Well, now another case is continuing the debate around seniors and driving.
This one also comes from San Francisco, where an almost 80-year-old woman crashed into a bus stop, killing an entire family. This happened in 2024, but it returned to the news this week when the judge let her off with just a light probation sentence. I am not here to litigate the case, rather I want to highlight the growing dangers Boomers are now posing to our roads.
The woman in this particular case was going 70 MPH when she crashed into the bus stop! Look at the area where it happened: it is not a suburb with wide open lanes, it is in the middle of a transit-rich walkable neighborhood. I can barely imagine getting to 40 MPH in this space, let alone 70. Going that fast here is incomprehensibly neglectful.
I see a lot of discourse demanding the removal of licenses for seniors or adding tests with age. While I actually do agree with these tactics, I am also realistic about what can happen legally. There is not as much political will to limit seniors because they are such a massive voter base. In fact, Illinois recently made it easier for seniors to keep their licenses.
Given the difficulties in legislative solutions to this problem, I think we should tackle the issues locally through street design. Our cities do not need to change any laws to install bollards everywhere. We need real protection basically everywhere cars interface with anyone outside of a car. Chintzy flexipoles will not work; the protection needs to be sturdy.
It is just a simple fact that as we age, we lose our faculties to drive. We essentially revert back to teenagers in terms of fatal crash involvement (see Cox and Cicchino, 2021). I wish we could all live in walkable communities where people weren’t forced to drive, but even then (as we’ve seen in LA and San Francisco), people still insist on driving. We should install protection now instead of waiting for more tragedies.
Links I’m Reading This Week
Education
The Tampa Bay Rays and Hillsborough College have unveiled a plan to build a stadium and mixed-use development on campus. Interesting deal that I have not seen with a college and pro sports team.
Similarly, the University of Oklahoma in my home state is getting a new arena and sports district. I guess these types of districts are the new wave. Unfortunately, even the renderings look fairly car-dependent.
According to a new study, academics are no longer on T̶w̶i̶t̶t̶e̶r̶ X. They are now on BlueSky. I tried BlueSky, it’s just not the Internet Town Square replacement that a lot of us were looking for.
Too many As? Harvard proposes caps on top grades. Interestingly, I had this in grad school in Korea. It was pretty annoying, and I did earn a couple of Bs, but they did not affect me in any way after graduation. Much to think about there.
Time magazine unveils a new university. It’s just as bad as the rest of them. Please do not take it seriously.
A college announces three-year college degrees. I am generally against these short-term programs. I’ll have to write about my aversion to them in the future.
There seems to be a continued exodus of elite talent in the US, as two high-profile Vietnamese researchers relocate to Hong Kong.
There is a college cheater on Reddit where users trade strategies for cheating. They are mad r/professors found their little group. One fellow prof even asked them why they do it.
Urbanism-ish
In more Olympic news, this time from the summer. LA gears up for Airbnb bonanza, as we likely don’t have enough hotel capacity.
Similarly, the World Cup will be held in the US later this summer, and American stadiums are already issuing warnings against walking.
In more sports news, China is getting into baseball. East Asia is already one of the top regions in the sport, with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. I could see the sport really catching on in Mainland China.
Ford CEO admits expensive EV strategy was a failure. He promises the American automotive manufacturer will start producing more affordable cars. I find it interesting that he drove a Chinese Xiaomi years prior!
China is also racing way ahead of the US in terms of AVs:
Bus stops in the US are too close together. I have been banging on this drum for years, so it is finally good to hear these critiques entering the discourse.
What looks like the real-life house from Up is up for sale in Atlantic City. Just $775,000, not a bad deal!
There’s a new book that got my attention called Paris is Not Dead about creating and maintaining a vibrant street life in the French capital. Thanks to R. McKay Stangler for the tip.
Closing Time… Winter Olympics and College
The Winter Olympics are happening right now, and I have to be honest, I haven’t really been paying much attention to them this go around. I do love the Italian futurism aesthetic that has been used in some of the promotional materials in these games. Sleek. There are also some education-related stories that have piqued my interest.
The NCAA has a tracker of all the athletes who attend US colleges (American or international students). The list covers a range of universities in the sector, and the impact of higher ed can be seen globally. I will say it is only US universities, though. I’d love to see data on all the athletes and their college backgrounds. If I had more time right now, I’d just track that data myself and publish here. Alas, the Spring semester has been busy for me. Here are the top-10 US universities represented:
Ohio State - 13
Boston U - 12
Minnesota - 12
Wisconsin - 12
Clarkson - 11
St. Cloud State - 10
U of Maine - 10
Dartmouth - 9
Minnesota Duluth - 9
Northeastern - 9
Another story from the Winter Games that relates to higher ed came from the r/professors Subreddit. A user asked if they should give an extension to an athlete who had been competing in the Olympics. The story eventually got picked up by the media, too, confirming its authenticity. The athlete was figure skater Madeline Schizas, who is also a senior at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.
I was pleasantly surprised that most professors in the group enthusiastically supported the extension:
Only if they win a gold medal. I’m kidding, of course. Yes, absolutely.
I’ve given extensions for much less significant reasons. I’ll just point out the polite tone and lack of entitlement in that request. An Olympian knows that superior performance is a 24-7-365 undertaking…the few olympians I have had in class have uniformly been extremely diligent students.
What kind of POS would say no?
I say I am pleasantly surprised because many professors are hostile to athletics. It is somewhat understandable when sports have come to overshadow institutional learning itself, such as the complaints about big-time college football. Yet, I still think sports can be a value-added to the broader liberal arts experience that defines much of US higher ed. I will have a deeper dive into this topic in the future.
To close, let’s check in on the medal tally so far to see who is in the lead:
Oh, wait, that’s not it. Wrong chart. Never mind. Enjoy the rest of the Games!
I find the senior driver debate a bit obnoxious and tedious. They are not meaningfully more dangerous than younger drivers despite being far more fragile and thus presumably more likely to be the fatality in a fatal crash. Like the idea of "no driving past 75 but you can still drive at 18" is entirely arbitrary and you have a better chance of building a skyscraper in Manhattan, KS than you do convincing anyone that 18 is too young to drive.