Greetings from sunny Seattle, destination city for hordes of misguided people. No! The great multitudes of humans descending upon the Emerald City have many reasons for doing so: It’s verdant and lovely, everyone is good-looking, and you can get a goddamn Frappuccino for just obeying the law like you’re supposed to.
To help enforce the city’s Vision Zero initiative (with the goal of achieving zero traffic fatalities by 2030) local officers rewarded precious drivers for supreme acts of goodwill — namely, not running people over. From CityLab:
For a few days last week, Seattle DOT staffers joined with police officers and local street-safety advocates to hand out $5 Starbucks gift cards at several different locations, including an elementary school, a busy bridge crossing, and a protected bike lane downtown. The giveaways were funded by a state grant aimed at increasing safety for pedestrians and bicyclists. …
Kubly says his department plans to continue this type of program in the future. He acknowledges that taking a positive approach was a characteristically Seattle way of dealing with things, and that it might not be an obvious tactic in every city. “It’s very earnest on the West Coast,” says Kubly, who worked in the DOTs of Chicago and Washington before he took the job in Seattle.
Welcome to the Pacific Northwest: Where You Can Be A Baby For Life.
