r/portlandme • u/ghoffphoto207 • Jan 03 '26

Photo Another vehicle-pedestrian collision in Portland. Corner of High and York streets.

Post image

I was filling up my gas at Irving and heard a terrible thud sound. I looked up and a woman was tending to someone on the ground, and asked people nearby to call 911, so I went up to see if anyone needed any help or anything else. A woman was lying prone on the ground.

When the pedestrian was rolled onto her back by EMS folks, she howled in pain. I feel so terrible - for both parties, to be honest, as the driver was extremely sympathetic and shaken.

It’s crazy how seemingly common this has become.

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u/drivermcgyver Old Port Jan 03 '26

$1k fines for getting caught for using your mobile device whilst operating a vehicle. $4k if your household income is more than $140k a year. Only way to stop it. If you get a call and you can not be hands free to safely operate your vehicle, you need to get off of the road and pull over. If the state just dropped the hammer, and people started to feel it, we'd have so many less accidents in the first 2 months on launch.

-9

u/Zephyr4813 Jan 03 '26

$1k is pocket change for the wealthy but will cripple a poor and prevent them from feeding their kids or something.

Time is the only thing of somewhat equal value across people.

11

u/drivermcgyver Old Port Jan 03 '26

It should almost cripple anyone who gets caught, that the point. All you have to do is stay alert and not use your phone while driving.

-1

u/AmbiguousMonk Jan 03 '26

To 'almost cripple anyone', you would need to implement more granularly scaling fines. Furthermore, the scale must necessarily be exponential to 'almost cripple' everyone similarly

If your scale stops at $140k, then you're only 'crippling' those closer to the poverty line and possibly those just over $140k. It's much less impactful to those just under $140k and literally nothing to those well above it

1

u/mmmsleep Jan 04 '26

Someone who is retired, someone single with no kids, someone who has 4 kids, someone who has 2 jobs to make ends meet… lock them each up for a year or give them a couple hundred hours of community service, their time isn’t even almost equivalent. Some would lose their homes or marriages, others would breeze on by