Dead Man's Curve

Fraction of US Motor Vehicle Deaths Relative to Total Population

NBC Washington

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/One-Shot-Outside-National-Zoo-256081731.html?_osource=SocialFlowTwt_DCBrand

Police say two men were shot outside the gates of Smithsonian's National Zoo Monday afternoon.

News4 has learned police are reviewing security camera footage from nearby businesses, in hopes of finding any sign of a possible shooter or shooters. 

The shooting was reported around 5:17 p.m. on a busy stretch of Connecticut Avenue in northwest D.C. According to D.C. police, a large group of between 30 to 50 people was traveling southbound on Connecticut Avenue when shots rang out...

Jim Battagliese with WTOP-103.5 FM said he heard two shots and saw parents diving to the ground to protect their children.

One victim was shot in the hand, and the other was shot in the arm. Both injuries are non-life threatening, and no suspect information has been released. Additional police presence spread to neighboring Metro stations immediately after the shooting.

The zoo hosted Easter Monday: A Washington Family Tradition event throughout the day, with family-friendly activities and live entertainment.

"We were scared because we do have our kids out here," a mother who was at the zoo at the time told News4...

Previously, I compared our newly re-affirmed Weapon Society (as re-established in law by the Supreme Court) to our Automobile Society. We must regulate ourselves based on an Acceptable Level of Mortality. In 2012, it was 10.8 automobile deaths per 100,000 people, and this figure does not include any deaths linked to air pollution caused by automotive emissions.

The engineering that goes into road systems reflects this figure: we do not over-over-design roads to achieve some impossible goal of almost -zero- fatalities; we accept a death floor and a death ceiling and work within that range.
Sometimes we make mistakes, and fatal accidents tend to accumulate at certain locations due to locale influences not taken into consideration by the safety engineers. That is how we come up with names like Dead Man's Curve.
A lot of people die on a certain stretch of road due to road, landscape, climate, or even social conditions (drag racing) and - bingo! - you have a Jan and Dean hit song.

So also with Weapons.

Surely it must have occurred to all of us that Fort Hood's second mass shooting claimed for that Army base the unique status of the Dead Man's Curve of the Weapon Society.







National Zoo...

shooting with the baby pandas...