Jordan Peterson Mad About Crosswalks Now, As One Is

You can't spell 'psychotherapist' without psycho.

Dr. Peterson cares this much about Garden State traffic fatalities. (Wikimedia Commons)

Canada’s most famous psychologist is known for trafficking in pedestrian ideas but typically not in the literal sense.

Dr. Jordan Peterson, an Alberta man the New York Times once described as “the most influential public intellectual in the Western world,” has a long list of sworn enemies — pronouns, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the College of Psychologists of Ontario, Elmo (the Sesame Street puppet, not the Putin one), women who don’t want to fuck unfuckable men, etc. — but directing his fury at a newswire service reporting on a New Jersey city’s initiatives to reduce traffic fatalities was a twist not many people had on their Bingo cards for 2024.

Err Jordan took to the other Elmo’s generic social media site to scream about a report by the Associated Press regarding policies enacted in Hoboken, where nobody has been killed or seriously injured by vehicles in seven years.

Nicknamed Mile Square City, Frank Sinatra's densely populated hometown has the highest per capita public transportation use of any city in the country and recently adopted a policy known as Vision Zero, which may sound like a description of the GOP's current platform but instead is a bunch of ideas first cooked up in Sweden to help make it easier for cyclists and pedestrians to not get run over on the regular. Unlike other major Swedish innovations, it doesn't even require multiple Allen wrenches to make it happen.

A key ingredient is something called “daylighting” where cars are no longer allowed to park near intersections to increase visibility for motorists and pedestrians alike. Presumably it's even more helpful at night. Mayor Ravi Bhalla kicked the policy into gear a few years after an 89-year-old woman was killed by a van while crossing busy Washington Street.

You have become pathetic beyond comprehension @AP and the woke death will soon visit you.

This despite the AP dutifully reporting not all Hoboken residents are on board with it, particularly business owners worried about losing the bridge-and-tunnel crowd.

Not sure what “the woke death” entails but I'm guessing it involves being crushed by a Prius. Which is more generous than imagining Dr. Peterson hopes someone will go all “The Cask of Amontillado" on them.

Doctors don’t normally wish death — woke or otherwise — on anyone, with notable exceptions such as Doctor Doom, Doctor Evil, and Doctor Death. Maybe the clean-your-room guy is just bitter he didn’t include “look both ways before crossing the street” in his big 12 Rules for Life book but, if there's anyone who might appreciate being awoken, you'd think it'd be someone who spent eight days in a medically induced coma at a Moscow hospital in a last-ditch effort to overcome an addiction to benzos. But instead Dr. Peterson thinks Hoboken is more like Hobroken amirite?

(I'm here all week, try the veal!)

Mayor Bhalla responded with the double whammy of a sick burn and a Sikh burn, tweeting: “Being triggered by safe streets and Hoboken’s zero traffic deaths in 7 years is certainly a mood.”

Being cross about crosswalks is an odd take for even such an odd duck as he, and is presumably somehow connected to the lunatic Right's obsession du jour with so-called 15-minute cities.

The term was coined nearly a decade ago by Carlos Moreno, a professor at the Sorbonne, and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo made it a central plank of her successful 2020 re-election campaign.

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I assumed, since most reasonable city folk would agree the idea of basic needs being available within a quarter-hour walk, bike, or transit ride from home is a good one, the slack-jawed yokel community was against it simply to “own the libs” as usual. Or maybe their objection had something to do with artist Andy Warhol, a lifelong Democrat who was as queer as they come, although it's hard to imagine how these idiots would've ever stumbled across him.

Soup doesn’t actually taste any better after a long drive to get it. (Photo: Wally Gobetz/Flickr)

Turns out the conspiracy has more to do with the usual suspects' fever dreams that the Deep Brother Big State is gunning to track your movements to take away your freedumbs. Probably your guns too.

The urban planning initiative first became “controversial” in the UK when the clogged university town of Oxford brought in a trial where drivers would need a special permit to be on six specific busy roads during workday hours. Traffic cameras would simply scan license plates with subsequent fines sent to scofflaws. Thousands of Brits took to the streets in protest, worried it would lead to punishment for leaving their neighborhoods without permission. “We shall fight from the beaches” and all that.

Some of Bhalla's other initiatives rolled out to make the city less deadly were to saddle up with Citi Bike, which makes it a hell of a lot easier to ride to neighboring NYC, and lowering the speed limit to 20 mph. He was reelected unopposed in 2021 and is currently taking on incumbent Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), a man carrying some SUV-sized baggage as the son of disgraced NJ Senator Bob Menendez (D-Egypt), in the upcoming June primary. Particularly when it comes to road safety.

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If voters end up giving Bhalla the green light, there'll be a chance for Peterson acolytes or other Jersey residents who might think they’re born to run to apply for his old gig and see how popular it'll be to pump the brakes on public safety.

[CBC / AP / YouTube]