Tag Archives: Visualizing Rulemaking

Visual Tools to Remind Congress: You have the authority to protect The People from Death by Underride.

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As we prepare to go to The Hill next week to participate in a bipartisan discussion of the Comprehensive Underride Protection Bill (RAMCUP Act of 2017; RAM = Roya, AnnaLeah & Mary), I am preparing a video to share our message. One of the things I need to do is figure out if I can find a song or musical background which expresses what I am trying to say.

I want it to convey what we are setting out to do next week on The Hill. We are going to communicate the message that this country was founded on principles of governing that promote the welfare of the people. We are going to remind our legislators that the ball has been dropped for decades and our People have not been protected from Death by Violent Underride.

We are going to remind them that they have a responsibility to use their authority and position to act decisively to ensure that people are hereon out protected from such horrific and preventable tragedies. For the People. We the People are calling on them to do so.

This is not just about trying to get members of Congress to feel sad about our losses and give us their condolences, it is about motivating them to do the right thing — to do what only they can do and make Comprehensive Underride Protection the Law of the Land.

What song will convey that message?

This dilemma reminds me of how effective this form of communication can be. It made me remember the package which I got in the mail last year telling us that our story was going to be included in a law review article titled Visualizing Rulemaking.

Here’s an excerpt from the letter in that package:

We are law professors at the University of Washington in Seattle, and we are writing because we have been deeply moved by your website in memory of your daughters and inspired by your campaign to improve truck safety by mandating new underride protections. Between the two of us, we have five children, and we now never drive on the highway without thinking about your family’s accident and the need for increased safety measures.

We found your website when we were researching and co-authoring a law review article titled “Visualizing Rulemaking,” which discusses the way that people are harnessing the power of visual images and social media to influence the federal administrative rulemaking process. We describe your rulemaking campaign as an excellent and powerful example of ordinary citizens using modern, highly visual tools to effect change in the regulatory realm. Kathryn Watts and Liz Porter

Here is their published article: VISUAL RULEMAKING ELIZABETH G. PORTER† & KATHRYN A. WATTS‡, NYU Law Review, Volume 91, Number 5

Our story is included on pages 41 and 42 (1223, 1224) and 64 (1246) of the pdf.

Interesting article on need for more consumer participation in federal rulemaking process.

Safety Advocacy, Truck Safety,

I am glad to see that the federal rulemaking has become more open to participation by those upon whom it has the most impact. I only hope that our Vision Zero goals will be genuinely considered and implemented to the benefit of us all.

Along that line, I just found this interesting article from 2013 which outlines the history of participation in the federal rulemaking process.

As a policymaking process, rulemaking is a civic paradox in two senses:

1. It often has substantial direct effects not only on industry but also on individuals (including small business owners), state and local government entities, and non-governmental organizations. Yet relatively few people know about rulemaking, and even fewer understand how it works.

2. Rulemaking’s formal legal structure is an open government ideal: it has broader transparency requirements and public participation rights than any other form of federal decision-making. Yet only a limited range of stakeholders—principally, large corporations and trade and professional associations—take advantage of their right to review the information on which an agency is making its decision, or effectively exercise their right to comment on the merit of the proposed rule.

Rulemaking 2.0: Understanding What Better Public Participation Means, And Doing What It Take to Get It1 by Cynthia R. Farina2 & CeRI3, March 1, 2013

And I am looking forward to the upcoming publication of the article on Visual Rulemaking by two law professors, with the inclusion of the story of AnnaLeah and Mary and our efforts to impact truck safety rulemaking. Elizabeth Porter & Kathryn Watts, Visualizing Rulemaking, N.Y.U. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2016).

Responsibility

 

 

“Visualizing Rulemaking”: Ordinary citizens use highly visual tools to effect change in regulatory realm

AnnaLeah and Mary, Safety Advocacy, Truck Safety,

Just this weekend, we started the ball rolling for the next step after the Underride Roundtable. I posted about our idea and then sent out an email to the people who attended that event–inviting them to a follow-up meeting to hammer out a specific and comprehensive underride rule proposal to submit, as a group, to NHTSA in hopes of shaping their final underride rule to be as effective as humanly possible.

Yesterday, I was struggling with feelings of uncertainty about what-did-I-think-I-was-doing?! Who-do-I-think-I-am to try to make things happen like that? Then, I went and got the mail and found a thick manila envelope addressed to me from the School of Law at the University of Washington in Seattle. I thought, What’s this? I haven’t been in contact with anyone there.

After I opened it and started reading the cover letter, I started crying and thanking the Lord for His guidance to our family over these last three years as we have worked relentlessly to put an end to preventable crash deaths. This letter was a gentle but powerful affirmation that He has indeed been using our family (with all of our strengths & weaknesses) as His vessels to bring about needed change. May it be so.

University of Washington School of Law Letter

This is an excerpt from that letter:

We are law professors at the University of Washington in Seattle, and we are writing because we have been deeply moved by your website in memory of your daughters and inspired by your campaign to improve truck safety by mandating new underride protections. Between the two of us, we have five children, and we now never drive on the highway without thinking about your family’s accident and the need for increased safety measures.

We found your website when we were researching and co-authoring a law review article titled “Visualizing Rulemaking,” which discusses the way that people are harnessing the power of visual images and social media to influence the federal administrative rulemaking process. We describe your rulemaking campaign as an excellent and powerful example of ordinary citizens using modern, highly visual tools to effect change in the regulatory realm. Kathryn Watts and Liz Porter

The two photos which they want to use:

Mary and AnnaLeah at Battle Park, Rocky Mount, NCIMG_4464

The professors included a copy of the draft of their 95-page article, which will be available digitally in a few weeks and published in the NYU Law Review in November. I will share the links when they are available.

Here we are with another way that Mary is getting her wish, “I want to be famous someday. I don’t know how, but I just do,” Mary wrote to herself a few weeks before her crash.

Washiington Vision Zero Petition photos 013Petition Photo Bags at DOT, best