u/Nutsmacker12

my wife and I have been trying to get pregnant naturally for some time, and in July she popped hot on the pregnancy test. At five weeks she went in for her first ultrasound and things looked fairly normal. The second scan, which would have put us around 7w2d, roughly measured the gestational sac at 6w3d with a small yolk sac seen, but couldn't make out an embryo. The NP said we are in "limbo" and had her do another hCG test, which showed rising levels. She is going back for another hCG test this week and another ultrasound in a week or so. We are terrified that we lost the baby between the scans. I am barely able to function as a person. I went from excited and hopeful to devastated in a matter of days. She is handling it a little better than I am in the sense that she has accepted that God will either grant us that baby or not. I had no idea how terrifying this is. We are already bracing for the worst, but remain hopeful that our prayers will be answered. I really just wanted to vent instead of talking to AI about my concerns, dating, etc. I have literally gotten to the point where ChatGPT has told me to cool it. I have dissected every single word that the NP mentioned from two short doctor visits to try and infer something. I didn't realize how much this means to me until now. I spend half my day worrying, crying, and the other half trying to stay positive. I haven't told many people what we are going through besids my mother and she is old school, keeps saying its early, don't worry, back in the day we wouldn't know anything until way later.

I’m not against road safety. Nobody wants pedestrians, cyclists, or drivers getting hurt. But Montgomery County’s Vision Zero program deserves way more scrutiny than it gets.

The County adopted Vision Zero back in 2016. Since then, it has built out a dedicated Vision Zero structure — budget line, coordinator, reports, studies, campaigns, and now a policy framework that constantly points in the same direction: lower speed limits, more “speed management,” more traffic calming, and expanded automated enforcement.

The narrow Vision Zero budget line is not huge by county standards — roughly half a million dollars in FY27. But that is not the real issue. The real issue is that the County also labels roughly $169 million+ in operating and capital spending as “in support of Vision Zero.” So the office may be small, but it functions as the administrative hub for a much larger spending and policy ecosystem.

And what are the actual results?

By the County’s own reporting, Vision Zero has produced lots of activity: studies, projects, bike lanes, sidewalks, signals, pedestrian beacons, road diets, speed-limit reductions, and speed-camera expansion. But the headline promise was not “more projects.” It was zero deaths.

Montgomery County is nowhere near that.

Fatal crashes remain above the pre-COVID baseline. Pedestrian deaths are still a serious problem. Countywide results are mixed at best. Some targeted corridors may have improved, but the overall fatality numbers do not show the kind of dramatic success that would justify treating every new camera, reduced speed limit, and traffic-calming project as automatically effective.

This is the problem with Vision Zero as implemented here: it creates a moral shield around policy. If you question a speed camera, you are accused of not caring about safety. If you question lowering speeds everywhere, you are treated like you want dangerous roads. If you question the spending, people say, “Well, don’t you want fewer deaths?”

Of course people want fewer deaths.

But wanting safer roads does not mean every camera is justified. It does not mean every speed reduction is smart. It does not mean an office should be able to keep expanding a policy agenda without proving that the core outcome is improving.

At some point Montgomery County needs to answer a simple question:

If Vision Zero has been around since 2016, has its own coordinator, its own budget, and is used to justify a much larger spending framework, why are traffic deaths still not clearly trending toward zero?

Safety should be measured by results, not by how many signs, cameras, studies, and press releases the County can produce.