Letters: Hawaii’s police aren’t like those on mainland; Vacation rentals and hotels can coexist

Hawaii’s police aren’t like those on mainland

So it happens again: Our elected leaders are abysmally persuaded by a group of protesters and now want to try to fix something that isn’t broken. How do police-related events on the mainland get more of a voice than our people here in Hawaii?

Malcolm Lutu’s commentary exhibits just another example of our frustration and anger when our voices here in Hawaii are ignored (“Exposing officers’ names won’t help,” Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, June 17).

Plus, why do our police have to pay for the errors of those on the mainland? If that is the way things should be, then why don’t our elected leaders also pay for those errors performed or committed by their mainland counterparts and resign en masse?

As I’ve been saying all along, now is the year of change and that will only be done by electing those who aren’t beholden to the Democratic Party.

Don Clark

Aiea

Short-term rentals, hotels can coexist

Short-term vacation rentals and hotels can coexist, up to a point. Think of a Venn diagram in which some travelers prefer hotels and some prefer lodging more like a residence. These are the parts of the circles that do not intersect.

In the middle, where the circles do intersect, are travelers for whose business hotels and short-term vacation rentals can compete.

There likely can be some mix of price, length of stay and type of unit that can be used to determine when hotels and short-term vacation rentals do not compete, because the consumers simply have different preferences.

Why does this matter? Because it is in the mutually exclusive parts of the Venn diagram that we can increase Hawaii GDP, because we do not have rentals cannibalizing hotel occupancy.

And that will be the path for zoning change to take.

Lloyd Lim

Makiki

Emergency blinkers can alert drivers to hazards

While living in Germany and driving the autobahn (and throughout the rest of Europe), I learned a technique that is effective in alerting drivers to potentially dangerous situations.

As you come upon rapidly slowing traffic, each driver turns on their emergency blinkers. As drivers behind you turn their blinkers on, you can turn yours off.

This alerts drivers much more quickly, as many are not paying as much attention as they should, and brake lights are not a sufficient warning.

I believe a technique such as this would have potentially prevented those two men from getting run over and hit on the H-1 (“Man is killed in 2-truck crash on H-1 in Kapolei,” Star-Advertiser, June 17).

James Roller

Mililani

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