Few would disagree that today’s cars are safer than cars built in 1967. Still, it is astonishing to discover that a key safety standard applied to virtually every vehicle on America’s roads has not been updated in all that time. The feature is seatback strength, and, as a recent article…
The death of a 13-year-old boy in a boating accident on Hagg Lake in Washington County has highlighted a number of safety issues we all need to keep in mind during this holiday weekend and in the coming weeks before fall sets in. According to The Oregonian, the boy died…
Just seven months ago the governor signed a new law designed to improve safety at daycare facilities around Oregon. Yet shortly after New Year’s “Oregon child care regulators imposed first-of-their-kind restrictions… on a Hillsboro day care where an infant died January 6,” according to reporting by The Oregonian. Calling the…
A recent article in the Salem Statesman-Journal draws attention to infant deaths, an area where decades of government and private education efforts have both shown dramatic progress and encountered stubborn resistance. The paper notes that “every year, about 40 babies in Oregon go to sleep and never wake up… deaths…
I first used this space to talk about the importance of life jackets and water safety back in 2016. That’s when a charity I actively support – the Aaron Peters Water Safety fund – set up a free life jacket kiosk in Gresham’s Oxbow Park, near the Sandy River. The…
A tragedy and a near-tragedy on the other side of the country offer important reminders of a problem that recurs every summer: hot car deaths. According to The New York Times twin one-year-olds died in the Bronx late last month after their father forgot to drop them off at day…
Just after the Memorial Day holiday weekend, Governor Kate Brown signed HB 2027. This essential legislation has been making its way through the legislature since the beginning of the year, and goes a long way toward closing a legal gap I first wrote about last November. As The Oregonian notes,…
A shooting incident earlier this month at a teen-focused dance party is raising serious questions about safety and security as we move into summer – a time when the number of youth-focused events always increases. As outlined in a recent Oregonian article, an argument outside an art space on southeast…
An incident last summer at a Corvallis athletic club reads like every parent’s nightmare in condensed form. According to a recent article in The Oregonian “the parents of a 5-year-old boy who drowned in a swimming pool at a Corvallis summer camp have filed a $56.6 million lawsuit, claiming the…
Following up on my recent blog about the dangers in Oregon’s system of uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage an incident on Interstate-5 near Olympia, Washington is bringing similar issues into focus north of the Columbia River. According to The Olympian an arraignment is scheduled to take place next week for…