Articles Posted in Motor Vehicle Accidents

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The Oregonian reports this morning on an Oregon pedestrian death involving a MAX train. The Oregon pedestrian accident took the life of a 71-year-old Portland man Friday night. “Transit police are continuing to investigate the incident,” according to the newspaper.

The man reportedly died when hit by a MAX train early “Friday night near East Burnside and 160th Avenue.” The newspaper quotes a Tri-Met spokesperson saying that “the Blue Line train was eastbound and that trains usually move about 35 mph in the area where the incident took place. She said the accident took place near a pedestrian crossing specifically designed to help make sure that people getting ready to cross the tracks have a good view of oncoming trains.”

The Oregonian quotes family members saying that the victim had lived in the neighborhood since 2001 and was in good health. He was taking his regular evening walk at the time of the accident, according to family members who spoke to the newspaper.

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A report in yesterday’s Oregonian details problems with a common type of guardrail used throughout the country, along with the disappointing revelation that Oregon will not follow the lead of at least three other states and move to replace the rails. This, despite evidence linking them to “grisly deaths and severed limbs” in car crashes around the country.

The guardrails in question are “fitted with so-called ‘ET-Plus’ energy absorbing impact plates on the end… Guardrails with end plates are supposed to lessen the severity of a crash, by absorbing the initial energy while shifting the vehicle to ride down the rail without deflecting back into traffic.” The newspaper reports, however, that a study by The Safety Institute found that a design introduced by the rails’ manufacturer in 2005 and now in widespread use “was 1.36 times more likely to produce a severe injury and 2.86 times more likely to produce a fatality” than the original design.

The article goes on to note that lawsuits in five states “have blamed ET-Plus guardrails for at least four deaths and nine severe injuries.” As a result, Nevada, Missouri and Massachusetts have “suspended use of the barriers.” According to the newspaper, however, Oregon’s DOT plans to keep using them partly because no problems have been reported in our state but also because “even if ODOT wanted to replace its ET-Plus barriers on Oregon highways, the agency wouldn’t know where to start. The agency has apparently lost track of where they’re installed.”

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An article published in Friday’s New York Times brings the issue of General Motors and its massive recalls sharply back into focus. It tells the story of a 27-year-old Virginia woman who died in a car crash only days after receiving a recall notice on her 2006 Saturn. That notice concerned the ignition switch issue that has received so much media attention this year. It is also noteworthy that it was the third issue for which her car had been recalled. It is useful to be reminded that the GM recall story is far from over – but several details buried deep inside the article are points of special concern.

The victim in the crash highlighted by the article died earlier this year. That fact is significant, because even though the defects in GM cars stretch back many years the fatal crashes associated with them have been seen by most people as something that happened several years ago and is only now traceable to the company’s negligence. The article notes that as of this week the mediator administering a fund to compensate victims “had determined that 21 deaths were eligible, raising GM’s longstanding death tally of 13 by more than 50 percent.”

Equally disturbing (though, admittedly, not a new development for anyone who has followed this issue closely) is the paper’s reporting that “during months of outcry over GM’s handling of the (ignition) switch issue, as investigations and lawsuits mounted, the company has fought any effort to get the recalled cars off the road until they are repaired… To date, hundreds of thousands of cars remain on the road, and the automaker continues to maintain that they are safe.”

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Portland residents began to get some sense this week of how the “street fee,” the proposal to help fund city roads and maintenance that has been debated all summer, may eventually help to improve health and safety around our city.

According to an article published this week in The Oregonian, “the (city’s) Transportation Needs and Funding Advisory Committee (this week) produced the most detailed list to date of potential transportation projects.”

Though explicitly described as a “wish list,” – a fact designed to indicate that not all of the projects listed in the report will be funded, and that some may be funded at different levels from those recommended in this report – the document does offer some sense of how city leaders would like to allocate the revenue raised by the Street Fee.  According to the newspaper “The list included an estimated $109 million in dozens of specifically identified sidewalks, pedestrian crossing, bicycle and other safety projects.” The estimate is “based on roughly $35 million annually in net revenue for a six year period.”

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An article published earlier this month by Al Jazeera America looks at a new academic study focusing on the costs and benefits of bike lanes and other publicly-funded spending on cycling infrastructure. Living in Portland, a city often cited as one of the most bike-friendly in North America, its findings are not likely to be particularly controversial. Still, they are a useful reminder of how bike riding benefits the community at large and not just cyclists themselves.

The study (see link below) was published in Environmental Health Perspectives, an academic journal sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. It comes with the ponderous title “The Societal Costs and Benefits of commuter bicycling: Simulating the Effects of Specific Policies Using System Dynamics Modeling” but reaches, Al Jazeera reports, a fairly straightforward conclusion: “for every dollar spent on bike-related infrastructure, cities can receive anywhere from $6 to $24 in cost savings in the form of reductions to pollution and traffic congestion, as well as lowered health care costs from decreased traffic fatalities and increased exercise.”

Some of those conclusions may seem obvious to an audience here in bike-friendly Oregon, but they are a reminder that it is important to get the details of infrastructure right. More importantly, in focusing on the big picture – by, for example, citing long-term benefits such as lower health-care costs the study is especially useful.

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In an effort to raise awareness regarding distracted driving Allstate, the insurance giant, is touring the country with a driving simulator designed to highlight the dangers of texting while behind the wheel.

According to a recent news release issued by the company (see below) the program, known as “Reality Rides,” was launched last summer and is expanding this year. It involves “a driving simulator that utilizes a real – but stationary – vehicle equipped with virtual reality technology, including a new curved LED television embedded in the car windshield. The television displays an animated environment and reacts to the driver’s motions.” Participants are invited to ‘drive’ the car while texting and/or talking on the phone as a way to experience just how significant the danger of distracted driving can be. Allstate plans to take the simulator to 40 cities over the course of the summer following what the company describes as a successful rollout of the program last year. This represents a significant expansion from the 26 “Reality Rides” events the company organized in 2013.

“Last year, the first tour surveyed more than 1,700 people… Seventy-three percent (of whom) said they learned more about distracted driving after experiencing the simulation,” the company says. The same survey – conducted at the simulator sites last year – found that “more than one-third of drivers say they text and drive at least some of the time.” The company is also using the simulator to promote Graduated Drivers License laws, under which teen drivers face more restrictions on their driving than adults. “Stronger teen driving laws… have been shown to reduce traffic fatalities by as much as 40 percent in the states where they have been adopted,” the company says.

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Just as the July 4 holiday weekend got underway news broke of a sweeping recall of school buses. According to an Associated Press report, republished by ABC News, “Blue Bird is recalling more than 2,500 All American school buses and some transit buses to fix a problem that could make steering more difficult. The company also is recalling a smaller number of school buses that may be prone to a propane fuel leak, according to paperwork filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.”

It will be worth keeping an eye on the NHTSA vehicle recall website over the next week or two for further details as this story develops. At this writing the NHTSA had not posted information about the Blue Bird recall, presumably because the company’s paperwork has not yet been completely processed. In the meantime, however, it is safe to say that it is difficult to imagine a clearer risk of injuries to children than a school bus with a steering or a fuel leak issue.

The AP story did not say how many school buses are affected by the steering-related recall notice, only that it involves “some buses made between 2011 and last May.” The story put the number of transit buses affected at 400, but did not say in which cities they are currently on the road. The fuel leak issue involves “388 Vision school buses made in 2012 or 2013,” the news agency reports.

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Bicyclist deaths in traffic accidents rose in 2012 (the most recent year for which data is available) both in absolute numbers and as a fraction of the nation’s overall road and highway death toll, according to a new report released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

As a table on the first page of the report shows, the total number of traffic-related fatalities fell by more than 20% over the last decade, from 42,884 nationwide in 2003 to 33,561 in 2012. During that same time period, however, the number of bicyclists killed on America’s roads rose from 629 to 726 – an increase of almost 20 percent. As a portion of overall traffic-related deaths that represented an increase from 1.5 percent to 2.2 percent – a small portion of the overall number, but a dramatic increase proportionately speaking.

At a time when people across the country are becoming more aware of the health and environmental benefits of cycling these are worrying numbers. It is good to see that tougher enforcement and better public education have brought the overall traffic death rate down so dramatically (indeed, in the 1970s and 80s it was well over 50,000 per year). At the same time it is alarming to see the rate of bicycle accidents and fatalities rise – especially in an era when one might hope that more bikes on our streets would lead to greater awareness and caution among drivers.

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Recreational use of marijuana is now legal in two states, including Washington State, and Oregon is among the ever-increasing number of states that permit marijuana use for medical purposes.

As legal acceptance of the drug grows it was, perhaps, inevitable that, in the words of USA Today, “it’s looking like dope is playing a larger role as a cause of fatal traffic accidents.” Put another way: advocates of legalization have long argued that marijuana is no worse for you than alcohol. If, for the sake of argument, we accept that premise then it clearly follows that driving while high should be treated with the same degree of seriousness as driving while drunk.

The evidence is not merely anecdotal. According to USA Today, a recent study by Columbia University found that “of nearly 24,000 driving fatalities… marijuana contributed to 12% of traffic deaths in 2010, tripled from a decade earlier.” The newspaper reports that a recent National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study estimated that “4% of drivers were high during the day and more than 6% at night.” The majority of high drivers were under age 25 – an age group that already has proportionately high levels of both drunk driving and distracted driving, both here in Oregon and elsewhere around the country.

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In the annals of reckless and irresponsible things people do behind the wheel this one deserves special mention. According to The Oregonian, a three-car crash injuring four people was touched off Sunday when a teenager driving through a tunnel on US 26 near Manning, Oregon “held his breath when entering the tunnel and fainted.”

Just before 5pm on Sunday afternoon the teen was driving a 1990 Toyota Camry. When the driver passed out the vehicle “crossed the center line, (hitting) an eastbound 2013 Ford Explorer head-on. Both vehicles then smashed into the interior tunnel walls and a third vehicle… hit the Camry,” according to the newspaper. A spokesman for the Oregon State Police is quoted by the paper saying that none of the victims sustained life-threatening injuries, but even he was at a loss to explain why the teenage driver of the Camry would have been holding his breath to begin with or why that would have resulted in the driver losing consciousness, particularly granted that the tunnel is not particularly long. An OSP spokesman told the paper that the 19-year-old driver “did not appear to be intoxicated” and that there was no evidence that drugs were involved either.

According to The Oregonian police were particularly puzzled because the tunnel in question – the Daniel L. Edwards Tunnel – is not especially long. Normally a car would pass through it in about 10 seconds, which hardly seems like enough time for a person holding his or her breath to lose consciousness. The driver of the Camry was cited “for reckless driving, recklessly endangering three other people and assault and is due to appear in Washington County Circuit Court.”

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