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A report released by the Bureau of Labor statistics earlier this month draws attention to a disquieting trend: though the number of workplace deaths fell nationally last year, here in Oregon the numbers went up.

According to reporting by The Oregonian, the BLS report found that “the number of Oregon work-related deaths increased 12 percent, from 43 to 49, between 2012 and 2013. Yet the number of workplace fatalities decreased by 5 percent nationwide to 4,400.” As someone who has written extensively about Oregon industrial accidents and the importance of workplace safety I find both the numbers and the overall trend disturbing.

The largest single source of Oregon workplace deaths was crashes involving cars, trucks and other vehicles. “Safety regulators tied a majority of the Oregon deaths to traffic- or equipment-related accidents. The report says 19 workers died as a result of vehicular crashes and 12 people were killed by machines or other objects.” The report’s accounting system also takes note of police and firefighters killed or injured in the line of duty. The relatively large number of vehicle crashes (accounting for more than one-third of all workplace deaths) is worth special attention. Under Oregon law there may be a case for a wrongful death action by surviving loved ones if a third party is found to be at fault in the incident.

The extraordinary tragedy that unfolded at Hagg Lake late last month is spurring calls for action. As reported by The Oregonian, four people, representing three generations of the same family, all drowned in the lake on August 25. The bodies of a three-year-old boy along with those of his “mother, grandmother and uncle” were located “about 30 to 40 feet from the shoreline in water that ranged from 8 to 13 feet deep.”

A week later “members of fire agencies across Washington County, as well as invited guests including Washington County Parks Superintendent Todd Winter and Forest Grove Parks and Recreation Director Thomas Gamble, spent about ninety minutes discussing ideas and safety concerns at Hagg Lake.” Their talks came as part of a safety forum organized with the help of SafeKids Washington County. The meeting was called to consider community responses to the drownings and ways to prevent anything like this from happening again, The Oregonian reports.

Prevention emerged as the most significant theme among the participants. Though the focus on safety for children was paramount, last month’s events also show that safety is not something anyone should take for granted.

Historically Labor Day weekend is second only to New Years when it comes to driving danger on Oregon’s roads. So it is good that both the Oregon State Police and a number of local departments are going out of their way to remind Oregonians and visitors to drive safely this holiday weekend, and are stepping up patrols designed to intercept Oregon drunk drivers. A news release from the OSP notes that the agency “will put all available sworn personnel assigned to field operations on the road” for a period that began Friday night and will continue through Monday night/Tuesday morning.

We have all, perhaps, become a bit too accustomed to warnings like this. Whenever holiday weekends roll around TV and newspaper stories appear, public service announcements are aired and blogs like this are posted.

So it is useful that the State Police have put the issue into stark perspective for those who might think that holiday drinking-and-driving is overhyped. An OSP news release (see link below) notes that “throughout the year, someone is killed on a road in the United States in an alcohol-impaired-driving crash every 51 minutes. Over the Labor Day weekend, that statistic jumps to one death nationally every 34 minutes.”

A story from Ohio last week highlights the danger of industrial accidents throughout the United States and the need for all of us to be vigilant. According to Ohio.com, the website of the Akron Beacon-Journal newspaper, “a 45-year-old man was killed after he was pulled into a machine while working at a northeast Ohio industrial company.”

The article goes on to note that the man died “after his clothing was stuck in the machine and he was pulled into it. A fire official said that when rescuers arrived… (the victim) had been freed from the machine by co-workers, but he died from crushing injuries.”

Had this industrial accident taken place here in Oregon there would be a number of clear-cut legal issues that would merit examination. In particular, we would have to consider whether the deceased and his co-workers were properly trained in the use of the equipment they were hired to operate and whether the employer maintained that equipment properly. The latter point is especially important because it highlights the responsibility of employers not only to give their staff the necessary and appropriate knowledge to do their jobs but also the employers’ responsibility to maintain the machinery in a safe manner.

Last week I wrote about the shocking and indefensible position of some car companies and car dealers that rental vehicles should be allowed to remain on the road, and even resold, while they are subject to recall notices but not yet repaired. This week has brought more surprising and disappointing auto recall news for all of us who care about consumer safety.

According to Bloomberg News, Chrysler has taken the highly “unusual decision to buck what would be one of the largest US auto recalls.” The company rejected a request by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) “to recall 2.7 million Jeep Grand Cherokee and Liberty sport-utility vehicles made over 15 model years.” NHSTA has linked the vehicles, reported by Autoweek as the 1993-2004 Grand Cherokee and the 2002-07 Liberty, to “51 deaths in fires after rear-end collisions,” according to Bloomberg.

Chrysler’s move is an unsettling reminder of something that is often forgotten when recalls are discussed: while the government does have the authority to order product recalls in the name of consumer safety is almost never uses it. Virtually all recalls, whether of vehicles through the NHSTA or of consumer products via the Consumer Product Safety Commission, are, legally speaking, voluntary in nature and are negotiated by the government with manufacturers.

An Associated Press dispatch republished this morning in The Oregonian recounts a Salem hit-and-run car accident last night that that left a tow-truck driver injured.

According to the news agency a tow truck was parked Sunday evening on a Salem street where “police say the driver was loading (his) vehicle and had emergency lights activated when he was knocked down. Medics took him to Salem Hospital with injuries described as non-life-threatening.” If the news agency report is accurate the driver is potentially in big trouble: under Oregon law a hit-and-run that involves an injury is a felony.

The driver of the car that allegedly caused this Oregon injury car accident is still at large, but the AP reports that police have a significant piece of evidence in hand: one of the hit-and-run driver’s outside mirrors. “The passenger-side mirror broke off, and police believe the car likely has scrapes and possible body damage on the right side,” the news agency notes.

A recent article at Atlantic Cities, a subsection of The Atlantic magazine’s website, looks at efforts to make American cities more bike-friendly. Its focus is the Green Lane Project (GLP), which is organized by the national advocacy group Bikes Belong.

As the magazine explains, the GLP’s goal is to help cities “adopt high-quality bicycle infrastructure – bike lanes where people can ride with at least some protection from car traffic in the form of bollards, parked cars, raised pavement or other separation.” The project is focusing its efforts on Austin, San Francisco, Chicago, Memphis, Washington D.C. … and Portland. “The GLP hopes to educate municipal planners and engineers, increase the visibility of such lanes, and make them part of a mainstream approach to designing urban streets.”

As we know here in Portland – and as a photo from San Francisco’s Market Street accompanying the article illustrates – green-painted bike lanes are not always separated from motorized traffic. The broader point of the project, however, is to rethink city streets in ways that make it less intimidating for casual cyclists to share the road with cars and trucks. Activists hope that, in turn, will make urban biking more mainstream and less about “messengers and Lycra-clad road riders.”

The Oregonian reported last week on a sad and solemn vigil held in Portland to commemorate the life, and untimely Oregon pedestrian truck accident death, of a 27-year old woman who lived in the city’s Hayhurst neighborhood.

The woman died earlier this month when she was struck by a truck as she crossed the road at the intersection of the Southwest Beaverton-Hillsdale Highway and Shattuck Road. According to the newspaper she was crossing at a marked crossing place and was doing so with the pedestrian walk signal. The Portland auto accident took place barely a week before Christmas. The vigil, reportedly attended by approximately 25 people, was held two days later.

Addressing the gathering Roger Averbeck of Southwest Neighborhoods Inc’s Transportation Committee said: “This was not an accident. It was a crash, and crashes are preventable,” according to The Oregonian. He called on local residents to advocate for safer, more pedestrian-friendly, streets. The paper goes on to note that in Southwest Portland: “many of the major arterials lack sidewalks, and some have very few places where pedestrians can safely cross. High speed vehicles make travel more dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists.”

Television station KOIN, citing the Oregon State Police, reports on a two-vehicle head-on Oregon car crash over the weekend near Rainier, Oregon on the Columbia River, north of Portland.

The station reports that at about 10:30pm last Friday a pick-up truck traveling “southbound on Highway 30 near milepost 44” collided in a head-on motor vehicle accident with a northbound passenger car. The Oregon crash took place as the truck moved over into the left lane to pass another vehicle. The driver and four of the five people traveling in the car were injured, KOIN reports.

Where this becomes an important lesson for all drivers is when we look more closely at the injuries. The driver of the pick-up truck, a 37-year-old St. Helens man, is reported to have been taken to a Portland-area hospital in critical condition. In the car, the driver, a woman from Longview, Washington, was also injured along with three of her four passengers. Unlike the man in the pick-up truck, however, the injuries to the people in the car are described as “non-life threatening.” In fact, one of the car’s passengers – a two-year-old – was not hurt at all.

Depending on how one looks at it, the view expressed by automakers in a recent New York Times article represents either a resigned but forward-looking attitude toward electronics and driving, or a bid to maximize profits with little regard to the dangers of distracted driving here in Oregon and elsewhere across the nation.

According to the newspaper, the car companies are moving forward with plans for “connecting smartphones to in-dash systems and putting internet-based information into so-called connected cars for 2013.” It notes that while ever-more-elaborate electronic dashboards have been a fixture of our cars for some time, the newest car models will allow drivers to buy movie tickets, check restaurant reviews and make, read or listen to Facebook posts all while attempting to cope with all of the other distractions one encounters behind the wheel.

The government is concerned, the Times reports, noting that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration “issued a 177-page set of proposed guidelines for in-car electronics” earlier this year. “The report repeatedly mentioned the complexity of dashboard displays,” it adds.