Category: Biking Elsewhere

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How we can prevent more Aimee Michael road tragedies

By Jamila Porter
In following the trial and sentencing of Aimee Michael, the 24-year-old Atlanta woman who was recently convicted of causing a chain-reaction crash that resulted in the deaths of two adults and three young children, one can’t help but feel immense grief for each of the families involved. Now is also the time to learn from it.
One lesson for Georgia lawmakers is that they must work to improve road safety. They can accomplish this by increasing adolescents’ accessibility to driver education programs, making investments in improved roadway and community designs, promoting alternative forms of transportation and enhancing state and local transportation policies.
Traffic crashes are the single greatest cause of death to children and adults ages 1 to 34, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2007, more than 1,600 Georgians died in traffic crashes, a number that would fill more than four 747 jets.
Yet despite the significant number of deaths that can be attributed to crashes, the roads of our state, particularly in Atlanta, have never been more packed with cars. And there’s no guarantee that the drivers of these cars are knowledgeable about state traffic laws.
Speeding, changing lanes without signaling, failing to yield — these complaints are common among Atlanta drivers. And like many states, Georgia does not require public schools to provide driver education programs. As a result, many adolescents lack the necessary information needed to drive safely, a lack that sadly persists into adulthood.
Georgia has also failed to make infrastructural investments that would support safer roadways and a variety of transportation choices. In Atlanta, the car is king and it has to be. Neighborhoods are sprawled; schools and retail areas are often on busy roads miles from residential areas; roads commonly lack proper crosswalks or sidewalks; and budget cuts to essential public transportation systems like MARTA have become routine.
Corridors like Camp Creek Parkway and Buford Highway are notorious for being packed with high-speed traffic, creating conditions that make any slight error behind the wheel a potential catastrophe for those traveling nearby.
Research has long shown that investments in traffic safety education, roadway design and public transportation can save lives.
As the number of people walking and bicycling in a community increases, deaths from crashes decrease. Improving children’s knowledge of traffic safety, combined with making simple engineering changes to make sidewalks and streets safer, can lead to significant decreases in the number of child pedestrian deaths. Compared to riding in a car, using public transportation reduces a passenger’s risk of death tenfold.
Tragedies like the one involving Aimee Michael can be prevented. Let’s start now to make educational investments that will make Georgians smarter and safer drivers. Let’s change the designs of roads and neighborhoods to encourage walking, cycling and public transit to reach retail shops, schools, and parks. Let’s enact traffic laws and transportation policies that will protect motorists, cyclists and pedestrians.
The immense burden of traffic-related deaths should make roadway safety an absolute priority for Georgia legislators.
State and local officials can support a variety of policies and programs that will enhance the safety of motorists, cyclists and pedestrians. These include:
● Adopt “Complete Streets” policies that require the implementation of engineering strategies and design characteristics to make roadways safer.
● Increase funding for programs that encourage walking and biking (e.g., Safe Routes to School) to increase safety, promote physical activity and reduce motor vehicle use.
● Revise school siting policies that encourage the construction and renovation of schools that are accessible by walking or biking.
● Increase investments in public transportation systems to reduce traffic fatalities and provide enhanced transit options.
● Adopt traffic safety laws that have been proven to prevent fatalities associated with motor vehicles (e.g., primary enforcement of seat belt laws, helmet laws, child booster seats, etc.).
By enacting policies founded in public health approaches, we can increase the health and safety of Georgia’s communities and allow residents to live to their fullest potential. We can prevent horrifying events like the one that took place that fateful day in April 2009 on Camp Creek Parkway. Let’s encourage our lawmakers to act now and make immediate policy changes that will protect our citizens and keep their lives from being cut tragically short.
Jamila Porter is assistant director of the Safe States Alliance in Atlanta.
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Would ’strict liability’ help curb America’s distracted driving habit?

from Streetsblog.net by Bike Portland

If marketing campaigns and PSAs don’t curb distracted driving and we lack the resources to enforce laws, how will we ever learn that driving a multi-ton vehicle on a road shared with people walking and biking is an extremely serious responsibility?

As we struggle to figure out why an “alarming” amount of people are being killed while walking on our roads here in Oregon, and we wish the best for a 23 month old in critical condition after being hit while being pushed across the street in a stroller in North Portland yesterday, I want to share the concept of “strict liability” that is current practice in the Netherlands.

Earlier today, a local activist shared a short video (published by IPayRoadTax.com, a UK campaign) about the concept .

The video features the voice of Hans Voerknecht, the International Coordinator for Netherlands-based Fietsberaad (you might remember Mr. Voerknecht from his Portland visit in October 2009).

Here’s the transcript from the video of Mr. Voerknecht explaining how their system works in the Netherlands (please excuse his English):

“When an accident happens in general the car driver is liable; and even when the car driver would say, ‘Yeah but the bicyclist made a very strange movement and I couldn’t do anything about it,’ then the judge would say, ‘Well, you could see the bicyclist and you know that this happens with bicyclists and you should reduce your speed in a situation where there are bicyclists, so still you are at fault‘.

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DC Buses: Pedestrians Get Out of My Way

In an effort to increase safety WMTA has instigated a pilot "Talking Bus" program. When a driver turns on it turn signals a voice any Borg would be proud of announces “PEDESTRIANS, BUS IS TURNING.” Greater Greater Washington points out:
"Worse, talking buses bully pedestrians into accepting responsibility for an incident that might occur. After all, if someone is unfortunately struck, shouldn’t they have seen it coming? It’s logic designed to distract attention away from the incident itself, and prematurely assign responsibility. "
Doesn’t this sound like The Onion’s Pedestrian Safety Program? https://www.baltimorespokes.org/article.php?story=20100813104440316
You know it would be nice to have a safety program that The Onion did not think of first, just saying.
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Traffic safety campaign kicks off (but not here)

By Michael Bolden
Maryland, Northern Virginia and the District are kicking off an annual pedestrian and cyclist safety campaign today.
Law enforcement throughout the region plan to gather in Rosslyn to roll out the Street Smart program, part of an effort to increase awareness and reduce pedestrian- and cyclist-related deaths. According to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, there were 78 pedestrian and cyclist deaths in the Washington region in 2009, accounting for 27 percent of all traffic-related fatalities.
[B’ Spokes: 64 pedestrian and cyclist deaths in the Baltimore region in 2009, accounting for 27 percent of all traffic-related fatalities.]
As part of the effort, Arlington police are conducting two targeted enforcement sweeps along Wilson Boulevard today to encourage pedestrians and drivers to follow traffic laws. The first occurred this morning from 7 to 9 a.m., and the second is scheduled from 12 to 1 p.m.
[B’ Spokes: Unlike here, if and when we do this we target j-walking pedestrains.]
Authorities from around the region are expected to gather around 12:30 p.m.
https://voices.washingtonpost.com/dr-gridlock/2010/11/traffic_safety_campaign_kicks.html
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From Greater Greater Washington:
Arlington police step up enforcement: On Monday, Arlington County Police were out ticketing drivers and pedestrians, as part of MWCOG’s Street Smart program. Yesterday the police cited 33 drivers for infractions from failing to yield to pedestrians to blocking the intersection. (TBD)
[B’ Spokes: Anyone else notice the lack of public information on how many drivers are ticketed here during our pedestrian safety campaigns? Why does Balto Metro think that drivers failing to yield to pedestrians and blocking the intersection, can’t possibly lead to pedestrians j-walking… seriously? We are so stuck in the windshield perspective that few notice the lawlessness of drivers and their effect on other road users.]
https://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=8059

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Virginia Beach Drivers ARE Killing Without Consequence

“City records show that nearly 40 Virginia Beach drivers have killed bicyclists and pedestrians in the past 10 years and faced not even a traffic ticket. Seven more faced charges for driving away after the accidents, but nothing for the crashes themselves. Only two motorists faced reckless-driving charges for killing pedestrians. The last time that happened was 10 years ago.”
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Portland shows off its growing network of neighborhood greenways

[B’ Spokes: in the referenced film it looks like when they calmed residential streets they also included storm water management. Think about this for a second, in Maryland one big (exaggerated) concern is space for cyclists increases impervious surfaces and hence damage the environment, in Portland they are taking car centric and environmentally damaging roads and not only making them bike friendly they are making them more environmentally friendly as well. This is what I have been trying to stress all along, Maryland builds roads and parking lots for cars with absolute abandonment to environmental concerns but space for cyclists now that’s going to be environmentally damaging. This is just the wrong kind of thinking. We can build space for cyclists and reduce the damage done to the environment by the previous car centric design. This is the power of thinking outside the cage.]

from Bikeleague.org Blog by Jeff

In this new video from StreetsFilms, Portland shows us that bicycle boulevards are a low cost, easily implemented way to encouraging bicycling in communities with tight budgets. Many neighborhoods across the country have great networks of low traffic volume and low speed streets. Converting some of these streets into bicycle boulevards means calmer traffic, opportunities to improve stormwater runoff, and encouraging more “eyes on the street” to make neighbors safer and more pleasant. In other words, there are tons of benefits for residents that don’t or won’t bike.

Learn how your community can create their own here.

~Jeff Peel
State & Local Advocacy Coordinator

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