No one likes to believe that he or she is a bad driver. So it has to come as a surprise to many of us here in Portland that collectively we are some of the most collision-prone drivers in the country, according to a study by the Allstate Insurance Company…
A report released earlier this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention highlights both the health benefits of cycling and the potential risks. As the report notes, “only about 1% of trips across all modes of transportation” are made by bicycle here in the United States, but the…
The Oregonian this week reported on a guilty plea by a 24-year-old Gresham woman in an Oregon distracted driving case that encapsulates everything that is wrong with this growing problem. According to the newspaper, the defendant admitted to “taking cellphone video of her child when she crashed into three teens outside…
A summer marked by low gas prices has led to a jump in the number of miles Americans are driving. Unfortunately, it also appears to be leading to a significant increase in traffic deaths, according to a recent Yahoo! News article. “The National Safety Council reported this week that traffic…
As the Bend Bulletin notes in a recent article, two recent crashes near the Central Oregon city are drawing attention to safety issues on US-97. The newspaper notes that just on Tuesday of last week two Oregon car crashes took place on the same stretch of the road highlighting an…
US car makers may no longer dominate their industry they way they did a generation or two ago, but, as the New York Times recently detailed, their political clout in Washington remains formidable. As a result, the industry enjoys protections for unsafe and irresponsible behavior that other industries do not…
A report on the public radio program Marketplace this week focused on yet another way that our city is becoming a leader in promoting cycling. According to the report, a locally-based tech entrepreneur “has created an app called Ride, which asks cyclists to collect data as they cruise around Portland.…
A party line vote in the Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee this week marked a big win for industry lobbyists and loss for consumers. According to a report in the Washington Post the approved legislation, which now heads to the full Senate, “brims with industry-sought provisions that would block,…
A Harrisburg car crash over the weekend left a 19-year-old man dead and has led to the arrest of the vehicle’s 20-year-old driver, according to The Oregonian. “Police said alcohol and drugs likely were contributing factors. There was evidence to show that the driver… was allegedly (had) over twice the…
A blog post this week from Bike Portland contained some good news for all of us concerned about bike and car accidents here in the city: “After more than a year of focused activism… one of Portland’s highest-traffic neighborhood greenways has been chosen as the site of a traffic calming…