Oregon DUI stories often, sadly, seem to be an inevitable part of every holiday weekend. Here in Oregon Thanksgiving week began with a DUI story that may raise broader issues. “Police say a Salem woman was under the influence of alcohol early Tuesday when she drove her car the wrong…
Investigators from Oregon’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration are looking into a possible Oregon industrial accident that claimed the life of a Scappoose woman on Thanksgiving Day. According to a report in The Oregonian the 43-year-old woman “died Thursday afternoon in an explosion that investigators believe was started by sparks…
An experiment by a Connecticut television station designed to highlight the problem of distracted driving among truck drivers turned up a wealth of disturbing evidence. NBC Connecticut.com set up cameras on three major interstate highways “over the course of several months looking for distracted drivers behind the wheels of…
A recent story in the Salem Statesman-Journal highlighted some critical changes the ODOT is now beginning to implement in the name of traffic safety, but did an equally good job of drawing attention to how those changes get approved. The article focused on the September 24 death of a…
Last month I wrote about the spreading scandal relating to potentially lethal airbags installed in millions of vehicles from nearly a dozen carmakers over more than a decade. The airbags have a defect that can cause the steel cylinders used to inflate them to fragment, sending shrapnel into the bodies…
If there is any night of the year when extra-cautious driving and attention to pedestrian safety are required in residential areas it is Halloween. Small children are everywhere, running up and down streets, many of them dressed in dark costumes as the sun sets. The news spreading around the northwest…
As I have written on several previous occasions, distracted driving here in Oregon and around the country is not exclusively a teen problem – but it is also important to acknowledge that it is an issue of particular relevance to teens and other young drivers. The latest attempt to…
For more than a week we have been learning details of what may be one of the biggest recalls in automotive history. The potential car accidents linked to it are especially scary because the recall is focused on one of the most basic safety features of modern automobiles: the airbags.…
The death earlier this month of a six-month old Hillsboro girl whose father forgot that she was in the back of his car when he went inside his office for work is a sad reminder of a problem that is far more extensive than most people think. As The Oregonian…
A recent news item from Maine offers an important autumn reminder about safety and Oregon injuries to children. According to the Portland (Maine) Press-Herald, a teenager died and 22 other people were injured when “a mechanical malfunction caused the Jeep towing a trailer of passengers on a haunted hayride… to…