A recent article in the Salem Statesman-Journal draws attention to infant deaths, an area where decades of government and private education efforts have both shown dramatic progress and encountered stubborn resistance. The paper notes that “every year, about 40 babies in Oregon go to sleep and never wake up… deaths…
An incident in Colorado, recently recounted by The Oregonian, offers striking insight into the culture of neglect in our prisons and the important role our courts must play in ensuring justice is done. On the night of July 31, 2018, the newspaper reports, an inmate at a county jail in…
The horrific death of a cyclist in New York City earlier this month – a moment captured on video – has brought attention to the way police there and in many other parts of the country treat fatalities brought about by reckless driving. The New York Times reports that an…
I first used this space to talk about the importance of life jackets and water safety back in 2016. That’s when a charity I actively support – the Aaron Peters Water Safety fund – set up a free life jacket kiosk in Gresham’s Oxbow Park, near the Sandy River. The…
A tragedy and a near-tragedy on the other side of the country offer important reminders of a problem that recurs every summer: hot car deaths. According to The New York Times twin one-year-olds died in the Bronx late last month after their father forgot to drop them off at day…
Two articles published last month in The Oregonian should be drawing our attention to safety issues for pedestrians on Portland’s streets. Earlier this week the newspaper reported that “more than one-quarter of the pedestrians killed on Portland streets during the last five years were 65 years or older, according to…
One might have thought that buses – some of the largest vehicles navigating Portland’s streets on a day-to-day basis – are fairly hard to miss. TriMet, however, is experimenting with bright rooftop lights designed to make them easier to see, according to The Oregonian. “The transit agency quietly rolled out…
An annual report compiled by Allstate insurance on driving safety across the nation has good and bad news for Portland, according to The Oregonian. The good news is that Portland jumped nine spots in the company’s ranking of driving safety in 200 American cities. The bad news is that still…
As many of us prepared for this July 4 holiday week the Oregon legislature passed a key bike safety measure and sent it to Governor Kate Brown. As outlined by The Oregonian, Senate Bill 998 will “allow bicyclists to legally treat stop signs or intersections with flashing red signals as…
I have said it many times before, but it bears repeating: insurance companies are businesses, not charities. Careful attention to the fine print is important. An obvious example of this is car insurance. All drivers need to carry it, and the law lays out in great detail what that insurance…