Articles Posted in Motor Vehicle Accidents

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An article published this week in the Salem Statesman-Journal highlights an alarming fact: in this one relatively small city “between December 26 and January 15 three vehicle crashes involving pedestrians resulted in four deaths.”

The paper goes on to note that “all three crashes took place in darkness” and that “no drivers have been found to be at fault.” After so many fatal Salem pedestrian accidents in such a short period of time, however, some sort of an investigation is warranted – one that goes beyond the three individual accidents to look at broader traffic, pedestrian and biking patterns in an effort to make the city’s streets safer. The article quotes a 63-year-old South Salem resident who points out that the problem is the city’s large number of unmarked crosswalks. “At least 95 percent of cars do not even slow down, although they are required by law to stop and wait for you to cross,” he said.

The sudden rise in fatal pedestrian accidents in Salem is particularly troublesome because at the time of the first one, on December 26, the city had not witnessed a fatal pedestrian accident in over a year. The paper also notes that while fatalities are rare, accidents themselves are not. “Between December 1, 2013 and April 30, 2014 there were 22 pedestrian-related crashes in Salem that injured 25 people, according to data from the Oregon Department of Transportation” the newspaper reports.

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I want to take some time today to bring to readers’ attention an organization with an important message for Oregonians: The Coalition Against Bigger Trucks, or CABT. The CABT has won my support, because of the nuanced and thoughtful approach it takes to a problem that is especially significant in states like Oregon, where semi-truck accidents are a regular presence on our roads – especially in the rural east of our state. These trucks pose persistent problems, and have well-known safety issues. Yet left to their own devices truck owners and shippers are pressing for more and bigger trucks to be allowed on our roads, even on the small rural roads where they pose the greatest danger to other drivers.

As the organization’s website notes: “Semitrailer trucks play a vital role in the US economy and transportation system, but longer, heavier trucks endanger motorists, weaken our roads and bridges, and cost taxpayers billions of dollars every year in highway subsidies.” Simply put, CABT is not against trucks, but it is against allowing trucking companies to put ever-bigger, ever-more dangerous vehicles on our highways. It supports reasonable, common-sense regulations, something which regular readers will know I have always advocated in all of the areas covered by my practice.

The facts behind this campaign are compelling. According to CABT, federal government figures show that double and triple trailer trucks “could be expected to experience an 11-percent higher overall fatal crash rater than single-trailer combinations.” The organization notes that this figure is also backed up by private research. The group reports that larger trucks stand a significantly greater chance of tipping over because “heavier trucks tend to have a higher center of gravity because the additional weight is typically stacked vertically.”

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As members of Congress worked through the weekend to agree on a spending bill to keep the federal government operating a fair of amount of media attention focused on an unrelated provision that would weaken the regulations imposed on banks in the wake of the 2008-09 financial crisis. Another, less noticed, amendment to the bill, however, is likely to have a more immediate effect on a much larger number of Americans.

According to NJ.com, language slipped into the federal spending bill at the last minute “suspends two rest rules for drivers” of semi-trucks. In other words, it makes it legal for trucking companies to demand more hours behind the wheel from already overstretched truck drivers.

Specifically, the website reports, “under federal law, truck drivers can be behind the wheel 11 hours a day, up to a maximum of 60 hours in a seven-day period. But if a trucker takes a 34-hour rest period, that seven-day calendar starts all over and he or she can drive another 60 hours during the next seven days.” The Hill, a magazine that tracks congress, notes that the new rule will “suspend a current requirement that truck drivers take breaks between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. on consecutive nights before they can work again. The measure would also remove a limit on the number of times they can declare the start of a new workday.”

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An OHSU study just published in a medical journal may have uncovered key evidence linking Alzheimer’s disease and traumatic brain injuries and, more importantly, hinted at a way both can be addressed medically according to a recent article in The Oregonian.

According to the newspaper, a scientific paper prepared by OHSU and a university in New York “discovered that a traumatic brain injury fouls up the brain’s waste removal system, causing toxic proteins to build up among the cells. A similar phenomenon exists with Alzheimer’s.” The article goes on to note that if TBI and Alzheimer’s do, indeed, stem from similar chemical causes then there is “hope that scientists will find a drug one day to slow the development of Alzheimer’s or neurodegeneration after a brain injury.”

According to The Oregonian’s account of the study, the breakthrough lies in the discovery of “the brain’s waste removal system.” It continues: “Scientists had long suspected that the brain, which is separated from the body by a protective blood-brain barrier, had a mechanism for flushing out waste. But they did not have a clue about the process.” Now, they do. Another important feature of the study is its identification of the failure of this waste-flushing process as the core cause of both Alzheimer’s and of many traumatic brain injuries – a link between the two conditions that has long been suspected but has been difficult to prove scientifically.

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The New York Times reported this week on a decision targeting cyclists that might surprise some: “In the wake of two pedestrian deaths caused by collisions with bicycles, Central Park has lowered the speed limit for cars and bicycles to 20 miles per hour from 25, while reconfiguring intersections with especially heavy foot traffic.” Though the announcement mentioned cars it was mainly focused on bikes since large sections of the park are closed to motor vehicles at any given time (on weekends the entire park is off-limits to cars except for a couple of car-only passages that are largely below ground level and mostly invisible to other park users).

The speed limit change is part of “Vision Zero,” a program of safety improvements touted by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio with the goal of eliminating pedestrian deaths citywide. Earlier this year the Times reported that as part of Vision Zero police had stepped up speed limit enforcement in the park, at one point issuing “tickets to 103 bicyclists” in a single weekend, though that level of enforcement is not the norm. The program’s most visible element has been the lowering of the speed limit on most of New York’s streets from 30 mph to 25 mph.

In both fatal accidents congestion appears to have been a major issue, according to the Times. One victim was struck by a cyclist who “said he had swerved to avoid other pedestrians.” The other involved “a 17-year old bicyclist dodging a pedicab.” The paper quotes the head of the Central Park Conservancy, the non-profit group that handles day-to-day operations of the park, saying “There’s no question: Slower traffic will mean a safer park.”

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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 big rigs… it didn’t take long for us to find several drivers of tractor-trailers who appeared to be either talking or texting while driving.” Like Oregon, Connecticut has a comprehensive distracted driving law that bans the use of cellphones without a hands-free device and bans texting by drivers in all circumstances.

The article goes on to quote a spokesman for Connecticut’s Motor Transport Association asserting that the trucking industry has always advocated “tougher laws and better training to stop distracted driving,” as NBC Connecticut puts it. The TV station’s findings, however, highlight the importance of enforcement mechanisms to prevent distractive driving. Specifically, other states need to do what Oregon did several years ago and close loopholes that allow truck drivers and others involved in serious accidents to avoid distracted driving responsibility by claiming that their phone calls were “work-related.”

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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 well-known Salem-area psychiatrist in a fatal Oregon car crash on I-5. According to the newspaper the accident took place when a vehicle traveling the interstate highway in the other direction crossed the median. The psychiatrist died at the scene. A colleague who was travelling with him died at an area hospital a few days later from injuries suffered in the crash.

The circumstances of the accident raise longer-term questions about Oregon wrongful death, and whether the fatal crash may prompt a legal action. More immediately, what made the reaction to this accident different was the outpouring of emotion from the Salem community, an outpouring which only increased when the Statesman-Journal revealed “that in the previous 10 years there had been 20 crashes along I-5 in Salem that involved vehicles crossing the center median into oncoming traffic.” The paper noted that the ODOT has plans to install simple cable-like barriers along that stretch of the highway. Cable barriers have been shown to be a relatively inexpensive way to prevent crossover crashes. The paper also discovered, however, that bureaucracy and political infighting had led to progress implementing the plan to install the barriers moving slowly at best. Indeed, a low-bidder to carry out the work was not scheduled to be selected until next February, even though, the paper reported, a decision in principle to move forward had been reached some time ago.

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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 of the people the bags are meant to protect. Car accidents involving the defective airbags, manufactured by an auto parts supplier named Takata, are believed to have resulted in at least four deaths.

This week, however, the story became even more serious when the New York Times reported that as far back as 2004 “Takata secretly conducted tests on 50 airbags it retrieved from scrapyards, according to two former employees involved in the tests.” The paper goes on to report that when the tests confirmed the defect in the airbags “instead of alerting federal safety regulators to the possible danger, Takata executives discounted the results and ordered the lab technicians to delete the testing data from their computers and dispose of the airbag inflaters in the trash.”

“Today, 11 automakers have recalled more than 14 million vehicles worldwide because of the rupture risks,” the Times notes. In addition to the four fatalities linked to the defective products “complaints received by regulators about various automakers blame Takata airbags for at least 139 injuries, including 37 people who reported airbags that ruptured or spewed metal or chemicals.” The newspaper adds that Takata is the world’s largest airbag company “accounting for about one-fifth of the global market.”

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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 today is of a terrible accident that appears to have brought this fact home in the worst possible way.

According to The Oregonian “two girls, ages 6 and 7, and a 20-year-old woman were in critical condition with life-threatening injuries on Saturday morning, police said. The woman was reportedly put into a medically-induced coma.” This was the tragic outcome of an apparent Washington drunk or impaired driving incident in which “a Ford Mustang… jumped the curb and struck a group of trick-or-treaters on a Vancouver sidewalk Friday night.” The newspaper adds that, according to police, the man driving the car “was likely speeding and driving impaired.” A 33-year-old woman also suffered broken bones in the Washington car accident.

Police say the driver, a 47-year-old male, only came to a stop after hitting a pole. He is reported to have only minor injuries. The paper reports that toxicology tests are still being conducted but the police already suspect that drugs may also have been a factor in the driver’s impairment.

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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 reach that audience and impress the importance of this issue on them comes from, of all places, CalTrans, California’s state transportation agency. According to a recent Tech Wire story, reprinted by the newsletter Government Technology, the agency “has launched a mobile app and online game designed to teach teenagers the importance of safe driving habits and avoiding distracted driving while on the road.” The app is currently available for free in the Google Play store, the publication reports (there is no mention of an iOS version at this point).

According to Government Technology the app and game “puts the player in the driver’s seat and challenges them to obey the speed limit in a virtual car while slowing down in highway work zones and avoiding phone calls and other potential distractions… CalTrans seems aware of the potential mixed message of releasing a game app, and says the game should not be played while driving.” If that last point seems a little obvious the fact that the agency felt compelled to make it is also evidence of how deep the distracted driving problem runs, especially among teens.

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