Articles Posted in Motor Vehicle Accidents

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A disturbing article published this week in the New York Times outlines a series of failures by both corporate America and the federal government. Its focus is General Motors’ recent recall notices involving well over a million vehicles manufactured since the 2003 model year (click here for GM’s latest news release with full details of models and years effected). The vehicles have a defect in the air bag system that in some instances means the air bags will not deploy during a crash because the ignition switch has been cut off.

According to the Times, GM now acknowledges that at least 13 deaths can be tied to the defect. What is disturbing is the paper’s report that the automaker’s engineers were aware of the issue in 2004 – more than a year before the first of those 13 documented deaths. Equally bad is the record of federal regulators from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. According to the paper, “after two of the (Chevy) Cobalt crashes, the regulators took a close look at the cause, each time raising the possibility of a defect. They also met with GM about the issue. But despite the red flags, they never opened a broader investigation into whether the car was defective.”

As the paper goes on to report, a number of lawsuits related to the documented deaths have already made their way through the court system. Class action law was created precisely to enable ordinary Americans to defend their rights in cases of this sort of willful and negligent misconduct, especially when it results in wrongful deaths. The recall notices are still new and are still sinking in for many people (the initial recall was issued on February 19 and was later extended to hundreds of thousands of other vehicles) so it is also important to note that the full impact of the situation is not yet clear. It is clear that the court system will probably hear much more about these vehicles in the months and years to come.

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New York City’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio, unveiled a plan yesterday designed to eliminate pedestrian traffic deaths in America’s largest city. His proposals are worth looking at here in Oregon because they may contain lessons we can learn from here in Portland.

According to the New York Times, the focus of the initiative is stepped-up enforcement of existing laws combined with a proposal to lower the city’s speed limit from 30 to 25 miles per hour. “Our lives are literally in each other’s hands. Our children’s lives are in each other’s hands,” the mayor told a news conference Tuesday.

The strategy is called “Vision Zero” and is “adopted from a Swedish traffic safety approach that views all traffic deaths as inherently preventable,” according to the Times. De Blasio advocated these measures during his campaign last year, but they took on special urgency when New York “experienced a spate of traffic deaths, including three pedestrian deaths last month in fewer than 10 days” in the first weeks after the new mayor took office.

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Two former Portland-area prosecutors made headlines in The Oregonian this week with their advocacy of marijuana legalization. According to the newspaper Norm Frink and Mark McDonnell both believe that legalization is inevitable and, as a result, are trying to focus public attention on getting the details right.

“This is just a political fact in Oregon, even if some people don’t want to admit it,” the newspaper quoted Frink saying. “As a result,” the paper went on to note, “Frink and McDonnell, who headed the district attorney’s drug unit before retiring, on Tuesday announced that they wanted legislators to refer a marijuana legalization measure to voters in November.” The key to their idea is combining a voter referendum with legislative action. Oregonians would be asked to approve marijuana for personal use, but would charge the legislature with working out the details before the new law went into effect. “The two want to put off allowing legal possession of marijuana until after the legislature figures out how to set up a regulatory system,” The Oregonian reports.

The experience of Washington and Colorado would appear to validate this idea. When the two states became the first to make the possession and use of marijuana legal for personal recreational use the result was an immediate legal conundrum. At the most basic level, legalization puts state law in conflict with the federal government, but there are a number of equally serious – and in some ways more immediate – issues. Take drunk driving, for example. It ought to be relatively easy to agree that impaired driving brought on by pot use is just as dangerous as driving while drunk. Any state legalizing marijuana, however, will need to figure out ways to measure and assess the drug as part of a drunk driving arrest: what level of marijuana impairment crosses a safety line? What is the best and most efficiently to measure it? How should the use of marijuana and alcohol together be treated (presumably the two in combination could cross an impairment threshold at a point when neither, by itself, does so)?

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With an ice storm warning now extending throughout the day Sunday and road closures throughout the Pacific Northwest this is a weekend to avoid any travel that is not absolutely necessary.

That is not just my opinion, it is the official word from public safety officials throughout the state. As The Oregonian has been reporting – and regularly updating on its home page – the severe weather gripping much of Oregon and Washington State poses a real threat to anyone out on the roads.

These warnings do not only apply to well-known danger zones, like the stretch of interstate in Eastern Oregon known as Cabbage Hill. According to the newspaper, local leaders in both Portland and Beaverton are urging everyone to “just stay home.” Portions of I-5 were closed at this writing. Roads and sidewalks are icy, Portland’s streetcars are not running and Tri-Met is “no longer reliable” according to city transportation officials quoted by the newspaper.

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A leaked state audit of Tri-Met, details of which appeared in The Oregonian this morning, speaks of morale problems among “front-line” workers (such as bus drivers) and portrays an agency where “safety first” is often little more than a slogan.

The newspaper’s summary of the 54-page report is startling: “TriMet needs to fix a culture where low morale, secrecy, safety problems and more than $1 billion in unfunded financial obligations threaten to wreck the public transit agency,” the Oregonian says, summarizing the report’s key findings. The leaked report is a draft, not a final, official document but that fact does little to ease the sense that state auditors uncovered serious problems as they examined TriMet. The report was compiled by the Oregon Secretary of State’s office.

Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that TriMet does not appear to be disputing the picture the report paints. The newspaper reports that TriMet officials “took the Secretary of State’s criticisms in stride… in a 10-page response, TriMet General Manager Neil McFarlane didn’t disagree with the findings. Rather, he seemed to ask how high he should jump to implement the audit’s suggested improvements.”

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An item posted late last night on The Oregonian’s website offers details of a serious Washington bicycle accident involving a teenage rider in which a motorist faces assault charges and, potentially, drunk driving charges as well.

The paper, citing the Everett Herald, reports that a 52-year-old Everett man driving a pick-up truck “allegedly struck a teenage cyclist, launching the boy off a 30-foot overpass… the crash caused the victim, 16, to fall about 20 feet onto a hillside, police said. His body then tumbled an additional 10 feet down into the street.” The paper reports that the boy’s injuries include a possible broken neck – meaning that, while they are not, according to the paper, life-threatening, they could be life-altering for both him and his entire family.

The pick-up truck driver “told police he had been drinking beer or wine a few hours before the crash and believed he suffered a seizure.” The paper reports that when he was arrested at the scene the suspect “had trouble standing and could not easily move his hands. Officers said the suspect slurred his speech and had bloodshot eyes.” Bail for the suspect was set at $25,000, the paper reports.

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A new year begins on Wednesday and, with it, a collection of new laws take effect. From my perspective as Portland distracted driving lawyer one of the most important new measures involves the tightening of our state’s laws concerning texting and the use of cellphones while driving.

Concerning distracted driving, the big news is that fines for the offense are about to rise significantly. When the law went into effect four years ago the fines were modest, topping out at only $90. Starting January 1, however, “texting or talking on a cell phone while driving will fetch higher fines – at least $142 and up to $500” according to The Oregonian. The higher fines are good news for all of us who are concerned with the issue of Oregon distracted driving and want to see more done about it. Simply put, a potential $500 fine is a much more significant deterrent than $90. Oregon has long been one of the nation’s leaders on this issue, and it is good to see our state leading again.

Some of the other notable measures that take effect this week include a statewide ban on the use of tanning beds by minors without parental permission, a measure allowing landlords to require tenants to maintain renter’s liability insurance and a law preventing employers from requiring access to the social media accounts of employees and job applicants.

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As we move through this holiday weekend here is a sobering thought about Oregon distracted driving: at any given moment during daylight hours nine percent of all drivers on the road nationwide are using cellphones, according to the National Safety Council.

The Council has just released its annual analysis of driving and cellphone usage and while the figures are for 2011 – the latest year for which full data sets are available – the numbers can be chilling to read. For example: a driver using a cellphone – even with a hands-free device as required by law here in Oregon and elsewhere – is four times more likely to be involved in a crash. More than one-in-five of all “fatal, injury and property-damage only crashes are likely attributable to talking on cellphones.” That added up to 1.1 million traffic crashes, according to the Council’s analysis.

The Council survey draws together data from a number of government, academic and non-profit sources. Two sections of the report stand out as particularly striking. First, its conclusion that using a hand-free device such as a headset, or the increasingly popular Bluetooth speakerphones built into many newer cars, does not lower the risk of a distracted driving crash nearly as much as one might think. Second, that the distracted driving problem is more widespread than originally thought because cellphone-related crash data is under reported almost everywhere in the country.

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The non-profit National Safety Council has published an excellent tip sheet to help parents prepare teen drivers for the special challenges that come with winter.

Oregon car accidents can happen any time of the year, of course, but winter is different. As the website notes: “Winter conditions can challenge even the most experienced drivers. It is incumbent upon a parent to prepare a teen as best as possible for driving under those difficult circumstances that adverse weather brings.”

Many of these recommendations are so basic that one might overlook them, but they bear repeating: slow down, factor in more travel time to get from point A to point B so you don’t unconsciously feel a need to rush; gently test a moving car’s brakes when ice and snow are present to get a sense of road conditions; don’t use high beams when it is snowing. Don’t use the cruise control in the snow either. Keep a greater distance between vehicles than one does in easier driving conditions.

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Last week the New York Times carried an op-ed piece on the subject of urban cycling, particularly bike commuting, that managed to be thoughtful, funny and harrowing all at the same time. Topped by the provocative headline: “Is it OK to kill cyclists?” the article cites numerous recent instances of fatal bike accidents from around the country in which bike riders were killed by drivers who then were subject to only the lightest of punishments.

A 24-year-old riding inside a bike lane in San Francisco was killed by a truck making a right turn and police issued no citation. A Seattle area teenager who ran over and killed a cyclist in 2011 was “issued only a $42 ticket for an ‘unsafe lane change’ because the kid hadn’t been drunk and, as (the police) saw it, had not been driving recklessly.” As the article rightly points out: “Laws in most states do give bicyclists full access to the road, but very few roads are designed to accommodate bicycles, and the speed and mass differentials – bikes sometimes slow traffic, only cyclists have much to fear from a crash – make sharing the road difficult to absorb at an emotional level.”

The writer cites a friend who advised him that the best survival strategy was to assume “that every driver was ‘a mouth-breathing drug addict with a murderous hatred for cyclists.’” On one level that is not necessarily bad advice, but the tragedy is that in this day and age it is even necessary. With cycling now, as the article notes, $6 billion industry and an outdoor activity whose popularity is surpassed only by running this is a subject that resonates far beyond the our own streets in legendarily bike-friendly Portland – a fact made clear that even here we suffer several fatal Oregon bike and car crashes every year.

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