Motor Vehicle Accidents

January 31, 2013

Freeway Pileup Highlights Winter Driving Dangers

The Associated Press is reporting that two people died and 20 people have been injured in a multi-car and truck accident on Interstate-75 near Detroit. The fatal road accident involved “more than two dozen vehicles including tractor-trailers,” according to the news agency, and highlights the need for caution during this winter driving season.

Though this particular accident took place half a continent away from Oregon, the circumstances are some that we are all too familiar with here in the Pacific Northwest. Be it on the congested roads around Portland or the notoriously dangerous Cabbage Hill segment of Interstate-84 in the east of the state, Oregon semi-truck accidents are a serious problem on the roads of our state and region.

In 2010 alone, the last year for which Oregon Department of Transportation data is available, there were 649 Oregon truck crashes on our roads involving semi-trailers, resulting in nearly 250 injuries and 25 deaths. As these figures indicate, the operation of large trucks calls for special care and caution on the part of drivers. Of course, semi-truck operators are not alone in this responsibility. The accident figures cited here are only a fraction of the total number of Oregon truck crashes that take place every year.

January 21, 2013

Oregon Car Crash Kills One

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A three-vehicle Polk County, Oregon car accident over the weekend left one man dead and five people hospitalized, according to a report in The Oregonian.

The Oregon auto accident took place in the town of Dallas, about 60 miles southwest of Portland. The newspaper, quoting the Oregon State Police, reports that the sequence of events began Saturday evening when a van driven by a man from Woodburn “was heading west when it traveled across the center line and collided” with a vehicle headed in the opposite direction on State Route 22.

The driver of the eastbound vehicle was a 69-year-old Silverton man. He was pronounced dead by paramedics responding to the accident. Two other people in the car were taken to a Salem hospital with what The Oregonian describes as “critical” injuries. The driver of the van was not seriously injured in the initial crash, but was struck by a third vehicle, a westbound pickup truck, when he stopped to assess the initial accident. He was taken to the same Salem hospital as the victims in the car and is reported to be suffering from “serious injuries.” The two people in the third vehicle were treated in McMinnville for minor injuries.

January 17, 2013

Portland Bus Safety At Issue as Tri-Met Drivers Reject Longer Workday

by Matthew D. Kaplan

The union representing Tri-Met workers has rejected proposed work rules that would have allowed bus and other transit drivers in the Portland area to work 14-hour shifts, according to a report published in The Oregonian.

The paper reports that “the union representing operators, mechanics and support staff quickly rejected the plan on Monday, saying it didn’t go far enough to address the growing problem with exhaustion.” The paper quotes a union leader saying “No human being, especially one transporting passengers through city traffic, can safely operate a bus over a 14-hour workday, day-after-day.”

The proposed work rules would “limit” drivers to a 14-hour workday and require at 10 hours off between shifts. According to the paper the proposed work plan would have applied to drivers of both buses and light-rail trains. The paper notes that “the current policy, based on service days, makes it easy for a driver to finagle extra overtime by working marathon runs.”

January 12, 2013

Cabbage Hill Crash: New Details Emerge

by Matthew D. Kaplan

Following up on a story I first blogged about last week, The Oregonian reports that federal authorities have ordered the bus company involved in the New Year’s weekend crash on Deadman’s Pass section of Cabbage Hill, east of Pendleton, to cease operations in the United States. According to the newspaper, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced on this week that the Canadian company operating the tour bus had let the driver work “well beyond” the 70 hours per 8 days maximum allowed by US law.

As the paper notes, “nine people died in late December when (the) bus… ran through a guardrail and rolled down a steep embankment along Interstate 84.” A further 39 people were injured in the fatal Oregon bus crash, an accident which, as I noted last week, raises significant wrongful death questions.

The action taken by federal officials raises several issues. Obviously, rules designed to prevent driver fatigue need to be rigorously enforced in the interest of public safety, but enforcing those rules on a foreign company is likely to involve significant technical and logistical issues. It is especially worrisome that, as The Oregonian reports, the order requiring the company to cease US operations “specifically cites the company for failure to test the driver for drugs and alcohol prior to the crash, failure to properly maintain driver qualification requirements and failure to operate a motor vehicle in a safe manner.” To be fair, it is difficult to imagine that Canadian national or British Columbian provincial law (the bus company is headquartered in Vancouver, B.C.) does not also address most if not all of these issues – but assuming that it does, one has to wonder why two governments as closely tied as ours and Canada’s are not able to exchange information that might go a long way toward protecting public safety.

January 4, 2013

Oregon Wrongful Death Questions in Wake of Bus Crash

by Matthew D. Kaplan

By now most Oregonians will have read or heard about the terrible New Year’s weekend bus crash on Deadman’s Pass in the east of the state. According to The Oregonian, nine people died and dozens were injured last weekend when a tour bus “skidded off Interstate 84 east of Pendleton and rolled 200 feet down a mountain canyon.”

The newspaper quotes an Oregon state police spokesman saying that 39 injured people were taken to hospitals across three states. A total of 49 people were aboard the bus at the time of the accident, meaning that only one person avoided injury in this Oregon bus crash. The newspaper reports that the passengers ranged in age from seven to 73 years old. Most were Americans and Canadians of Korean ancestry.

The bus was reportedly returning from an excursion to Las Vegas at the time of the accident, which occurred on a dangerous stretch of the Cabbage Hill section of I-84. “Oregon state police investigators will look into the possibility that (the) bus driver… was driving too fast for the slippery conditions on the notorious mountain pass,” according to the paper. “Investigators will also determine if driver fatigue was a factor,” The Oregonian reports.

December 13, 2012

A Broader Definition of Oregon Distracted Driving?

by Matthew D. Kaplan

An article published last week in The Oregonian’s ‘Hard Drive’ column asked a simple question: if using a cellphone behind the wheel is considered sufficiently dangerous to warrant Oregon’s distracted driving law, what about other potential distractions?

The question was prompted by Washington’s new law legalizing marijuana use. Pot may be legal, but should you be driving with it in your system? If marijuana is going to be legal to consume, should its potential to impair a driver be treated more-or-less the same way that we treat alcohol consumption and driving?

If the answer is ‘yes’ that opens an entirely separate conversation about impairment levels and the best way to measure them. For our purposes, however, the question is broader. As The Oregonian puts it, “whether it’s applying lipstick or reading a book (or flicking ashes from a Camel), trying to micromanage and ban every kind of distraction isn’t the quixotic endeavor that it used to be.”

December 8, 2012

Suspected Oregon Drunk Driving Accident is a Holiday Reminder

by Matthew D. Kaplan

A single car accident in the early hours of Friday morning is calling attention to the problem of Portland drunk driving and the damage it can cause.

According to a report in The Oregonian, in the early hours of Friday “a gold four-door 1998 Toyota Corolla crashed into the overpass abutment at Northeast 33rd Avenue and Columbia Boulevard, ejecting the 34-year-old driver from the vehicle.” The paper notes that the woman wound up trapped underneath the car. After being rescued she was taken to an area hospital with what were described as “life-threatening injuries.” The newspaper quotes police sources saying that an investigation is still in progress, but that the crash appears to be alcohol-related.

While we can take some small consolation from the fact that this terrible accident involved only a single car, it also serves as a powerful reminder of the damage drunk driving can do – a reminder that is especially timely as we enter the heart of the Holiday Season. The period between Thanksgiving and the New Year is always filled with parties, visits to and from relatives and many, many opportunities to overindulge.

November 18, 2012

Investigation of Oregon Child Party Bus Death Continues

by Matthew D. Kaplan

Following up a story I originally wrote about last month, there are new developments in the death of an 11-year-old Portland girl in a September accident involving a party bus.

According to The Oregonian the girl died when her skull was crushed as she “tumbled out of an emergency window on the bus when it careened around a corner… at Southwest First Avenue and Harrison Street.” She is reported to have been sitting atop a horseshoe-shaped couch in the back of the bus at the time of the fatal Portland bus accident. “The bus was full of kids on their way to a birthday party but no adults were in the back,” the newspaper reports.

As troubling as this lack of adult supervision is the revelation that the bus itself lacked the proper safety inspection permit and was being operated by a man who was not licensed to drive this type of vehicle, according to The Oregonian. This image of a company putting immediate profits ahead of safety is chilling not only for any parent considering whether to let a child attend a party involving this sort of bus but, frankly, for any adult who might be thinking of hiring a party bus for a special celebration. The fact that a window that was supposed to function as an emergency exit flew open so easily is a reminder of how essential the required government safety inspections are.

November 13, 2012

Oregon Pedestrian Deaths Rise Sharply

by Matthew D. Kaplan

Figures published recently in The Oregonian paint a distressing picture of the safety situation for pedestrians here in Oregon. Citing data compiled by the Oregon Department of Transportation the paper reports that “pedestrian deaths in Oregon are up 23 percent over last year.”

With the death in late October of a 58-year-old man on the Hawthorne Bridge the total number of Oregon pedestrian deaths for 2012 reached 48. “That matches the total for all of 2011,” the paper reports, citing an ODOT spokeswoman. The victim of this latest fatal Oregon car accident involving a pedestrian was struck by an eastbound car as he crossed from one side of the bridge to the other. He had been using the bridge to watch his wife compete in a rowing race.

The sharp rise in pedestrian fatalities is especially surprising since bicycle-related deaths have fallen over the same period. The Oregonian reports that bicycle deaths have dropped 41 percent: seven this year compared to 12 during the same period in 2011.

October 16, 2012

Study Questions Effectiveness of Portland’s Bike Boxes

by Matthew D. Kaplan

One of the things that distinguishes Portland from less bicycle-friendly metropolises is our bike boxes. These large green-painted areas at key intersections give riders a designated place to wait for the light to change, and serve as a constant remainder to drivers of their obligation to share the road. According to an article published this week in the Portland Mercury, however, newly released data indicates that in some parts of the city the bike boxes may not be helping – and might actually be making matters worse at some intersections.

The Mercury’s article focuses specifically on so-called “right hook” crashes – Portland bike and car accidents in which a cyclist crossing an intersection is struck by a car or truck making a right turn. The paper notes that the boxes have been painted onto the street “at 11 problem intersections” since 2008, and that they are widely believed to “make cyclists and drivers feel safer at the intersections.”

A study of accident data at those intersections, however, found that “in the four years since their installation, the intersections had 32 right hook crashes involving bikes.” This is double the number of such Oregon car accidents at those same intersections in the four years since the boxes were added to the roadway.