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Matthew D. Kaplan

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Recreational use of marijuana is now legal in two states, including Washington State, and Oregon is among the ever-increasing number of states that permit marijuana use for medical purposes.

As legal acceptance of the drug grows it was, perhaps, inevitable that, in the words of USA Today, “it’s looking like dope is playing a larger role as a cause of fatal traffic accidents.” Put another way: advocates of legalization have long argued that marijuana is no worse for you than alcohol. If, for the sake of argument, we accept that premise then it clearly follows that driving while high should be treated with the same degree of seriousness as driving while drunk.

The evidence is not merely anecdotal. According to USA Today, a recent study by Columbia University found that “of nearly 24,000 driving fatalities… marijuana contributed to 12% of traffic deaths in 2010, tripled from a decade earlier.” The newspaper reports that a recent National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study estimated that “4% of drivers were high during the day and more than 6% at night.” The majority of high drivers were under age 25 – an age group that already has proportionately high levels of both drunk driving and distracted driving, both here in Oregon and elsewhere around the country.

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A story earlier this week on Oregon Public Broadcasting began with a stark statistic: “Oregon’s health care facilities reported more than 650 adverse events last year, 44 percent of which ended in serious harm or death, according to a new report by the Oregon Patient Safety Reporting Program.” Forty-four percent means that, as the article’s headline put it: “285 medical mistakes ended in serious injury or death in Oregon last year.”

For a state our size this is a shocking, and frankly unacceptable, number. “Adverse events include medication mix-ups, falls, infections, and erroneous surgeries being performed,” according to OPB. The number in the study is the largest reported in Oregon’s history, though the people who compiled the study say that can be attributed, in part, to a higher participation rate (the study was voluntary, since “the state doesn’t require health care facilities to report such mistakes,” OPB notes.)

The important thing to take away from the study, however, is how critical it is for doctors to take extra care when prescribing drugs and ordering treatment. Mistakes are simply less likely to happen when fewer and more carefully considered treatments are ordered, a fact that our current system, in which doctors get paid for each procedure they order, does not always encourage.

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Yesterday at the White House President Barack Obama hosted a special event designed to spotlight the dangers of concussions and traumatic brain injuries in youth sports. As someone who has worked and written on these issues for years it is inspiring to see them receiving this kind of attention at the presidential level.

Citing the Centers for Disease Control, the White House website notes that “kids and young adults make nearly 250,000 emergency room visits each year as a result of brain injuries from sport and recreation. And that doesn’t include visits that young people made to their family doctor, or those who don’t seek any help.”

To put these issues in the spotlight, Mr. Obama was introduced at the event by a teenage girl who suffered a concussion while playing soccer. The President told attendees that concussions “are not just a football issue. They don’t just affect grown men who choose to accept some risk to play a game they love and excel at. Every season, you’ve got boys and girls who are getting concussions in lacrosse and soccer and wrestling and ice hockey, as well as football.”

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In the annals of reckless and irresponsible things people do behind the wheel this one deserves special mention. According to The Oregonian, a three-car crash injuring four people was touched off Sunday when a teenager driving through a tunnel on US 26 near Manning, Oregon “held his breath when entering the tunnel and fainted.”

Just before 5pm on Sunday afternoon the teen was driving a 1990 Toyota Camry. When the driver passed out the vehicle “crossed the center line, (hitting) an eastbound 2013 Ford Explorer head-on. Both vehicles then smashed into the interior tunnel walls and a third vehicle… hit the Camry,” according to the newspaper. A spokesman for the Oregon State Police is quoted by the paper saying that none of the victims sustained life-threatening injuries, but even he was at a loss to explain why the teenage driver of the Camry would have been holding his breath to begin with or why that would have resulted in the driver losing consciousness, particularly granted that the tunnel is not particularly long. An OSP spokesman told the paper that the 19-year-old driver “did not appear to be intoxicated” and that there was no evidence that drugs were involved either.

According to The Oregonian police were particularly puzzled because the tunnel in question – the Daniel L. Edwards Tunnel – is not especially long. Normally a car would pass through it in about 10 seconds, which hardly seems like enough time for a person holding his or her breath to lose consciousness. The driver of the Camry was cited “for reckless driving, recklessly endangering three other people and assault and is due to appear in Washington County Circuit Court.”

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The tragic death last year of two teenage girls in a semi-truck accident has spurred an online petition drive organized by their family, and an advocacy movement for tighter regulation of large trucks.

“Their lives were abruptly ended and we want to see that same thing does not happen to others,” the girls’ mother said, according to Washington DC TV station WJLA, as she delivered a petition with over 11,000 signatures on it to the Department of Transportation earlier this month. The North Carolina family was driving down an interstate highway a year ago when “their family vehicle was struck, propelling it under a tractor trailer and killing the two girls,” the TV station reports.

In response, the grieving parents organized an online petition drive seeking tighter regulation of the trucking industry (you can see, and sign, the petition here). Specifically, the couple is calling for “improved under-ride guards to prevent vehicles from sliding under trucks, and also wants to require electric monitoring devices to decrease the number of truckers driving while fatigued. They also want to increase the minimum liability insurance required for drivers,” according to WJLA. The girls’ father told reporters that installing the under-guards would cost only $20 per truck.

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It is no secret that Portland has a reputation as one of America’s most bike-friendly cities, but the census bureau now has the data to prove it. According to a recent article in The Oregonian, since 2000 biking to work “has shown the largest percentage increase among all commuting modes” nationally. Portland leads the way with a significantly higher percentage of bicycle commuters than the national average.

Nationally about 786,000 people get to work using bicycles, according to the paper, up from 488,000 in 2000 (the data is for 2012, the latest year available). That’s only about one percent of commuters nationwide, but “within the Portland city limits the number has nearly tripled since the 2000 census… In fact, Portland leads all large cities with a bicycle commuting rate of 6.1 percent.”

According to the newspaper, local activists welcomed the news, but also warned about “complacency.” The head of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance called for “bolder steps” by the city to prevent Portland bicycle accidents so that commuters will feel safer. The article specifically cites initiatives to create “buffered bike lanes” – a move which often requires the removal of parking spots or one auto lane along busy streets that double as important bike commuter routes. It also cites “a long-delayed $4 million bike sharing system, which still lacks a sponsor.” Once implemented, the bike share program is also expected to increase bike commuter numbers. The Oregonian concludes by noting that “Portland’s strategic bike plan calls for 25 percent of all trips in the city to be made on a bike by 2030.”

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A story posted this week by Atlanta television station WSB has a surprising – and good – connection to Portland. The station announced that it is sending one of its anchors to Portland to examine Tri-Met’s streetcar system “to learn how (Portland) handles streetcar safety.”

According to the report, tests of a new streetcar system in Atlanta may begin as early as this month but Atlanta “streetcar leaders told (WSB) a public awareness campaign is needed to avoid hundreds of accidents or even deaths.” The announcement followed word of a streetcar-related death in Philadelphia last week, according to WSB. Atlanta is a city that has long had a reputation for skepticism regarding public transportation. Though many Portlanders sometimes have an up-and-down relationship with Tri-Met, it is good to be reminded of the fact that Portland has long been one of the country’s leaders in green energy and innovative public transportation.

The article notes that Portland’s streetcar system, at 14.7 miles, is far more extensive than what Atlanta soon plans to launch The Georgia system will initially involve only 2.7 miles of track, according to WSB.

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An announcement last week by New York’s University of Rochester received little attention in the national media, but deserves more. According to a news release from the university’s medical center, researchers there have made a significant breakthrough in the study of sports-related traumatic brain injuries, especially to children.

The medical center says the development of a new testing model “provides a foundation for scientists to better understand and potentially develop new ways to detect and prevent the repetitive sports injuries that can lead to the condition known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).” The key to the research is the discovery “that mice with mild, repetitive traumatic brain injury (TBI) develop many of the same behavioral problems, such as difficulty sleeping, memory problems, depression, judgment and risk-taking issues, that have been associated with the issue in humans.”

As the news release goes on to explain, the lack of a reliable animal-based testing model has held back research on repetitive TBI and other sports injuries. If the model stands up to further peer-reviewed research it could, over time, prove to be crucial not only in the diagnosis and treatment of sports injuries but in developing new treatments, equipment and procedures to prevent them. The news release quotes one of the Medical Center’s doctors summarizing the importance of the findings: “While public awareness of the long-term health risk of blows to the head is growing rapidly, our ability to scientifically study the fundamental neurological impact of mild brain injuries has lagged.”

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Following up on a blog I posted a few days ago concerning Oregon industrial accidents, it is my happy duty to report a significant sign of progress both for public safety and for the public’s right to know.

Wednesday evening The Oregonian reported that “the owner of the oil train terminal near Clatskanie (will) begin requiring safer tanker cars to deliver oil to the facility starting June 1.” Regular readers will recall that just a few days ago I wrote about a reversal of policy by the Oregon Department of Transportation. After The Oregonian won a court case seeking access to documents that rail companies are required to file regarding hazardous shipments, the ODOT initially announced it would no longer collect this information, on the grounds that it was now public. As I reported a few days ago, the agency reversed that policy under pressure from the Governor, the media and, most importantly, the public.

Today, it is good to report that the owners of a major oil terminal will require higher safety standards for shipments passing through their facility. While there is no way to link this directly to the events of the past week, it is always good to welcome a victory for the public’s right to know and, more broadly, for public safety.

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The Oregonian reports that a section of US-20 in Jefferson County was closed for several hours Monday in the wake of an Oregon car crash that left one person dead and several others injured. As of mid-morning one lane of the road had been reopened but police were warning motorists to expect long delays.

The fatal accident took place near Santiam Summit as the road passes through the Willamette National Forest between Corvallis and Bend. Relatively few details are available about the accident, which took place Monday morning around 9:30 am, though the newspaper does report that Life Flight helicopters were required to evacuate some of the injured. The exact type of vehicles involved in this Oregon crash have not been announced, but the location and the poor weather conditions that appear to have contributed to the accident are a reminder of the special care that trucks need to take in areas like the Willamette National Forest.

I have written frequently about the dangers that trucks face on in mountain areas. When even interstate highway travel is dangerous because of the weather and terrain it is especially important to proceed cautiously on narrow mountain roads. My past blogs on Oregon truck accidents have focused mainly on the northeast corner of our state – particularly the area around Cabbage Hill on Interstate 84. In the case of this accident, however, the newspaper’s note that “a spokesman for the ODOT said the highway has been hit with a lot of snow in the past few days” is an important reminder that the conditions on Cabbage Hill, while often extreme, are hardly unique in the more remote parts of Oregon.

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