Accidents Up Despite Spokane Red Light Cameras

Intersections where Spokane, Wash., installed red light cameras in 2008 in the name of safety saw an increase in crashes and injuries in the first year of the controversial program.

There were 38 collisions at the three intersections the year after the city began fining violators caught on tape. That's up from 32 the previous year, according to police collision reports provided to The Spokesman-Review.

Injury accidents at the intersections also rose from 11 the year before to 14 after.

Spokane Mayor Mary Verner called the data '"interesting,'" but cautioned that it's too early to make a final judgment on camera enforcement.

""The program has been effective in that we seem to have caught a lot of people running red lights,'" Verner said. '"If we're not seeing a decline of injury collisions, then we need to figure out why not.'"

The numbers contrast with predictions made when the camera program was approved -- that collisions and injuries would decline because drivers would be less willing to run red lights. In the first year of the program the number of crashes at the intersections that police blamed on running red lights held steady at 11.

Traffic safety experts caution that crash statistics fluctuate every year and that it's difficult to prove cause and effect with only a year's worth of data. Police say they're confident that crash numbers will fall as the public becomes more aware of the cameras.

"Typically, there might be a slight increase (in the first year)," said Officer Teresa Fuller, who examines camera violations before tickets are issued. "But those go down in the second year of the program."

The city began fining red light violators caught on camera Nov. 1, 2008. Fuller said the department expects to complete its examination of the program's first year later this month. The department also plans to expand the program to four other intersections later this year.

About 80 crash records were provided to The Spokesman-Review through a public records request that asked for all collision reports at the camera locations for the year before the program started and the first year the cameras were in use. Of the reports provided, about 10 were not included in the analysis because they did not result in injuries or at least $700 in damage, or because they were unrelated to the intersections.

Councilman Bob Apple, who was the lone vote against the creation of rules to allow the program, said he's not surprised by the numbers.

"I would like to see the council dump Photo Red," Apple said. But in a year in which the city faces a $10 million deficit, "a lot of things are going to trump Photo Red."

Camera enforcement has become increasingly popular throughout the United States, and proponents say cameras decrease injuries and crashes without the need to hire more officers. Some independent research, however, has shown they can have mixed results, and critics argue that the programs are motivated by officials looking to balance budgets.

One of the most comprehensive studies, released by the Virginia Transportation Research Council in 2007, examined seven years of crash statistics and camera-enforcement intersections and found that cameras generally helped decrease T-bone crashes based on a decline of people running red lights. But rear-end crashes increased, potentially as a result of drivers braking suddenly to avoid being caught by cameras. T-bone crashes are considered more severe than rear-enders.

Even so, the study said that the rate of injuries increased after cameras were installed.

The report also noted that collisions declined significantly at certain intersections, leading the authors to suggest that cameras can be effective -- if intersections are researched before cameras are installed.

"You have to work very hard to decide the right locations where they should be used," said John Miller, associate principal research scientist at the Virginia research council. Factors for choosing locations include ensuring that the intersection doesn't already have a significant problem with rear-end crashes since they might get worse after installing cameras, he said.

While it may be too early to judge the effectiveness of the cameras in Spokane, they have succeeded in catching violators and raising revenue.

Spokane issued 5,690 camera tickets that resulted in revenue of $419,000, Fuller said. After the contracted camera company, Arizona-based American Traffic Solutions, is paid and other expenses subtracted, police estimate a profit of $103,000.

The Spokane City Council stipulated that camera fines be used only for traffic safety projects. Council members argued that doing so ensured that the aim of the program would remain traffic safety and that the city would not become dependent on the fines to balance the city budget.

City Council President Joe Shogan said he's hopeful that the cameras will improve safety as drivers who receive tickets become more careful. He said the program may need to be re-evaluated if statistics don't show declines in crashes and injuries after three years.

"If we've got 6,000 people running red lights in this city, it's a concern," Shogan said. "You never know if we would have had more accidents without the red light (cameras)."

Besides catching red light runners, police have seen side benefits to the cameras. Sgt. Eric Olsen said police have used the cameras to track down drivers who fled crash scenes.

The cameras also can help officers assign blame. In the program's first month, John Grollmus, co-owner of the Elk Public House, was westbound on Sprague when he was hit by a southbound car on Browne. Both drivers told Olsen at the scene that they had had a green light, according to the accident report.

Three days later, the woman who hit Grollmus was issued a $124 ticket for a red light violation after Olsen viewed the camera footage.

"We are able to do follow-up" Olsen said.

In other Washington news, the state Traffic Safety Commission reported the level of seat belt use last year in Washington at 96 percent.

That's about the same as the year before and it's one of the highest rates in the nation. Seat belt use was 36 percent in 1986 when the law was adopted.


Source

LegalView Expands Car Crash Practice Area, Focuses On Cell Phone Laws

LegalView.info, one of the leading providers of free legal resources on the Internet, is pleased to announce the expansion of its automotive crash practice area, available at http://crash.legalview.com. The current extensive practice area provides individuals with access to a wide range of legal resources regarding car accidents, truck accidents, or contacting a car accident lawyer. Several pages are available free of charge, including an extensive articles page which features a library of informative pieces regarding many different facets of automobile crashes, litigation surrounding several pivotal cases, government releases concerned with legislation and federal laws dealing specifically with automotive transportation safety issues.

The most recent LegalView update comes in response to recent legislation by many state governments to ban cell phone usage while driving. While only 6 states (California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Washington) currently ban all handheld cell phone usage while operating a motorized vehicle, several states have passed legislation effective January of 2010 restricting cell phone use while operating a motor vehicle. The hope of these new laws is to reduce the possibility of being involved in a car accident while using a cell phone. These new laws expand the language in the older legislation, outlawing text messaging, hands-free cell phone use, or all cell phone or PDA usage while driving a car, truck or school bus.

Many of these laws are coupled with hefty fines, upwards of $100 in some states for infractions. Furthermore, law enforcement officers may ticket a driver for using a cell phone while driving without another traffic offense taking place. Almost 80 percent of car accidents and 65 percent of near accidents are a result of driver inattention, of which cell phones and drowsiness are the primary cause, according to a 2006 report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.

Many of these new laws also offer drivers who have been involved in a car accident the opportunity to take legal action against the offending driver if he or she was using a cell phone while operating their vehicle at the time of the accident. This could have the unexpected consequence of creating a large number of people seeking to develop an automobile accident lawsuit against drivers in violation of the cell phone laws.

The possibility of this increase in the number of lawsuits puts the services of an experienced car accident attorney in high demand. To this end, LegalView.info, in its quest to provide the most comprehensive online legal resource available, has opened up its practice areas to include litigation against drivers responsible for accidents while using a cell phone.

LegalView.info also provides extensive resources for a host of other legal issues, including information regarding Avandia. They offer several articles, links, and access to an experienced Avandia lawyer, all free of charge.


Source

Mormon missionary injured in Va. car crash

REXBURG, Idaho -- A Rexburg man who is serving as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Virginia was seriously injured in a car accident Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2010.

Scott Trotter, a spokesman for the LDS Church, released the following statement:

"Elder Taylor Romney, age 21 from Rexburg, Idaho, serving in the Virginia Richmond Mission, was seriously injured in a traffic accident in Midlothian, Va., a suburb of Richmond on Jan. 6, 2010. He was riding in a car with three other missionaries when their vehicle was hit by another driver. Elder Romney underwent emergency surgery and is expected to recover from his injuries. The other three missionaries sustained minor injuries."

Terry Gorton, Romney's bishop in his home ward in Rexburg, said Romney sustained serious abdominal injuries in the accident and and underwent several hours of surgery after the accident.


Source

Young Mother in South Carolina Killed in Terrible Car Accident

Barbara J. Morton was driving her Dodge Neon with her 3-year-old boy, Mikey Pound, when the drive took a tragic turn. She was on Sharon Church Road near Gaston when her Neon hit a Ford E-150. Morton’s vehicle was propelled into a ditch and burst into flames, according to The State.

Ray Shealy, the driver of the Ford E-150, failed to yield to Morton’s Neon. Nevertheless, he made a heroic effort to try and save both Barbara and her son. Fortunately, he was able to get the child out of the car and to safety, but was unable to save Barbara.

This stretch of road in Lexington County, South Carolina (SC) is usually quiet and not used to such a horrendous scene. Ricky Spires, who lived close by, also made a noble effort to try and save Barbara but could not. It wasn’t for a lack of trying. Her legs were blocked by the front dash of the Neon. The extreme temperatures from the flames made the situation even more volatile and limited the amount of time they could try to extract Barbara.

My deepest condolences go out to the friends and family of Barbara Morton. She was just 29 years old and had her entire life ahead of her. This is a tragedy and she was taken from this world far too soon.



Source

Budget Cuts Ground Virginia Aerial Traffic Monitoring, Will Traffic Accidents Increase?

Did aerial monitoring play a part in this decrease of car accident fatalities? Maybe. There’s really no way to be sure, but the program probably didn’t hurt. When people are speeding and see a sign saying there’s a plane in the sky monitoring speed limits, it could cause the driver to slow down.

The major drawback of the program is, obviously, cost. It’s expensive to obtain a plane, pay for manpower capable of flying the aircraft and properly monitor traffic conditions, pay for fuel, etc.

A drawback not regularly mentioned is the potential safety risk. One citizen posted on the Pilot’s comment board…

“I've watched them flying at no more than 800 ft altitude at minimum airspeed with half flaps, over residential areas. If I had done that, I'd have lost my license. Flying low and slow, on the verge of stalling, over urban areas for hours at a time was an accident waiting to happen.”

Another citizen stated…

“When you look across the country, state after state has tried using aircraft to patrol for speeders, and time and again they've dropped the program because it wasn't as cost effective as having a few more patrol cars out there. With the cost for gas continuing to go up, the situation only gets worse. It should be no surprise that this is happening.”

There’s talk the program could be resuscitated when the economy rebounds, but there's a chance it could lead to an increase in car accidents in Virginia (VA) since the threat of aerial monitoring is longer around.



Source

Collision - Anatomy of an accident

What do the following dead people have in common: Albert Camus, Jackson Pollock, James Dean, Jayne Mansfield, General George Patton and Princesses Grace and Diana? Diana's inclusion in the list should be the killer clue that this is a roll call of celebrities who departed this life in a car crash, although road traffic accidents are a common-enough experience for us civilians, too – and not just from rubber-necking motorway pile-ups. I have personally known two people who have died in their cars and I imagine that is a fairly average tally.

The universality of the experience and its life-shattering impact have made the car crash an attractive subject for screen writers, whether it's the medical emergency of the week on Casualty or the heady meeting of minds between J G Ballard and David Cronenberg in the 1997 movie Crash. And next week, a new ITV1 drama "event" (in other words, it's screening over five consecutive nights), Collision, joins a healthy sub-genre of screen dramas that have used auto accidents to explore the human stories of those mangled by them.

"I've always had an interest in motorways," says the Collision writer Anthony Horowitz. "I divide my life between London and Suffolk, and spend a lot of time on the A12, and it's always occurred to me that every journey you make has a story – and that all these different people hurtling around at 70mph in one-ton killing machines is in itself an interesting situation. The tiniest little incident can change your life forever."

In classic portmanteau fashion, Collision follows the stories of the different individuals who are going to come together in the pile-up, including a millionaire property dealer (played by Paul McGann), a piano teacher with a guilty secret (David Bamber) and the great Phil Davis as a man taking his mother-in-law (Sylvia Sims) out for a spin. The cast also includes Dean Lennox Kelly from Shameless, and Douglas Henshall and Kate Ashfield as the police officers investigating the accident.

"There was a film I'd seen as a boy which had a train crash – a sort of anthology film – and it told all the different stories involved in it," says Horowitz, referring to the 1949 Ealing drama Train of Events, starring Jack Warner and Peter Finch. "I've always had an interest in the question of how much you are in control of your own life. For example, if this conversation is one minute shorter than it might have been and you leave one minute earlier, your life might take a completely different turn."

Somewhat distracted by this thought, we fail to discuss the case of the author Albert Camus, who was killed in a car driven by Michel Gallimard, his publisher and close friend, in a small town in Burgundy in January 1960. Camus was famously found to be carrying an unused train ticket for the journey he was undertaking when he died. What if he had gone by rail instead? Or what if Dodi and Diana had decided to make an early night of it? "How do we recognise these crucial moments in our lives?" wonders Horowitz. "The answer is, of course, that we can't. You could say that we're all in a dance of death and we never know who we're going to be waltzing with next."



Source

Don’t Text and Drive

A recent New York Times article reported the case of a young British woman killed in a traffic accident. The 22-year-old driver of the car that caused the crash was sentenced to 21 months in a high-security women’s prison. This was not a case of DWI — rather DWT: driving while texting.

This dangerous behavior is not taken lightly in Britain. According to The Times, texting while driving is considered a serious aggravating factor in “death by dangerous driving,” and is typically punishable by four to seven years in prison. New guidelines of the British law place reading and composing text messages while behind the wheel in the same category as driving while intoxicated or high on drugs.

Although driving while texting and driving under the influence are treated as similar offenses under the law, it seems that the former is more socially acceptable than the latter. The Times article notes the reactions of some of the victim’s relatives. I was quite surprised to read that a number of the victim’s friends and family members sympathized with the driver. A statement from the victim’s cousin captures this sentiment: “Until Tory’s death I texted while driving, as have most people. I don’t think she realized the danger she was causing.”

This analysis is quite accurate. According to a recent poll by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, 21 percent of drivers admitted to texting while driving. Even more alarming is that half of drivers in the 16- to 24-year-old cohort reported that they have engaged in this behavior. In fact, The Times reported, the victim of the accident herself had been texting behind the wheel earlier the day that the accident occurred.

Recent studies reveal just how dangerous DWT actually is. According to data from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, text messaging made the risk of a crash or near-crash event 23.2 times as high as it was with non-distracted driving. CBS News reported that a 2007 simulator study by Clemson University showed that “text messaging and using iPods caused drivers to leave their lanes 10 percent more often.”

But what is truly frightening is that this risky behavior is not occurring out of ignorance on the part of the offenders. Despite the fact that 21 percent admit to texting while driving, the same Virginia Tech poll reveals that 95 percent believe that this is unacceptable behavior. What is the explanation for this inconsistency?



Source