Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Hit Me, I Dare You. Weekly Safety Reminder (WSR) #7

Yea, go ahead and crash into me. You'll see: It'll be YOUR fault.
Yes, it's WSR #7.

Go ahead and hit me? Well that's what some of our roadway users seem to be telling me.

Our Safe Kids coordinator told us a story about a frightening traffic incident that she and her hubby encountered last week while riding their motorcycle. A kid on a bike was horsing around and strayed into the street proper causing the vehicle in front of my friends to swerve and very nearly cause a terrible crash. The kid's response? An expletive along with a familiar hand gesture thrown in for good measure.

Guess we need to cut that kid some slack, though. After all, he's just a kid. So, what's the excuse for the 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70 year old kids taking similar risks? A few adult bike riders aren't just goofing around, they're using the roadway to make a statement. That statement being: I have just as much right to use this roadway as the motorized conveyances. They're right, of course, but their actions can be just as risky as that kid's, and they probably know it. That right will be of small comfort if they get whacked.

I'm one of those 50 year olds that likes to ride my bike along the side of the road almost every day, but I have great fear and respect for the power of those darn motorized vehicles. I also have a pretty good grasp of reality. That reality being the fact that many of the humans piloting those motorized vehicles do not consider driving to be their primary task. I'm sure that they don't want to hit me, but if they're really busy answering an important text message right now, they just might not notice that I'm there until it's too late.

If I'm on my bike riding side-by-side with a pal and not really holding up traffic I'm absolutely operating within the law. Unfortunately, that law won't protect me from the mom zipping her car around the curve yelling at her kids in the back seat, or the 15 year-old that got their license half an hour ago and is texting all his pals to let them know how fast he's going, or the driver who's swatting a bee that flew in the window.

One of my crash investigator pals from the Michigan State Police tells me that he expects bike crashes to increase along with the proliferation of texting drivers. The texting drivers, of all ages, tend to drift to the right and have an average attention loss of three seconds. If my biking pals are riding two abreast at that point, the law's not going to protect them from the crash. Will the driver be at fault? Absolutely. This week's safety reminder though: in the crash 'n injury battle between the bike rider and a distracted and/or inexperienced driver, the motorized vehicle is going to prevail.

Be safe.


Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Traffic Safety Advocates for Sale

I really miss this stuff. I do. Above you see a photo of my former work parter Cheryl Dupay and myself hanging out with the Safety Patrol statue that proudly stands in front of the main entrance to the Auto Club Group (AAA) headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan. There are thousands of safety patrollers in Michigan and we, along with our other team members April Morrison-Harke and Gary Bubar, loved training and motivating them.

Did I tell you that I really miss it? All four of us do. Yes, this blog post is pretty self indulgent, but it's also an opportunity for someone.

See, I've been faithfully posting traffic safety reminders and updates for several months now as a means of maintaining my skills, contacts and sanity. Well, here is one more great traffic safety tip for everyone: There is an excellent team of four traffic safety advocates scattered around Michigan that have found themselves, well, without a job, but with no loss in passion for what they had been doing for so long. Perhaps you know of an employer that could use one of them.

Within this group of four you've got two of the State's Child Passenger Safety Instructors, a Governor's Traffic Safety Advisory Council member, someone who certifies people who CERTIFY traffic safety trainers, public speakers, teen driving instructors, senior driving specialists, Certified Driver Improvement Program instructors, school traffic safety evaluators, safety board members, pupil transportation trainers, truck safety specialists............ Heck, we've worked with police, principals, pupils, parents, prosecutors, bus drivers, students that ride buses, engineers, nurses, fire departments, EMS, NHTSA, MDOT, USDOT, FHW, CPS, ADTSEA, MDTSEA, MPTA, OHSP and a wide variety of other letter combinations.

OK, seriously now, I know I'm getting a bit over the edge here, but I'll have to admit that I'm getting a bit worried and concerned for our group. The practical matter is that we all need jobs, and it's not looking good for being able to stay within the industry that, between the four of us, we have spent over 100 years in. My traffic safety tip and reminder for anyone reading my words this week is this: There are some real traffic safety education/advocacy resources available right now, and they would like nothing more than to be able to thrive and serve within a new team. Don't be shy about passing along ideas and referrals. We won't be shy about accepting them.

Be safe.


Thursday, April 8, 2010

Should 5-Year-Olds be Driving?

So, should the kids that I'm chatting about passenger safety with in this photo (4.5 - 5 year olds) be driving? Well, probably not without lots and lots of our help. Sound silly? Of course they shouldn't be driving. They haven't even developed enough to reach the top shelf in closet and get down a hat.

OK, add 10 years to the faces in that photo. Now they're of age to take drivers training and be on Michigan roadways (14 yrs, 8 months). Are they old enough to be driving? Well, probably not without lots and lots of our help, you say. But, why do you say that? At what age did they magically develop enough to do that safely? Can you just tell?

Now, they've finished segment 2 of driver training, they're 16 or so, have met all of the criteria for driving on their own in Michigan and are ready to drive their kid brothers/sisters to the mall without lots and lots of our help. Right? Must be- we've all decided that it's OK and they look very much like adults. After all, they can reach the top shelf in the closet now. Hmmmmm, what about that top shelf?

Little kids (like the ones in the photo), need lots and lots of our help to be safe. That's what I used to tell safety patrollers. Little kids only have two speeds- stop and RUN. Not because they're naughty, but because they're, well, little kids. So, we need to help them until they develop the higher function decision making parts of their brain that deal with actions and consequences. Those parts of their brains (real anatomical body parts) have not developed any more than their height has developed enough to reach the top shelf. They can't reach that top shelf no matter how much I try to ask them to or tell them how important it is. What hasn't developed yet, hasn't developed yet.

So, now we've got that 16 year-old taking their little sister to dance lessons after their vast 30 hours of classroom training and 56 hours (perhaps) of driving experience. The good news is that in another five or seven years (more or less) those higher function decision making parts of the brain that deal with actions and consequences will have developed. Yup, it's that darn problem again- what hasn't developed yet, hasn't developed yet. Yea, I know- the bodily structures for reaching the top shelf in the closet are fully developed now, but the bodily structures dealing with decision making and consequences just aren't. No, not even if we tell them how hard to try or how important it is. What ain't there, ain't there.

Hopeless? Nope. I've often asked a room full of adults how many were safety patrollers. I see a lot of hands go up. Well adults, what do you owe these new drivers? Yup, the same thing you pledged to provide for the little kids when you were in 5th grade: lots and lots of help during this crucial developmental stage. You've got to protect and defend them until they can reach that top shelf.

Be Safe.



Thursday, April 1, 2010

Doak TC's Traffic Safety Summit Notes, Day 3

It was the third and final day of Michigan's State Traffic Safety Summit at the Kellogg Center in East Lansing. The final day included only morning sessions. Here are my notes and impressions about the sessions that I attended today. They're centered around two main topics and their associated attributes.

First, bikes and pedestrians.
- The US Secretary of Transportation issued a new policy statement in March regarding bicycle and pedestrian accommodation regulations and recommendations. He encourages states, local governments, professional associations and others to adopt similar policies. The upshot of the policy statement says that because of numerous individual and community benefits that walking and bicycling provide, the DOT policy is to incorporate safe and convenient walking and bicycling facilities into transportation projects. You can find the complete policy statement at http://www.dot.gov/affairs/2010/bicycle-ped.html.

- There are now more behavioral studies evaluating the effectiveness of various pedestrian crossings. Pedestrians themselves all have something in common, though. People do not want to wait, and the longer we make them wait the more likely they will take chances. They'll also cross where convenient. That explains why "hot button" crosswalks work well. There is also a need to channelize the pedestrians, and make the crosswalk waiting area safe and comfortable. It appears that a crossing's greater perceived risk also led to better compliance from pedestrians, but waiting still led to risk taking.

- High traffic intersections with multiple lanes (12,000 - 15,000 average daily traffic (ADT)) will need crosswalks and signals with much higher visibility. Signals with rectangular rapid flashing beacons (RRFB) are very effective. Traffic needs to stop well back (obviously) because a pedestrian crossing multiple lanes of traffic can't see beyond the first vehicle they are crossing in front of. SO, walking at 4 feet per second, they are 1 second away from being hit by the second vehicle that they can't see yet. The terminology for this is multiple threat crashes.

- An interesting side note: remember that the researcher said people do not want to wait? Well, he tested this theory in an office that wanted to encourage people to use the stairs for exercise. Left to their own devices, they normally chose the ease of the elevator. However, when the researchers added a slight delay to the elevator's response time the stairways became much more crowded. People do not want to wait. Remember that when designing crosswalks for compliance. Increased wait times will reduce compliance.

So, how bout bikes?
- Jeff Bagdade, of Opus International, demonstrated that there are new emerging strategies for mixing bicycles more safely into the transportation systems of a municipality. Obviously, seeing the USDOT's policy statement, this is will have a significant impact on the way roadway projects are designed and evaluated from this point on. So, it was good to see that there are new strategies being tried and tested.

- There are new ways of designing shared bike lanes with sharrow markings and bike boxes providing more protected turns at intersections. Some New York streets that received road diets gained an offset/floating parking island that provided a barrier to the bike lane at the curb. Picture this: sidewalk- then curb - then bike lane - then painted barrier, then traditional vehicle parking - and then the street traffic. The parked cars provide a barrier for the bikes. The bikes are also now on the passenger side of the car along with a barrier greatly limiting "dooring" (being whacked by the parked vehicle driver opening their door).

- The upshot for bikes? There are a variety of new strategies that have the benefit of being new and innovative, but the drawback of not much data yet.

Finally, why do we do this stuff?
- As I said a couple of days ago, Michigan traffic fatalities were down again last year. They've come down by hundreds in the past few years. Injuries are down as well. We were reminded how terribly quick a car crash changes the lives of families forever and about that terrible knock on the door that Troopers, Deputies and Officers never want to deliver. The Office Of Highway Safety Planning's Director, Michael Prince told us how the jobs that the State's traffic safety advocates do lead directly to fewer incidences of the terrible knock at the door.

Someone NOT being killed in a crash is hard to picture, though, and hard to quantify for others that want to measure results against numbers. My suggestion for y'all is to take some time and do some people watching at the mall next week. Sit and count a hundred-or-so people. It's quite a bunch, and they all have families, faces and names. Imagine that they're all still at the mall a year later because of a child seat you helped with, a crosswalk you improved, a drunk driver you arrested, a bike helmet you gave out, a teen driver you talked to, a guard rail or rumble strip you installed, a law you passed, a grant you secured, a repeat offender you took off the road. Now count a another thousand people-or-so and know that they're at the mall with their families instead of languishing with a life-long debilitating injury. That's why you do this stuff.

Michael also reminded us, though, that there are 800 or more people that don't know it yet, but they'll have a crash this year and not survive to see the spring of 2011. We're aiming at zero, and we're a lot closer to that than we've been in our entire lifetimes.

Be safe.