What is Killing Oregonians? Driving! - Also, Morningside NA

There's a front-page article today tabulating the top causes of death for Oregonians in 2016.

Number three on the list, "unintentional injury," includes "motor vehicle crashes" as one of the "most common factors contributing to unintentional injury" death.

While noting a large increase in traffic violence, it says "Oregon ranks among the states with the best transportation safety laws" and also quotes the State Epidemiologist and State Health Officer, who says “Driving under the influence of drugs or even distracted driving by texting while driving are both big problems that contribute to these deaths.”

But of course the bigger, unacknowledged problem is that we are driving more. The count of deaths tracks closely with vehicle miles traveled.

The more we drive, the more we die
(from the paper a year ago; red comments added)

Driving itself is a proper topic for public health! It's not just that we should drive better and more carefully. Humans can't even walk on a sidewalk without tripping from time to time. If we are intrinsically incapable of 100% safe walking, what makes us think we can operate at lethal speeds a motor vehicle weighing tons?

Over at the Vitoria Transport Policy Institute, Todd Litman proposes a new traffic safety paradigm.

He says:

Despite large traffic safety program investments, motor vehicle accidents continue to impose high costs, particularly in the U.S. Crash casualty rates have ended their long-term decline and recently started to increase. New strategies are needed to achieve ambitious traffic safety targets such as Vision Zero....The current paradigm favors targeted safety programs that reduce special risks such as youth, senior and impaired driving. A new paradigm recognizes that all vehicle travel imposes risks, and so supports vehicle travel reduction strategies such as more multimodal planning, efficient transport pricing, Smart Growth development policies, and other TDM strategies.

If we really want safer roads and less death we need to drive less often, drive shorter distances, and drive more slowly. That's what our policy actions should aim to accomplish, not driving more carefully while driving as often, driving the same distances, and driving the same speeds. It's driving in general, not "targeted safety programming" we need to think more about.

At Morningside

Tieing up Traffic worse than death and safety

The Morningside Neighborhood Assocation meets this week, and while there's nothing of great interest on the agenda, a couple of notes from December's minutes are worth a comment.

The prospect of more crosswalks and signals on South Commercial made one neighbor worry about "a spate of new applications for ones...which could further tie-up traffic."

Never mind the safety and comfort of those who might travel on foot! This attitude for free-flow, unimpeded, even high-speed, travel is an important ingredient in our death rates and the resistance to reducing them.

A new light at 12th & McGilchrist

The new light on 12th at McGilchrist is up and running, and the new clinic is nearly done. It will be interesting to see how the new turn lane and associated widening between Hoyt and Fairview affects it. The masts for the traffic signals seem awfully close to the street - but maybe more of the right-of-way for the new lane will actually come from the left side, not the right. It's also a small disappointment that both of the clinics are fronted with big parking lots, which might more interestingly have been placed to the side or even fully in back.

The Morningside Neighborhood Association meets at Pringle Creek Community Painters Hall,  3911 Village Center Drive SE on Wednesday the 10th at 6:30 PM.