Motorcyclist killed by driver making a bad left

Off duty Tempe police officer Scott Saffell died in a motorcycle-car wreck at an Ahwatukee intersection. The motorcyclist was proceeding straight through southbound 48th Street, when the unnamed driver made a bad left just north of Elliot Road. The “enhanced” criminal traffic charge would be 28-672.

I don’t know why they don’t release the 24-yo female driver’s name. Now looking up court records to find out if she will actually be charged becomes that much more difficult.

According to police, according to the driver this is “Looked but Failed to See” collision. Read the rest of this entry »

IIHS: SUVs Becoming Less Deadly

It used to be that SUVs were both more deadly to others, because of something dubbed poor “crash compatibility”, and not particularly safe (or perhaps i should say: not as safe as they could have been) for their own occupants due to a propensity to roll over; see this 2005 IIHS study that looked at 1999-2002 model years. It was a bit of a lose-lose proposition.

The latest version of looking at the risk of dying in any particular car, which covers model year 2005-2008, shows a marked decrease in SUV rollover deaths, presumably due to design changes in SUVs the most prominent being stability control “Recently calculated driver death rates for 2005-08 models show that drivers of SUVs are among the least likely to die in a crash. That change is due largely to ESC (Electronic Stability Control)”

Who is your Crash Partner?

Those studies look only at the risk of death to the driver of any particular vehicle — without regard to any other factors of the collision. It has long been known that SUVs pose a higher risk to others, because of their rigid frame design, which is also rides higher; in a collision with a car, particularly a t-bone, the rigid frame tends to slice into the car, disproportionately killing the car occupants. Happily, design changes made to SUVs have helped the situation, to the point where similar weight vehicles, whether they are SUVs or cars, have similar risk of death.

“Whether you’re in an SUV or just sharing the road with one,” Nolan says, “recent improvements to these vehicles are making you safer.”

The results don’t contradict the basic physics of crashes. Size and weight are still key, and a small, lightweight vehicle is going to fare worse than a big, heavy vehicle in a crash. In general, SUVs and pickups are heavier than cars, so in that sense different types of vehicles always will be mismatched. But the study shows that, beyond weight, differences in vehicle styles don’t have to be a safety problem.

– IIHS, Effort to make SUVs, pickups less deadly to car occupants in crashes is paying off, news release 9/28/2011

 Pickups remain problematic, though even they have shown improvement.

Another Ray Road Wreck in Ahwatukee

Westbound, single-vehicle, presumably one or more fatalities occurred Sept 24, 2011 early morning hours. The vehicle was apparently going way too fast, lost control and smashed into some trees in the median. I didn’t see any skids. The palm tree got decapitated, and a smaller tree was snapped off (you can see the original trees in the google maps streetview, below). The picture barely shows the twisted wreckage. The cops were keeping people way way way away. To the extent one wonders what was trying to be hidden? I was told I “can’t” take a picture. Weird.

google maps view of the vicinity; E. Ray Road about mid-way between 33rd and 34th St.

News Report

Press coverage was brief; e.g. az rep piece that appears to have been drawn from a police statement:

One woman was killed early Saturday morning after her car crashed into a palm tree, Phoenix police said. The crash occurred just before 2 a.m. Saturday near E. Ray Road and 33rd Street, said Phoenix police spokesman Tommy Thompson. The victim, 28-year-old Nicole Johnson, was driving at high speeds when she entered the center median and collided with the tree, Thompson said. She was taken to a local hospital where she died as a result of her injuries, he said. Police said Johnson was the only occupant in the single-vehicle collision, and it is unknown at this time if impairment was a factor.

The KPHO piece is very similar, but mentions the model of vehicle was 2007 Mitubishi Eclipse.

The Walls Continue to Keep Tumbling Down

This area is the scene of many wall-knockings-down. There were two I know of in broad daylight within this past year. Here is a pic of one in the east 3200 block from March 2011. Less than a month before that, another careless driver knocked down a wall exactly 2 blocks west of here, that time at 34th Street.

These are the result of extreme negligence, and it’s only by happenstance that no one gets killed. The broad sidewalk and shoulder attracts all manner of pedestrians, joggers, dog walkers and bicyclists.

I haven’t seen the Phoenix Police Department doing any speed enforcement here in ages. Years. Don’t they love us?

… update: on Sept 30, there was a motorcycle unit monitoring speed at 32nd Street and Ray at ~ 7:30 AM (which, by the way, is when traffic is pretty heavy, and it seems to me, less likely to be speeding.

ADOT’s Bicycle Safety Action Plan Study

ADOT’s Bicycle Safety Action Plan Study (BSAP) is a multi-phase plan to assess and improve bicycle traffic safety, with emphasis on Arizona state highways. In urban areas that often means the interchanges.

During the five-year study period “There were a total of 9,867 bicycle crashes statewide in Arizona…  crashes that occurred on state highways were extracted from the statewide data set. There were 1,089 bicycle-motor vehicle crashes reported on state highways between January 1, 2004 and December 31, 2008″ (see Working Paper 1, Section 4.2).

Thus this data set accounts for a small minority of bike-MV crashes, around 11%. But Working Paper 1,  table 15 offers a useful comparison between the studied data and all statewide data. For example, we see the same suspiciously-high percentage (24 to 25%) of “other” fault ascribed to bicyclists as with other studies. As I’ve written before, the “other” fault is generally the result of a poor/improper crash investigations that tends to wrongly faults cyclists who are doing nothing illegal (see Understanding Collision Summaries) — this is statistical proof of poor-quality investigations are a statewide problem for bicyclists. This is a shortcoming of the crash reports, and not the BSAP;  in Working Paper 1, figure 20, something they call “primary contributing factor” by crash group is assigned overwhelmingly to motorists (67%), and only 24% to bicyclists.

Press coverage

There was a lengthy, front page A1,  Arizona Republic article by Sean Holstege on Sept 17, 2011 which perhaps was intended to be about the plan but did wander, understandably, to general topics. For example they make great hay out of the per capital fatality stats, without any discussion of how to interpret them — e.g. how weather probably affects them, with Arizona being more of a year-round cycling state; or a higher per capita usage, e.g. Arizona has significantly higher (than US) percentage of commuters (according to census figures, see Working Paper 1, Table 1 — Arizona is 0.9% versus 0.5% nationwide).

The story, as many “bicycle safety” stories do, lacks context of traffic in general. So, for example, there was a chart of the number of bike-MV collisions (about 2,000/year total). There is no mention of the fact that that represents only a tiny fraction of all MV collisions ( which ran well over 100,000/year over the study period). And though it mentions the number of fatalites, say 25 in 2008 — it never mentioned the total number of traffic fatalities (it runs around, and lately something under, 1,000 per year).

So here are some hard numbers, over the five year period 2004 – 2008 there were 681,466 MV crashes, of which 9,730 were bike-MV — a little less than 1.5% (taken from the historical overview in the 2009 Bicyclist Fatality study, which were gleaned from AZ Crash Facts — note that the numbers a slightly different in the BSAP, but I don’t know why). The number of fatalities is 4,943 total, 132 bicyclist; or 2.67% — so bicyclist fatalities were somewhat over-represented but not dramatically so.

Note that the ADOT plan by design is aimed at the small percentage of bike-MV crashes that occur on the state highway system. “The majority of bicycle crashes in Arizona (approximately 90 percent) occur on local, city, and county roadways outside of ADOT jurisdiction”

Also, by the way, the article inaccurately stated that the BSAP recommends a mandatory taillight law. That was in an earlier draft but was since removed — I don’t believe there is adequate evidence to support the additional burden on cyclists. The article does correctly mention that the BSAP recommends state-level sidewalk law clarifications, which seem like a worthy endeavor, given the huge proportion of sidewalk-related collisions, along with the current legal murky morass that currently exists when cyclists who cycle on the sidewalk subsequently collide with vehicles in crosswalks and driveways.

—

See more about Media Bias in bicycling safety stories.

ADOT 2010 Crash Facts

ADOT’s 2010 Motor Vehicle Crash Facts has just been released.

Highlights are the total number of fatalities continued to fall; there were a total of 762 persons killed in 2010, a 5% decrease from the year before.

There were 19 bicyclists killed on Arizona’s road in collisions with motor vehicles in 2010, which compares favorably with the 25 killed in 2009. That means there are two (possibly three) missing from this tally for 2010.

The MOST COMMON DRIVER VIOLATION is (remains) Speed too fast for condition

There were 106,177 crashes in total, of which 1,914 were bike-MV crashes.

Dangerous by Design

While we’re on the subject, t4america.org released the latest version of their recurring report Dangerous By Design 2011; where metro-Phoenix has a recurring, starring role as a particularly dangerous place for pedestrians — the 8th worst rate in the US. The only places significantly higher are basically several (!) metro areas in Florida.

Bad for pedestrians tends to translate into bad for motorists and bicyclists, as well — in other words, we’re all in this together.  Arizona’s motorist fatality ”VMT rate  is over twice as deadly as Massachusett’s. The disparity in per capita rate, since Arizonans drive more miles, is even worse…. more”

But you are not likely to hear anything about how or if or why Arizona isn’t closing the gap; or even that a gap exists! — rather that deaths overall have merely fallen. Here is a typical new-release-style story: azfamily.com story

Back to the DbyD report, they have this concept called PDI, the Pedestrian Danger Index; Phoenix-metro at 132 is many times worse than, for example, Boston-metro at 21.6.

And just to throw out a factoid, for the year 2009 (the most recent year for which detailed stats are available) there were more bicyclists killed within the City of Phoenix (9) than were killed in the entire state of Massachusetts(6).

The population of Phoenix is 1.5M versus State of Massachusetts having 6.5M…. The C.O.P., accused rightly as being an enormous-sprawling place covers 516 square miles, the state of Massachusetts 7,840 square miles of land area.

John Allen’s blog reflecting upon the fact that in the DbyD report, the Boston-metro area came in dead last (SAFEST!) of all large metro areas in US — “Strange, isn’t it — the Boston area has repeatedly been derogated as supposedly having the nation’s craziest drivers”.

Arizona’s Rural Highway Traffic Safety Problem

A couple of days after the data was released, and somewhat to my chagrin, the arizonarepublic/news/articles/2011/09/02/20110902arizona-deadly-rural-roads.html did a fairly long and detailed piece on what ADOT is doing to identify and address rural highway problems… though, interestingly, the latest Crash Facts shows a steeper decline in rural as opposed to urban fatalities.

So far, no one that I know of, has said or suggested that Arizona’s high rate of rural fatalities is what accounts for Arizona’s overall high traffic fatality rate. Perhaps that is so?

As mentioned in the article, rural fatal crashes tend to be single-vehicle — though that is a little misleading because a bike-MV, or ped-MV crash is defined as a single-vehicle.

Here are the number of fatal crashes split by urban/rural for 2009 and 2010:

Peds fatal crashes, total/urban/rural: 156 / 102 / 54 ( 2009: 121 / 77 / 44)

cyclists killed, total/urban/rural:         19 / 17/ 2 ( 2009: 25 / 17 / 8 )

(all inclusive) Number of fatal crashes, total / urban / rural: 698 / 354 / 344 (2009: 709 / 299/ 410)

…

Here is some discussion of the 2010 National results: early-estimate-of-motor-vehicle-traffic-fatalities%C2%A0in%C2%A02010/

Woman dies after being hit by car on Ahwatukee sidewalk

file this under Are Cars Dangerous? and Seriously, how often does this happen? .

A jogger, later identified as 56 year-old Rene Karlin, was killed while jogging on the sidewalk near my home in Ahwatukee (city of Phoenix). Read the rest of this entry »

Where to ride on the road

What the Experts Say

Arizona Dept of Transportation

Arizona Bicycling Street Smarts is a short book based on bicycling traffic expert John Allen’s Bicycling Street Smarts; augmented with references to specific Arizona statutes, and published by the State of Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT). The full title is Arizona Bicycling Street Smarts: Riding Confidently, Legally and Safely, and is available online in its entirety. Read the rest of this entry »

Beyond Safety in Numbers: Why Bike Friendly Cities are Safer

I don’t have time to figure any of this out, but in a nutshell, this sounds like a reasonable explanation;

The traffic fatality rates tend to be tied together (i.e. car vs. bike vs. ped), and…

high death rate places have faster traffic in general and vice versa.

Beyond Safety in Numbers: Why Bike Friendly Cities are Safer. The full published paper is linked, but i haven’t looked at it yet. (and i can’t open it on my android tablet?)

Why is AZ so deadly; and why does no one seem to notice or care?

Does, or could this explain the huge disparity between, for example, Arizona’s high traffic fatality rate and Massachusett’s extraordinarily low fatality rate? Check out the NHTSHA numbers here. Arizona’s rates are between TWO AND THREE TIMES as deadly as MA. Why?

These are composite traffic fatality rates, not bicyclist or ped or motorcyclist.

Moto-cyclist killed in Tempe hit-and-run

In an update to this July 2010 story, as the City of Tempe prepares to turn off its photo-enforcement effective July 19, 2011, police mention that those very photos were instrumental in capturing the suspect, Cody Davis, who fled the scene. See Police: Photo enforcement’s impact goes well beyond traffic infractions from the EVtrib.

UPDATE: Police arrest suspect 7/17/2010 [abc15] “Tempe police say Cody Ryan Davis has been charged with leaving the scene of a fatal accident in the death of Bradley Jason Scott, 32, Read the rest of this entry »

IIHS Driver Fatality Rate Stats

The IIHS does this every so often, e.g. see here for their report from a couple of years ago.

So, the latest is Dying in a Crash, Vol 46, No. 5, June 2011. It covers 2005-08 model year passenger vehicles during calendar years 2006-09. It also specifically only covers driver fatality rates.

The big news is that SUVs, which long have had higher death rates than passenger cars — due to the much higher rollover deaths — have become safer, due presumably to the prevalance of ESC (electronic stability control) in newer model SUVs.

There is no accounting for attempt to account for danger imposed on others.

What the WSJ Thinks

The WSJ has been running the same editorial and op-eds for as long as there’s been a CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Econonmy, probably 30 years old now) Read the rest of this entry »