LA’S DEADLY STREETS - Don Rosenberg today released a white paper addressing traffic safety issues in Los Angeles in which he details what needs to be done to make our streets safer.
As Southern California's population continues to grow, traffic safety becomes more of a concern for the public and law enforcement officers. The white paper addresses distracted drivers, unlicensed drivers, intoxicated drivers, road rage, and speeding which are all contributing to an immense traffic safety crisis in Los Angeles. The paper recommends strategies improving traffic safety.
The paper reveals a startling fact; hit and run accidents are four times the national average in Los Angeles. While nationally 11% of all police reported crashes involve a hit-and-run collision, in Los Angeles, 44% of all traffic collisions are due to hit-and-runs according LAPD data analyzed.
In 2010, 21,000 collisions were hit-and-run accidents in Los Angeles. Annually, 1,500 deaths are due to fatal hit-and-run accidents according to a study by AAA. (In the City of Los Angeles, if no one is injured in the accident, the LAPD does not take a report. This is not the case in most jurisdictions in California or across the country.)
An AAA study found that one in five fatal crashes in Los Angeles involve an unlicensed driver. According to the paper, unlicensed drivers are serious threat to public safety and contribute to the spike in hit-and-runs accidents.
The AAA study showed that "excluding drivers who were incapacitated or killed and thus could not have fled, an estimated 32.4% of fatal-crashes involved drivers who lacked a valid license … and an estimated 51.2% of all drivers who left the scene of a fatal crash lacked a valid license."
"We need to law enforcement in Southern California to implement strategies to reduce crashes, serious injuries, and fatalities," said Don Rosenberg, author of the whitepaper. "It is more than obvious that the increasing commonness of unlicensed drivers and accidents needs to be addressed head on for the safety of all Los Angeles residents.
It is time that law enforcement leaders in Los Angeles form a task force to evaluate traffic safety and develop and implement a strategic plan that tackles traffic safety. The Committee should be comprised of law enforcement professionals, traffic safety experts and concerned members of the community," added Rosenberg.
While some will argue that eliminating fatal and serious injury crashes is impossible, it is still important to set goals that show that law enforcement leaders in considers traffic safety a high priority.
Certainly other forms of transportation industries (planes and trains) do not consider any loss of life acceptable and go to great lengths to investigate such crashes and implement strategies to eliminate future crashes. The white paper includes references to more than 30 studies and reports about traffic safety issues.
The white paper is available for free download.
(Don Rosenberg became active in traffic safety issues and started the website Unlicensed to Kill to bring attention to the horrendous problem of unlicensed drivers who have no regard for the law and are responsible for death and destruction on our roads and highways every day. Don’s son was killed by an unlicensed driver in November 2010.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 81
Pub: Oct 12, 2012