Reckless Drivers Wield Lethal Weapons on Our Neighborhood Streets

Why are so many drivers turning neighborhood streets into speedways?

Federal statistics show that most pedestrian fatalities in the U.S. occur on the very streets where we live and play--rather than main thoroughfares or freeways.

Call it aggressive driving or just plain speeding, but people are dying because drivers are rocketing through once-peaceful communities.

Of the 5,449 pedestrians killed in the U.S. in 1996, 69% lost their lives on neighborhood streets, according to a public interest group’s analysis of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration figures. In all, about 82,000 pedestrian injuries were reported in the U.S. that year, 13,000 of them serious.

“This is a significant public health and safety problem that is killing more Americans than headline-grabbing causes of death such as random gun violence, air bags or the E. coli bacteria,” warns “Mean Streets 1998: Children at Risk,” a report issued by the Surface Transportation Policy Project in Washington.

“The data is even more sobering for children,” said Roy Kienitz, the group’s executive director. “Many of those who die are children killed by cars as they play or walk home from school.”

Despite the dangers, Kienitz said, “few federal dollars are being used to improve pedestrian safety.”

Although many more child pedestrians--837--were killed by vehicles in 1996, it was the 23 children killed by air bags that led to federal and congressional investigations, the report notes.

Unsafe streets, especially in residential neighborhoods, should be dealt with as a “national transportation safety priority on par with automobile and railroad program safety,” Kienitz’s group recommends in its report.

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The problem is more than a matter of people driving aggressively or carelessly.

“National deaths and injuries to pedestrians are the result of a transportation system gone badly wrong--a system focused on making our streets more convenient for speeding vehicles, but more dangerous for those on foot,” the “Mean Streets” report reads.

Roadway engineering and design are focused on creating roads to carry the maximum number of vehicles at high speed. Our car culture even thrives on speed. Just look at automobile ads, which feature cars and trucks zooming along city streets or treacherous mountain roads. The message, unintended or not: It’s cool to speed.

Those who have witnessed vehicles flying past their homes at double the posted limit know how dangerous neighborhood roads have become.

What’s especially troubling is when residents realize that it’s their own neighbors who are violating the traffic laws: soccer moms and dads with sport-utilities full of kids, carloads of teenagers, harried commuters trying to cut a couple of minutes off their morning drive. They carelessly speed within a few feet of children playing on sidewalks and whiz by elderly people waiting at crosswalks.

Rushed and distracted, many seem oblivious to the 25-mph speed limit. Others blow the limit because they believe there’s little risk of getting ticketed in neighborhoods. And when they are stopped, they sometimes take great offense.

LAPD Officer Mike Partain, baffled by the arrogance of some motorists, recalls encounters with drivers who simply refuse to acknowledge that they’ve done anything wrong and instead accuse him of trying to get his ticket “quota” for the day.

Even if he only issues an oral warning rather than a ticket, Partain says, such drivers often argue and feel insulted. Some motorists become so combative and unwilling to accept that their behavior was unsafe, he says, “I’d end up ticketing them.”

Although education and roadway design and engineering play their parts in keeping residential streets safe, police enforcement is critical in curbing speeders and careless drivers, Kienitz and other safety advocates contend.

“Better enforcement of existing traffic laws seems reasonable,” Kienitz said. But the “impression has been . . . in some areas that there’s not enough police presence.”

Obviously, police can’t be there every time a car or truck blasts down the street in excess of the speed limit. Budgets and staffing limit how much police power can be devoted to traffic enforcement.

But if curbing road rage and preventing traffic fatalities are goals, it would seem only logical to spend more money on stopping reckless behavior before it ends in injuries and deaths.

Like most police and sheriff’s departments, the California Highway Patrol does not track oral warnings given to drivers, says CHP spokeswoman Wendy Moore.

Citations, obviously, are recorded. But if a speeding driver is stopped and given an oral warning, no record of it is entered into a law enforcement database, Moore says.

So what happens if you’ve got a habitual speeder who pushes the limits? He could get a dozen verbal warnings, but there would be no record to tip off the next officer who pulls him over.

“If they’re speeding all the time and driving recklessly, they’ll get written up eventually,” said Lt. Hector Rivera, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

But that could be after the habitual speeder has mowed down some youngster at a crosswalk.

Indeed, studies in the U.S., Canada and Australia have found that a driver’s risk of a crash increases in direct proportion to the number of times the driver has been cited for speed violations, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in Arlington, Va.

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Communities can take action to cut traffic problems in neighborhoods, Kienitz says. In fact, highway safety funds available for pedestrian safety projects are going unspent in some states, according to researchers at the Surface Transportation Policy Project.

On average, the “Mean Streets” report says, just 1% of funds spent by states on safety projects are directed at pedestrian safety, even though 12% of traffic deaths and injuries in the U.S. are suffered by pedestrians.

Kienitz and other safety proponents say a new federal transportation bill would enable communities to get more funding to keep streets safe. Surveys to identify and aid problem neighborhoods, increased enforcement of speed limits and changes in road design to slow traffic could all be implemented, the project recommends.

The National Safe Kids Campaign in Washington, another group concerned about children and traffic safety, reminds drivers and parents that children are “particularly vulnerable to pedestrian death because they are exposed to traffic threats that exceed their cognitive, developmental, behavioral, physical and sensory abilities.”

To protect children and adults, as well as make neighborhoods better places to live, Safe Kids recommends “traffic-calming measures” that include strict enforcement of neighborhood speed limits, stiffer penalties for violators, reduced curbside parking and lowering speed limits.

Jeanne Wright cannot answer mail personally but will attempt to respond in this column to automotive questions of general interest. Write to Your Wheels, Business Section, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. Via e-mail: highway1@latimes.com.