Go After the Problem, Not the Pedestrian

I could have been killed in Santa Ana the other night.

I stepped carefully into a crosswalk on Standard Avenue at Hobart Street, the very intersection used by hundreds of schoolchildren every day. A cautious car in the nearest lane slowed down, but another one pulled out from behind, gunned his engine and lunged toward the crosswalk in the middle lane.

When he realized I was right in front of him, he slammed his brakes and stopped in time.

But then, unbelievably, an impatient woman at the wheel of a black compact swerved from behind the second car, crossed into oncoming lanes, and squealed to a stop when she finally saw me.

I was beginning to feel like a duck in a shooting gallery. The crazy driver honked and scowled at the motorist who had halted her hell-bent commute during rush hour. I finished crossing and she sped away.

My reporting for the day was over. I now had a firsthand look at why Santa Ana ranks as the deadliest city for pedestrians in Southern California.

During the 1990s, the rate of death and injury went from bad to worse for people on foot in Orange County’s largest and densest city. In 1997, Santa Ana jumped to second place for pedestrian casualties in the state, leaping ahead of San Francisco.

The carnage continued last year. On one bloody day in December, five pedestrians were hit by cars in Santa Ana, including a first-grader killed on his way to school. A crossing guard was also slightly injured that day at the very spot I tested on Standard, a virtual drag strip right in front of Madison Elementary School.

The most tragic fact is that most pedestrian casualties are suffered by the very young and the very old.

Recently, Santa Ana and UC Irvine teamed up to find ways to prevent these frequent tragedies. But I discovered that these well-meaning partners don’t agree on the best way to reduce the city’s risk of walking.

Are the pedestrians at fault? Or should we target the motorists who hit them?

Police appeared to lay the blame at the feet of people on foot. This month they started a crackdown on jaywalkers and crosswalk violators.

The cops even suggested that recent immigrants are unfamiliar with rules regarding jaywalking and crosswalk safety. And since some don’t drive, newcomers may not be used to how a driver reacts.

Immigrants from the moon, maybe.

All the immigrants I’ve ever met are pretty good on their feet. Once here, it’s true that many of them don’t drive. But blame that on their budgets.

“This isn’t an immigrant problem,” said Madison’s principal, Marti Baker. “People know it doesn’t do them any good to stand here at Standard, because nobody stops for them.”

Slapping pedestrians with citations is not the solution, agree researchers at UC Irvine’s Pediatric Injury Prevention Research Group. Because the people most likely to get tickets--working adults--are the ones least likely to be hit by a car.

It’s much more effective to target the hostile environment, not the people walking around in it. That means cars must slow down, to start with.

UCI’s new Pediatric Safety Initiative will use Santa Ana as an urban lab to develop other ways to reduce pedestrian injuries, especially to Latino kids who are three times more likely than non-Latinos to be injured by a car in Orange County.

Santa Ana is a city always on its feet. I dare say no other town in Southern California has so many people on the ground, day in and day out. In other places, you can drive for miles and not see a soul on the street. That skews the stats from the get-go: You can’t hit pedestrians who aren’t there.

But spend some time on Santa Ana’s sidewalks and you’ll rub shoulders with its residents.

Old ladies and baby-sitters at bus stops. Pairs and trios of teenagers with backpacks on half-hour marches to their high schools. Mothers pushing shopping carts and baby carriages, which sometimes are one and the same. Men in drab clothing trudging home in the dark after work at factories and construction sites.

And kids, kids everywhere. Kids on skates. Kids on tricycles. Kids sprinting and darting around parked cars on the pavement that doubles as their playground.

On my recent visit, I encountered pedestrians the moment I got out of my car. I saw Erica Diaz, 17, coming my way down Hobart Street in front of Madison School. While still at a distance, the well-dressed Century High School student stepped off the sidewalk and very purposefully cut across the street to the other side.

I had found my first jaywalker. If I wanted an interview, I knew I’d have to break the law too. I looked both ways, then jaywalked to intercept her just a few doors from her house. Her 4-year-old sister, Celeste, ran up to meet her and clung to her skirt.

I asked Erica, a junior who’s bilingual, why so many people get hit in Santa Ana. Don’t they know the rules?

“Dumb people get hit,” she said with a smirk. “You should look before you cross.”

Suddenly, she noticed that her sister had started dancing and twirling dangerously close to the curb. “Celeste!” she snapped sternly to call the girl back.

“Cops do as much as they can,” Erica said. “It’s the parents’ responsibility to take care of the kids.”

For almost this entire decade, parents have been clamoring for a stoplight at that dangerous intersection near Madison School. They used to rally on the campus, charter buses to take them to City Council meetings and lobby behind the scenes through advocacy groups.

They got nowhere. They’re still trying, but the city has said there’s not enough reason or not enough money, or both, to install a $130,000 stoplight there.

Cpl. Eric Mattke, who’s in charge of the Police Department’s new pedestrian-safety program, says he’s often studied that intersection. He told me he still doesn’t think enough cars pass the spot to meet the standards for a stoplight. The city reports no pedestrian accidents there in 1996 and 1997.

Mattke deserves a lot of credit for his concern, though. During one January roll call, he asked his motorcycle cops for volunteers to develop the city’s new safety program. Nobody did, so he took the project on himself.

Later, Officer Paul Hayes stepped forward to lead the Pedestrian Accident Reduction Team, composed of four motorcycle cops. Hayes is an “immigrant” from New York who knows a thing or two about ornery pedestrians who walk where and when they want to.

In the first seven days of March, the team issued 231 citations in the downtown area. Only one went to a motorist, for failing to yield to a woman and two small children on Main Street.

Still, Mattke promises to focus on vehicles too. This week, officers will start going out as pedestrians to catch reckless drivers.

“It’s both sides who are at fault,” the corporal said. “Unfortunately, the pedestrian is the one that loses.”

Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com.