Traffic Safety Should Be Priority

San Fernando Valley streets were not really made for speeding, but that’s not the way many drivers see things. Wide and straight with longer distances between stoplights than the rest of the city, streets here all too often bring out the race car driver within. No wonder the Valley is home to eight of the 19 city intersections with the worst accident records.

Given how much time Angelenos spend in their cars, traffic safety should be a top priority. Indeed, Los Angeles Police Department studies show that motorists want cops to issue more tickets for bad driving. (Of course, the same motorists say it’s other drivers who deserve those tickets.) Residents surveyed considered speeders to be as much a threat to public safety as drugs and violent crime and ahead of youth gangs.

So when city planners late last month released the report on dangerous intersections, the LAPD had the right response: Speed. In less than a week--and just hours after a Los Angeles City Council panel called for action--the department announced it would switch 40 officers from patrol to traffic enforcement. The expanded enforcement staff, which will concentrate on the 19 intersections, will be in place by July 1.

The city’s Transportation Department needs to act just as quickly to apply engineering fixes. The department is running a three-year backlog in installing new signals. But waiting three years is simply unacceptable. The number of accidents increased 4% from 1997 to 1999, reversing an earlier downward trend. How much more will the rate increase in three years?

Installing protected left-turn signals or increasing the time that all signals stay red between signal changes can help cut down on the number of accidents. The report released late last month identifies the priorities; the Transportation Department needs to do the same.