Police, Lawmakers Tackle Valley Traffic Problems at Summit

The pictures in Michele Sapper’s photo album are stark and disquieting.

You see the faces of her family crowded around her hospital bed as she lay comatose after a drunk driver plowed head-on into her car. You see the bandages and tubes to her body.

“I was killed on impact, brought back to life by CPR and in a coma for two months,” Sapper recalled of that night 16 years ago. “Then a new Michele was born.”

Defying doctors’ predictions, Sapper went on to finish college and today helps educate Los Angeles police officers about drunk drivers. Though she still struggles with the effects of the crash--her speech is slow and slurred, her walk is measured--Sapper, 37, silenced a roomful of Los Angeles police officers, lawmakers and experts Monday at a San Fernando Valley traffic summit at the Airtel Hotel in Van Nuys.

LAPD officials said 61 people have died on Valley streets this year and, with the holidays approaching, the region is on track to reach last year’s total of 74. Speeding is the usual culprit, and drivers turn the Valley’s broad, often six-lane streets into makeshift freeways.

More deaths and injuries in the Valley are the result of traffic accidents than all violent crimes combined, including homicides, LAPD officials said.

Everywhere he goes in the region, traffic is the top issue, said LAPD Deputy Chief Michael Bostic, who heads the department’s Valley Bureau.

“This place is the wild, wild West,” Bostic told the audience of about 300 on Monday. “I’ve never seen people drive like they do here.”

While traffic motorcycle officers often write 15 to 20 tickets a day, patrol cars may cite just one or two offenders a month, Bostic said. One goal is to make traffic enforcement a priority for all Valley police officers. “I want drivers in the Valley to be as afraid of black and whites [patrol cars] as they are motorcycle cops,” he said.

Traffic deaths strike a personal chord with Bostic, as well.

As a Lakewood teenager, he escaped death as a passenger but lost his best friend when a drunken driver hit their car. Many years ago, Bostic’s brother was killed in a crosswalk by a motorist, and his former LAPD partner died in an accident while on patrol.

It doesn’t surprise Capt. Greg Meyer of the LAPD’s Valley Traffic Division to see people flying along some northern stretches of Balboa Boulevard at 80 mph. Nor is it a surprise when drivers get ticketed on Victory Boulevard for going 70 mph. Whether accidents occur at left turns, busy intersections or crosswalks, they’re usually caused people in a hurry, Meyer said.

The toll is evident every day in hospital emergency rooms, said Dr. Ed Lowder, an emergency room doctor at Northridge Hospital Medical Center. The task of trying to save battered and burned bodies seems to stem from human choices: speeding, deciding to drink and drive, a moment of distraction, he said.

“It has made me a more defensive driver,” Lowder said.