Accident Prevention

Nearly a year after Woodland Hills teen-ager Adam Bischoff drowned in the storm-swollen Los Angeles River, city and county officials on Wednesday unveiled a program for Los Angeles County schools aimed at preventing children from dying in flood-control channels.

Former rodeo rider and jockey Kim Terry has been around all sorts of animals his whole life, but it's the wild burros that have snorted and kicked their way into his heart. He loves their moxie, respects their survival skills and is smitten with what he calls their "fantastic personalities." "Just don't get behind them," he advised recently as he prepared to flush a dozen or so from a holding pen. Terry let rip with a sharp "heyaaaah!" and charged them, swinging a long blue stick.

Dana Carr Balchunas sat on the floor in a Washington row house, a stuffed suitcase within easy reach and two babies crawling nearby. Two couples and their child-care providers, seated around the family room, listened intently as she talked. When one of the infants grabbed a small toy with beads, Balchunas seized the opportunity to drive home a point. That toy, she stressed, is an accident waiting to happen.

Time was if you needed a baby-sitter and couldn't grab Grandma, you'd rustle some quarters out of your apron, set out a bag of potato chips and call over the fence to the kid next door. But in today's vast, seething and rootless society, where both parents spend more waking time at work than at home, where families are extended across the country and you don't know anyone more than two doors away, traditional sitters are tough to find.

Jumping into a swimming pool is a popular way to beat the heat, but parks and recreation officials want to make sure swimmers use caution while keeping cool. Swimming, lifesaving and first-aid techniques will be demonstrated during Splish Splash Fun Faire '99, a daylong water-safety awareness event at all Los Angeles city and county public pools beginning at 12:30 p.m. Sunday.

Amid concerns about an increase in traffic accidents, Los Angeles officials proposed Friday to fix 19 city intersections with the worst accident records, eight of which are in the San Fernando Valley. The focus on dangerous intersections stems from concern over a 4% increase in accidents from 1997 to 1999, reversing an earlier downward trend.

Among the thousands of trees that dot Southern California's landscape, perhaps none symbolizes the region more than the palm tree. With their stately trunks and thick, flowery masses of fronds, they liven up the urban scenery and offer a tropical atmosphere. But when not maintained properly, palm trees can also create a deadly fire hazard--literally exploding into flames in a matter of minutes, according to fire officials.

Federal safety officials called for railroads to install cameras and voice recorders in every locomotive cab in the nation as they publicly warned Thursday that cellphone texting by engineers and conductors was a growing and lethal danger. The call came as members of the National Transportation Safety Board publicly concluded their investigation into the deadly collision of a commuter train and a freight train in Chatsworth in 2008 -- a crash they blamed on a Metrolink engineer who passed a stop signal as he sent a message from his phone.

The Federal Aviation Administration, attempting to reduce near collisions on the nation's runways, announced Monday that John Wayne and 24 other medium-size airports have been chosen for installation of a new ground radar system. The announcement by FAA Administrator Jane Garvey came at the opening of a three-day national meeting on improving runway safety.

Nick LeBlanc rues his reckless youth. Back when he was 16, he bought an old Chevy pickup and took a girl he liked out for a ride down a country road on a summer night. Just as he reached over to turn down the radio, he hit a telephone pole. The girl bounced braces-first off the dashboard and into the windshield. She split her lower lip. "After that night, she didn't want nothing to do with me," he says. The patrolman who had been tailing his speeding vehicle wasn't very forgiving either.