Traffic Safety

Drunk driving deaths in California dropped for a third straight year in 2008, the state Office of Traffic Safety said Thursday, but motorcycle fatalities continued a decade-long rise, mirroring a national increase. Overall, traffic deaths dropped by 14% in 2008, to 3,434, the state said, using figures released last month by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Alcohol- related deaths accounted for slightly less than one-third of the total, and were down 9.1% -- a slightly smaller decline than for the nation as a whole.

WASHINGTON — More than 21/2 years after the fatal crash of a Lexus in suburban San Diego led to the recall of millions of Toyota vehicles, federal regulators are taking their most significant step to prevent future vehicles from accelerating out of control. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration formally proposed a requirement Thursday that automakers include a brake-throttle override system in all their passenger cars and light trucks to help drivers regain control when a vehicle accelerates suddenly.

Actor Gary Busey, whose 1978 performance in "The Buddy Holly Story" won an Academy Award nomination, was critically injured Sunday in a motorcycle accident in Culver City, police said. Busey, 44, of Malibu, was driving west on Washington Boulevard near Robertson Boulevard at 11:40 a.m. when his Harley-Davidson motorcycle fell to the ground, Culver City Police Sgt. Karin Reagan said. "He was thrown off, and the back of his head struck the curb," Reagan said. "He was not wearing a helmet."

The road through Hopewell, Va., isn't exactly paved with gold, but a mile-and-a-half stretch of interstate generated $2-million worth of speeding tickets for the town last year - and a fight between the AAA and the local sheriff.  AAA Mid-Atlantic, decrying "heavy-handed traffic enforcement tactics," said the 14,000 tickets written last year for a stretch of Interstate 295 through the town "appears to be about more than safety. " The speed limit is 70 mph. Sheriff Greg Anderson said officers won't write up tickets until a driver is going a minimum of 81 miles an hour.

A lot of people don't like to read, panic at taking a written test and have never quite understood what all those yellow lines on the road mean. Those are a lot of the folks you share the highway with in California. When it's time to take the California driver's test for a license renewal, one-third of the drivers flunk the exam given in English. Among aspiring drivers who have never taken the exam before, 50% fail. People taking the test in Spanish for renewal do even worse, with 80% flunking.

A deceptively straight and smooth highway tempts drivers to go too fast through this postcard picture of rural California, where cows meander in the foothills and tractors harvest grain on the valley floor. The results have been fatal time and again on California 46, where actor James Dean died more than four decades ago. Five more deaths this month bring the grisly total to 31 since 1992 on the two-lane stretch of highway known as Blood Alley.

I protest and take strong exception to the style, content and conclusions of The Times' Valley Edition editorial titled "Self-Policing Is Best Traffic Ticket," Sept. 29. This editorial is the most egregious example of garbage journalism I've read in a long time, and I read a lot. The unnamed author of this jewel is repeatedly guilty of making statements where unsubstantiated conclusions are put forth as the correct interpretation of inadequate data. From this supposedly informative editorial, look at some examples: "Local motorists actually want traffic cops to issue more tickets."

Briana Llamas stopped, looked and listened before crossing the streets of a miniature city set up on the playground Thursday at Pacoima Elementary School. The third-grader and hundreds of her classmates walked through the display -- complete with buildings, houses, streets, crosswalks and vehicles -- making sure to carefully observe stop signs, traffic signals and railroad crossings. The temporary display is the centerpiece of "KIDSTEPS!

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.

As far as the safety of the westbound Riverside and northbound Santa Ana freeways interchange, I must disagree with Caltrans spokeswoman Deborah Harris (March 19). I travel north on the Santa Ana Freeway through that spot every day, usually around 2 p.m., when traffic is flowing around 45 mph. The merge and acceleration zone for those coming from the westbound Riverside Freeway to the northbound Santa Ana Freeway is way too short. Although I get off at the Manchester offramp, 100 yards past the Riverside Freeway ramp, I move to the middle lane to avoid the merging traffic.

Federal safety investigators have announced their second probe in less than a week involving fires starting in the driver's side doors of vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it had opened an investigation into reports of fires in 2006-07 Chevrolet Trailblazers manufactured by General Motors Co. Last week, the agency said it was looking into the cause of fires in 2007 model year Toyota Camry sedans and RAV-4 sport utility vehicles. In both cases, the agency said it appeared that the fires started in the power window master switch on the door.

In 2008, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a study examining fatal accidents in which a car's air bag should have deployed but didn't. The most common reason wasn't poor manufacturing by automakers. It was that the air bag was simply missing, never replaced after a previous crash. The numbers weren't large, averaging 51 accidents a year nationwide over the five years studied. But that doesn't mean there's no cause for concern. Who knows how many more cars are on the road without air bags?

Federal safety regulators are looking into reports that the 2006 model year Toyota Highlander hybrid SUV is prone to stalling. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it has received 32 complaints from drivers alleging incidents of the vehicle stalling unexpectedly. About two-thirds of the incidents occurred at speeds of 40 mph or more. In most of the cases, the vehicles could not be restarted and had to be taken in for service. NHTSA said on its website Tuesday that the complaints apparently are increasing, with all but one received within the last year.

An investigation into sudden acceleration in Toyota and Lexus vehicles by the nation's space agency is expected to report Tuesday that no significant electronic defects have been found, though the issue requires continued monitoring, according to automotive electronics and safety experts. The NASA report was commissioned by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration after thousands of owners complained that their Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles accelerated unexpectedly, causing dozens of deaths.

Motorists and passengers in California, Oregon and Washington state have the highest seat-belt use in the country, according to a new report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Oregon ? where nearly 94% of people said they always wore a seat belt ? ranked No. 1, according to a CDC telephone survey. California was close behind in self-reported seat belt use at 93.2%, followed by Washington state at 92%. All three states have strict enforcement of safety belt laws ?

Four children were dead on an Oklahoma highway. It was a crash scene so horrific that Jim Hall, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, flew down from Washington to oversee the investigation. He spotted one of his engineers fiddling with some computer chips. "I asked him what he was doing," Hall recalled. "And he told me he was trying to download some data, that he had found a black box. " Until that day in 1994, Hall had not known that automakers were quietly installing black boxes, also known as event data recorders or EDRs, and encrypting the data.

Kids can learn the rules of the road in a program conducted by police. The miniature "Safety Town," which opened Friday, teaches children ages 4 to 7 about traffic safety. Traffic officers and Explorers from the Oxnard Police Department use interactive techniques to illustrate the significance of traffic signs, proper street crossing, bicycle safety and more. Officers will also be on hand to fingerprint children and take their pictures for identification purposes.

The City Council will hold a "study session" today to discuss the operations of the Sheriff's Department in Malibu and to review the department's concerns about safety problems on Pacific Coast Highway. The primary purpose of the meeting is to educate new council members about Sheriff's Department services, said City Manager Harry Peacock. In addition, deputies will provide information about traffic safety issues on PCH, he said.

Driver complaints to federal highway safety regulators soared this year, spurred by a slew of Toyota Motor Corp. recalls and a rush by other automakers to announce fix-it campaigns that focused the public's attention on auto defects. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration received more than 40,000 complaints through Dec. 14, according to an analysis by automotive research firm Edmunds.com. That's four times the volume of recent years. "People are now more aware that there is an agency called NHTSA and that you can complain to it. Complaints are a good thing," said Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety.

At first glance, this quaint old mining town looks like many others that dot the hills and canyons of this mountainous state. There are old brick storefronts, quaint Victorian homes on the hillsides and winding, narrow lanes corkscrewing up to the sky. But instead of Lycra-clad fun-seekers and shabby-chic shops, Black Hawk is filled with tour buses and casinos. And this summer, the town took an unprecedented step for a mountain community here — it banned bicycles from its main streets.