by Jennifer O'Connell | Oct 16, 2019 | Auto Accident, Colorado, Kentucky, Tennessee
Climate Change: A Total Hottie
Let’s assume for a moment that the hoax of climate change is real. Now that we’ve gotten over that little speedbump, raise your hand if you’ve slogged through an airport recently, searching for the least crowded bar serving $14 well drinks, all thanks to Mother Nature’s insistence that your flight be delayed or canceled. Many of us know this tale so well that it’s beginning to feel like Groundhogs Day, but without the benefit of having Bill Murray join us in our plight… not that he’d be exempt. In fact, just this year there have been so many delays and cancellations due to weather that finding an estimated number just for DIA puts Google to the test. It makes sense to most of us that two bomb cyclones in a single year may put a damper on some snow-birding south or snowboarding west. But summer can be just as brutal. “Heat wave” has become common vernacular in parts of the country where the term was previously used for body temps and songs on that dusty vinyl rescued from your mom’s attic, not for transportation. What does 1960’s Motown have to do with travel and climate change? Everything. According to a 2017 article in Forbes magazine, Bombardier CRJ’s can only withstand 118 degrees and larger Boeing jets can’t get much past 125 in order to operate properly. Why? Remember in 3rd grade when you were just learning to write those “check yes or no” notes to your crush while your teacher was desperately trying to teach you how to get an egg into a 2-Liter using just a match? Call her and thank her for explaining to the 8-year-old you why the… ahem… more distinguished version of yourself should start exploring alternatives to air travel. Or call the National Weather Service to inquire as to the accuracy of their early-August report showing near-nationwide heatwaves with temperatures inching closer to forced “stay-cations.”
Road Trip!
Think you’ll out-smart nature and finally see Route 66 from start to finish? Au contraire! In July of this year, the National Weather Service warned of heat waves one week and cold fronts with flash flooding and damaging winds the next. So if the buckled roads don’t squelch your determination, the rushing waters of the Plains States just might. Angry at our wrath-bearing planet? Watch that finger-pointing. All that air transportation we’ve been suffering cancellations is really turn-about finally becoming fair play, according to the New York Times. A June article written by Andy Newman cited scientific conclusions such this: One 2,500-mile passenger’s contribution to emissions melts 32 square feet of Arctic summer sea ice. And a 600-mile drive to an Airbnb with a peaceful spa tub might as well be a giant flame-thrower to the Arctic, melting 90 square feet of ice per person. That’s a chunk the size of our beloved Jeep Unlimiteds. Want to get especially gruesome? A scientist from my Alma mater, University of Tennessee – where the rumor of dead bodies under Neyland Stadium and a body farm just across the river is true – estimated that the average American generates three times the global average of carbon dioxide annually, a lethal dosage to the third rock we live atop.
Cruisin’
Alright, then. No road trips, no sky miles. Let’s all just charge the gangway of the closest cruise ship and take “King of the World” selfies with Celine songs in the background and shuffleboard games taking on SEC vs Big Ten-esque rivalries. That should solve both our transportation and climate problems with one shuffle of the board… is that what it’s called? Except… according to the International Council on Clean Transportation, the most efficient ships sailing the seven seas emit 3 to 4 times more carbon dioxide than those pesky jets. And if you’re still set on shopping at the dockside markets of Jamaica, keep your face mask handy while on board. Particulate counts on cruise ships are comparable to – or worse than – the air quality in Beijing. Alas, how can we safely see the planet and save it at the same time? It seems the experts agree: prioritize, protest, and offset. Prioritize your travel, opting for the less-emitting road trip over the flight, the flight over the cruise. And before kicking those tires and lighting those fires, toss some cash towards offsetting sites to make up for your contribution to polar bear homelessness. Throw your money into methane emanations instead of into the pockets of the worst offenders. It’s the eco-version of “Be kind. Rewind.”
by Jennifer O'Connell | Oct 15, 2019 | Auto Accident, Bicycle Accident, Brain Injury, Colorado, DUI, Motorcycle Accident, Pedestrian Accident, Personal Injury, Trucking Accident
Current State of Denver Roads
If you haven’t seen the signs or the persistent social media posts about Vision Zero, then you have definitely seen changing road shapes around the Denver Metro area. Extra bike lanes are going in, barriers between motor and bike lanes are building up, speed barriers are popping up, and speed limits are dropping. This is all part of Denver Public Work’s efforts to stamp out traffic collisions and deaths, bringing the later to “Zero.” According to the City and County of Denver, an auto collision has a 40% Chance of causing serious or fatal injury at 30 mph. That stat, however, skyrockets to 73% just by increasing the speed to 40 mph. In the Denver city limits, as of October 12, 63 people have died in collisions, and since 2016, 41% of those were due to speed. Fatalities have continued to increase every single year for the last nine years. Of the 63 fatalities so far this year, 2 were cyclists, 17 were pedestrians, 15 were motorcyclists, and 29 were vehicle occupants.
Denver Vision Zero has set a county-wide goal to have zero traffic deaths by 2030. Rather, though, than simply announce a lofty goal and simply flash stats on overhead announcement boards on the highways, the City and County of Denver have enacted an Action Plan to take proactive steps towards the goal. The first step involved analysis. Vision Zero members analyzed not only fatal collisions themselves looking for causes, but they also constructed a map of the areas within the county lines at which there were serious or fatal collisions over the last six years. You can find this map below or interact by clicking here. You can clearly note roads like Federal, Colfax, and 6th Avenue lighting up like a light-bright as hotbeds for major collisions. In fact, an ancillary map highlighting just the routes labeled High Injury Network zones (HIM), shows that while these roads account for only 5% of Denver streets, the account for 37% of fatal collisions and 40% of serious injuries. And county-wide, motor-vehicle collisions account for twice the number of deaths than homicide. In fact, traffic collisions are the #2 leading cause of hospitalizations in Denver County.
It is also interesting to note that Vision Zero identified that most collisions in these HIN routes are crashes happening near schools and in neighborhoods primarily comprised of lower income, disabled, and elderly citizens. In these areas, speed, aggressive driving, distracted driving, and impaired driving were the top causes of serious and fatal collisions.
What are the next steps in the Action Plan?
The five priorities within the action plan, laid out for the public here, are:
- Enhance City Processes and Collaboration
- Build Safe Streets for Everyone
- Create Safe Speeds
- Promote a Culture of Safety
- Improve Data and Be Transparent
How does this translate into increased safety and less traffic collisions?
To the city and county government, enhancing city processes and collaboration includes adding departments within local governments focused primarily on traffic safety, including studies, economic appropriation, and governmental reaction to tragedies. And the “building safe streets for everyone” phase is already visible in many neighborhoods. Vision Zero has already begun re-configuring streets and intersections to reduce speed, enhance bicycle and pedestrian detection, and improving light and visibility at crossings. A part of phase two is also significant enough to the effort for Vision Zero to make a separately delineated phase. Creating safer speeds city-wide has begun in several parts, with greater speed enforcement, lower speed limits in neighborhoods and school zones, and street design changes to create safer cycling and walking lanes and force lower speeds for vehicles though the use of barriers and speed bumps.
The next phase seems tricky, and it is the opinion of Queener Law that the city has failed already in some aspects of the promotion of a culture of safety. When e-bikes and scooters hit the streets of Denver, the city was behind the eight-ball with education and regulation. Since then, the city has tripped over itself, releasing multiple complicated ordinances for how these multi-modal measures should interact with other established traffic, and education of the community has failed in spade. Traffic collisions involving scooters and bikes have continued to rise. Vision Zero intends to correct those mistakes, and make better efforts to educate and make available alternate modes of travel outside of driving. It is the opinion of the Vision Zero team that multi-modal methods will not only reduce traffic, but they should also reduce traffic deaths, aggressive and impaired drivers from occupying the road, and give a broad range of safe methods of transportation to the HIN zones.
Finally, Vision Zero does not intend to rest on the current data and act accordingly. They are making a promise to the community to continue the analysis and make honest reports to the public of the successes, failures, or stagnation of their efforts. Many more details of the Action Plan are available here. And Queener Law occupies a position on the Mobility Council for the Downtown Denver Partnership, an organization that tasks itself with advising local leaders of what our community members are thinking and feeling about the government’s actions with regards to safety. Take a look at what the local government has planned for your neighborhood, and let us know your thoughts. Queener Law will take them back to the Partnership and push for the government to be advised. We will ensure the government hears us, and therefore hears you, about our collective safety. Traffic collisions are not an inevitability. How do you think we can prevent them?
by Jennifer O'Connell | Feb 22, 2019 | Auto Accident, Colorado
I-25: Gridlock Defined
Ever driven on I-25? Then enough said. CDOT has heard our continuous gripes, as well as the stats on the horrific number of wrecks that happen at the 6th Avenue/Auraria interchange. Plans are being made to address the gridlock, and CDOT has requested that the community participate. Click here to participate in the survey regarding the project that is set to span from Santa Fe to 20th Street.
For more Colorado-related traffic and mobility concerns, check click here. And for more about how we can help, click here.
by Jennifer O'Connell | Feb 20, 2019 | Auto Accident, Colorado
In a War Between Hovercraft and Scooters, Who Wins?
Hovercraft, self-driving vehicles, autonomous buses — all modern innovations touted by the Tech Gods as the next greatest technology to hit our city streets. Just weeks ago, Tesla and other innovators debuted their versions of Jetsons-like vehicles in blue-print and digital formats at tech-gatherings across the world. And we’ve all seen YouTube videos of autonomous vehicle testing, or even experienced some of the early models on the road already. These forward-thinkers tout their devices as mechanisms of safety and traffic avoidance, as well as a mobility-method gentler to our Earth.
In fact, Denver was supposed to have its own test track for hovercraft, originally scheduled to open in 2018 by Arrivo.
Planned for just off of E-470, the testing facility was awarded $267,000 by the Colorado Office of Economic Development, according to an article published in the Denver Business Journal on February 19, 2019, but the company would only collect upon making good on their promise to bring 152 jobs to Commerce City. The company was unable to do so, and the project folded. The slow-roll of development, along with the generalized fear in the community of the safety of putting our lives in the proverbial hands of an unmanned machine or literal space-age technology just to get us to work and the grocery store, has had a major impact on the viability of these techie dreams. While the prophets of innovation are busy in their labs developing up-to-the-minute innovation, something much simpler and childhood-reminiscent has snuck into the hands of their target demographic and onto roads, sidewalks, and greenways alike.
“Micromobility” is now the name of the game.
Scooters and dockless-e-bikes are popping up like whack-a-moles on every city block in most major cities in the country. Consumers ranging from teens out for joyrides to executives escaping the gridlock morning commute are coasting alongside the rest of us still relegated to our gas-guzzlers and gas emitters. Much like the questions surrounding how to manage hover-craft safety, or even how they would be kept in their lane, the same seems to be going unanswered about the more micro methods already hitting our streets.
Denver is tackling these issues head on while simultaneously promoting the use of these alternate methods of work commuting.
At the beginning of this year, an ordinance went into effect in Denver City banning the use of scooters on sidewalks after an outcry from pedestrians who have had less than glowing reports of their shared sidewalk experiences. Additionally, the city has teamed up with B-Cycle to offer free memberships to the bike rental program in order to revitalize its use and encourage more traffic-goers to leave the ever-becoming outdated four-wheeled transport at home and take up the open-aired, two-wheeled transport. Denver is also combining its efforts to promote micro-mobility with other forms of public transit. Along with partnering with Panasonic to launch a driver-less bus to assist transit from Aurora to Denver International Airport, Denver is also working with Uber to incorporate RTD locations and schedules into its ride-share app to encourage Denverites to use Uber’s services as a gap-filler to the already existing light rail system. Denver is also making efforts to cooperate with Xcel Energy to add docking stations for electric vehicles around the city for a more energy efficient and climate-friendly commute.
All of these measures are aimed at attacking one of the most significant issues for Denver citizens, aka voters — traffic. The Denver Metro population has risen 30% in the last five years in the downtown area alone. Denver ranks 17th in the use of public transit for work commutes of major US cities. Transit commutes amount to only 6.8% for Denver workers, while 70.2% of Denver Metro residents drive alone to work. And only 2.3% of residents bike to work. Tesla and friends have suggested that hovering autos and self-driving vehicles will allow more space in the morning gridlock and more safety in high-traffic conditions. But their overall “alien” presentation to consumers combined with their molasses-like development have allowed for the swift promulgation of micro-mobility and alternatives to the old four-wheeled approach. And cities like Denver have received these substitutions with open arms. The more popular the current options become, the steeper the climb will be for innovators to launch profitable tech-commutes.
At the end of the day, we should always remain cognizant of what’s most important — safety of our community and the health of our world.
Whether scooters become more popular than hover-crafts or automated vehicles remain much more frightening than developers counted on, if these modernizations prove to protect us and our planet, we cannot be remiss in giving them due consideration. With an eye to the future, safety, and the global heartbeat, there are assuredly exciting days to come.
by Jennifer O'Connell | Feb 15, 2019 | Auto Accident, Colorado
Citations Down, Fatalities Up. Whodunnit?
On Friday, February 1, Denver Police Officers hit the highways, sweeping for speeders in what they refer to as a “saturation patrol.” And according to Jon Murray at The Denver Post, officers cited 101 drivers and warned 21 others. The average radar clock: 80 mph. The winner of the day: 110mph.
The Denver Police Department recently released stats showing that since 2009, the number of traffic citations in the county has dropped 45%, even though the population has increased by 20% over the same time period. Does this mean that all these outsiders flocking to this mountainous desert paradise are better drivers than the natives, or they at least speed less? Allow this stat to answer the question: the number of traffic-related deaths in Denver is at its highest level in a decade and the number of traffic collisions has risen 17% since 2013, according to the Denver Police Department. Is the lack of citations the cause? Or maybe police staffing? According to Murray’s article in the Post, its much more complicated than this. What appears to have occurred is an increase in population — no surprise — coupled with an increase in staffing at the Denver Police Department, which should suggest that the problem is being addressed. So why the increase in fatalities and injuries ?
Murray surmises the cause as follows: while more officers are employed by the Department, less are being directed to traffic. Their expertise is being put to other uses, such as crowd and traffic control vs patrol and other more crime-related duties. Being of the mind of our industry, we at Queener Law can’t help but also consider that the glaring increase in traffic collisions is also a culprit in and of itself.
It’s a Simple Formula:
More people + less road safety patrols = more wrecks. More wrecks + less road safety officers = more officers working scenes of wrecks and less patrolling.
Thus the dangerous spiral begins. Murray cited several public safety personnel and city officials as sharing in our concern. They offered current efforts to assign private groups to respond to collisions, leaving Denver PD officers free to maintain their posts. They also pointed to efforts to implement unmanned traffic control efforts such as red-light cameras and the like. But according to Murray, all of these efforts have been implemented in Aurora disproportionately to the rest of Denver, and even still, there has yet to be any positive effect on the fatality rates on Aurora streets.
Denver Police Department have made other changes to attempt to keep our streets safer. They’ve reassigned traffic patrol officers to closer precincts to shorten response time, according to Murray, and placed digital speed signs to keep speeds at the forefront of a driver’s mind. But we at Queener Law think this issue needs to be addressed by us, the drivers on Denver’s streets. We need our own personal call to action. Wrecks aren’t controlled by the police alone. Simple distractions, mind wanderings away from our speeds and actions, or the desire to get to our destinations on time taking precedence over strict compliance with road safety measures — these are the primary culprits.
There are many things in this world disrupting our safety, and often we feel all too helpless in protecting ourselves and our loved ones. But here’s one on which we can have a direct effect.
Let’s pledge to put our phones out of reach or on Do Not Disturb. Let’s keep our eyes and minds on the speed limits. Let’s scan our periphery in neighborhoods for pedestrians, cyclists, and other drivers who aren’t talking part in this safety pledge and might help themselves to our lanes a bit too eagerly. All in all, let’s help the Denver PD in dealing with their ever-growing road responsibilities. We can get these fatality numbers down, or even better, bring them to zero! We’ve got this, Denver!
by Jennifer O'Connell | Feb 12, 2019 | Auto Accident, Colorado
Marijuana and Traffic Safety
The conversation about whether legalization of recreational marijuana affects road safety is a common one in Colorado. Thirty-three states have legalized medical marijuana, while nine states in addition to Colorado have legalized recreational marijuana. The public seems to be continually moving towards acceptance of recreational use, but our communities are still worried about potential negative impacts in safety. And of course, the experts disagree. The journal Addiction recently cited that there is one more traffic death for every million residents in states where recreational use is legal, compared to states where recreational use is legal, compared to states without recreational legalization. The journal also cited that the states that have had legalized recreational use for more than a year have balanced back out, no longer showing an up-tick.
However, the IIHS says there are overall 6% more crashes in general, while the American Journal of Public Health says there is no change.The problem lies in the testing and current lack of accurate measurement markers for “under the influence” as it relates to marijuana. Our society is still playing a lot of catch-up to the public’s acceptance to legal use. Until the medical and legal experts develop proper testing and scaling for determining the influence marijuana has on drivers, the debate will continue. It goes without saying, though, that any driver who uses marijuana or simply takes a medication and feels cognitive effects from that should not be operating a vehicle. When a wreck occurs, BAC data and other medical markers of influence and inebriation are helpful, but they are not necessary to deciphering fault, or whether a substance influenced the driver’s ability to operate a vehicle. Diving into the facts of the collision itself and the actions taken by that driver, both before and after the collision, can provide the necessary clues.
Queener Law has tried cases for clients who were injured by drivers under the influence when there was no medical data or the medical data ceased to exist by the time of our involvement in the case. We have a network of medical experts and law enforcement experts that can help us put the pieces together. While we wait for science to catch up, with a few important facts, we may still be able to prove that the person responsible for our clients’ injuries should not have been on the road and was not in the right frame of mind. If you think your wreck applies, give us a call for a free consultation.
