Traffic Safety Letter of the Week

In response to the smoke and noise devoted to traffic safety this week in the wake of several high profile crashes on Glenoaks and the recent report by Allstate Insurance ranking Glendale drivers as having the second to worst safety habits in the U.S., Steve Foster jumps above the fray with a concise letter in the News-Press:

City should go out on a limb

Regarding “Najarian introduces traffic plan,” Wednesday:

If the Glendale City Council, by raising penalties, can protect certain tree species from tree-butchers, the Glendale City Council, by raising penalties, can protect citizens from motorized people-butchers.

STEVE FOSTER

Glendale

Good letter, Steve!  In addition to more severe penalties for dangerous driving, implementing leading pedestrian intervals along Brand Boulevard north of Colorado would go a long way towards making pedestrians safer downtown.

 On Friday, I was nearly run over twice.  The first encounter was with a woman inattentively driving down Maryland at a high rate of speed.  Maryland has two pedestrian crosswalks, but they are poorly marked (by elevated signs in the median and two shades of earth-tone bricks[!]) and drivers frequently don't notice them.  In this case, I was in the pedestrian crossing, saw a RAV4 squeal around the corner of Wilson/Maryland and accelerate towards me, and I literally had to wave my hands wildly (while preparing to dive out of the way) to get this idiotic woman to stop.

The second encounter on Friday was a few minutes later at Wilson and Brand, when a very young driver making a right onto Brand from Wilson decided to stomp on the gas as soon as the light turned green, and nearly ran over 5 pedestrians (including me) who had the right of way to cross Brand.  The second situation is exactly the type of dangerous conflict that leading pedestrian intervals are designed to eliminate.

A Simple Way To Improve Pedestrian Safety

Here's an innovation that could improve Glendale's appalling pedestrian safety statistics: programming existing intersections to include an LPI, or leading pedestrian interval.

Here's an explanation from Streetsblog LA:

A leading pedestrian interval, or LPI, lights up the pedestrian signal a few seconds before vehicular traffic gets the green. This gives pedestrians a head start into the intersection and makes it less likely that they will be hit by vehicles turning into the crosswalk. LPI's are also known by their sassier nickname, Pedestrian Head Start. But in my view the best variation on what LPI stands for comes from Christine Berthet of the Hell's Kitchen Neighborhood Association, who proposes "Life Preserving Interval."

Head over to Streetsblog for a great video demonstrating the idea.

Implementing this on Brand Blvd. between Colorado and California would certainly make the near-daily walk to Porto's less stressful.