Don't drive behind chicken trucks, study says

Ever been stuck driving behind a truck carrying live chickens? Here's some news that may inspire a lane change in the future: antibiotic resistant bacteria from chickens has been inside cars that follow chicken trucks, according to a new Johns Hopkins study.

Researchers took a good hard look at a car that closely followed a chicken truck for 17 miles. The car had its windows down. And what did they find? "Air samples collected inside the cars, showed increased concentrations of bacteria (including antibiotic-resistant strains) that could be inhaled," states the school's press release. "The same bacteria were also found deposited on a soda can inside the car and on the outside door handle, where they could potentially be touched."

Full press release after the jump for those who didn't have chicken for lunch today. I'm not sure I've ever been behind a chicken truck in California, but my car got beaned by some carrots that fell from a truck on the Golden State Freeway in the San Joaquin Valley on a recent trip.

-- Steve Hymon

Teen-safety driving law appears to work, says Auto Club

At the beginning of 2006, a law (AB 1474) went into effect in California that prohibited teen drivers under 18 from driving between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. The previous curfew was midnight. The Automobile Club of Southern California says the restriction appears to have worked and that the number of fatal crashes has decreased, based on their analysis of data for 16-year-old drivers.

It's a limited study because the new law has been in effect for less than three years. Still, the numbers look promising.

-- Steve Hymon

The full news release is after the jump.

Slowing down traffic on Eagle Rock's Colorado Boulevard

Once upon a time, Colorado Boulevard through Eagle Rock was the vital link between the San Gabriel Valley and points west. Then along came the 134 Freeway and ... Colorado Boulevard remained a big, wide road that is a vital link between the San Gabriel Valley and points west. That's how things are done here in the City of Angels Who Drive Everywhere.

In August, four people and an unborn baby were killed in an accident in which a speeding car on Colorado Boulevard slammed into a tree. The street has had a reputation over the years for speeding -- it has three lanes in each direction, turn lanes and parking lanes and is as wide as a freeway -- and now the city is getting serious about cracking down on bad driving behavior.

"Eagle Rock prides itself on having a small-town feel but in the middle of it you have Colorado, a thoroughfare to get from San Gabriel Valley to downtown L.A. and to Glendale and it's kind of a contradiction," Los Angeles Councilman Jose Huizar told me Tuesday.

The city has stepped up traffic enforcement on Colorado, Huizar said, and more than 600 tickets have been issued for various infractions in the past two months. Surveillance cameras have been installed along the road, so that police can monitor traffic from the LAPD's northeast station and some patrol cars (Huizar says it also helps police watch for other criminal activity, such as tagging). In addition, motorists exiting from the westbound 134 to Colorado Boulevard will get a red light at the end of the long exit ramp if traveling too fast.

Finally, Huizar said that the city has unsynchronized a couple of the traffic lights on Colorado from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. in an effort to keep motorists from building too much a head of steam.

In fact, a lot of the enforcement was already in place before the crash, Huizar said, and he thinks speeding along Colorado has declined in the past year.

I suggested to Huizar that the real problem with Colorado is that it's too big -- and that it needs to go on a road diet and be narrowed. Colorado goes through the heart of Eagle Rock's downtown area, which has great potential with lots of old buildings and some great restaurants. In other words, it's one of those parts of town that has somehow survived past efforts by the city's planning and transportation departments to turn it into a mini-freeway lined only with strip malls. Still, Colorado needs some work. It could use wider sidewalks, some residential buildings, more public space and anything that brings it down to a human scale.

The councilman wouldn't quite go that far, although said he would ask the city's transportation department to study reducing Colorado to one lane in each direction. I'm pretty sure he was being facetious. In any event, I give Huizar credit for pushing steps that probably aren't real popular with the motoring public and my sense is that he knows that Eagle Rock has great potential.

If you want to learn more about road diets, here's the Wikipedia entry and here's the road diet page on the Livable Streets website. The Complete Streets website also makes the case for better designed streets that serve the needs of people and not just cars.

Press release from Huizar's office after the jump.

-- Steve Hymon

Photo credit: Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times
 

A push for motorcycle safety

Here's a photo from the international wires. It's a motorcycle ride that happened Sunday in Frankfurt, Germany, with hundreds of cyclists commemorating family members or friends who died or were injured in motorcycle accidents. According to the European Pressphoto Agency, the memorial drive is also intended to call more attention to the need for everyone who uses roads to get along better.

--Steve Hymon

photo: Frank Rumpenhorst / European Pressphoto Agency

Group pushes for better motorcycle helmet labeling

I posted recently that motorcycle deaths are up while vehicular deaths are down. No one has been able to pinpoint an exact reason.

This press release from the Governors Highway Safety Assn. caught my eye because it speaks to one important safety issue for motorcyclists: having the right equipment, in particular having the best helmet available. Not all of them are created equal and some apparently do not meet state or federal specs -- something that the federal government may fix by requiring better labeling on helmets.

Here's the release:

State Highway Safety Agencies Support Motorcycle Helmet Rulemaking Proposal

Statement for Attribution to Vernon F. Betkley, Jr., Chairman of the

Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA)

Washington, DC—Today, I have submitted comments indicating GHSA’s strong support for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) proposed rulemaking that will strengthen motorcycle helmet labeling requirements so that compliant helmets are easier to identify and counterfeiting is much more difficult.

As NHTSA notes, motorcycle helmets are 37 percent effective in reducing fatalities. Few other countermeasures offer such a high level of effectiveness.  GHSA strongly supports mandatory motorcycle helmet laws for all riders and encourages the thirty states without such laws to enact them.

A major concern in the states that currently have mandatory laws is that it has become far too easy to evade law enforcement by using a novelty helmet that is neither in compliance with federal standards nor state laws.

Tunnel under ski run collapses in Mammoth Lakes

Some bizarre and overlooked news out of Mammoth Lakes last week: A 200-foot-long tunnel that takes Lake Mary Road underneath a Mammoth Mountain ski run collapsed on Friday afternoon. Here's a link to the town's press release on the collapse.

No one was injured. The road is also the primary connection to several high country lakes, campgrounds, trailheads and the Tamarack Lodge resort. A detour to the lakes basin is available using the narrower and steeper Old Mammoth Road that is extremely difficult for large RVs to navigate. A few, according to town officials, are still stuck up at the lakes, waiting for the road to be cleared enough to get back to town.

Mammoth Lakes officials are say the cause of the collapse has not been determined, but the incident doesn't appear to be a random event. A bike path has been under construction along Lake Mary Road and a second tunnel was being dug about 20 feet on the downhill side of the  original tunnel at the time of the collapse.

Mammoth Lakes spokesman Stuart Brown told me today that as part of that project, the contractor had stripped the dirt away from the original tunnel to check on its integrity -- it was built in 1974. Most of the dirt had been packed back onto the tunnel when it gave way -- with a small bulldozer on top. The driver was unharmed.

"There were no signs that we saw from stripping the dirt and putting it back on that this would happen," Brown said. "I think the outcome is obviously ideal -- we'll get a new span and new bridge" over Lake Mary Road.

It just so happens that the Lupin ski trail sits on top of the tunnel (here's a link to a ski trail map -- the area impacted is on the lower left). Ski season isn't scheduled to open at Mammoth until early next month, so no one was skiing at the time of the collapse, although it was snowing. The Lupine run descends to the Eagle Lodge, one of Mammoth Mountain's base areas. A chairlift, the Eagle Express, also runs up the middle of the trail (shown at right).

The town says that it's trying to fix the tunnel before Nov. 26, when that part of the mountain is scheduled to open for the Thanksgiving weekend -- usually a busy time for the ski resort. If the tunnel is not rebuilt by then, skiers won't be able to access the rest of the mountain from the base area and the pricey condos that have been built around the bottom of the chairlift in recent years. With lift tickets now $83 a day, that presumably would not be something that skiers in that area are happy about.

I've posted a few more pics after the jump.

--Steve Hymon

Top photo: Town of Mammoth Lakes

Bottom photo: Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times

Angeles Crest Highway may reopen this fall

I drove up to Islip Saddle a couple of weekends ago to go hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains and was surprised to see that Angeles Crest Highway (also known as Highway 2) was closed from that point going north. The road is usually closed at the saddle during the winter months because of snow and rock slides, but not this early in the year.

Surprise, surprise -- I called Caltrans last week and discovered that the five-mile stretch of highway north of the saddle has been closed since the winter of 2004-05, when it was damaged by heavy storms. The road was damaged again in March 2006 and when a thunderstorm hit this past July. That has meant no getting through to Wrightwood from the south.

Bottom line is that about $12 million of work has been done fixing culverts, reworking pavement and rebuilding a bridge. Dave White, a Caltrans spokesman, said that if work keeps going at its current pace, the Angeles Crest could reopen by Thanksgiving. If not, it will be closed as usual for the winter and then open in spring of 2009.

Texting banned while driving

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has started to sign bills now that the budget standoff is over. The big one today is a bill that -- gasp! -- makes it illegal to text-message while driving in the Golden State.

The two laws that banned holding a cellphone to your ear and driving overlooked text messaging because the cellphone part was hard enough to get through a Legislature that has fattened itself on campaign donations from cellphone providers over the years. The public reaction to that lapse helped spur this bill, which some folk may suggest is pure common sense.

The bill was written by State Sen. Joe Simitian, who also authored the cellphone ban. First offense is $76. Schwarzenegger's comment, via press release: "Banning electronic text messaging while driving will keep drivers' hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road, making our roadways a safer place for all Californians."

-- Steve Hymon

Crash on 210 Freeway kills woman, injures good Samaritan

It was a very sad scene on the 210 Freeway Tuesday morning after a woman was killed and another motorist who tried to come to her aid was injured in a bizarre accident. I spoke with California Highway Patrol Sgt. Becky Lynch on Wednesday afternoon, and she said that the CHP is still sorting out exactly what happened, but this much is known:

A silver Mitsubishi lost control in the No. 3 lane (third from left) and sideswiped a white GMC pickup truck. The Mitsubishi then collided with the center divider and came to rest on the freeway. Another driver with emergency medical experience stopped to help, but then a utility truck hit the Mitsubishi, sending it into the carpool lane. A Dodge pickup truck trying to avoid the utility truck then broadsided the Mitsubishi, which pushed it into the good Samaritan. The driver was ejected from the Mitsubishi.

The driver of the Mitsubishi, Lizbeth Ramirez, 27, of Altadena, died. The good Samaritan who stopped to help her suffered moderate injuries. The good Samaritan was not identified by the CHP. 

-- Steve Hymon

Vehicle fatality rate drops to new low in California

As we're heading into a holiday weekend in which many of you will be driving, I thought it would be a good time to share this: The fatality rate of motorists on California roads hit an all-time low in 2007, according to the California Highway Patrol.

The death rate was 1.18 deaths per 100 million miles driven. The federal fatality database shows that the previous low in California in recent times was 1.19 deaths in 1999.

The number of road deaths in the United States fell substantially last year and California also saw a decline, from 4,240 in 2006 to 3,974 in '07, although motorcycle deaths increased. Federal and state officials credited the drop in deaths to safer cars, increased law enforcement and the fact that people are driving less overall.

Of course, such statistics have to be taken with a grain of salt. It was not a good week on local roads. The death toll in the accident on Colorado Boulevard in Eagle Rock on Wednesday night increased to four today, when another victim died. A motorcyclist was killed in an afternoon rush-hour collision with a truck on the 405 in the Sepulveda pass on Tuesday and a 38-year-old woman died in a head-on collision between a Toyota Tercel and pickup truck in Hemet on Thursday.

Please be careful out there this weekend. The full CHP press release is after the jump.

-- Steve Hymon