Local Notes

Volume 4, Number 2 - Spring 2001

• Deschutes County Safe Communities (DCSC), located in Bend, Oregon, has undertaken an ambitious project to study and map traffic crashes. Working with state and county agencies, DCSC compiled statistics from a number of sources, including the Oregon Department of Transportation and county sheriff’s office crash databases, the county emergency dispatch database, and St. Charles Medical Center Hospital discharge data. By using multiple local data sources, DCSC identified the most dangerous intersections and road segments in the county as well as patterns of crash characteristics important in determining how these types of crashes can be prevented. In addition to location and injury severity, DCSC explored the role of road condition, time of year, driver error, age, alcohol, trucks, bicycles, and pedestrians in the county’s crash problem. Using mapping software, DCSC created computerized maps showing where crashes occur, why they occur, and their human and economic costs. This provides a powerful tool, not only for identifying traffic safety problems and countermeasures, but for generating the public and political will to support these measures. For more information, contact Deborah Hogan: (541) 317-3050.
• San Francisco: The year 2000 set a new record for pedestrian fatalities in San Francisco. To address this issue, the San Francisco Department of Public Health funded two neighborhood Safe Communities programs. The neighborhoods chosen for these programs are those in which pedestrians are most in danger of being struck by a motor vehicle. Both are densely populated, low-income areas with active community groups well-positioned to create effective Safe Communities coalitions.
  
  The Mission Safe Communities Project evolved from the 16th and Mission Public Safety Mini-Taskforce, a coalition of residents, businesses, and agencies that addresses public safety problems. Mission Safe Communities used data from the State Wide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS) and the San Francisco Department of Parking and Traffic to identify areas in the neighborhood that are most dangerous for pedestrians. They also conducted a number of focus groups among community residents to identify the reasons these areas were unsafe. Project Coordinator Ethel Newlin reports that resident concerns are "variations on two themes." The first is the difficulty of crossing streets because of inadequate intersection controls, notably a lack of marked crosswalks that would remind drivers that pedestrians, by law, had the right of way. The second theme concerns obstructions on the sidewalks that force people to walk in the streets. These obstructions include signboards for businesses and displays by green grocers, illegal activities (including drug dealing and prostitution), garbage, and encampments by homeless people.
  
  The second program, the Tenderloin Safe Communities Project, is sponsored by Adopt-a-Bloc, a community-based program focusing on public safety issues. Like its companion program in the Mission, the Tenderloin project is carefully identifying the needs of the neighborhood using a data analysis and assessment process. The Tenderloin project plans to address the pedestrian education needs of the neighborhood by assisting community organizations that work with specific groups (including seniors, youth, and the disabled) to build pedestrian safety education into their regular services. But, as Project Director Nicolas Rosenberg points out, the program also needs to change the behavior of drivers: "Many people who drive through the neighborhood are not from the neighborhood. They just commute through it. They see the neighborhood as an unpleasant place. They do not realize that it is a residential neighborhood and that 3,500 children live here."
  
  Both San Francisco programs have accomplished the first two steps suggested by the Safe Communities model. They used local data to identify problems and they organized a broad-based coalition of government agencies, businesses, community organizations, and citizens. The programs are now developing implementation plans and seeking funds to address their problems using a combination of strategies (including the "3 E’s" of education, engineering, and enforcement, as well as policy recommendations).
  
  For more information on the Mission Safe Communities Project, contact Ethel Newlin at (415) 864-5205. For more information on the Tenderloin Safe Communities Project, contact Nicolas Rosenberg at (415) 921-7320.
• In Indiana, the St. Joseph County Safe Communities program is administered by the Healthy Communities Initiative of St. Joseph County, a nonprofit organization that coordinates projects and programs that affect a wide range of economic, environmental, social, and health issues. Tom Evons, who directs the Safe Communities program, says that the connection between Healthy Communities and Safe Communities is a beneficial one. He reports that the Safe Communities effort has been able to bring together local organizations which, in the past, would not or did not cooperate in injury prevention efforts. One example is a Tie One On for the Holiday (driving-under-the-influence) program involving the fire department, school district, and the local court’s victim impact panel. This program, which seeks to reduce driving-under-the-influence, was implemented at five high schools (with a total enrollment of 1,500 students) prior to the Winter 2000/2001 holiday season. The Safe Communities program also works closely with the local Drug-Free Community Council, another Healthy Community Initiatives partner, to reduce alcohol use by teenagers.
  
  In its work with local emergency providers and the St. Joseph County Local Emergency Planning Committee, the St. Joseph County Safe Communities program discovered that first responders were having problems with collisions at intersections. Safe Communities is conducting a survey among first responders to identify the most dangerous intersections in the county and applying to the Federal Emergency Management Administration to obtain funds for transponders for emergency vehicles that would trigger traffic signals to give fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances the right of way at intersections and thus reduce injuries to both first responders and the public.
  
  The Safe Communities program is also working to ensure that the increasing percentage of the county’s population that is Hispanic is not overlooked in traffic safety efforts. They are working with SAFE KIDS to recruit and train bilingual community members as child safety seat inspectors. The program is also working with the community of Mishawaka to bring child safety seat inspections to that community’s low income public housing project whose Hispanic residents do not frequent the suburban malls where most child safety inspections are held.
  
  For more information on St. Joseph St. Communities, call Tom Evons at (219) 234-0051. For more information on the Healthy Communities Initiative of St. Joseph County, see their website at www.hcisjc.org.