Edit My Questionnaire for the City Attorney Candidates

Photo: Los Angeles Times

I’ve been promising for awhile to write out questionnaires for the remaining candidates for City Attorney.  Here are a couple of questions I would like to put to paper, but since the whole point of blogs is “two-way communication” how about all of you play editor and review my questions and add your own in the comments section.  Next week, I’ll compile everyone’s comments into a document and send it both Jack Weiss and Carmen Trutanich.  When I hear back from them, you’ll be the first to know.

There has been an uptick of violent collisions where drivers are failing to see pedestrians in crosswalks resulting in a crash. What role do you see the city attorney taking in the efforts to keep our streets safe for all users?

When a motorist kills a pedestrian and the motorist is found not to have any drugs or alcohol in their system it seems as though the police have their hands tied on what they can do. How would you empower police to better investigate when a pedestrian is killed by an unsafe driver?

There’s been a lot of discussion of cyclists as a key part of reforming transportation. Conversely, I hear from drivers all of the time that cyclists don’t follow traffic laws and are generally a nuisance. What, if anything, do you hear about cyclists and how would that affect the way you perceive traffic justice?

Many times when a cyclist is struck by a car, there is little to no effort to charge the driver with any sort of crime unless there is something spectacular about the crash such as last summer’s crash in Mandeville Canyon. Why do you think this is, and what can be changed about it?