Safety

Democrats are moving quickly on their plan to take a unified approach to auto safety reforms in the aftermath of the Toyota recalls, with Senate Commerce Committee members releasing a new bill today that would quintuple the maximum existing penalties for carmakers who -- like Toyota -- fail to promptly notify the public of defective products.

After a year marked by discord between the House and Senate over the timing of the next federal transportation bill, another split emerged yesterday over the timetable for taking up the Obama administration's plan for federal involvement in transit safety oversight.

Thanks to an excellent submission by Enci Box last year, we've had a couple of great discussions on women's safety on the streets, both for cyclists and pedestrians.  However, we haven't spent nearly as much energy discussing safety for bus riders, especially women bus riders.  Fortunately, Planetizen Editor Tim Halbur sat down to have an in-depth discussion of this issue with UCLA Professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris.  You can read the full interview at Planetizen, and I strongly recommend it for anyone interested in this issue as both Halbur and Loukaitou-Sideris do a great job.  For those without the time to read the full interview, here's an except.

As we mentioned last week, there is reason for concern about the way the traditional media is covering the "bike v car" controversy in the wake of the verdict in the trial of Dr. Christopher Thompson.  Sometimes there is a soft bias, such as in the wording of the question in  today's "Question of the Day" by KABC and sometimes it is more pronounced on radio shows or other two-way communications.

One week from today the Eastside Bike Club, Streetsblog and the Bus Bench will meet at the Union Station Entrance to bike the six-mile Gold Line Extension to document what we see concerning crossings and safety.  I've been getting a lot of questions about the ride, so I'm going to answer as many of them as I can here.

Sometimes when there's breaking news, such as dissolving light rail contracts, verdicts from trials, public hearings on major transit or bicycle plans, it's easy to lose sight that sometimes Livable Streets activism can be as simple as encouraging your children, or parents, to use their bikes, take transit or think of ways to move around without cars.

Partisanship is a fact of life in Washington, often slowing down progress on issues from health care to climate change. But when it comes to preventing the use of electronic devices behind the wheel, a congressional consensus is emerging in favor of federal action -- even as the extent of GOP support for a punitive approach remains decidedly unclear.

Via TreeHugger, Copenhagenize reports that Volvo is in the final stages of testing technology to improve safety for people outside its products -- a "pedestrian detection" system available in S60 models next year:

Last week, the Times took a close look at the Metrolink rail system to zero in on how the embattled agency is doing when it comes to improving safety for passengers and the drivers and pedestrians that cross the tracks.  Their results?  Over a year after a crash that killed 25 people when a freight train and a Metrolink train collided head-on, the agency still isn't making the grade.