Traffic Enforcement

If Hollywood were to make a movie entitled "Hollywood & Vine - Transit Oriented Development" they'd have to hire professionals to manage the streets, control the traffic, move the trucks and make sure the entire environment was safe. There would be a 1st Assistant Director on set, legally responsible for the safety of all cast and crew, a commitment that would include a safety meeting each day. It's been this way for a long time, ever since the tragic incident on the set of "Twilight Zone" that took the lives of Vic Morrow and two child actors, Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen.

It's nice to see a story about DUI laws that don't involve a celebrity and an ankle bracelet.

There’s encouraging movement in Washington on a different automated-enforcement front: a rule to equip new cars with "black boxes" capable of recording up to 60 seconds worth of pre-crash data.

As another sign of the ongoing cooperation between the LAPD and the cycling community, the police are turning to the online advocacy community for help finding a hit and run driver from yesterday.  The flyer says it all.  Anyone who has no information, but is interested in following the trend of a new, more responsive, LAPD should note some of the strong language in the flyer.  For a full sized copy of the flyer, click here.  To read the accompanying press release, read on after the jump

Last March, Claudia Cabrera was speeding through South L.A. with her boyfriend at her side and their seven month old in the back seat.  After a couple of drinks, Cabrera failed to notice a pair of USC students legally crossing the street and crashed into them with her car.  Adrian Bachan was killed instantly, while her companion, Marcus Garfinkle, was stuck on the windshield of the car with numerous injuries including two broken legs.  Cabrera stopped her car briefly so she could dislodge Garfinkle before speeding off.

When we last checked in with the Glendale Police Department, we were entertained by the sight of an officer in a giant bunny costume being used in a traffic sting to catch motorists that ignored pedestrian crossing.  The story wasn't just encouraging, officers thinking outside the box to make their streets safer, but also funny.  I mean, there was a giant bunny suit involved.

Last Sunday, a cyclist was forced off his bike when trying to avoid colliding with a car that raced out of a parking lot on Sunset Boulevard. The cyclist went over his handlebars, while the vehicle sped off.  Another cyclist, who did not know the victim, raced after the driver and photographed their plates and the driver herself before returning to the scene.  Eventually, the driver did as well; only to find the LAPD didn't seem interested in the crash, or the driver fleeing the scene and refused to even write a report.  Naturally, there was some outrage.

Safe streets advocates often ruefully say, "if you want to kill someone and get away with it, do it in a car." In fact, unless alcohol is involved, very few motorists who kill vulnerable road users -- like pedestrians and cyclists -- are charged with a crime, even when they break traffic laws in the process.