February 22, 2006

By MARIA ANTONOVA
Contributing Writer

With the limelight Seattle usually gets for its transportation gridlocks and monorail collisions, you thought you’d be safer walking. Wrong again! As statistics show, King County has almost twice the national average for pedestrian crash fatalities. Every month, two pedestrians are killed by automobiles.

According to Amy Freedheim, King County Felony Traffic Prosecutor, Seattle was not always a hotbed of pedestrian deaths. “One difference is that we had very few jaywalkers before,” she says, adding that jaywalkers were routinely fined and therefore discouraged from crossing the street illegally. “Right now I see two types of cases: people who get hit while illegally crossing, and drivers who don’t pay attention to crosswalks and lights.” She points out that the rain and darkness during winter commute hours are what makes Seattle especially unsafe.

David Townsend, founder of TIA (Traffic Intersection Awareness) Foundation, disagrees: “It’s the driving culture. Northwest drivers have terrible driving behaviors,” he says. Changing lanes without a signal, not paying attention, and speeding in residential areas all can lead to fatal consequences.

The other issue is the lack of laws covering inattentive driving. Killing a pedestrian while driving negligently can result in a fine of $520 — since the driver is accountable only for running that red light, not for manslaughter, says Freedheim.

“ When someone fires a gun in a crowd of people, the question is ‘Who fired the gun?’ — not whether the firing was legal or not,” she says. “With traffic felonies it is different, because you can be civilly responsible for killing a pedestrian, but not criminally responsible, since you didn’t mean to kill that person, even if you are at fault.”

For Townsend, that explanation only goes so far. He advocates for higher fines, suspension of drivers’ licenses, and up to a year in jail. He calls these collisions crashes, not accidents, and says that 70 percent of drivers at fault are repeat offenders.

On Thursday, experts will convene a Pedestrian Safety Summit, organized by the county’s Traffic Safety Coalition, to discuss ways of increasing pedestrian safety. There, a panel will cover three components of pedestrian safety: engineering, enforcement, and education. Freedheim and Townsend seem to agree on one thing: there is not enough money allocated for any of these purposes. Out of Congress’ $285 billion transportation bill, only one percent will go to pedestrian safety.

Engineering is severely underbuilt, says Townsend: “In Seattle on average, we have the density of Queen Anne and the infrastructure of Carnation.” He notes that crosswalks and sidewalks are hardly meant for a rush of traffic, especially in the commute hours.

And when it comes to enforcement, “I am the only Traffic felony prosecutor in King County,” Freedheim says. “That pretty much illustrates the scarcity of resources.”

Arguably, the most important factor is education, she adds: “People need to realize that when they are sitting in a metal box, they are armed to kill.”