Posts by Albert Stoll
Double Fine Zone on 19th Avenue
19th Avenue (specifically Highway 1 between the intersection of 19th Avenue and Junipero Serra Boulevard and the intersection of Highway 1 at Lake Street) has been declared a Safety Enhancement-Double Fine Zone until 2013. Fines for unlawful passing and overtaking, excessive speed, reckless driving, drunk driving, and similar moving violations are currently doubled. Base fines…
Read MoreWest Portal Suffers First Pedestrian Death of 2010
Sloat Boulevard near Forest View Drive marked the scene of the first wrongfuldeath of a pedestrian in San Francisco for 2010. On Thursday, January 7th at 6:23 p.m. 54-year-old Feng Zhu peacefully crossing the street was struck and killed by a car. The SFPD are still investigating the circumstances of the accident. Sloat Boulevard and…
Read More40,000 Dead Every Year On U.S. Roadways
Oliver Broudy writes about this morbid car crash statistic in the December 2009 issue of Men’s Health. Broudy cites the Natioanl Highway Trafic Safety Administration (NTSA) for the 40,000 deaths annually on our nations roads along with a stunning 3.2 million injuries. With the proliferation of hand held portable digital assistents or PDA’s the problem…
Read MoreCheap Gas Creates Bike Rider Hazard in San Francisco
Examiner writer Will Reisman reports on the intersection of Fell and Divisadero in the November 27th issue of the San Francisco Examiner. He reports Cars waiting in line for cheap gas at the Arco Station at Fell and Divisadero in San Francisco are forcing bicyclists to unexpectedly move into swift Fell street traffic. So many…
Read MoreCan Your Secretary Take Dictation At 55 MPH?
Today the front page of the New York Times led off with a story by Matt Richtel, “Promoting the Car Phone, Despite Risks.” Driven to distraction, Ignoring Red Flags. Here are a few quotes from the story, “The federal government estimated in 2007 that 11 percent of drivers were talking on their phones at any…
Read MoreBay Bridge S-Curve: 50 days, 40 accidents, now somebody got killed.
“What are they going to do about that?” That is the question, posed by Tahir Sheikh Fakhar’s brother Naveed Anjum. There have now been 44 S-Curve crashes in just nine weeks. The cause of Mr. Tahir Sheikh Fakhar’s death was an inadequate three foot guard rail at the apex of the s-curve itself. Caltrans knows…
Read MoreA Simple Tip to Survival on The Golden Gate Bridge & Fast Lanes Without Center Barriers
Few people in the Bay Area are unfamiliar with the Golden Gate Bridge and its southern approach known to locals as Doyle Drive. On a daily basis, and some seventy years after the Bridge was completed, tens of thousands of vehicles from opposing directions pass within feet and sometimes mere inches of one another with…
Read MoreUCSF Police Officer Killed – Stopping Distance at 100 MPH
The sad news about Detective Edson Veloro brought the issue of vehicle stopping distance to mind. How many feet does it take to bring a vehicle traveling at 100 mph to a stop? When perception and reaction time are included the answer is feet 707 ft. At 60 mph the stopping distance is a much…
Read MoreFirst Lady Caught Cell-Handed Violating Vehicle Code § 23123
Photos were released showing California first lady Maria Shriver holding a cell phone to her ear while driving. She was caught doing this twice. As her husband Arnold knows, this is a violation of California Vehicle Code § 23123. Here is the statute itself. (a) A person shall not drive a motor vehicle while using…
Read MoreBay Bridge S-Curve – Government Entity Liability
San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer Jaxon Van Derbeken wrote about the problems with the Bay Bridge S-Curve in the October 15th Chronicle. Officer Shawn Chase, a CHP spokesman said “Wednesday’s traffic fiasco was just the latest indication that the S-curve has become a safety problem”. As of Sunday, the Highway Patrol had logged 20 accidents…
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