Seattle Bike Blogger Tom Fucoloro directed his ire at the Bellevue, Washington police treatment of a particularly horrendous pedal misapplication crash by a new driver that came within inches of hitting a nine-month old baby asleep in a crib.
A 34-year-old woman trying to park in a carport allegedly mistakes the gas pedal for the brake. The car careens through the carport, over a curb and "into an apartment building where the car stopped just short of crushing a 9-month-old baby asleep in a crib, according to Bellevue police," report Christine Clarridge and Sandi Doughton for The Seattle Times. Fortunately, the baby was uninjured.
In an update to the story, it is revealed that the driver, whose husband indicated he was teaching her to drive, will not be cited. "It was purely accidental," said [Bellevue] police spokesman Seth Tyler. "Our past practice is that we don’t cite the driver in that kind of instance."
"No harm, no foul. Cars will be cars," fumes Tom Fucoloro for Seattle Bike Blog.
No charges of endangering a child. No charges of property damage. Not even a token $42 ticket for “unsafe lane change.”
The $42 ticket was the result of another so-called auto accident Fucoloro wrote about in 2011 - although this one resulted in the death of a 49-year-old man biking on the shoulder of a road in Kirkland, Wash.
Fucoloro describes his exasperation with how police and the legal system treat these types of unintentional crashes:
Our culture of absolving people of all responsibility when — and only when — they are behind the wheel of a car is the stuff of dystopian novels. It’s a world gone mad with motor brain.
There is no other imaginable scenario where a person could endanger a baby’s life like this and get away without any recourse. But if you are behind the wheel of a car, the law lines up to protect you.
The legal system Fucoloro wishes for:
When you are behind the wheel of a car, you are responsible for what happens with that car. So, accident or not, when you drive through the wall of a child’s bedroom and smash his crib around him, you are responsible for that. Nobody else is. That car did not drive itself. A person drove it.
I’m not saying we should throw this person in jail. But a ticket? A fine? Traffic school? License suspension? Something — anything — to let your community know it’s not OK to crash a car into a baby’s crib?
These types of crashes, classified as "pedal misapplications" by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, occur about 15 times a month, wrote Jerry Hirsch for the Los Angeles Times in 2012. "Drivers aged 16 to 20 and those 76 or older were most likely to be involved in pedal misapplication crashes."
Click http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/nti/pdf/811597.pdf to download the 2012 NHTSA report: Pedal Application Errors.
Some levity on such a dire topic. Commenter Gary Yngve wrote, "The baby wasn’t wearing a helmet."
FULL STORY: Bellevue Police: It’s perfectly legal to crash a car into a home and crush a crib holding a sleeping baby
Oregon Passes Exemption to Urban Growth Boundary
Cities have a one-time chance to acquire new land for development in a bid to increase housing supply and affordability.
Where Urban Design Is Headed in 2024
A forecast of likely trends in urban design and architecture.
Savannah: A City of Planning Contrasts
From a human-scales, plaza-anchored grid to suburban sprawl, the oldest planned city in the United States has seen wildly different development patterns.
Washington Tribes Receive Resilience Funding
The 28 grants support projects including relocation efforts as coastal communities face the growing impacts of climate change.
Adaptive Reuse Bills Introduced in California Assembly
The legislation would expand eligibility for economic incentives and let cities loosen regulations to allow for more building conversions.
LA's Top Parks, Ranked
TimeOut just released its list of the top 26 parks in the L.A. area, which is home to some of the best green spaces around.
City of Rochester
Boston Harbor Now
City of Bellevue
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Mpact Transit + Community
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
City of Birmingham, Alabama
City of Laramie, Wyoming
Colorado Department of Local Affairs
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.