Door to Door: The Magnificent, Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation by Edward Humes Read Free Book Online Page B

mechanical failures or adverse weather, nor was there evidence of drunken driving, which means avoidable errors—distraction, dozing, or speeding—were involved.
    Extensive research in the U.S. and United Kingdom dating back to 1979 pins the blame for 90 to 99 percent of traffic crashes on human error. 4 Speeding (a factor in 30 percent of traffic deaths) and distraction (26 percent) together account for more than half of all crashes. 5 The single most frequent cause of fatal collisions, driving drunk (30.8 percent of road deaths) is certainly an example of human error, as are all the other acts of reckless, negligent, incompetent, and criminal driving behavior: tailgating, running red lights, refusing to yield to pedestrians, ignoring the right of way of bike riders, driving at unsafe speeds, driving drowsy (instead of pulling over when drowsy). All of these are intentional behaviors, as opposed to the commonly used but almost always incorrect descriptor “accidental.” The fatal results might have been unintended, but the behavior is no accident.
    D riving is by far the most difficult, complex, and high-risk task most people other than bomb defusers and brain surgeons will ever do. Yet driver training and licensing tests set the bar so low that almost everyone passes (eventually). So it’s not really surprising that error, by commission or omission, is the primary culprit in almost all car wrecks. The surprise would be if it were otherwise.
    The real surprise is that, for all its prevalence, few mechanisms exist to deal effectively with the often reckless or negligent decisions that precede fatally bad driving—either preventing it, minimizing it, or imposing consequences to deter it.
    On the afternoon of Friday the thirteenth, Tiffanie Strasser waited patiently for the “Walk” signal and a green light beforestepping out to cross a busy street in Denver’s lively Bonnie Brae neighborhood, pushing her two children before her in a double stroller. There was five-year-old Audrey, blind and developmentally delayed, and, next to her, three-year-old Austin, Audrey’s precocious, self-appointed “big” brother, protector, and guide, who was counting down the days to his fourth birthday one week away. The family was headed for ice cream, then the library.
    At the same intersection, also with a green light, was driver Joan Hinkemeyer, a seventy-eight-year-old retired professor and current gardening columnist for the Washington Park Profile , a monthly community newspaper. Hinkemeyer, after departing from her volunteer work at the same neighborhood library the Strassers had planned to visit, turned her car left—into the crosswalk, and into the Strassers. Tiffanie and Audrey suffered only minor injuries, but Austin was dragged several feet and suffered fatal head trauma. Hinkemeyer said she couldn’t see the family in the crosswalk because of glare from the late-afternoon sun.
    After a long investigation, the Denver district attorney charged her with one count of careless driving resulting in death, and two counts of careless driving resulting in injury—misdemeanors under Colorado law, punishable by a maximum fine of $1,000 and a year in jail. The maximums were only theoretical, however; lesser penalties are the norm. Prosecutors offered a plea bargain with a sentence of no jail time, two hundred hours of community service, and a driving class in exchange for an admission of one count of careless driving.
    In an emotional court hearing in which Hinkemeyer apologized to the Strasser family, Austin’s parents pleaded with the judge to reject the deal in favor of a maximum jail sentence and a ban on Hinkemeyer ever driving again. After setting up framed photos of her son throughout the courtroom, Tiffanie Strasser stared at the judge and asked, “How can the consequencesof killing a child in a crosswalk be some hours of community service?”
    The judge did indeed