Johns crash on street VDOT had been warned about

In the wake of the Rebecca Johns fatality earlier this week, WUSA has a story on keeping your kids safe while biking to school. Unfortunately in only focuses on two things

1. Putting a helmet on your kids

2. Not letting them bike to school alone until they're 10 years old

So, to some extent their answer to the question of how to keep your kid safe while biking to school is to drive them.

The helmet part pulls out the "85% effective" stat again (Is this canard required for medical school graduates?) and states that it has been "proven over and over again to prevent serious head injuries, concussions, broken bones and even bleeding inside of the head" which I don't believe is true (that it has been proven). I worry that I sound anti-helmet and I'm not. It's just in an article about how to keep your kids safe while biking I wouldn't dedicate 5 paragraphs out of 6 to helmets. How about teaching them where and how to cross a street safely - since that played a larger role in Johns' accident than the lack of a helmet. We don't even know if she was or was not wearing a helmet. Or mentioning the usual items - watching for cars at driveways, not riding after dark, riding with traffic even on the sidewalk, etc..or suggesting a class? Sigh.

TBD/ABC7 meanwhile ran a story about how neighbors have complained for years about the road and how hard it is to safely cross.

Resident say there is no safe place to cross Franconia, which is the site of a park and two schools, and is frequented by children. Pedestrians and bikers only have a paved trail on the north side of the road to travel on.

"There are some painted crosswalks, but I don't trust a driver to stop just to let me cross to the other side," said Matt Iden, another neighbor.

Mary Kelly says she's complained to state legislators and VDOT for years but without success.

"VDOT says it's really just a traffic problem," Kelly said. "'We don't have money to widen the roads and there's nothing the county can do about it.'"

There are plenty of things VDOT can do to make the street safer. If that's true, that they said this, it's tragic.

ABC7 has gotten much better on these stories since they started working with TBD by the way.

Comments

[Froggie]

Problem with the story...this is ONLY Alexandria in the sense that's the mailing address. This is very much Fairfax County.

Agree there's a few things VDOT can do in this area. A traffic signal is a possibility...but only at Clermont Ave (about 1/3 mile west of where the fatality occurred). At the crosswalks mentioned, a possibility is LED-lit warning signs similar to what Alexandria has put on Braddock Rd at the Braddock Rd Metro station.

[freewheel]

Franconia is the classic case of an area designed for cars, not people. Now, due to this tragedy, even fewer kids will be walking or biking.

[Richard Layman]

Obviously I don't know squat about that area, and I focused more on MD when I was working in Balt. County,

BUT, there is no question in my mind that MD, VA, and DC need to adopt at the "state" level, balanced transpo planning requirements for local school districts, which typically focus only on bus transportation.

Washington State advises but doesn't require that each school district have a traffic safety and education committee, but also requires a safe routes to school plan/map for every elementary school in the state. Clearly there needs to be one for this area.

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/NR/rdonlyres/5463FD69-F7B9-477D-B9AA-D21CEEFCF722/0/SchoolWalkandBikeRouteGuide.pdf

I wrote up a bunch of recommendations for the western baltimore county plan on necessary state level changes, but because lower jurisdictions don't have control over those processes, they got excised from the posted final draft. Having school district wide walk and bike to school planning, based on the Washington State, Minneapolis, and Boulder, CO examples, was recommended.

However, I did send them to my primary contact at the Maryland Dept. of Planning (he is a hardcore cyclist by the way) and he distributed them throughout the agency. Hopefully, there will be some long term impact.

FABB and any walking orgs in Fairfax should connect with Gina Arlotto at WABA and do an event in that area wrt walk and bike to school.

Michigan has a good walk to school audit manual:

http://www.saferoutesmichigan.org/

and FHWA has an excellent pedestrian audit guide:

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/ped_bike/

[Geof Gee]

What is the relevant phrase?

... not crashing is 100% effective against head injuries.

We design our roads/intersections for high velocity travel instead of requiring careful observation.

[Dr Pangloss]

I wear a helmet when riding 90% of the time, but sorry, *gloves* are more important safety equipment than a helmet.