Eva Inbar: Will Somebody Have to Die Here, Too?

» Henry on 02.08.09 @ 10:52 PM

Eva Inbar’s description of the dangers that lurk in our community for people on foot and bicycle is right on. People in cars don’t always pay attention to what they’re doing. The death of young Jake Boysel on Camino Real 2 years ago, hit from behind by a driver, shows how deadly the results of speeding or distracted drivers can be

The speeding cars leaving State for De La Vina make that situation just as much a reason for concern, and hopefully will result in action by a responsible City Council.

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» James Wagner on 02.09.09 @ 06:41 AM

Safety is no accident!!!  I completely agree with Ms. Inbar. This intersection is especially dangerous for pedestrian and eastbound bicyclists and is in desperate need of safety improvements. The city Santa Barbara City counsel meeting this Tuesday 2-10-09 is the next step toward actualizing safety at De la Vina & State Street. Please attend or email to share your views in support of safety. Contact information can be found at http://www.santabarbaraca.gov/Government/Council/Meet_Us

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» CC on 02.09.09 @ 06:58 AM

Where does Iva Inbar live?  She is active in the group that is trying to tamper with the Goleta Valley.  Now she is mucking around in the city.  Enough is enough.  We do not need expensive modifications to the intersection at State and De la Vina in a time of economic crisis.  We will need every dime to pay for the salary enhancements at City Hall.

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» John Q on 02.09.09 @ 07:20 AM

Please. There have been no deaths at that intersection ans now they want to create more traffic by creating a light. If these people had their way a light would be put up after every bike or pedestrian collision.

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» LydiaO on 02.09.09 @ 07:36 AM

Nice piece, Eva. I’m still not completely convinced, but you brought up important points I had not heard about previously.

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» Babs2 on 02.09.09 @ 08:10 AM

Re “fixing” it…Is the intersection really “broke?”

What’s the accident rate in the area?

Is it reasonabl, logical or safe place for a crosswalk now that traffic has increased?

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» Come On! on 02.09.09 @ 09:26 AM

It is such an unfortunate circumstance when someone gets hurt or killed just crossing a street.  Unfortunately, accidents do happen but, so much of this could be averted if bicyclists and pedestrians would follow their responsibility of knowing and heeding the laws of the road too.  Many people riding bikes here seem to think they don’t need to stop for anyone or anything!  They continually go through red lights, ride the wrong way on one way streets and on sideWALKS.  This is total disregard of the laws, cars, and pedestrians.  Many pedestrians seem to think that they ALWAYS have the right of way, which by the way is NOT true!  Instead of stopping, or even slowing down, drivers rush yellow lights and make right turns as soon as a light turns green, without regard to pedestrians who now actually have the right of way.

Let’s see…not completely off-topic, the city has begun to charge for parking in downtown structures and lots on Sundays in an effort to avert a heftier deficit (what’s next?).  With disregard to that deficit, they have increased pay for some city employees AND given them another paid holiday.  However, they have done nothing to improve the saftey on our streets.  It has been said before.  If tickets were handed out for people breaking the laws in cars, on bikes or even on foot, it wouldn’t have to trickle down to law abiding citizens who just want to come down to shop or have lunch on the weekend.  Enforce the laws and we might just solve a coupld of problems here.  At the very least, we would be on the right track!

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» Jim Marino on 02.09.09 @ 11:05 AM

I have been a resident of Santa Barbara for 55 years.  I was a police officer for 8 of those years and worked the beat which included that intersection for many years. I don’t recall there being any accidents there, not even fender benders let alone fatalities.

There is nothing wrong with that intersection and IT IS NOT UNSAFE! The ill concieved plan to spend hundreds of thousands of dollar to re-design and remodel that intersection, particularly in these troubling economic times, when that kind of money is needed for more important things, is a total waste of money.

The proposed plan is foolhardy and unnecessary and is apparently a figment of the City staff’s well recognized utopian imagination, ever trying to seem like they are somehow at the “cutting edge” of traffic planning using what they euphamistically call “traffic calming” projects. Silly schemes which are most often outright boondogles and that should really be called failed attempts at social engineering!

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» Bud Stuart DVM on 02.09.09 @ 11:08 AM

If we follow the logic of the writer of this article then there should be a traffic light at every intersection in the entire city of Santa Barbara since there is always the possibility of a pedestrian being struck. Do we really think that even doing that would end pedestrian injuries for all time?? As long as cars share the streets with bikers, pedestrians, etc. there will be incidents.
The vast majority of Santa Barbara residents have already spoken!! They do not see the need to destroy one of the smoothest functioning intersections in the city in order to spend more money which the city does not have! Will common sense NEVER set in??

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» wyse on 02.09.09 @ 12:03 PM

No one wants anyone to die at a crosswalk of any sort. (That’s inflammatory propagands, and it has no real place in a rational discussion about the configuration of streets.) In her commentary, Ms. Inbar neglected to mention the site of another tragic pedestrian fatality: In a crosswalk, at a light, downtown Santa Barbara in broad daylight—a distracted tourist hit a pedestrian. Now what are we to do with that? Reconfigure every intersection with safety walls? Sorry. The problem isn’t with the intersections, but in the people who use them. A few safety guidlines—like always looking the driver in the eye before you cross might be a better way to deal.
The De la Vina Wye is not unlike many intersections in town—there;s one very close by near the Med Center, one right in front of the Mission leading up to APS, one at Milpas and Cabrillo, and a chaotic one at the entrance of City College. Does she propose reconfiguring all of those as well?
The other problem I have with this is that in other parts of town, notably the St. Francis neighborhood, they have taken out Stop Signs that once worked well, in favor of these obstacles that cause many drivers to try to figure out what to do.
Be careful what you wish for. The plan Ms. Inbar pushes will surely end up with multiple rear-end collisions by cars who unexpectedly have to stop. What will she then propose as a solution?

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» Safety takes a hike on 02.09.09 @ 03:28 PM

Unfortunately, lost in the safety rhetoric is the logic behind safety itself. Two examples come to mind. One I experienced firsthand at a four way intersection in Camarillo when I was five years old, the memory was seared into place. The intersection was a four way stop with pedestrian crosswalks on all four sides. The approaching streets were 2 lanes each. I watched as a group of 3 girls approached the intersection, they were about 10feet in front of me. One of the girls (my age) was walking slightly ahead of the other girls, she turned her head to the right and smiling and laughing stepped off the curb. She was hit full force by an approaching car and knocked clear across the intersection. The driver of the car failed to stop at the stop sign and did not see the girl. What I learned from that graphic memory was the futility of relying on “legalistic” measures for safety. The 24” red and white stop sign did not circumvent the law of physics, nor did the yellow paint on the road way. No, all the safety implements designed into the intersection did not avert this terrible accident. The little 5 year old girl was not trained by her parents on how to safely cross a street. Nor was she taught the most basic law of Newtonian physics, inertia. The girl did survive (along with that sweet smile) but the lesson I learned from that was indelible. Safety is your responsibility and you cannot design anything to be 100% safe.
The other example comes from Belgium. They had a high accident rate intersection on the outskirts of a town. The intersection was again a four way controlled intersection with stop signs. The government spent all kinds of money trying to make the intersection safer and lower the accident rate to no avail. Speed bumps, approach signs and flashing lights did no good and the accident rate actually went up. Exasperated the government decided to do the un-nanny thing and they removed all signs, warnings, impediments and stops and left the intersection completely un-fettered. Astonishingly, the accident rate went to zero in the first year. After a more thorough investigation they found that drivers were so intimidated by the lack of safety apparatus that they slowed way down when approaching the intersection. They also found that sings, warnings and impediments actually distracted drivers from observing traffic conditions, they made the approach to the intersection less safe not more.
So, I learned a valuable lesson, safety is your own responsibility and safety laws, signs, implements and regulations are for the lawyers. If you are a bicyclist and want to be safe in the State and De La Vina intersection then approach it with caution and never assume anyone sees you. Same goes for pedestrians. Reconfiguring intersections, adding stop lights or any other means of making an intersection safer only makes it easier for a lawyer to sue or a government to defend a law suit. The end result is they do nothing to change the laws of physics. Making this particular intersection a “T” will only delude those who aren’t being cautious anyway into a false sense of security. I salute Eva’s intentions; she truly has people’s safety at heart. However she would do a lot better by just teaching people how to cross the street rather than trying to stop a 2 ton hurling hunk of metal with a strip of paint or a little 24” sign.

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» unrepresented on council on 02.09.09 @ 03:50 PM

Since COAST is pushing this issue so hard, and since two members of City Council are board members of COAST, I would expect they would step down from hearing this issue. That is, I would expect them to step down anywhere but here, where the appearance of conflict of interests is completely disregarded. But I will remember when Helene and Grant want my vote, what they do in this regard tomorrow night. It’s all just one happy little family around here, and too bad for those of us us who are not part of their inner circle.

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» joe on 02.09.09 @ 05:39 PM

I go through this intersection all time time - on foot, bike, and in the car. It’s fine. What needs to be taken care of is trader joe’s parking lot.

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» City employees off 16 weeks on 02.09.09 @ 07:19 PM

The city council gave city workers now up to 16 weeks off a year. I say they are not full time employees, and should work at least 10 months of the year—Thats two months off—but 16 weeks off now in 2009—This is good government? The people are the servants…

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» John Locke on 02.10.09 @ 08:11 AM

Budget repair opportunity:  Eliminate the traffic planners - they do more harm than good.

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» Professor Charles W. Kingsfield Jr. on 02.10.09 @ 09:29 AM

JAX writes: “the intersection design at State Street, DeLaVina and Samarkand, would have to be proven to have been a significant contributing factor. Secondly the City would, under current law, have to be proven to have understood and known about the dangerous condition in need of correction”.

EXACTLY.

The existing design is inherently hazardous as all the expert engineering design manuals specify. And, the City fully understands all of this, considering it now will be the subject of many public hearings and reports.

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» JAX on 02.11.09 @ 06:31 AM

Prof, Kingsfield

The element of liability needed to be established in court and that you culled out of my post is only ONE of the necessary proofs. You did not mention the most important ones. That is that the supposed “dangerous design defect” would have to be proven to be THE PROXIMATE (OR LEGAL) CAUSE of the accident or at least the preponderant cause under rules of comparative negligence and all other causes either eliminated or reduced on the comparative negligence scale to far less than the so called “dangerous” (and I emphasize that word) defect.

Far be it for me to challenge these “traffic engineers” you refer to in you comment, however it it would be most persuasive to the majority of reasonable jurors that, if there was such a “dangerous defect” existing in the design for that intersection, how is it that it could go decades without a significant accident? This is particularly true when you consider the extensive use and traffic volume that has existed there for over three decades.

Unfortunately the single largest deficiency in the Traffic Planning Department of the City of Santa Barbara is COMMON SENSE! Similarly missing in the City Planning Department is any forsight. If there had been any, then they would not have approved a Trader Joes, a popular coffee shop hangout and the Surgical offices (that serves as a vision obscurement to the crosswalk) in so close a proximatey to that busy intersection therby generating the volume of traffic, particularly pedestrian and bicycle traffic, that exists there now.

It could be that the real “danger” percieved by a small segment of the community, is in the minds of the holier and healthier than Thou bicycle/anti-car crowd, with a well established and orchestrated agenda. They were certainly out in force at the City Council meeting Teusday evening where this expensive, uneeded fix was being discussed before being tabled!

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» Safety Takes a Hike on 02.11.09 @ 03:47 PM

Jay, I am not suggesting we remove stop signs or other impediments, only that we realize that they do not guaranty safety. A law cannot force anyone to comply. Compliance is and always will be a voluntary action. To make all roadways safe 100% of the time you would literally need to remove human beings from them. Redesigning an intersection to make it safer is not a bad thing if and only if the redesign can ensure the added benefit is justifies the cost. I believe Eva would suggest that if even one life could be saved it would be worth any cost. However, my suggestion is it would be better to place the burden of safety on the individual rather than trying to make a rubber mat world where no one can possibly get hurt. We spend far too much of our nations expertise, capital, energy and other resources trying to make a pain free,  accident proof, idiot proof physical environment while spending literally nothing on making people more cognizant of their surroundings. The lawyers are the only ones getting richer, and our entire country is being drained into poverty as a result. We no longer take risks, unless we are guaranteed no pain (the current bailout debacle is an excellent example). We demand that society pick up the tab for our irresponsible behavior, whether running through a stop on our bike and blaming the traffic engineer or borrowing to much money and blaming the lender. At some point we need to back off the legalism before it consumes us.
Of course, none of this takes in consideration the collateral damage done by those using our addiction to legalism as a tool for advancing other political agendas.

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» Gating Function on 02.18.09 @ 01:53 PM

Traffic Flows

Posting a sign will make people say my city will look ugly – normal city folk’s mentality. Not alleviating the problem allows conflict to grow; bicyclist will say I have right of way and motorist will say I also have rights, and in the future the pedestrian dies because a new mini park was created out of the ‘T’ intersection.

The intent of the intersection is for cars to flow properly while bicyclists are already given paths to exercise somewhere else. As to costs, the Federal grant is not known to be allocated or even if given so the citizen just have to tell everyone to slow down by word of mouth; that part is not overly populated.

Key Points of Conflict:

(1) streets are for cars
(2) parks are for strolls
(3) bike lanes are for bikes

So money spent telling people to slow down – updated signs visible enough that no one strolling dies – a new light installed pleases people by sight but rarely saves lives. As a caregiver for elderly residents; what was a 90 year old lady doing outside getting killed? Part of mental culture – I am sad to say that there was something wrong with that to begin with.

Studying Applied Mathematics, Traffic is a topic under gating functions for Mathematical Analysis. The interpretation of the following can apply for everyone: Sufficient flow of traffic creates a pressure for any ‘Y’ intersection. “THUS” Traffic Pressure decreases where two lanes meet and increases by pressure when one lane divides. All lanes bound towards – flowing from pressure – moves fast while merging lanes move slow.

Solution:

To alleviate the disturbance of flow, an absolute function must regulate the confusion even City Managers are confused about. Otherwise known as gating functions, Absolute Value Functions are also governing principles of neurons and biological electricity. Absolute functions are positive when negative as well as positive while also having positive variables. Draw a Cartesian plane where a V intersects at the origin – any can vision the kind of flow. Positive variables gated more frequently while negative variables must be consistent with timing and flow from the other.

Since there must be consistency, everyone needs to slow down and a proper light as to the timing switch has to be applied. The last thing to invest – thinking of the area – is the amount of signs needed to do both; (1) slow down properly miles before the intersection given the allowable speed limit at each sign and (2) include the fact a school is out there close enough disrupting the source of traffic flow; 25, 15, and Pedestrian X-ING signs required also around residential streets and visible.

Just because it is State and De la Vina, everyone must be consistent as to the flow of both time and gates – slowing down properly might as well be informational. Redirection of flow for parents or guardians must be planned where to pick-up their children and alternative routes as well as patience known so none burdened any crazy traffic.

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