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Tag Archive for: Safe Vehicles Save Lives

CalBike Continues Campaign for Safer Vehicles

November 7, 2024/by Jared Sanchez

The path to achieving critical safety improvements on California streets is rarely straightforward. CalBike supports and sponsors legislation, but bills are often amended, sometimes in ways that remove the teeth from a measure, and even those that make it through can be vetoed. But a veto or amendment isn’t the end of the road for CalBike. We continue to find ways to help move the campaigns for good ideas forward.

One example is Senator Scott Wiener’s Safer Vehicles Save Lives Bill, SB 961. A provision to require side underride guards on trucks to prevent fatalities during collisions was removed in committee. The remaining provision, the addition of intelligent speed assist (ISA) technology to cars sold in California, passed the legislature but was vetoed by the governor. Neither of these safety campaigns started or ended with this bill, however, and CalBike continues to work with partners to advocate for safer vehicles — and you can join the campaign.

Preventable fatalities in truck crashes

While you may not have heard the term “side underride guard,” you likely know that people on bikes and in cars can be injured or killed if they are pulled under a semitrailer or box-type truck during a collision. The side underride guard is an inexpensive piece of equipment to add to these vehicles that can help prevent serious injuries and fatalities in the event of a crash. CalBike partner Eric Hein, father of Riley Hein, who died in a side underride crash, has detailed the problem of underride crashes and the promise of side underride guards, if you’d like to learn more. 

The people who die in these crashes aren’t statistics — an acceptable death rate over a certain number of miles traveled. Riley Hein was driving to high school on I-40 when a semi drifted into his lane on a curve in the road, wedging his car under a trailer that lacked a side guard. The truck dragged Riley for half a mile and caught on fire. Riley died at the scene. He was 16 years old.

Eric Hein has become an advocate for side underride guards on trucks, as have many family members whose loved ones have needlessly died in underride crashes. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has recognized that side underride guards are a valuable safety feature for 50 years. Yet, in the face of opposition from the trucking industry, it hasn’t made a rule requiring them.

FINAL California Side Underride PetitionDownload

California has a chance to take a different approach. The California Highway Patrol has the power to require side underride guards in California, and Eric Hein has spearheaded an administrative petition asking them to do so. You can support this effort by sending emails to Sean Duryee, Commissioner of California Highway Patrol, and Kenneth J. Pogue, Director of the Office of Administrative Law, to express your support for side underride guards. You can send both emails with one click using CalBike’s action tool.



Intelligent speed assist at the federal level

ISA is a technology that’s currently available and required on all cars in the EU. It notifies drivers, with a sound or vibration, when they go more than 10 mph over the speed limit. Speed is a factor in many fatal collisions, particularly those involving vulnerable road users. Giving drivers a safety reminder will reduce speeding and provide calmer streets that are safer for people biking and walking.

The Safer Vehicles Save Lives Bill, which would have required ISA in California, got a veto from the governor this year. In his veto message, he said this should be regulated at the federal, not state, level. 

NHTSA recognizes the effectiveness of ISA in reducing speeding but has not recommended requiring it on all cars in the U.S. CalBike joined with America Walks and Families for Safe Streets to send a letter to the president and vice president, asking them to require ISA on vehicles in the federal fleet. 

Washington, D.C. recently adopted ISA and some cities, including D.C., have ISA on their municipal fleets. Installing speed warnings on fleet vehicles is an excellent way to pilot this technology, and it will have the effect of slowing traffic as other drivers travel behind cars equipped with ISA.

CalBike will continue to join with our partners to advocate for this safety technology.

Federal Fleet ISA coalition letter 10-28-24Download
https://www.calbike.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/bike1.jpg 353 628 Jared Sanchez https://www.calbike.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/calbike-logo.png Jared Sanchez2024-11-07 12:43:062024-11-20 12:53:12CalBike Continues Campaign for Safer Vehicles

Slowing Cars to Save Lives

March 5, 2024/by Jared Sanchez

This post was originally published March 5, 2024. It was updated to add an Assembly Transportation Committee vote.

CalBike is a sponsor of Senator Scott Wiener’s Safe Streets package, which includes the Complete Streets Bill (SB 960) and the Safe Vehicles Save Lives Bill, SB 961, a bill requiring side guards on semi trucks and speed governors on passenger cars. Both provisions of the Safe Vehicles Save Lives Bill are commonsense safety measures that will significantly reduce the risks of death and injury for people outside of cars.

The measure goes up for a vote in the Assembly Transportation Committee on Juen 17, 2024. Please email your assemblymember and ask for their support.

How do speed governors work?

Anyone who has ridden an e-bike or electric scooter has experience with speed-limiting technology. E-bikes stop providing an electric boost at either 20 mph or 28 mph, depending on the class, and most e-scooters have a top speed of 15 mph. 

Speed governors on cars are slightly more complex because cars will travel at varying speeds on freeways and local streets, but that problem is easily solved (see below). The technology is known as intelligent speed assist, or ISA.

There are two types of ISA: active and passive. Passive ISA provides feedback to drivers via auditory or physical feedback, making it annoying but not impossible to exceed the posted speed limit. Active ISA stops a vehicle from accelerating at a specific limit above the posted speed limit. AB 961 would require active ISA on passenger cars sold in California starting in 2027, limiting drivers to no more than 10 mph above the speed limit.

How does a car know the speed limit?

By now, you should realize your car is basically a giant computer on wheels that knows everything about you, from your favorite Sirius station to the fight you had with your spouse over the speakers last week to the coffee you spilled taking that left turn. The same GPS data that lets the map software on your phone or in your car tell you the speed limit can communicate with speed-limiting software to keep you from driving too fast.

Fast and deadly California streets

Speed is a killer on our streets. Excessive speed is a factor in at least one-third of road fatalities, and it’s a particularly lethal factor in collisions where a car driver hits someone walking or biking. The chance of a pedestrian being killed when hit by a car more than doubles if the driver is traveling at 20 mph vs. 30 mph, as described in Streetsblog. Seniors are particularly vulnerable to dying from the impact of a motor vehicle.


speed kills chart smart growth america
Chart created by Smart Growth America

Yet many urban streets in California have speed limits of 35 mph, and many drivers travel above posted speed limits. Speed governors are only part of the solution. We need lower speed limits, particularly in areas with dense bicycle and pedestrian traffic. And we need infrastructure improvements — such as narrower lanes, speed humps, and chicanes — that force drivers to slow down. 

Still, speed governors that prevent the worst excesses of drivers are a technology that’s available now and will start saving lives as soon as they’re deployed. The provisions in the Safe Vehicles Save Lives Bill are critical to making California roadways safer for everyone.

Long history of resistance to automotive safety

An automaker first introduced seatbelts in 1949, but they didn’t become mandatory in new cars until 1968. Despite decades of evidence that seatbelts reduce injuries and fatalities for people inside cars, you can still find whispers about seatbelts causing injuries (wrong) and restricting, I guess, an American’s god-given freedom to fly through a windshield on impact.

Similarly, airbags were invented in the 1950s but weren’t required for U.S. cars until 1998. Modern cars have all sorts of safety features, including blind spot detection and cameras for parking assistance, that we now take for granted.

Yet the idea of speed governors that would require drivers to — gasp! — follow the law has many people clutching their pearls. The San Francisco Standard came out against Wiener’s bill within hours of the press conference announcing it, and Fox host Laura Ingraham is convinced that breaking speeding laws is a constitutional right. 

Insistence on behaving in ways that are clearly harmful and refusing commonsense safety measures is uniquely American. In Germany, drivers follow traffic laws just because. In Australia, speed cameras guarantee a ticket, so drivers simply don’t speed. And the EU is mandating passive ISA in all new cars starting this July. 

Driving fast on California streets might feel like survival when everyone else is speeding, even if you don’t want to. If you’ve driven on the freeway, you’ve probably had times when everyone passed you because you were the only one poking along at 75 in a 65 mph zone. Speed governors could change that.

Will speed governors really slow down California drivers?

Even if the Save Vehicles Save Lives Bill passes, only a few vehicles will have speed governors at first, and it will take years before older cars age out and speed-limited driving becomes the norm. Of course, some people will figure out how to disable speed governors, and the market for older cars that can go fast might heat up. 

But speed limiters will have an impact even if only a fraction of the vehicles on the road have them because everyone else driving will be stuck behind them. We might even change our culture around driving to one of following the rules and valuing safety over speed (we can dream).

Even if speed governors don’t pass this legislative session, they are coming. Autonomous vehicles observe all the rules of the road, including the posted speed limit; as more of them circulate on our streets, they will slow other drivers. Washington, D.C., and New York City are piloting speed-limiting technologies on municipal vehicles, a test that will show the impacts on other drivers.

CalBike strongly supports the Safe Vehicles Save Lives Bill because shaving a few minutes off the time it takes to get to the store isn’t worth someone’s life. We hope you’ll join us in speaking up for this vital measure.

https://www.calbike.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/speed-cars-traffic-blur-scaled.jpg 1707 2560 Jared Sanchez https://www.calbike.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/calbike-logo.png Jared Sanchez2024-03-05 18:12:392024-06-13 10:48:05Slowing Cars to Save Lives

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