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WATCH: IIHS video shows devastating effects of side underride crashes

May 16, 2017 by Jay Stefani Leave a Comment

A new study advocates for a federal mandate

We’re starting to sound like a broken record. Side underride crashes are devastatingly gruesome, and the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety is showing us why.

Evaluating side guards for the first time, the IIHS rolled out new video showing two types of crashes—one in which the truck is outfitted with a protective side underride guard, the other without. The results are dramatically different.

The footage shows two 35-mph crash tests involving a 53-foot long-dry van trailer and a standard mid-size car. The first test features a typical fiberglass side skirt intended only to improve the aerodynamics of the truck. The second test focuses exclusively on the AngelWing side underride protection device designed by Airflow Deflector, Inc.

As the video makes clear, the fiberglass side skirt does nothing to prevent the car from sliding under the truck, which in turn severs the sedan’s roof and shatters the windshield. The skirt may save the truck company some money on fuel, but it’s worthless from a safety standpoint.

By contrast, the AngelWing side guard absorbs the impact of the oncoming car and prevents it from sliding under the truck. Also important to note: the side guard allows the car to deploy its airbags while keeping the seat belt harnesses intact. Not only does it stop the car from riding under the trailer, but it also triggers the car’s own safety features.

Both crashes are severe but the difference is striking. The first test sees the sedan run into the trailer and keep going, wedging it beneath the trailer. “In a real-world crash like this,” according to the IIHS study, “any occupants in the car would likely sustain fatal injuries.”

Can insurance contracts be challenged in court?

May 15, 2017 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

How Illinois public policy works in drivers’ favor

If you’ve ever filed an insurance claim, you know that insurance policies have provisions. In the case of American Heartland Insurance Co., one of them is this: a claim must be filed within 120 days of an accident, otherwise the insured forfeits their right to the claim.

The requirement isn’t unique to Heartland, but it was the situation in Smith v. American Heartland Insurance Co., a case in which the plaintiff, Smith, sued the insurance company for failing to make good on the money it owed stemming from a hit-and-run case.

Defending its actions, American Heartland argued Smith wasn’t entitled to receive the money because she filed her claim well after the 120-day provision. This despite Smith proving she had been hampered by extenuating circumstances, including the fact she was covered under two separate insurance policies, which caused confusion as to which policy was responsible for the liability coverage.

In the end, Smith won her case. The courted stated that she acted reasonably and that American Heartland didn’t. American Heartland appealed the ruling, and the Illinois appellate court affirmed, explaining: “the 120-day notice provision Heartland seeks to enforce against Smith is a dilution or diminution of the uninsured motorist statute and is therefore against public policy as applied to her.”

Why Smith’s case matters

To begin, what exactly is the court enforcing? Illinois state law requires every auto policy—one that insures against bodily injury—account for uninsured motorist coverage, protecting drivers from things like hit-and-run crashes. It’s a matter of public policy, according to Illinois law, meaning insurance companies can’t skirt the requirement.

As I said earlier, the Smith case arises out of a provision in American Heartland’s insurance contract that requires the accident victim to file a claim within 120 days of an accident. So why did the court rule in Smith’s favor when it was established that she notified the company after 120 days?

An insurance contract can say one thing (that the company must be notified of a claim within 120 days of a crash, for example), but it can’t account for every version of an event leading up to the deadline, which runs counter to public policy, even if the language of the contract is clear.

I’ll note that challenging a contract on public policy grounds isn’t easy. It interferes with our fundamental freedom to contract. But the concept of public policy is powerful because it works in favor of the average citizen, whereas insurance contracts typically don’t.

Essentially, Smith and her attorney made reasonable efforts to contact American Heartland under the circumstances. The court could not justify taking away Smith’s uninsured motorist coverage for a requirement that she, through no fault of her own, couldn’t adhere to. The court rightly concluded that her insurance company’s strict interpretation of the contract was against public policy and therefore could not be enforced.

Takeaways for drivers

Smith’s case underlies a few basic principles when it comes to insurance contracts and potential lawsuits. First, read your contract from beginning to end. Second, know your coverage and the types of insurance you purchase.

Illinois-insured drivers should, at the very least, carry the same amount of uninsured motorist coverage as liability coverage; it’s state law and policy. More importantly, though, is to realize just how far some insurance companies are willing to go to pay as little on claims as possible, which could leave their policyholders stuck in years of litigation.

The reconfiguration of North/Damen: What to expect at tonight’s public meeting

May 9, 2017 by Jay Stefani Leave a Comment

More red light cameras? A radical redesign?

For years, the intersection of North/Damen/Milwaukee has been a tried and true hazard for pedestrians and cyclists. It’s heavily congested, awkwardly designed, and densely populated—a combination of cars, buses, and foot traffic spilling out from the surrounding nightlife and the Damen Blue Line. It’s also the site of dozens of accidents that occur annually.

Recently, for example, a 76-year-old man in a motorized wheelchair was thrown from his chair when a truck hit him as he crossed the intersection. Luckily, he sustained non-life threatening injuries, but his case wasn’t the first and it won’t be the last.

The Chicago Department of Transportation hosts a public meeting tonight to talk about reconfiguring the much-fraught intersection, and it’s the first time the public will have an opportunity to provide critical feedback for what could be a turning point for the future of Chicago’s six-point intersections.

Here are some ideas that could come up, ranked from ostensibly the simplest to the most difficult modifications and implementations.

Eliminate left-hand turns from Damen and North Ave.

Steve Vance of Streetsblog proposed the relatively simple, but exponentially beneficial elimination of left-hand turns by drivers coming from Damen and North Avenues. Vance pointed out that the change could potentially free up about ten feet of roadway “for bike lanes in each direction, wider sidewalks, or a combination of the two.” It would also allow people crossing the street to feel protected from inattentive or impatient drivers, who often jump the gun at the sight of a yellow light.

Vance even went as far as suggesting that right-hand turns should also be eliminated, and while that may be a stretch, it’s indisputable that doing so would allow for a much safer intersection.

Consider more red light cameras

Chicago drivers have had issues with Chicago’s red-light camera enforcement. And there’s no question the city has bungled its operation to a degree. But there’s also no question that red light cameras deter drivers from making hasty decisions.

A study in 2016 by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that cities with active red-light camera programs experienced 21 percent fewer fatal red-light running crashes, and 14 percent fewer fatal crashes of all types at signalized intersections. The study also found that of the 79 cities with active camera programs between 1992 and 2014, roughly 1,296 lives have been saved.

What’s more, red-light cameras receive a great deal of public support. A 2012 survey conducted in D.C. found that 87 percent of residents supported red-light cameras.

Establish prominent road markers and “smart” traffic lights

If you’ve been hanging out in Wicker lately, it may feel as though the roads could use a drastic makeover. That’s because they could. As it stands, the traffic signals and road indicators are relatively modest in size and scope.

One solution is to consider a “smarter” approach for getting people’s attention. In Bellevue, Washington, for example, the city has worked with a system of intersection signals that adjust to traffic conditions in real time, known as adaptive signals. According to an article in Time, Bellevue is the standard for which every city should strive to become. Back in 2010, officials in Bellevue began instituting a system called SCATS (Sydney Coordinative Adaptive Traffic System), “a series of wires embedded in city streets that tell the signals how much traffic is moving through the intersection. When traffic is heavier, the green lights stay on longer. Less traffic means shorter greens.”

Costly? Yes. A long shot? Probably. Worth considering? No doubt.

Enforce small infractions/hire regular traffic cops

There’s an inherent risk whenever the city trots out a member of the CPD’s traffic division to direct heavy traffic. For one thing, the officer on duty is putting his/her life at risk. Washington D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood was once patrolled by Joseph Pozell, a volunteer traffic cop who manned the intersection of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue—one of the most notorious traffic spots in all of D.C.

One sunny, crystal clear day, as Pozell was directing traffic, he was struck by an inattentive driver and killed. It prompted the city to institute even stricter enforcement of the intersection.

The Pozell tragedy notwithstanding, traffic cops can do what stop lights cannot: enforce traffic and keep people from making bad decisions. It’s worth considering what might happen if the city considered assigning a traffic officer to Damen/North/Milwaukee during rush hour. And if a traffic cop isn’t the answer, what about crossing guards?

Consider a radical redesign

Is it time for Chicago to consider more roundabouts? The intersection is probably large enough, and the purpose would effectively expand on Vance’s proposal: to eliminate left-hand turns. A roundabout might also slow traffic significantly and give drivers a clear path to their chosen direction. But a redesign comes with significant costs and could likely prove to be a logistical nightmare. Still, I would argue that there’s no such thing as a bad idea.

Distracted driving tickets took a dive in 2016

May 9, 2017 by Ken Levinson Leave a Comment

From tens of thousands to hundreds

Distracted driving remains a low priority for the Chicago Police Department, a consequence of less manpower and changes to city ordinances, according to Tribune Transportation Columnist Mary Wisniewski.

Wisniewski made appearances on WGN Radio and WBEZ this morning to discuss the huge drop off in the number of citations being doled out by the CPD for things like texting while driving. In 2015, nearly 26,000 distracted driving tickets were written, compared to 46,000 in 2014. In 2016, the CPD wrote just 186 tickets.

“They’ve all but given up on enforcing this particular city ordinance,” Wisniewski said on WGN’s The John Williams Show, prompting host John Williams to ask why. Wisniewski explained:

In 2015, there was a change in the law that made police treat citations under the cell phone ordinance the same as other moving violations, which means that [officers] now have to go to traffic court and appear when the person who’s going up there with their ticket is appearing. [Officers] used to be able to not appear and the tickets could be upheld without them.

Wisniewski also pointed out that the CPD now employs fewer officers and that the department is placing stronger emphasis on other areas of law enforcement, like guns and gang violence. Still, she continued, the CPD hopes to make distracted driving a priority in the future.

The U.S. has experienced an influx of crashes over the last two years, including a 14 percent jump in auto-related fatalities nationally—the highest in almost half a century. Officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration attribute at least some of that to distracted driving.

The people who are experts on this said that people are very complacent about distracted driving. Everyone thinks they can do it safely. Everyone thinks, ‘well, I made it home okay, I must be a great driver.’

One of the ways that we can change that is through technology. One of things I brought up in my article is a technology that a company’s working on called a textalizer, which will be able to look at your phone’s operating system after you’ve been in a crash. You’ll be able to plug in your phone and see if you were just texting or on the phone.

Williams countered by saying that while a textalizer might be a good thing, it still wouldn’t prevent people from doing something bad in the first place, would it?

Do we need stronger penalties?

As we’ve outlined here on the blog, and as Wisniewski illustrated to Williams, the key to prevent distracted driving may be imposing stricter penalties to deter people from doing it at all.

Driving Under the Influence is considered a class A misdemeanor in Illinois for first and second-time offenders. Some instances qualify as a felony, which carries much stiffer penalties, including hefty fines and extended jail time.

Organizations like the Brain Injury Society go as far as to say that texting while driving is the equivalent of drinking four beers, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has said that the two are similar as far as the level of distraction. As it stands, Chicago and other cities and states could benefit by qualifying the word “impairment” to cover a much broader scope of infractions. One hopes that doing so would effectively scare people straight.

Remember these safety tips during National Bike Month

May 8, 2017 by Ken Levinson Leave a Comment

We outline a small refresher for cyclists and drivers

With National Bike Month officially underway and warm weather on the horizon, we’re dusting off our seats, tuning our wheels, and getting ready to enjoy the best of what cycling offers: an unmitigated sense of freedom. But it also means that we (along with other cyclists) are taking precautionary measures to remind ourselves of the dangers amongst us and how to combat them. We’ve outlined a few best-practices for both cyclists and drivers.

For Cyclists: Bike lanes are your friends

The city of Chicago has at least one proponent of safe cycling in Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Since Emanuel took office, the city has added an additional 200 miles of protected bike lanes in and around Chicago, which has consequently improved people’s driving habits. In 2011 for example, the city completed the construction of the Kinzie Street Protected Bike Lane. A survey found that 49 percent of respondents felt that driving habits had improved since then. That’s the good news. The bad news: Bike lanes, while exponentially beneficial, are not a failsafe. Some drivers overlook them, which can lead to problems like “dooring” and illegal parking. The bottom line: Remain on high alert.

For Cyclists: Check for flats

It might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many cyclists forgo the necessary tune-up to get back on the road as quickly as possible. Despite having sat in a garage for the better part of four months, bikes and their tires deteriorate at a slow but steady rate. Jump-starting your ride is akin to running a marathon without having trained in the first place, meaning your legs are bound to give out in a hurry. Tires are no different. The best option: Take your bike for for a pre-spring tune-up at your local bike shop, where rates are as low as $20.

For Cyclists: Wear your helmet

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that less than half of cyclists wear bike helmets while riding, putting their chances of survival in the event of a crash at a measly percentage. The CDCP also pointed out that kids are particularly averse to wearing helmets for fear of being teased, and amazingly, a 2011 poll by the BMJ found that 68 percent of its readers opposed mandatory helmet laws.

But teasing or not, fashionable or unfashionable, skeptical or not, helmets are indisputably a last line of defense that can’t be ignored. Some studies try to promote the idea that helmets are largely inconsequential, but if you need further evidence that they indeed save lives, we point you to the law firm of attorney Steve Gursten in Michigan, where a helmet quite literally saved the eye (and possibly the life) of a longtime receptionist. Countless stories like this exist, and they are not as few and far between as you might believe. For more perspective on helmets, read Jay’s opinion.

For Cyclists: Know your hand signals

Some cyclists underestimate or flat out ignore the importance of using proper hand signals, yet it’s one of the simplest ways to declare your intentions. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration provides a handy (pardon the pun) guide illustrating the proper indicators, and Active outlines eight of the basics by way of a slideshow. Of strong importance: The “Stop” and “Left Hand Turn” signal.

For Drivers: Employ the “Dutch Reach”

In our last blog post, we noted that more than 300 local cyclists crashed into car doors in 2015, a 50 percent increase from the previous year, according to statistics provided by the Illinois Department of Transportation. That’s a staggering statistic. One of the solutions that we, along with many others, proposed was promoting the Dutch Read, a concept developed in the Netherlands. The idea is this: Always open the car door with the hand furthest from the door (e.g. U.S. drivers open their doors using the right hand), forcing you to turn your body in the direction of oncoming traffic, thereby giving you a better vantage point of oncoming traffic. Simple. Easy. Necessary.

For Drivers: Avoid distractions

This may be stating the obvious. Stay off your cell phones and other handheld devices. I don’t think we need linkage to any studies or statistics on this one. Nothing’s more dangerous or consequential for those who ignore the basic safety tenements of the road. It’s also illegal, which means a conviction could end up costing you anywhere from a traffic violation to jail time depending on the severity of a crash.

For Drivers: Proceed with caution

It’s inevitable that you’re going to pass a bicycle at some point while driving. Give as much room as possible at a relatively slow speed, exacting a great deal of patience as you do. If you can’t pass right away, wait until the moment’s right, and whatever you do, don’t honk. Honking can induce panic, causing cyclists to make unpredictable decisions. Don’t put either you or the cyclist in that situation.

IDOT: Chicago cyclists crashing into car doors jumped significantly

April 27, 2017 by Jay Stefani Leave a Comment

New data shows that “dooring” rose by more than half from the previously reported year

The number of local cyclists crashing into car doors is on the rise, according to new data released by the Illinois Department of Transportation, as reported by the Chicago Tribune.

Described as a wake-up call by city officials, the report from the IDOT revealed that more than 300 doorings were reported in 2015, a 50 percent increase from the previous year. The data also shows that 203 doorings were reported in 2014, down from 270 in 2013, though crashes in 2012 and 2011 occurred more than 330 times.

Dooring is one of the most significant dangers impacting cyclists in major cities, and it continues to wreak havoc even for experienced riders. As told by several people interviewed by the Tribune in response to the new report, cyclists expressed that they’re prone to dodge car doors in highly congested areas, even opting to veer into oncoming traffic to avoid a crash. Some may consider that the lesser of two dangers, but it can also be the deadlier choice.

Despite more than 100 miles of protected bike lanes that the city has installed since 2011, the number of crashes involving cyclists has grown exponentially in recent years. State data shows that 1,720 crashes occurred in 2015, up from 1,634 in 2014. In 2013, the city saw 1,720 crashes involving cyclists, but fewer in 2012 and 2011.

How to combat the issue

As stated above, the city has taken proactive measures to improve the number of protected bike lanes in and around the city. That’s a good start, but it can’t be the end. Much of the issue can be attributed to a lack of driver education and awareness. It’s an unconscious habit to open doors without thinking about cyclists riding nearby, so it stands to reason why we don’t enforce laws that would have people thinking twice.

One of the proposals that we believe is a plausible solution is to strongly enforce laws that deter drivers from blocking bike lanes, or impose stricter fines to deter them from doing so in the first place.

It’s also incumbent upon riders to know that bike lanes do not simply guarantee safe passage. Cyclists are just as responsible for sticking to traffic signs and proceeding at cautionary speeds to minimize any chance of a crash.

Using the “Dutch Reach”

A more simplistic approach might be to consider the “Dutch Reach,” put in practice by those in the Netherlands in which drivers and passengers reach for their car door’s handle by using heir right arm instead of their left, thereby turning their bodies in a position that encourages them to spot traffic from behind. The habit is taught from a very early age, and it’s even enforced during driving tests. It’s already catching in cities like San Francisco.

Michael Charney, a doctor based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, began an advocacy program to encourage U.S. residents to adopt the “Dutch Reach.” His website, dutchreach.org, comes with a bevy of resources for understanding how effective the method is, and why it’s more about changing habits than anything else. Among other things, you can find advocacy toolkits, news, and several digital resources to learn more.

And for good measure: Outside Magazine produced this video to give you a decent visual.