Everything Traffic Safety
Q: This week we have a couple questions about kids in vintage cars: I have a 1939 Packard, which of course has no seatbelts. I’d like to be able to give my grandkids a ride in the car but without seatbelts I can’t install a carseat. Is it legal to let a child under 12 ride in a car without seatbelts?
Q: The distracted driving law has an exception for commercial drivers, but what is the definition of that? I drive a box truck used for construction. It’s registered in the company name and has the company name all over it. I have a regular driver license. On any given day, I receive a minimum of ten calls from the office or customers and make about the same number of outgoing calls. Yesterday, I pulled to the side of the road five times to talk on the phone and twice a cop rolled past to see if I was in need. For the other calls, I was able to use the headset or sent them to voicemail, much to the chagrin of the callers. Am I considered commercial or not?
Continue reading “Distracted Driving for Commercial Drivers”
Q: It’s obvious that the police respond to high-crash locations after crashes happen, but do they ever patrol these areas (and most others) to do proactive, deterrence enforcement? I guarantee that if traffic stops were performed and citations written, the driving behavior would improve.
Q: So many times I see people with dogs in the back of their trucks that are not tied in. I have seen dogs fall out of the back and be seriously injured or killed in the past. What is the law regarding having a dog or dogs, in the back of an open pickup?
Continue reading “Dogs In Truck Beds – Illegal or Just Unwise?”
Q: On the topic of tailgating, specifically enforcement: Why couldn’t they use the traffic cameras to watch for this type of activity and then just send out tickets? There should be a way to develop a formula for determining proper distances. And for the open highway, why not develop drones that could do the same thing? With all of the new technology it seems that it should not be too difficult to track and identify tailgaters, at least the more egregious ones. Maybe a project for one of the new technology sector institutions.
Let’s talk about tires. I recently had a conversation with someone about tire performance and how it relates to the price of a tire. The question was essentially, “Is it worth it to buy expensive tires for my car?” There is a study from AAA that answers that question, but in the process of exploring the question I encountered what I think is even more important – how long you keep your tires on your car.
Q: Recently I was pulled over after I drove on the shoulder when I got stuck in a border lineup on the truck route. I was given a warning and was told that it is illegal to drive on the shoulder, even if it is to avoid being stuck in a lineup to a location that I am not going to. Blaine and other border towns frequently have long lineups not just on the state routes or Interstate, but on local roads next to schools, shopping and businesses. If you get stuck you cannot do a u-turn to escape. What is the law about using the shoulder of a road? Is there any accommodation to local residents who are not intending to go across the border?
If you could do something to make traveling on our roads safer, would you do it? We’ll get to the rules of the road in a bit, but first I want to highlight two students in our community who can answer “yes” to that question with certainty.
Q: When the freeway speed is 60 mph, may I drive 50 mph in far right lane with an RV? What is slowest speed allowed without getting ticketed?
Q: In local parks, sidewalk upthrusts (say, by tree roots) are marked by yellow paint for the length of the walkway re-elevation. That’s terrific. But what about regular sidewalks along streets where there is often a one-inch elevation change from one concrete section to the next? Can we call the city to apply yellow paint to those? Could we simply paint them ourselves in our own neighborhood? Streets often have the same upthrust problems and are a great surprise to bicyclists. Also those pedestrian courtesy outcroppings of sidewalk that shorten their walk across the street (but stop cold the parking lane) – unwary or at-night cyclists ram those all the time; some are painted yellow but most are not. Thank you from a voice of unfortunate experience.