TRAFFIC ENG.:K.Hottmann Khottmann@cityofsalem.net 503-588-6211
CITIZENS' ADVISORY TRAFFIC COMMISSION:
Denise VanDyke dmvdhome@yahoo.com
Eileen Virden roevir@msn.com
John Ledger jledger@comcast.net
Lowell Wetzel lowell.wetzel@gmail.com
Miles Adams milestone42@comcast.net
Stephan Price stephanprice@mac.com
You may live on any residential street in Salem, but our situation may be familiar. I live on the south end of Fisher Road, but Hollywood has a similar problem.
The north end of Fisher has a speed of 40mph with no homes. The middle has a speed of 25mph and the pavement is 50 feet wide with few sidewalks and many pedestrians.
South of Silverton Road on Fisher has a speed of 25mph and the pavement is as low as 22 feet wide that is mostly without shoulders or sidewalks, but has pets, children, seasoned citizens, bicyclists, and wheelchair enabled pedestrians.
A reasonable person obeying the basic rule should know NO roadway that starts and ends on a city street should have a 40 mph limit. Unless the street has sidewalk on one side the full length, it should be less than 25 mph. Any road without shoulders and sidewalks should be 15 mph.
The first 1800 feet South of Silverton is technically a business district from Silverton Road to Watson Avenue. It has entrances at U-Haul Moving and Storage, Drag On Motorsports, All Import Repair & Trans, Bethel Baptist Church, Mega Foods, and Walmart. Two of them have 18 wheeler deliveries.
No business district should have a speed limit above 20 mph; not 25 mph. The intersection at Fisher and Devonshire is overloaded. There many accidents happen there, some of which I have video recordings of.
The next 3257 feet has roadway as narrow as 22 feet from Watson Avenue to Sunnyview Road. It has no sidewalks and at least half of it has no shoulders where a bicyclist, pedestrian or wheelchair can pass. By law you can use the street, but the 25 mph traffic is, in reality, driving at 35 to 40 mph. In a chase, police go as much as 100 mph.
I say this is a Narrow Residential Street, but the Traffic Engineer claims 22 feet is wide enough to go 25mph. If you make the speed 15 mph, they will drive at a safe speed of 15 to 25 mph. As is, the average speed seems to be 30 to 40 mph. Police are part of the problem; not the solution. Their threat to public safety is greater than the general population of drivers.
Parking, sidewalks and bike lanes are not the solution. Making room for them cuts down trees and steals front yards, but it will not protect you from speeders. At least not when crossing the street, riding a bike, or using a wheelchair.
A manslaughter charge for violations of the basic rule will fill prisons and graveyards, but speed kills pets, kids, spouses, and seasoned citizens.
Crash at Intersection of Devonshire and Fisher Road NE Salem, Oregon 5/12/17 3:24:51PM
At low speeds, below about 15 miles per hour (m.p.h.), risks are low and increase relatively slowly with small increments in speed. However, as speed increases above 15 m.p.h., small changes in speed yield relatively large increases in risk.The death rate more than doubles for pedestrians when speed increases from 25 to 35 m.p.h., said Kissinger.
Dog Dead on Devonshire & Fisher 11:16:08AM on 10/08/2016
FATAL DISTRACTION? A COMPARISON OF THE CELL-PHONE DRIVER AND THE DRUNK DRIVER
With respect to traffic safety, our data are consistent with Redelmeier and Tibshirani’s (1997) earlier estimates. In fact, when controlling for driving difficulty and time on task, cell phone drivers may actually exhibit greater impairments (i.e., more accidents and less responsive driving behavior) than legally intoxicated drivers. These data also call into question driving regulations that prohibit hand-held cell phones and permit hands-free cell phones, because no significant differences were found in the impairments to driving caused by these two modes of cellular communication.
http://drivingassessment.uiowa.edu/DA2003/pdf/5_Strayerformat.pdf
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