Letter: Human Speed Bumps

If walking into a lamppost is labeled an insurable injury, what do you call a misappropriation of funds?

Feeling run down?

If people hit by cars going zero have 100% survival rate, what chance is there of living to tell about it if run over at 20 (the speed of the car, not the age of the pedestrian)?

At 30, or 31?  Or more?

A closer look at the graphs and analysis of the Camp Murray Gate Relocation follow up traffic study presented to the Tillicum Woodbrook Neighborhood Association this past May 1, shows nearly 25% of cars are five miles or more over the speed limit in both directions on Portland Ave. – making either their approach along No. Thorne Lane to, or their getaway to I-5 from, Maple St. – where the table-top white-stripe-painted speed bump crosswalk was installed for the purpose of both lowering speeds and providing a safe crossing for children going to and from school and to the lake and playground.

It would thus appear that if one out of four cars are more than five miles over the speed limit – in either a posted school zone where signs clearly indicate the speed limit is 20 mph, or the approach to or the departure from that zone which is 25 mph – and 2,100 cars are daily traveling that section according to figures supplied by the Transpo Group that did the analysis, then crunching the numbers – and hopefully not the pedestrians – there are 525 opportunities per day for your child in Tillicum to be hit by a car going too fast.

A recent article noted that 85% of cars traveling Portland Ave. are under 31 mph.

Which means – this 85%-thing – “that 15% of drivers may be traveling unreasonably fast,” said the Transpo folks.

Fifteen percent of 2,100 cars “traveling unreasonably fast” means there are 355 chances every day that your Tillicum child will not survive.

How fast is “unreasonable”?

Fast enough.

“Fed up by cars going over New York City’s 30 mph hour speed limit, Keegan Stephan and his organization right of way started posting these ‘20 is plenty’ signs to get drivers to slow down,” reports Kerry Drew for MyFoxNY this past May 2.

The government took the signs down and established a series of workshops to study the issue.

“If you’re hit by a car going 30 mph you have a 50 percent chance of survival. If you’re hit by a car going 20 mph you have a 95 percent chance of survival,” said Stephan.

But what if the “unreasonably” fast car is going 40?

Plan your funeral.

Quickly.

Eighty-five percent of you aren’t going to make it.

And, and it’s a big and, “travelling at 40 mph, the average driver who sights a pedestrian in the road 100 feet ahead will still be travelling 38 mph on impact.”

Pick the music for your funeral.

But there is good news.

If you do not plan any activities that require you to be out-and-about on Portland Ave. at its intersection with Maple St., or Lake Street, or Spruce St. or anywhere between Exit 123 and the speed bump, you will be neither making your exit nor becoming a speed bump.

More than likely.

During the 12 hour period beginning at 6 A.M. and ending at 6 P.M., the traffic peaks through this area at nearly 500 cars – twice, once coming and once going.

Twenty-five percent of which are going too fast, some “unreasonably fast.”

During the same hours the sun is shining.

So enjoy the sunrise – when it’s not raining – or the sunset, in other words.

Otherwise stay in your house and watch TV.

Speaking of forecasts, though not of the weather but whether you’ll be sooner run over now as opposed to 2010 before the gate was moved redirecting Camp Murray employee traffic along the interior street of Tillicum’s Portland Ave. – you won’t.

So you can at least plan to live long enough to see your fifth grader graduate whereas in 2011 that was more in doubt.

In 2011 a horrid 2,700 cars were forecast to parade – not as in the old days of Tillicum’s convertible-riding and reigning Queen and King – up and down Portland Ave.

Now, as it turns out, only 2,100 do.

Twenty-five percent of which – while not faster than a speeding bullet given they speed but only speed a little although some speed “unreasonably fast” – are five miles per hour over the speed limit.

Or more.

And that statistic right there – not you as a statistic, although maybe – but the speed-thing, has the Transpo Group concerned.

“As a general guideline, speeding along a roadway segment is an issue when more than 15 percent of the vehicles exceed the speed limit by at least 5 mph.”

And we’re looking at nearly 25 percent.

So it’s an issue.

How much of an issue?

Not much.

Desireé Winkler, Transportation Division Manager for the City of Lakewood, says the money that had been earmarked, promised, dedicated, and otherwise singularly and solely assigned and “set aside for the specific purpose of making adjustments in traffic calming measures” as stipulated in the Right of Way Permit 11192 (p.7 of 11, XIV; Permit Application Date: August 25, 2011):

Won’t be.

At least not all of it.

Of the $100,000 obtained from Camp Murray to deal with ‘issues,’ $85,000 instead is going to pay for gutters.

The last time gutters were responsible for the death, abrasion or other serious or even symbolic injury sustained by a citizen is, well, unknown.

But hey, it’s possible.

Just this past April 26, the “News of the Weird” column in The Tacoma News Tribune (B12) related the new billing requirements for doctors to report to insurance companies why the latter should pay up for diagnosis and treatments to their insured.

“Balloon collision” for example.

Seriously.  Happens all the time.

“Knitting and Crocheting” was another.

“An injury occurring at an opera house,” seems a stretch but perhaps a high F-sharp, breaking glass, that sort of thing.

“If the patient is injured by walking into a lamppost,” even merited a separate ledger entry.

You can see it (pun intended – lamppost, get it?) can’t you.

With apologies to Simon and Garfunkel,

“Hello lamppost,
What cha knowing?
I’ve come to watch your flowers growing.”

And with a marijuana-legal-in-Washington “Doot-in’ doo-doo,” the drugee straightens – as best he can – and slams right into the lamppost. 

There’s not only “separate codes for the first such lamppost collision (but) for repeat collisions.”

All of which, more or less, fast or slow brings us back to the original question: If walking into a lamppost can be labeled an insurable injury, what do you call a misappropriation of funds?

Government.