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November 2007
Toward Zero Deaths Conference highlights ‘Move Over,’ primary seat belt laws
Mark Dunaski
In August 2000, Corporal Ted Foss with the Minnesota State Patrol was struck and killed during a routine traffic stop. As attendees at this year’s Toward Zero Deaths (TZD) conference learned, being hit by a vehicle is a constant threat for on-the-job law enforcement officers. In Minnesota and nationwide, approximately 50 percent of law enforcement deaths are traffic related, said State Patrol Colonel Mark Dunaski during the conference’s opening session.
The TZD annual conference serves as a forum for sharing information on how to reduce the number of fatalities and injuries on Minnesota roads. This year’s event, held September 17 and 18 in Duluth, Minn., drew about 540 attendees.
Dunaski noted that the issue affects not only law enforcement but also emergency response agencies, transportation department workers, and tow truck operators, among others. “We’re all out on the highways— it’s our work zone. We need motorists to understand this, and we also need to learn how to keep ourselves safe out there,” he said.
As a result of Foss’s death, the Minnesota State Legislature enacted the “Ted Foss” Move Over Law, which requires drivers approaching an emergency vehicle stopped along a roadway to move over to another lane (on roads with two or more lanes in the same direction), providing a full lane of buffer space. To get the word out to Minnesotans about the “Ted Foss Law,” Mn/DOT spearheaded an educational campaign along with other agencies including the Office of Traffic Safety and the Minnesota State Patrol.
Tom Horan
During the conference’s luncheon session, the critical role that the media play in raising awareness of traffic safety issues was recognized through the work of three local reporters. Trish Van Pilsum and Jeff Baillon with FOX 9 News and Rick Kupchella with KARE-11 News were given TZD STAR Awards for their work producing in-depth traffic safety news stories. Van Pilsum’s report on seat belt use showed that in many fatal vehicle crashes, the passenger compartment is left intact, and if seat belts are used, many people can survive. Today, thousands of driver’s education students across the country are shown Van Pilsum’s seat belt story, as are UPS and Speedy Delivery Service drivers. AAA and the Minnesota High School League have teamed up to show it at state high school tournaments as well.
Baillon’s story showed how cable median barriers are saving lives by preventing crossover crashes. Kupchella’s three-part news series on impaired driving included candid interviews with individuals who had been arrested for driving under the influence (DUI) and followed them through the legal process that follows such an arrest.
In a concurrent session on emergency medical services (EMS) response times and trauma, University of Minnesota researcher Tom Horan, with the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs’s Center for Excellence in Rural Safety, described the Center’s efforts to facilitate research, training, and outreach activities related to rural transportation safety.
Delays in receiving emergency care in sparsely populated areas put many rural Americans at greater risk of permanent injury or death than those living in urban areas. Improving EMS response in rural areas means learning about the differences that exist in rural versus urban transportation and health services and examining the role technology plays in improving accessibility, timeliness, and quality of rural services, Horan said.
Horan’s team is now working to construct a data model illustrating the flow from the initial 911 call through dispatch, response, coordination, and treatment. Ultimately, his team hopes to apply this data in a framework that allows anybody to access it and easily see the distribution of fatalities and response times in a state. “We think this will provide an interactive way for the public to start to see and understand the nature and severity of these fatal crashes,” he said.
In the conference’s final session, David and Loni Kjos described the devastating impact of their daughter’s death in a 2004 car crash and their ongoing efforts to get the Minnesota State Legislature to adopt a primary seat belt law. Kelsey Rae Kjos was not wearing a seat belt at the time she was killed. The current seat belt law is the only traffic law in Minnesota that is “secondary” in nature, and some experts say that upgrading the law to standard enforcement could annually save 55 lives and prevent 1,000 injuries in Minnesota.
Other conference sessions covered teen driving, safety strategies for rural roads, high-visibility law enforcement programs, initiatives for reducing impaired driving, child passenger safety, and other traffic safety topics. CTS’s Stephanie Malinoff, outreach and education coordinator, moderated one of the conference’s concurrent sessions.
Plenary sessions were moderated by Bernie Arseneau of Mn/DOT and Cheri Marti of DPS. Marti is the former associate director of CTS.
Toward Zero Deaths is a multiagency partnership that includes representatives from Mn/DOT, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, the Minnesota State Patrol, the Federal Highway Administration, and CTS. The conference was hosted by CTS and sponsored by Mn/DOT, the Department of Public Safety, and the Minnesota TZD program.
A proceedings of the conference will be published in early 2008. To receive a copy, call CTS at 612-626-1077 or visit www.cts.umn.edu/publications.