40 States + D.C. Indicate Highway Deaths Down in 2008

WASHINGTON, DC — A survey from the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) reveals that deaths on our nation’s roadways declined significantly in 2008. Forty-four states and the District of Columbia provided preliminary data. Of those, 40 states and D.C. indicated a decline in fatalities, while four indicated an increase. Overall, the average decline was 10.7 percent.

Most surprising about the survey was that many states saw a percentage decline in fatalities higher than their percentage decline in Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT). Most states are not yet able to release an indication of VMT from 2008. Notably, however, of the 19 states that indicated a decline in fatalities and provided an estimate of VMT, 17 reported their fatality percentage decline was more than the percentage decline in VMT—in most cases double, triple or even quadruple the decline in VMT.

What does this all mean? GHSA Executive Director Barbara Harsha interprets the numbers to mean that a variety of factors may have contributed to the declines in 2008. Harsha says, “Clearly, the high gas prices in the first part of the year and the difficult economy in the second half caused people to drive less, thus reducing fatalities. However, there’s more occurring here than just economic factors.”

According to Harsha, state highway safety agencies report other factors may have contributed to the fatality reduction, including: gains in seat belt use, stronger state laws and increased enforcement of these laws. Harsha notes that multiple states have reported experiencing a reduction in driver speeds mainly because drivers want to improve their fuel efficiency. For example, the speed of the average Oregon driver was down more than 1 MPH in 2008. Harsha notes, “This may not sound like a lot, but reducing driver speeds means that more people are surviving crashes. Drivers may not slow down to save a life, but clearly they will slow down to save a buck.” Harsha expects more states will use the economic argument to urge drivers to slow down.

GHSA’s survey results mirror a December report from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). In that report, DOT noted that the federal government projects the number of people killed in traffic crashes to reach a new record low for 2008. Early DOT projections revealed a 10 percent drop in deaths for the first 10 months of 2008.

The GHSA survey was conducted during the week on January 26. States were asked for their percent increase/decrease in fatalities and VMT. Fatality data is preliminary and VMT is based on estimates. Fatality estimates generally were based on data from 12 months in 2008 while VMT estimates were based on 11 months of data.

View survey results >>

Source: IPS

NEW YORK - In what promises to be the first major test of the Barack Obama administration’s new approach to the rule of law, the Supreme Court will soon hear what could be one of the most consequential cases in U.S. history.

It will be asked to answer the question: Can a U.S. president declare a legal resident an ‘enemy combatant’ and hold him or her indefinitely without charge or trial?

The legal U.S. resident in question is Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who has been detained in solitary confinement at a Navy brig in South Carolina since June 2003. Al-Marri is the only remaining person held in the United States as an “enemy combatant”. He is being represented by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The case, Al-Marri v. Spagone, is a habeas corpus action, challenging al-Marri’s indefinite detention. The defendant is Navy Commander Daniel Spagone, who runs the Navy brig in South Carolina where Al-Marri is being held by the military.

The central pre-Supreme Court question is what position the new Obama administration will take when it files its brief, currently due on Mar. 23. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments during the last week of April and is expected to hand down its ruling in June. The brief filed by the government in the lower courts during the George W. Bush administration defended the president’s authority to designate “enemy combatants” and to detain them indefinitely.

The ACLU says that the Al-Marri case “provides the Obama administration with an early and critical opportunity to repudiate the abuses of the past eight years and restore the rule of law.”

Jonathan Hafetz, ACLU’s lead attorney on the Al-Marri case, told IPS, “This is one of most extreme examples of the Bush administration’s abuse of executive power. It is a case where President Bush sought to push the outer limits of the Constitution. It is legally and morally indefensible.”

A separate case, Al-Marri v. Gates, is contesting al-Marri’s abusive treatment and conditions of confinement at the Navy brig.

Al-Marri, a Qatari national, came lawfully to the United States in September 2001with his wife and five children to pursue a master’s degree at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. He was arrested by the FBI at his home that December and subsequently indicted for credit card fraud and false identification.

Al-Marri asserted his innocence and prepared to contest the charges. But on Jun. 23, 2003, on the eve of a hearing to suppress illegally seized evidence and less than a month before trial, President Bush declared al-Marri an al Qaeda agent and designated him an “enemy combatant” in the “war on terrorism”. That same day, the military took custody of al-Marri and incarcerated him in the Navy brig, where he has been detained without charge ever since.

At stake in Al-Marri v. Spagone is whether the president can order the military to seize and detain indefinitely, without charge or trial, individuals lawfully residing in the United States, including U.S. citizens, based on government assertions that they planned to commit terrorist activities.

In 2007, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that the government cannot hold individuals arrested in this country in military detention without charge.

But in July 2008, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in a narrowly divided decision that the president had legal authority to imprison al-Marri indefinitely without charge based on the facts alleged. As one judge noted in dissent, however, to accept the government’s claim of extraordinary detention power would have “disastrous consequences for the Constitution - and the country”.

The ACLU says Al-Marri’s detention represents “one of the gravest expansions of executive detention power since Sep. 11.” The United States was founded on the principle that “individuals living in this country cannot be imprisoned without charge and that civilian government must remain supreme over the military. Al-Marri’s detention represents a radical departure from that celebrated legal tradition - one that was never authorised by Congress and that violates the Constitution.”

According to the ACLU, documents recently obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that standard operating procedures developed for Guantánamo Bay “were secretly applied at the Navy brig in an effort to create a prison beyond the law within the United States. Today, al-Marri remains in virtual isolation at the Brig, denied even meaningful communication with his family.”

“It is clearly illegal to imprison legal residents of the United States without trial. It is also the type of false choice between our safety and our ideals that has pervaded America’s approach to fighting terrorism for the past eight years,” said the ACLU’S Hafetz. “We are confident that upon review, the Court will strike down this radical departure from our nation’s most basic values and traditions.”

Former United States Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, former FBI Director William Sessions and numerous former generals, admirals and diplomats joined the ACLU in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reject the president’s authority to indefinitely imprison a legal resident of the U.S. without charge or trial. These and other top military and civilian leaders have filed friend-of-the-court briefs.

“A decision upholding our government’s right to arrest and imprison anyone within its borders, without charge, will not only undercut our ability to convince dictatorial regimes to abandon similar practices, it will substantially undermine efforts to restore our international reputation and to obtain more cooperation from our allies in combating terrorism,” they said in the brief.

The second Al-Marri case, Al-Marri v. Gates, contests al-Marri’s treatment and conditions of confinement since he was declared an “enemy combatant”. During the first 16 months of his military confinement, al-Marri was held incommunicado and subjected to a range of highly coercive interrogation measures, including being held in total isolation, exposed to painful stress positions, shackled in a freezing cell for hours at a time, and threatened with violence and death.

Al-Marri is the second U.S. person to have been held as an enemy combatant within the United States. The first was José Padilla, a United States citizen. Padilla was arrested in Chicago in May 2002, and was detained as a material witness until Jun. 9 2002, when President Bush designated him an illegal enemy combatant and transferred him to a military prison, arguing that he was thereby not entitled to trial in civilian courts.

Padilla was held for three-and-a-half years as an “enemy combatant” after his arrest on suspicion of plotting a radioactive “dirty bomb” attack. That charge was dropped when his case was moved to a civilian court after pressure from civil liberties groups.

In August 2007, Padilla was found guilty by a federal jury of charges that he conspired to kill people in an overseas jihad and to fund and support overseas terrorism. He was sentenced to 17 years and four months in prison.

Source: WWLTV

NEW ORLEANS – Residents in and around New Orleans have been hearing the sounds of low-flying helicopters and what sounds like bomb blasts over the past few nights, but the sounds are part of a training exercise for some of America’s elite military troops.

At one Lakefront home, Gigi Burk normally hears her son, 6-year-old Beau, practicing the piano, but last night she heard something much different at around 10 p.m.

“I said, oh my God! They’re bombs. That’s what I thought it was, somebody dropping bombs,” Burk said.

Burk said she panicked, not knowing why she was hearing what sounded like explosions and low-flying helicopters.

“We’re a little skittish around here with things that have happened,” Burk said.

But according to military officials, it’s a training exercise that brought about 150 U.S. troops from the U.S. Special Operations Command to train in New Orleans for urban warfare.

“They are regularly engaged in combat operations,” said U.S. Special Operations Command staffer Kimberly Tiscione. “They are the best of the best we have to offer across all the branches of the military.”

Black Hawk and “Little Bird” helicopters are transporting troops to several locations around New Orleans, according to Tiscione.

“They’re going to be flying near buildings, doing approaches on them,” Tiscione said. “You might see them landing on the roof tops or landing on the ground near them as well.”

“I heard a bunch of explosions starting at about 10 p.m. They were about ten seconds apart, and then they’d stop, and we thought it was over, but then they started again,” said Burk.

Tiscione said that the ground troops were performing “breeches at several different locations.

“So, they’re moving through doorways or walls or that sort of thing. They’re also doing weapons proficiency,” Tiscione said.

The forces are using simulated ammunitions, almost like paintball pellets, to conduct the training. And even though the noise may affect your neighborhood, the night-time training is only supposed to last from sundown to 11 p.m., according to Tiscione.

“They are the best of the best because they get these kind of training events,” she said.

Burk said she wishes the training had been better publicized before-hand to avoid a scare Tuesday night.

“People were talking about it everywhere today,” Burk said.

The NOPD did put a press release out about the training, and WWL-TV aired a story about it; however, that was a week ago.

Since U.S. Special Operations Command hasn’t done a similar training here since 2000, it has caught many people by surprise.

The training will go on every night through the end of this week.

SYNC reduces driving distractions claim

Research carried out by Ford on its SYNC hands-free system claims that it significantly reduces the level of distraction when drivers select a phone number or choose a song on their MP3 player compared with the same operations with hand-held cell phones and music players.

The research claims study participants spent an average of 25 seconds with their eyes-off-the-road to select a song with a handheld MP3 player compared with only two seconds for those choosing a song using SYNC.

Test participants performed seven typical tasks using SYNC’s voice interface and their personal handheld phones and music players. The tasks included dialing a 10-digit number, calling a specific person from the digital phonebook, receiving a call while driving, playing a specific song, and reviewing and responding to text messages. For each task, Ford researchers measured total eyes-off-the-road time, deviation of lane position, speed variability, and object detection response time to identify differences in attentiveness and driving performance while using basic functions.

The research was undertaken in a driving simulator with 25 participants who are regular SYNC users to compare driver performance and eye glance behavior effects of tasks performed using SYNC’s voice interface as compared to using nomadic devices with visual-manual interfaces.

Charleston Leaders Consider a Noise Ordinance
Reporter: Kallie Cart
Email Address: news@wsaz.com

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) — The Capitol City may soon get a lot quieter.

The Charleston City Council introduced a new noise ordinance Monday
night to crack down on loud offenders.

In addition to muffling noises like illegal mufflers on cars and
motorcycles, the new ordinance would also silence big trucks.

It will be illegal for truckers to make that jack hammering noise that
comes when they engine brake.

The ordinance also spells out the violations, making it easier for
police to crack down.

Violations could carry a big price tag of 500-dollars, which some city
council members say is a small price to pay for peace and quiet.

Noises from things like festivals, ballgames, and businesses are exempt
from the ordinance.

The proposal still has to be approved by the city council.

Deal Forged to Ban Smoking in Va. Restaurants, Bars

By Tim Craig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 5, 2009; 12:20 PM

RICHMOND, Feb. 5 — Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and House Speaker William J. Howell announced a deal Thursday morning to ban smoking in restaurants and bars in Virginia, a monumental decision in a state built on the profits of cigarette sales that remains the home to the nation’s largest tobacco company.

Under the agreement, which the two men finalized last night, smoking will be permitted only in private clubs but public establishments can also construct enclosed, ventilated smoking rooms for patrons.

Kaine (D) and Howell (R-Stafford) said they expect the legislation to sail through the General Assembly with bipartisan support. The Republican-controlled House General Laws Committee, which has repeatedly killed previous smoking bans, was to take up the bill later Thursday.

“This is a good thing for restaurant patrons, and it’s a good thing for workers,” Kaine said.

Kaine said the bill is a “good example of compromise” and “a true bipartisan achievement.”

Howell also described the legislative deal as one that will satisfy both smokers and nonsmokers.

“I feel comfortable that the rights of citizens to enjoy a legal product have been protected and that the rights of citizens who don’t want smoke while having their dinners have been protected as well,” he said.

But Teresa T. Gregson, a lobbyist for the American Heart Association, said her organization is “not happy” about the compromise.

Gregson said the bill as drafted does not clearly state what constitutes an enclosed room. Gregson said the bill also lacks stringent penalties for patrons or establishments that violate it.

“We are disappointed they would create a bill and show it to us two hours before the press conference,” said Gregson, who vowed to try to amend it. “There are problems with this bill.”

The District banned smoking in bars and restaurants in 2006, and Maryland followed with a similar prohibition in 2007. This is not the first year proposals to ban smoking have been proposed in Virginia, but they have repeatedly been defeated in the Republican-controlled House, where Howell has quietly blocked attempts to allow the debate to reach the floor.

Howell told Republican House members Wednesday afternoon that he now supports a “limited” prohibition — one that would not extend, for instance, to private clubs. Howell told the delegates he met Kaine, who has made the ban one of his top legislative priorities, and the two men agreed to move forward with a compromise.

On Tuesday, the Democratic-controlled Senate approved four bills that would outlaw smoking in bars, restaurants and public places. Howell and Kaine agreed to draft a more narrow version of the Senate bills.

Even with Kaine’s and Howell’s support, a smoking ban could face obstacles in the House.

In 2007, Kaine tried to slip a ban past House leaders by attaching it as an amendment to a bill. But 10 House Democrats, including House Minority Leader Ward L. Armstrong (D-Henry), helped defeat Kaine’s amendment.

GOP delegates said Howell, who controls prized committee assignments, has told them they can vote freely, without fear of retribution.

“Everybody has got to make up their own mind,” said House Majority Leader H. Morgan Griffith (R-Salem).

One GOP delegate, who declined to be identified because caucus meetings are supposed to be confidential, said Howell told them he was moving ahead with a proposed ban because of the looming elections.

Since 2003, Democrats have gained 11 seats. All 100 House seats are up for election in November. Democrats will take over the majority if they can pick up six seats this fall.

Public and private polls show strong support for a smoking ban, especially in the state’s Democratic-leaning north, where several GOP delegates could face strong challenges this year.

Staff writer Anita Kumar contributed to this report.

Thousands Injured and Killed in Non-Driving Car Accidents
US Department of Transportation finds 841,000 injured in vehicle accidents that have nothing to do with driving.

A US Department of Transportation study released last month showed that thousands are injured or killed each year in vehicle-related accidents that are wholly unrelated to driving. A total of of 1747 fatalities and 841,000 injuries are the result each year of non-traffic crashes and non-crash incidents, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The agency compiled the estimates to provide the first-ever look at the magnitude of accidents that cannot be resolved with a new law enforced with traffic citations.

Among the findings were that a total of 168 individuals are killed each year by falling vehicles with another 88 dying after they themselves fall out of a car. Five are killed by electric windows and three die while locked in the trunk. About 22 percent of injuries are caused while entering or exiting a vehicle. Twenty percent of injuries are caused by car doors while 10,000 find themselves in a hospital after an incident involving a hoist or a jack. NHTSA compiled the information from a number of sources including police reports, hospital records and an injury database maintained by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Annual Estimate of Non-crash Injuries by Incident Type

View a summary of the results in a 150k PDF file at the source link below.

Source: Not-in-Traffic Surveillance 2007 (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1/29/2009)