REGION: Office of Traffic Safety ranks North County cities

Standings help cities identify traffic safety problems

By SARAH GORDON - Staff Writer | Monday, October 27, 2008 10:21 AM PDT



Newly released statistics on traffic injury and fatality rates in 2007 highlight the differences in traffic safety among North County cities.

For example: Escondido ranked third among 52 similar-size cities in average injuries from alcohol-involved collisions per vehicle mile, according to the California Office of Traffic Safety.

Ranking high in this case is bad.

Carlsbad, on the other hand, did better, ranking 41st out of 52 in the same category.

The Office of Traffic Safety does not analyze the reasons why a city ranks low or high, said Michele Meadows, assistant director of operations.

The rankings are designed to help cities identify traffic safety problems and to help the state set priorities for doling out federal traffic safety grants, she said.

Escondido police Lt. Mike Loarie said that the department has been working to improve traffic safety with the help of Office of Traffic Safety grants, and has made recent strides in lowering its injuries by targeting unlicensed and drunken drivers and enforcing curfew laws.

He said collision rankings are not the best way to measure the city's progress.

The rankings are based on the number of people killed or injured in collisions each year and the daily average number of miles vehicles travel in the city.

The office also compiles DUI enforcement rankings, which are based on the percentage of licensed drivers arrested for DUI.

The rankings are crude because they do not take into account variables such as a city's demographics.

So while San Marcos ranks No. 3 out of 106 similar-size cities for injuries caused by drunken drivers under age 21, a traffic sergeant there last week questioned the ranking's significance.

Sgt. Cliston Hensley said he doesn't believe the city of about 81,000 residents has an unusually high rate of underage drinking.

But with two colleges, it has a lot of drivers younger than age 21 on its roads every day.

"I don't know how many of those other cities with our population really have our population," Hensley said.

San Marcos earned its No. 3 position after 14 people were killed or injured in crashes involving underage drinkers in 2007, according to the rankings.

San Marcos does much better in overall traffic injury rates. Its composite ranking, which takes into account all injuries per average daily miles traveled, is 63 out of 106.

In 2007, 227 people were injured or killed in the city, with vehicles covering an average of 731,997 miles every day.

Escondido, in addition to ranking third for alcohol-related traffic injuries, ranked high in several other categories.

It was No. 1 in fatalities and injuries caused by drunken drivers under age 21 and No. 4 in hit-and-run related injuries.

Overall, the city was ranked fourth out of 52 for its traffic-injury rate.

The city's ranking has changed little from year to year, according to Office of Traffic Safety reports going back to 2002.

But Loarie said comparing Escondido's collision rate with other cities' year by year is not the best way to measure whether the city is improving.

That's because if other cities also improve by the same amount or more, Escondido would not improve in its overall ranking, he said.

"We could be ranked the same or go down in the rankings, but that doesn't say whether we have safer streets," Loarie said.

Loarie said traffic safety in Escondido has improved since 2005. He credited driver's license and DUI checkpoints and seat belt enforcement with helping to reduce by more than 20 percent the number of injury accidents so far in 2008, compared with the same period in 2005.

Loarie also said the city's high DUI enforcement ranking shows that the police are serious about taking dangerous drivers off the roads.

With 911 drunken-driving arrests in 2007, or 1.06 percent of all its licensed drivers, Escondido ranked 47 out of 52 cities in DUI enforcement.

In this category, a higher ranking means more enforcement, according to the Office of Traffic Safety.

The average city arrests about 0.8 percent of its licensed drivers each year, Meadows said.

The numbers for Carlsbad show police arrested more people for drunken driving in 2007 than in any other year going back to 2002, while the injury rates involving drunken driving stayed about the same.

Carlsbad police made 561 DUI arrests in 2007, compared with 457 the year before, according to the Office of Traffic Safety. In 2005, police made 357 arrests.

Lt. Don Rawson said he wasn't sure why DUI arrests were increasing, but that more people are calling 911 when they spot impaired drivers, in response to a statewide campaign encouraging motorists to report drunken drivers.

"Our fellow citizens are being more diligent and reporting that behavior," he said.

Contact staff writer Sarah Gordon at (760) 740-3517 or sgordon@nctimes.com.

Ranking the cities:
2007 traffic injury and fatality composite rankings

Escondido: 4/52 (ranked against other cities with populations of 100,000 to 250,000)
Carlsbad: 40/52 (ranked against other cities with populations of 100,000 to 250,000)
Encinitas: 70/106 (ranked against other cities with populations of 50,001 to 100,000)
Poway: 89/106 (ranked against other cities with populations of 50,001 to 100,000)
Vista: 29/106 (ranked against other cities with populations of 50,001 to 100,000)
Oceanside: 8/52 (ranked against other cities with populations of 100,000 to 250,000)
San Marcos: 63/106 (ranked against other cities with populations of 50,001 to 100,000)
Poway: 89/106 (ranked against other cities with populations of 50,001 to 100,000)

--- Rankings are based on the number of 2007 fatalities and injuries per average daily vehicle miles.
--- All the 2007 collision and DUI enforcement rankings are available at

http://www.ots.ca.gov/Media_and_Research/Rankings/