Should the USA Adopt the ‘Safety Corridor’ Approach for Crash Scenes?

Eight European countries are now requiring drivers to create a “safety corridor” to allow emergency vehicles swift access to trapped and injured people at crash scenes on congested roads.  This methodology could be a life-saver here in the USA, too.

Traffic separates to leave a ten-foot ‘lane’ to allow rescue and police vehicles to reach crash scenes. Getting this to work requires the provision of good education regarding the technique, together with enforcement that significantly penalizes those who selfishly try to cheat.  (Image courtesy of the ETSC)

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An Excellent, Uncompromising Message about Drinking and Driving

In the 1960s, as a boy still at home with my parents, I started to see early road safety messages on British television, and key among these were film clips about not drinking alcohol and then driving.

The following decade, I joined the police — first in a three-year cadetship in which college played a major role, then as an officer.  And during those early police years, I started to more fully understand the tragic devastation caused by people who drink alcohol before driving.

 The video above is from 1978, my second year on Traffic Patrol

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Road Safety Lessons from Norway – Introduction

Road safety lessons from Norway?  Are you asking yourself:  “Why Norway?”  If so, the answers — those that are visible to anyone that looks — are a revelation.

A motorhome / RV / camper van on top of one of the bridges on the Atlantic Road, in Norway.
Beautiful, sweeping bridges (two-way traffic) over a series of inlets on the evocatively-named ‘Atlantic Road’, on a stormy day, south west of Trondheim. And as suggested by the RV at the top of this bridge, Norway is a touring paradise.   (Copyright image, 2019.)

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