New Washington state law makes it easier for wheelchair users to safely cross streets

From The Herald in Washington state:

MARYSVILLE, Wash. — Later this year, wheelchair users who venture across busy intersections should catch a break.

Currently, state law allows drivers to turn at intersections as long as pedestrians aren’t in the lane where the vehicle is headed.

A law passed this year, to take effect Aug. 1, requires the driver to wait when a wheelchair user enters a crosswalk and remain stopped until that person has crossed the street.

Drivers already must do this for visually-impaired people with white canes.

“This is going to save lives,” said Sharon Garvin Todd of Marysville, a wheelchair user who pushed for the new law.

State Rep. John McCoy, D-Tulalip, sponsored the bill.

“It’s just public safety,” McCoy said. “We have more and more motorized wheelchairs that are filing up our streets and sidewalks.”

Todd, 56, who has multiple sclerosis, knows from personal experience about the dangers of traveling in a wheelchair on city streets.

“I’ve been hit three times,” she said.

The new state law wouldn’t have been a factor in any of those accidents, but they illustrate how drivers often don’t pay attention to pedestrians or people in wheelchairs, she said.

Twice she was hit on sidewalks by drivers accelerating out of driveways, she said. In one of those, near the intersection of State Avenue and 80th Street NE, she was ejected from her chair and landed face-first in the street with cars going by.

She severely dislocated her collarbone, and her rib cage was severely twisted around.

Her rib cage still goes out on her and “the collarbone still dislocates,” Todd said.

Another time she was hit just after she entered the intersection of Grove Street and 43rd Avenue NE, right in front of the Marysville Public Safety Building. The driver was looking to the left for an opening to turn right and accelerated without looking to see if anyone was in front of her, Todd said.

That time, she suffered bruises and a sprained back and her wheelchair was totaled, she said.

Wheelchair riders are lower to the ground and harder to see than most pedestrians, she said. Often, the driver of a car turning right in an intersection will see a person in a wheelchair approaching from the other side, but the driver of the second or third car won’t see because their view is blocked, she said.

It gets back to driver inattention. According to Washington State Patrol statistics, some type of driver distraction is one of the leading causes of accidents.

Among the reasons for wrecks recorded by the State Patrol in Snohomish, King, Skagit and Whatcom counties from 2006 through 2008, inattention is in the top five. It’s behind only speeding, following too closely, failure to grant right-of-way and other causes not on the State Patrol’s list. Inattention is ahead of alcohol, drugs and falling asleep.

Todd, who is pursuing a master’s degree in social work from the Everett branch of Eastern Washington University, has written to the state asking for statistics on accidents involving wheelchair riders in intersections. She said she’s been promised that data.

Todd first brought her idea up to McCoy three-and-a-half years ago, she said. McCoy said when he first introduced the bill it got lost in the shuffle of all the other issues, but this year it made it through.

McCoy said he lives near the Quilceda Village shopping center, and every day he sees several people riding wheelchairs down the road to the outdoor mall.

“We just need to pay attention to them,” he said.