Motor vehicle collisions are a leading cause of death in the United States, with pedestrians and bicyclists the most vulnerable users of the road. Due to their small size and inability to judge speed and distance, children are at even greater risk, heightening parental concerns for those who walk or ride their bike to and from school.
In an effort to bring awareness to schools, cities and parents of the dangers surrounding school zones in California, Panish | Shea | Ravipudi LLP collaborated with 1Point21 Interactive to analyze over 400,000 collision records from 2015 provided by the California Highway Patrol’s SWITRS database. This raw data was compared against the location of 6,000 charter and public elementary schools throughout the state and broken down by the type of collision: motor vehicle, pedestrian and bicycle.
The results illustrate 468 elementary schools with the riskiest routes for students, with a total of 62,785 car accidents, 6,716 pedestrian accidents, and 5,114 bicycle accidents within one-half mile radius of the schools in our study. Of the 468 dangerous school zones, 215 are located in Los Angeles, 38 in Oakland and 31 in San Francisco.
“Schools should be interacting with their city and the traffic engineers to help prevent these accidents,” said PSBR attorney Rahul Ravipudi in an interview with Santa Monica Daily Press. “The study has only been out for almost two weeks now and we have been getting a positive response. This could possibly well be an annual study.”
In addition, elementary school zones located within Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and Long Beach ranked among the 25 most dangerous in California.
To see where your child’s school ranks, view the study in its entirety here.
To learn more about the legal duties of school districts in California visit www.schoolinjuryattorneys.com
News coverage by region:
San Francisco
Santa Monica
Pasadena
San Diego
Sacramento
Bakersfield