The Kansas Department of Transportation recently announced the winners of their “Put the Brakes on Fatalities” poster contest, in which kids ages 5 through 13 were invited to create artwork on the theme of traffic safety.

The Kansas poster contest is part of a national Put The Brakes On Fatalities Day, held annually on October 10th to raise awareness of the importance of traffic safety. The goal is to encourage everyone whether as a driver, passenger, pedestrian or cyclist to take extra caution each and every day to prevent crashes from occurring.

Three winners — one in each age category: 5-7, 8-10, and 11-13 — were selected in each of six Kansas regions, and they each received a free bicycle and helmet. Three statewide winners (one in each age category) received a family vacation at select destinations in Kansas.

The following are a few of the winning entries on such important topics as bicycle safety, driving while distracted, and pedestrian safety:

“Look Both Ways, Share The Road”
Kassie Zimmer, Age 5, LaCrosse, KS

“We All Deserve A Chance To Live”
Joseph Bennett, Age 11, Manhattan, KS

“Distractions Can Be Deadly”
Logan Proffitt, Age 9, Columbus, KS

“Signs Are Important!”
Stephanie Barrientos, Age 7, Dodge City, KS

Congratulations to all the winners, and thank you for leading the way in improving traffic safety. Everyone can learn for your example.

Results of a 2007 survey from the Centers for Disease Control:

More than one-fourth of all Americans are obese, a number that has grown by almost 2 percentage points since 2005.

In only one state — Colorado — are fewer than 20 percent of the residents obese. The rate is above 30 percent in three states: Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee.

In Kansas, 27.7 percent of residents were obese in 2007, up from 25.9 percent in 2006 (and up from 15.9 percent in 1995).

Nationwide, the CDC said 15.3 percent of American adults were obese in 1995; in 2005, 23.9 percent were. Now, it’s 25.6 percent.

Jennifer Church of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s Office of Health Promotion, said state efforts now are focusing less on education and more on changes to environments or policy. Public works and city planners must join health officials in the assessments, she said, so that issues such as safe bicycle and walking paths are considered.

In addition to 27.7 percent of Kansans being obese, an additional 36.1 percent are overweight, and near one quarter did not participate in any physical activities within the last month.

Read more from the Wichita Eagle: Obesity up in U.S. and Kansas

From The Eudora News:

In an effort to see more sidewalks throughout Eudora, officials from Eudora USD 491, the city of Eudora, citizens of Eudora and Safe Kids Douglas County have formed the Eudora Pedestrian Safety Committee.

The group first met early in the spring and met again May 23 to discuss grant applications for the areas of Eudora that most need sidewalks.

The committee would like to one day see a safe path for students to go over Kansas Highway 10 to the high school and middle school, but the construction of such a bridge currently is cost prohibitive. Dreese also said it would be difficult just to coordinate the required cooperation between the many organizations both private and public that would build the bridge.

Eudora Schools Interim Superintendent of Schools Don Grosdidier said it also would be unwise to build sidewalks along Church Street until there was a safer way for students to cross K-10.

“Until that bridge situation is taken care of, it’s not real feasible to put the sidewalks in there because you’re encouraging more kids to walk and it’s not really a safe place to walk and cross there,” he said.

After the May 23 meeting, the committee decided to pursue grant money that would go toward the installation of sidewalks along Elm Street between NES and the Eudora Community Center.

“We want to be as smart about this as possible and do what we can with the money we have,” Dreese said. “Our idea now is to get everybody together in Eudora and not only deal from a safety perspective, which is what most of this grant money is for, but also from a health and recreation perspective. The idea is that you’ve got a growing little town, so you plan ahead.”

Oct. 8 is International Walk to School Day for students in kindergarten through second grade, and the committee plans on having a communitywide summit sometime that month.

“We don’t want to just have a meeting, we want to make things happen and move forward,” Dreese said.

Read more from The Eudora News: Pedestrian safety committee formed

In an editorial in The Des Moines Register, Rox Laird writes:

With gasoline nudging $4 a gallon and people increasingly aware of the need to walk or bike more and drive less - for their health and the health of the planet - interest is growing in transportation alternatives to automobiles.

The trouble is, it is nearly impossible to navigate the modern city without an automobile. It’s time to rethink the way we design cities.

Transportation planners in the Des Moines metropolitan area are beginning work on a new transportation plan for the next three decades that will help determine how tax money will be spent on streets, highways, rails, trails and public transportation. For Des Moines, this is a perfect time to start thinking about how to modify the plan to make it easier for people to choose alternatives to driving. There is no reason a new Des Moines plan that would make it easier for people to get around without automobiles could not be a model for other cities in Iowa, and the nation.

In the 20th century, the mass production and mass consumption of automobiles liberated cities, and we have built a marvelous network of streets and highways that allow people to live far from work and to travel great distances with relative ease for shopping, entertainment and other activities.

The automobile not only changed cities, but the way we live by allowing us to work in one town, to shop in another and to transport kids to school, baseball practice or violin lessons in still another, all the while traveling distances that would have consumed a day or more in our ancestors’ time.

Today, the transportation system of greater Des Moines consists of a 2,700-mile network of streets and highways. According to a study by the Des Moines Metropolitan Planning Organization, 93 percent of all trips are made by automobile, 5 percent on foot and 1 percent each by bus or bicycle. The vast majority of driving trips are not commuting to work - which represent just 16 percent of the total - but for personal trips for church, recreation, shopping, running errands or going out to eat.

Making these trips by car is largely a personal choice, to be sure, but the choice is greatly influenced by a lack of alternatives. If people could walk to the corner store, or wander in and out of shops along Main Street, they might be encouraged to do so. But few urban residents have that option.

Laird writes that the movement toward making cities more walkable and bikeable is an effort to “turn back the city-planning clock to rediscover what worked in the past and what still works in most every small town in Iowa.”

But, he says, no changes will take place “until the public demonstrates that it is ready to embrace a new direction in how cities and communities are planned. So, citizens should let their elected officials know they are ready for urban planning and commercial and residential development that account for means of transportation other than just automobiles on four-lane streets.”

From an editorial in the Topeka Capital-Journal:

The Federal Highway Administration plans to recommend next year that states increase the time pedestrians have to finish crossing the street once they see the flashing orange signal in the box that tells them when it’s safe, supposedly, to walk. Reports are the highway administration wants states to increase the time the orange signal flashes by about 15 percent.

That might not sound like a long time, and it isn’t. But it might be enough to make our crosswalks safer for those on foot, and the extra time isn’t going to create any significant delay for motorists.

Some cities already are well ahead of the FHWA’s thinking in terms of making crosswalks safer. Denver and Knoxville, Tenn., are among cities that have gone to a system that stops all traffic at an intersection for about 30 seconds, during which time pedestrians can cross in any direction.

The number of vehicle/pedestrian accidents at crosswalks are behind the federal government’s plan to increase the required walking time. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration notes that while pedestrian deaths have declined over the past 10 years, the numbers are still too high. In 2006, 4,784 pedestrians were killed in traffic accidents and 471 of those accidents occurred at crosswalks.

Topeka Police Department records show the city had one fatal vehicle/pedestrian accident in 2006 and one in 2007, neither occurred at a crosswalk, however. Overall, there were 38 vehicle/pedestrian accidents in the city in 2007, with 18 of those occurring in crosswalks. For 2006, the numbers were 30 vehicle/pedestrian accidents, 15 of those in crosswalks. This year the city has recorded six vehicle/pedestrian accidents with no fatalities. The city’s reports don’t differentiate between crosswalks with traffic lights and those guarded only by stop signs.

That doesn’t sound like a lot of accidents when compared with the national numbers, but every vehicle/pedestrian accident has the potential to be fatal. If a couple more seconds means even one or two fewer accidents, we think it’s well worth the time.

Read more at Pedestrian crosswalks — Step up safety.