Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi almost never sounds desperate on his cheerful Wednesday podcasts.

But last week he pleaded with his listeners: “Let’s knock it off. I am begging you. Please don’t kill yourself. Don’t kill somebody else. Be responsible.”

The mayor was angushing about traffic deaths on Oʻahu, which have doubled to 44 this year compared with 22 during the same period last year.

At a town hall meeting in Kaimukī on Wednesday, Roger Morton was similarly alarmed.

“We’ve got to do something to solve this crazy epidemic of people driving too fast,” said the director of Honolulu’s Transportation Services. That’s the department responsible for municipal transportation services including rail and TheBus, and the engineering, design, maintenance and safety of city roadways.

Ideas showcases stories, opinion and analysis about Hawaiʻi, from the state’s sharpest thinkers, to stretch our collective thinking about a problem or an issue. Email news@civilbeat.org to submit an idea or an essay.

Read More

Kaimukī residents at the town hall that night shared Morton’s concern that drivers are ignoring speed limits — endangering themselves, their passengers and pedestrians.

On Friday, I interviewed Honolulu chief traffic engineer Kelly Akasaki, who had addressed many of the concerns at the Kaimukī town hall, and Renee Espiau, the administrator of the cityʻs Complete Streets program.

The two women are focused on making the cityʻs streets safer.

Akasaki, the ciyʻs first female chief traffic engineer, said if she had to send one message to drivers it would be: “Just slow down. Leave earlier if you have to be someplace on time. Slow down. There is no need to drive 40 miles per hour in a 25 miles per hour zone.”

One reason for more roadway deaths, Akasaki said, is that people — mainly young men — are speeding on motorcycles and losing control. Another is drivers impaired by alcohol or drugs.

On Oʻahu this year, seven drivers in fatal crashes tested positive for DUI with blood-alcohol concentrations of .08 or above, according to the state Department of Transportation. One Oʻahu driver tested positive for drug use, and 11 of the fatalities are suspected to be DUI-related — but  toxicology reports are still pending.

Three of the four traffic fatalities on Oʻahu this month involved alcohol-impaired driving.

Another key reason drivers are dying is they are distracted by texting on their cell phones or checking GPS or reaching for something in a back seat.

A History Of Going Too Fast

But speed is the underlying factor that turns any act in a vehicle deadly. There’s less time to stop, less time to correct. Itʻs the law of physics, the kinetic energy formula: double the speed, quadruple the impact.

“Even if speed is not considered (in official statistics) as contributing to a crash, speed is always a cause of death or serious injury because the higher the speed, the higher the energy of the crash and the potential for a fatality or serious injury,” DOT director Ed Sniffen wrote in an email to Civil Beat.

Traffic accidents on Oʻahu from Jan. 1 through July 20 killed 12 people in motor vehicle collisions, 14 pedestrians, 13 people on motorcycles or mopeds, three bicyclists and two “non-occupants,” a category that includes people in wheelchairs or e-scooters or on skateboards.

American drivers have been going too fast since the aftermath of World War II, when the U.S. began to build a new system of high-speed interstate highways, Espiau said.

Drivers now expect to go fast not just on highways but on all roads. Added to that, modern cars accelerate faster and are quieter, sometimes giving drivers the impression they are not speeding at all.

“Driving fast has become a crisis in our country,” Espiau said.

Traffic engineers, including Akasaki, say the pandemic exacerbated the speeding problem. With very few cars on the road, more drivers became accustomed to zooming along empty streets.

 “They thought they could get away with it and many did and many continue that behavior today,” Akasaki said.

Enforcement against speeding violators can be spotty with the Honolulu Police Department short 461 officers, or about 20% of its force.

“When we were young, we were always afraid a cop would be there to catch us speeding, but now people expect a cop will not be there and they take advantage,” Akasaki said.

If anyone needs proof that many drivers routinely ignore speed limits, just look at the latest data from Oʻahu’s red light traffic cameras.

Data collected by cameras at 10 downtown Honolulu intersections show on average more than 14,000 vehicles were going 11 mph or more over the posted speed limit each week.

From March through July, nearly 300,000 speeders got warnings that their vehicles had been photographed exceeding speed limits — no fines, just warnings. But in October the drivers will start getting citations that can cost $250 for a first speeding violation and up to $500 for subsequent violations.

Traffic-Calming Improvements

The DOT has found ways to speed up installing road safety infrastructure and it is using its expertise and financing to help the city also move faster.

“Such road improvements in the past could take us more than two years,” Akasaki said. “You may love or hate the speed bumps that Ed has installed but he has done them fast, sometimes in less than two months. We are piggy-backing on his contracts to speed up our own safety improvements on city streets.”

Drivers seem to have become more receptive to traffic-calming improvements, Espiau said.

The state recently has helped the city install speed humps around 12 Oʻahu schools. There are 16 more schools on the city’s list where improvements are pending to slow down vehicles..   

Honolulu City Council members last year approved reducing the speed limit around Oʻahu schools from 25 to 20 mph. Akasakiʻs office has $500,000 to install up to 800 signs to mark the new lower speed limits. But she says it will take a more than a year to install the signs at all 200 Oʻahu schools.

To improve safety for pedestrians, the city expects to install pedestrian-activated flashing crosswalk beacons on three streets on Waiʻalae Avenue in Kaimukī at 2nd, 4th and 14th avenues. There is already such a flashing crosswalk on Kailua Road fronting Kailua Town Center.

I asked Espiau if the toll of 44 people dead this year from traffic crashes will be enough to scare people into slowing down.

She said thatʻs not likely.

“Speeders will think the warnings apply to other people, not them,” she said. “It’s not easy to change the eight decades of a country-wide attitude that roads are made for speeding.”

I hope she is wrong.