Results tagged “safety”

Last night at about 10:20 p.m., a bicyclist was struck and killed by a car taking the Dexter Way North exit from Aurora, says Queen Anne News. The police arrested the car's driver after "an evaluation showed signs of impairment."

                  

Employees of Sound Transit were understandably filled with a certain pride yesterday morning as they showed off the new light rail operations and maintenance center for the collected media.

It's been a while since our last guest editorial. Not that you were clamoring for more, but we're just saying. We expected a lot more crank email from people about zoo animal captivity and Pez. This week we have Charles Redell, former Seattlester and Green Man-about-town, with a safety concern near and dear to the hearts of hipsters everywhere.

Eww...Somehow we haven't ever before considered the potentially toxic chemicals in such seemingly innocuous every-day items as baby bottles, but now we're eying all the plastic around us with new suspicion. The chemical in question today is bisphenol A, or BPA, which the state House just voted to ban from baby bottles, sippy cups and water bottles sold here. How timely--today, six of the largest manufacturers of baby bottles announced they're not even going to make BPA-contaminated products anymore, according to the Washington Post.

We had just noted that the temperature was 27 degrees this evening, and the roads were shiny, when we saw two luxury cars kissing bumpers on Roy Street. It was just a little surprising to see that one was a Hummer, and all the 4WD in the world hadn't helped. Now that's slippery.

Because we couldn't make it to the gun ban public hearing, we've been trying to catch up via online accounts of the meeting. "I personally view carrying a gun as kind of like wearing a seatbelt," one of the opponents of the ban said, caught on tape by King5. "You'll probably never need it but I still buckle up." (Of course, in a car crash the seatbelt would probably be a net positive, while a gun would just rattle around in your glove box.) Other opponents argued that the ban would prevent law-abiding citizens from being able to protect themselves against gun-toting criminals. Proponents of Nickels' questionably legal executive order were, of course, concerned about accidental firings. Still no conversation, at least not recorded in the accounts we've read, about addressing gun violence from the angle of making guns and/or bullets (and/or seatbelts, which are just like guns) more difficult to obtain--our favorite angle.

Seattle Public Utilities has issued a water advisory for a 30-block area on Beacon Hill after a pipe burst during construction this morning. The SPU advises residents not to drink or cook with tap water, and they will be providing bottled water to residents in the area. If you have to use tap water, first strain it to remove dirt, then bring it to a boil, and lastly let it cool in a sanitized (like with bleach) container. If you live within these boundaries, you are under the water advisory: Bennett Street to the north, 16th Avenue to the east, 13th Avenue to the west, Graham Street to the south.

If recently released rankings of big cities in America are to believed, yes. Seattle is the #1 Big City in the U.S. for Pedestrian Safety. And to that we say--remind us never to walk anywhere else in America, ever again.

We're stumped by those weight-activated turn arrows at intersections. When you're on a bike, what do you do? If you're at the head of the line, you don't have a car in front to trigger it and you're there forever. (And sometimes drivers politely avoid crowding you, and don't trigger the plate behind you.)

There's a 36-year-old senior surgical resident with the University of Washington who's in the hospital as a patient this week. Police are still looking for his assailants. If you were wandering around Belltown at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning and remember seeing a fight, or a group of meatheads running away from one, call the Seattle Police Department's Homicide and Assault unit at 206-684-5550.

The Alaskan Way Viaduct is closed for its semi-annual inspection this weekend. The viaduct will be closed from 6am to 6pm on Saturday and Sunday. The Battery Street Tunnel will be closed all weekend to traffic. The semi-annual inspections check for that settling Dan was talking about earlier this week and the cracks we all pretend aren't there when we speed down the viaduct, fearing for our lives.

Are food safety and food tasty mutually exclusive goals? You have to ask after both Zesto's and Wild Ginger show up on the P-I's list of Seattle's dirtiest restaurants.

Inspired by a random iPod event at Seattlest's Thanksgiving, a friend lamented the early death of John Denver and then launched into a diatribe about how he didn't pull a Kennedy; that is, Denver wasn't a dilettante pilot. He went on to explain that Denver was an experienced pilot who owned many planes and flew often. He died, our friend claimed, when one of the fuel tanks in the experimental plane he was flying...

The snow is here, and people are already missing on Crystal Mountain. They apparently hit the backcountry (seems way to early to be doing that, we think), and by all accounts were properly equipped, including avalanche beacons. But shit can go sideways in the backcountry, and "properly equipped" is most relevant if you really know how to use that stuff. We're hoping those lost folks do, and are found any second now.

Adrian Tomine started making comics in his teens when he created Optic Nerve. In it, he tells stories about people who tend to be searching for answers to questions they seem to think everyone else already knows. After a few years putting out Optic Nerve on his own, it was picked up by publisher Drawn and Quarterly.

Seattlest's favorite crime (just edging Identity Theft) strikes again, this time in one of Seattlest's favorite places. A copper theft at Snoqualmie Pass temporarily disabled highway signs and safety lighting, which had to suck for people navigating the pass in the middle of the night.

This morning, reported on inaccuracies in its article from a week age today on elements of the sting operation, including the disputed claim that a gun made it into Tommy's on the Ave after a bouncer was offered a $100 bribe. Jush Feit over at the Slog tore them a new one for getting info wrong again, particularly on the point about violence.

Funny picture just turned up in the Seattlest Flickr Pool:

Jim Riches, Deputy Chief of the FDNY, is one of the producers of the Urban Legends video that questions the supposedly heroic actions of Mayor Giuliani on 9/11. Jen Carlson recently interviewed him for our sister site in New York.

Monday the 10th, at 7pm, the Paramount Theatre presents Charlie Chaplin's 51st, 52nd, and 53rd films, all from 1916: The Floorwalker, The Fireman, and The Vagabond. They're all half-hour or so shorts from early on in his Mutual Films era, and feature Chaplin's genius for environmental comedy, with mishaps with escalators and fire poles.

Back in mid-July, the Seattle Times brought the sad story of Mark Cruz, Renton, to our attention. Cruz was busted for honking at the car in front of him, which was lingering at a green light. This morning (thanks, Kayvaan G!) we noticed the P-I headline "Hold that honk: car horns are for safety only." To our surprise, Mark Cruz was again in the news, but for the same exact story. The fine, by the way, is $124 for using your horn when it's not an emergency, but Cruz got off with a warning. Is this really the only guy who's been busted for this? And if he got a warning, is it really necessary to run two stories on his experience?

Last night Robert H. Frank, the author of 'The Economic Naturalist' and a professor of Economics from Cornell University, spoke at the University Bookstore about his new book You may, if you are widely-blog-read, recognize his name from recent excerpts posted to the Freakonomics blog.

We hear Tegan & Sara's shows tonight and tomorrow night at the Triple Door are sold out. (Don't they do some kind of SRO thing there, too? Maybe check CL.) If you don't get in, the Canadian duo are playing at the Showbox on December 3. We're new to the Tegan & Sara experience ourselves -- we just thought they looked alike and were completely unaware they're youthful lesbian twin sisters from Canada. (Not that they need to wear a big "Lesbian Twins!" sign -- the music speaks for itself -- but for safety's sake the Canadian thing should be mentioned as we need to keep a close eye on our northern border these days.) We've been listening to their new album, The Con, and we dig it what with the DCFC-influence (check out the title track's open at MySpace). The only thing critical we'd say is that the name "Tegan & Sara" sounds more like an afternoon TV talk show in the provinces. You don't get to be the world-famous Death Indigo Cab Girls of the '00s that way.

Here's a good one for the automobile haters: The completely impartial and fair people at Pemco Insurance have done a poll on speeders that attempts to get to the bottom of who these people speeding all over the place are; what they aspire to, what makes them bolt upright in the middle of the night, how much money they make, where they're going in such a damn hurry...

The people who bring you Sidewalk Cinema take over pizza-and-beer-serving Central Cinema tonight with a '50s B-movie double-feature in glorious 16mm: Port of Hell and Sky Liner. In Port of Hell, a ship with an atom bomb on board (fucking Commies!) shows up in the L.A. harbor just when harbormaster Gibson Pardee is getting all sorts of blowback for his stringent safety concerns. It's a race against time, and the film only runs 80 minutes! Even shorter, clocking in at 61 minutes, is Sky Liner, even though the action takes place during a transcontinental flight. A government courier is murdered, an FBI agent collars the culprit, but then the assassin is himself killed and the G-man has 'til wheels down to find out whodunnit.

There was a lot of talk on the blogs last week about newly-released census data that highlighted the 23% of Washington residents that get to work by means other than riding in a car alone. Seattle is in the top ten US cities in walking to work, taking the bus to work and biking to work (although not in carpooling) all of which are impressive and encouraging. There is an element of spin to all that fantastic news, of course, and the fact remains that 77% of us still drive to work alone.

Sometimes we feel like we grew up on the road. Our parents would hit the road for a weekend or plan a road-trip vacation at the drop of a road atlas. We've spent a lot of time on a lot of great North American roads. We've logged thousands of family miles, thousands of solo miles, and thousands of companion miles. We've driven and/or owned hatchbacks, wagons, SUVs, and pick-ups -- stick and automatic. We're no experts in highway safety; however, we've seen enough things to give us plenty to think about, especially during those stimulating stretches of topographically-diverse Nebraska.

Majestic America is a Seattle-based company and the Empress of the North sailed out of Seattle before hitting a rock and drifting near Juneau--We just can't be satisfied with "it hit something during a turn." Last week while Seattlest was bitching about the lack of information on the grounding of the Empress a commenter suggested we check the gCaptain blog.