OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2017
Founded in 1873
HEIDI WRIGHT, Interim Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND, Editor
JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
Water
under
the bridge
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago this week — 2007
Starting Freshman year, students know it’s coming.
They might stumble on the stack of bubbly cider bottles as they pile
up in a hallway.
And they can’t miss the telltale scent as it wafts through the halls.
One day each November, roasting turkey signals the final lesson in
Turkey 101, a program based half on etiquette, half on budget-friendly
food.
“You can smell it in the office, you can smell it in the gym. You can’t
even imagine,” said Astoria High School Principal Larry Lockett. “I love
Turkey 101.”
The annual two-day event is part of Senior Transitions, aimed at
imparting some practical knowledge to Astoria students before they grad-
uate high school.
There’s a new kind of storm rolling into the Oregon coast,
and it’s driven by conflicting interests in ocean real estate.
Nine different wave energy studies are targeting space in the
state’s territorial waters, many of them on sandy ocean bot-
toms that overlap with productive fishing grounds.
Even though most of the proposals are aimed at the central
and southern Oregon coast, North Coast fishermen say they’re
not too thrilled about the new players rolling in with the waves
— especially when coupled with the state’s plans to rope off
ocean waters for marine reserves.
North Coast commercial fishers often travel down the coast
to find their catch. They say the wave parks would not only cost
them money in lost grounds, but it would also block central
transit routes and crowd North Coast waters with displaced
fishermen.
America is now an
outlier on driving deaths
50 years ago — 1967
The new barge-loading ramp to pier 3 of the Astoria port docks was
used for the first time Sunday.
The Norwegian motorship Hoyanger discharged 130 tons of general
cargo at the new Waterway Terminals, Inc., marine terminal at the outer
end of Pier 3, for transshipment to Portland.
Longshoremen using fork lifts transferred cargo from the Hoyanger
into a barge of Western Transportation company via the new ramp.
In this operation the vessel saved approximately 14 hours running time
for the transit from Astoria to Portland and return.
Work begins at site of Pacific Riviera Development.
Plans for a $1 million residential development in Seaside
were announced today by Sunset Cove, Inc., an Oregon corpo-
ration whose members include William H. Holmstrom, Gear-
hart; Lowell M, Lowell W., and George Palmerton of Seattle.
The development, which is to be known as Pacific Riviera,
will occupy one of the most picturesque sites on the coast. It
is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the east
by Necanicum River. This will provide the 160 waterfront and
view lots the distinction of having access to both fresh water
and salt water, with activities such as swimming, surfing, boat-
ing, fishing and beachcombing at the doorstep. Site is at the
north end of Seaside.
The 400-foot Captaliannes, the Greek freighter pulled free from the
Columbia River’s Clatsop Spit by the powerful tug Salvage Chief, may
never carry cargo again.
Officials of Albina Engine and Machine Works in Portland have been
scurrying around the ship in a Swan Island drydock evaluating damage
the Mediterranean ship’s hull received in three storms during eight and
one-half days on the sands.
Hull plating amidships was pushed up about one foot, there is a leak
under the water line at the stern, the rudder is missing, one propeller blade
is badly mangled, there are several hundred tons of Clatsop sand covering
machinery. In addition most of the 400 tons of dried herring meal cargo
left on board is damaged by water and beginning to smell badly.
75 years ago — 1942
The nation celebrates its first wartime Thanksgiving in 25
years tomorrow with the holiday theme “Praise the Lord and
Pass the Ammunition.”
President Roosevelt will lead the people in prayer services
to be broadcast from the White House over all three major net-
works, and War Production Chief Donald M. Nelson has asked
workers to “pass the ammunition” by producing war goods as
usual on Thanksgiving day.
Frank Norris, Clatsop County’s only surviving veteran of the Civil
War, died in Portland Tuesday night shortly after his admittance to the
Veterans’ hospital there. He would have been 95 years old on Decem-
ber 4.
Pam Panchak/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A crash last week near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
By DAVID LEONHARDT
New York Times News Service
T
his week, millions of
Americans will climb into
their cars to visit family.
Unfortunately,
they will have to
travel on the most
dangerous roads in
the industrialized
world.
It didn’t used to
be this way. A gen-
eration ago, driving in the United
States was relatively safe. Fatality
rates here in 1990 were roughly 10
percent lower than in Canada and
Australia, two other affluent nations
with a lot of open road.
Over the last few decades, how-
ever, other countries have embarked
on evidence-based campaigns to
reduce vehicle crashes. The United
States has not. The fatality rate has
still fallen here, thanks partly to
safer vehicles, but it’s fallen far less
than anywhere else.
As a result, this country has
turned into a disturbing outlier. Our
vehicle fatality rate is about 40 per-
cent higher than Canada’s or Austra-
lia’s. The comparison with Slovenia
is embarrassing. In 1990, its death
rate was more than five times as
high as ours. Today, the Slovenians
have safer roads.
If you find statistics abstract, you
can instead read the heart-rending
stories. Erin Kaplan, a 39-year-old
mother in Ashburn, Virginia, was
killed in a September crash that also
seriously injured her three teenage
children. They and their father are
now heroically trying to put their
lives back together, as The Washing-
ton Post has detailed.
Had the United States kept pace
with the rest of the world, about
10,000 fewer Americans each year
— or almost 30 every day — would
be killed. Instead, more people
die in crashes than from gun vio-
lence. Many of the victims, like Erin
Kaplan, were young and healthy.
I was unaware of this coun-
try’s newfound outlier status until I
recently started reporting on the rise
of driverless cars. I’ve become con-
vinced they represent one of the big-
gest changes in day-to-day life that
most of us will experience. Within
a decade, car travel will be funda-
mentally altered. “This is every bit
as big a change as when the first car
came off the assembly line,” Sen.
Gary Peters of Michigan told me.
Our vehicle
fatality rate
is about
40 percent
higher than
Canada’s or
Australia’s.
Many people remain afraid of
driverless cars, because trusting
your life to a computer — allow-
ing it to hurtle you down a highway
— can feel a little crazy. But the sta-
tus quo is crazier, and the rest of the
world refuses to accept it.
We don’t need to wait for the
arrival of futuristic self-driving
machines to do better. Other coun-
tries have systematically analyzed
the main causes of crashes and then
gone after them, one by one. Canada
started a national campaign in 1996.
“The overwhelming factor is
speed,” says Leonard Evans, an
automotive researcher. Small dif-
ferences in speed cause large differ-
ences in harm. Other countries tend
to have lower speed limits (despite
the famous German autobahn) and
more speed cameras. Install enough
cameras, and speeding really will
decline.
But it’s not just speed. Seat belt
use is also more common else-
where: One in seven American
drivers still don’t use one. In other
countries, 16-year-olds often aren’t
allowed to drive. And “buzzed driv-
ing” tends to be considered drunken
driving. Here, only heavily Mormon
Utah has moved toward a sensible
threshold, and the liquor and restau-
rant lobbies are trying to stop it.
The political problem with all of
these steps, of course, is that they
restrict freedom, and we Americans
like freedom. To me, the freedom
to have a third beer before getting
behind the wheel — or to drive 15
mph above the limit — is not worth
30 lives a day. But I recognize that
not everyone sees it this way.
Which is part of the reason I’m
so excited about driverless technol-
ogy. It will let us overcome self-de-
structive behavior, without hav-
ing to change a lot of laws. A few
years from now, sophisticated
crash-avoidance systems will proba-
bly be the norm. Cars will use com-
puters and cameras to avoid other
objects. And the United States will
stand to benefit much more than the
rest of the industrialized world.
Until then, be careful out there.
WHERE TO WRITE
• U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici
(D): 439 Cannon House Office
Building, Washington, D.C., 20515.
Phone: 202- 225-0855. Fax 202-225-
9497. District office: 12725 SW Mil-
likan Way, Suite 220, Beaverton, OR
97005. Phone: 503-469-6010. Fax
503-326-5066. Web: bonamici.house.
gov/
• U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D): 313
Hart Senate Office Building, Wash-
ington, D.C. 20510. Phone: 202-224-
3753. Web: www.merkley.senate.gov
• U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D):
221 Dirksen Senate Office Building,
Washington, D.C., 20510. Phone:
202-224-5244. Web: www.wyden.
senate.gov
• State Rep. Brad Witt (D): State
Capitol, 900 Court Street N.E., H-373,
Salem, OR 97301. Phone: 503-986-
1431. Web: www.leg.state.or.us/witt/
Email: rep.bradwitt@state.or.us
• State Rep. Deborah Boone (D):
900 Court St. N.E., H-481, Salem,
OR 97301. Phone: 503-986-1432.
Email: rep.deborah boone@state.
or.us District office: P.O. Box 928,
Cannon Beach, OR 97110. Phone:
503-986-1432. Web: www.leg.state.
or.us/ boone/
• State Sen. Betsy Johnson (D):
State Capitol, 900 Court St. N.E.,
S-314, Salem, OR 97301. Telephone:
503-986-1716. Email: sen.betsy john-
son@state.or.us Web: www.betsy-
johnson.com District Office: P.O.
Box R, Scappoose, OR 97056. Phone:
503-543-4046. Fax: 503-543-5296.
Astoria office phone: 503-338-1280.
• Port of Astoria: Executive
Director, 10 Pier 1 Suite 308, Asto-
ria, OR 97103. Phone: 503-741-3300.
Email: admin@portofastoria.com
• Clatsop County Board of Com-
missioners: c/o County Manager, 800
Exchange St., Suite 410, Astoria, OR
97103. Phone: 503-325-1000.