A4
East Oregonian
Thursday, June 6, 2019
CHRISTOPHER RUSH
Publisher
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
ANDREW CUTLER
Editor
WYATT HAUPT JR.
News Editor
JADE McDOWELL
Hermiston Editor
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Summer fun shouldn’t mean summer crashes
S
ummer promises long days and
great weather and often means
vacations for area residents.
That means taking to the highways
and roads across the region and,
almost inevitably, the summer fun is
marred by a deadly vehicle crash.
Focusing on safety while on the
road seems so fundamental that
the concept can be overlooked or
dismissed by motorists. But they
shouldn’t ignore road safety.
The importance of safety while
driving hit home just this week when
U.S. Highway 20 — a major east-
west link in Oregon — was closed in
Malheur County because of a fatal
accident. That crash left one man
dead and sealed off the highway for
more than three hours as emergency
crews responded to the scene and
then fought the fires that erupted in
the wake of the accident.
Last summer proved to be excep-
tionally deadly for motorists. Over a
span of five days in August last year,
11 people died in traffic accidents
across Eastern Oregon, a deadly
nexus that created mayhem and
impacted dozens of families.
Photo contributed by Oregon State Police
The drivers of two commercial trucks were killed Sunday after a fiery crash on High-
way 20 in Malheur County.
In one of the crashes, eight people
died, including children.
It is no secret that speed kills on
the highways but sheer carelessness
also plays a role.
Two years ago, for example, more
than 37,000 people lost their lives on
the nation’s roadways. Twenty-six
percent of those crashes involved at
least one speeding driver.
At first glance a common miscon-
ception is big city traffic furnishes
most of the fatal accidents, but that
isn’t exactly true. Rural areas —
including highways that slice through
remote portions of the nation — tend
to have a higher fatality rate than
vehicle accidents in urban areas.
The other tragic aspect of vehicle
accidents on rural roads and high-
ways is that most can be avoided.
The single best way to avoid a deadly
crash is simple: slow down. It seems
so simple, so basic, but we are a soci-
ety that is now constantly in a hurry
to get somewhere or do something.
As such, we often become compla-
cent and shed common sense and
caution for speed.
Summer should be about fun,
should be about getting the family
together and visiting interesting areas
across our great region. That means
our goal on our roads and highways
should be to reach out destination
safely.
The responsibility for safety on
our roadways resets with each of us.
Once we climb behind the wheel we
all have an obligation to be safe and
to obey traffic laws.
No one wants to end a summer
with a tragedy. So be alert while
driving and be careful out there.
OTHER VIEWS
Sign up for a
better green deal
for Oregonians
Bend Bulletin
T
YOUR VIEWS
America must stay ahead
of the curve with China
Three cheers for Harriet Isom’s
column on “Standing up to China’s
Belt and Road Initiative.”
China’s Belt & Road Initiative is
an enormously ambitious plan with
major implication for the global econ-
omy the geopolitical future. With $3
trillion of hard currency reserves,
China has a vision of a future led by
China and inspired by China’s growth
model.
Isom provides a welcome call for
America and American companies to
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of
the East Oregonian editorial board. Other
columns, letters and cartoons on this page
express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
stay involved. Estimates suggest that
Asia alone will need many trillions of
dollars in infrastructure over the next
decades. In the Build Act of 2018,
the United States took a small step to
compete by combining existing ele-
ments of the government to support
infrastructure spending in developing
countries.
Isom ends her essay with a
reminder of how the United States
responded when the Soviet Union
launched Sputnik, the first artifi-
cial satellite. Sputnik mobilized the
country. America created NASA, the
Defense Advanced Research Proj-
ects Agency (parent of the Internet),
invested heavily in scientific research,
provided grants for post-graduate
study in science, sparked the study of
science and math in the nation’s high
schools and created university level
programs to study key languages.
We need to embrace Isom’s call
to maintain our global engagement.
We also need to duplicate the kind of
focus and commitment that we devel-
oped in the wake of Sputnik.
Kent Hughes
Woodrow Wilson Center
Washington, D.C.
he cost of Oregon’s green goodness
will come at the pump. To get Ore-
gonians to use less fuel, House Bill
2020 raises its price. The carbon reduction bill
— seemingly destined to become law — is
expected to raise the price of gas in the state
by about 21 cents in 2021. That won’t be the
end of it. The bill will keep driving prices up,
which in turn will increase the cost of living
for Oregon families.
Do the Democratic legislators behind HB
2020 believe average Oregonians have too
much money? Of course not. But people on a
mission to save the planet sometimes stop at
nothing. Even logic.
Given that this bill is going to pass,
shouldn’t more of the clear benefit go directly
to Oregonians? Oregonians may be all for the
idea behind HB 2020 — clean energy and a
cleaner Oregon. But when the price of fuel
ratchets up and up, that’s going to be a harder
and harder choice.
HB 2020 could have been written to return
those hundreds of millions of carbon tax rev-
enue directly to Oregonians. But Democratic
leaders wrote the bill so they would control
the money themselves.
If the Legislature isn’t going to do the
right thing, Oregonians should. There may be
no perfect mechanism, but state Sen. Brian
Boquist, R-Dallas, has a way to send a mes-
sage on the November 2020 ballot. His New
Green Deal Tax Cut ballot initiative would
reduce the state’s gas tax from 34 cents to 18
cents. Boquist’s initiative would, of course,
undercut the green goals of HB 2020. But if
the state isn’t going to return carbon taxes
to Oregonians, Oregonians should take back
some of the taxes themselves.
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Pendleton, OR 97801