A Santa Maria man was killed near the intersection of North Broadway and Williams Street on Oct. 21, when a car collided with him. The driver fled without stopping.
The victim, 74-year-old Armando Recendis-Alanis, was riding his bicycle on Williams across the intersection at about 5 p.m., according to a Santa Maria Police Department (SMPD) press release, when the car, headed south on Broadway, struck him. Police found the suspected driver, 42-year-old Maria Agustina Apolonioangel, hours later at her home, where she was arrested on a felony hit-and-run charge, according to the release.
Without a helpful witness, who SMPD Traffic Bureau Supervisor Sgt. Duane Schneider said followed the driver after the incident, police might have never located the suspect.
Similar hit-and-run incidents are common in Santa Maria, Schneider said. In the past four calendar years, he said 29 to 30 percent of all Santa Maria’s reported traffic incidents were hit-and-runs. And Schneider estimated that nearly half of those incidents involved alcohol.
“I mean, our demographic,” Schneider said, “a lot of hit-and-runs have to do with alcohol, and that’s why they run. A lot of them are people who don’t have driver’s licenses so they leave. Those are usually the two factors.”
Santa Maria’s hit-and-run issue persists despite the city’s recent attempts at improving traffic safety education and enforcement using funding from grants. Last year, the California Office of Traffic Safety granted the SMPD with nearly $300,000 to increase DUI checkpoints and traffic safety checks. That funding ended on Oct. 1, Schneider said, and the SMPD applied for the funds again. This year, the SMPD received $365,000 from the Office of Traffic Safety.
Again, this year’s grant aims for a yearlong effort to expand SMPD traffic safety special enforcement operations and education, including more DUI checkpoints and patrols—because so many hit-and-runs involve alcohol—and educational presentations in schools and elsewhere. Schneider said police will increasingly focus on bike, pedestrian, and motorcycle safety, as well as better enforcement of speeding, red lights, stop signs, and distracted driving.
But it’s not easy to prevent hit-and-runs, Schneider said, and many culprits are never caught. If there are no witnesses to hit-and-run incidents, police are essentially left to rely on footage from security cameras, which are located at several of Santa Maria’s busiest intersections and outside some businesses.
“It’s difficult,” Schneider said. “We can put out more cameras. If people know there are cameras everywhere, they’re less likely to run. We continue to apply for our grants, and that’s a very successful operation.”
Four out of 57
While Santa Maria is still listed as one of California’s least safe cities of its size when it comes to injuries and fatalities related to hit-and-runs and alcohol-involved traffic incidents, the situation seems to have slightly improved, although recent data is unavailable. Last year, when numbers from 2013 were available, the Office of Traffic Safety ranked Santa Maria as the worst of 56 cities for hit-and-runs and speed-related incidents.
This year, with data from 2014, Santa Maria ranked as the fourth worst of 57 similarly populated cities for hit-and-runs and 14th worst for speed related collisions. Santa Maria also ranks third worst for alcohol-involved incidents and 16th worst for overall traffic safety, with 596 total traffic-related injuries and fatalities.
The best way to prevent hit-and-runs is to attack their root causes, according to Chris Cochran, assistant director of marketing and public affairs at the Office of Traffic Safety.
“A majority are DUI cases,” Cochran said. “Sometimes they’re so drunk they’re not even aware of the incident, especially with pedestrians. Otherwise they’re aware enough to know they’re drunk and don’t want a DUI on top of it. If they look around and don’t see anyone who’s looking, the thought process is, ‘Let’s get out of here.’”
For that reason, Cochran said the Office of Traffic Safety tends to focus on preventing impaired driving of all kinds, including drugged driving. If all kinds of drugs and alcohol are factored in, Cochran said close to 50 percent of all California’s fatal car crashes involve impaired driving.
“The last time I checked,” Cochran said, “well over half our budget was being spent on impaired driving prevention in some form or another, whether it be grants or research.”
People without licenses also cause a large percentage of hit-and-run incidents. Cochran said recent studies showed that nearly 3 million to 4 million California drivers were unlicensed, and those drivers were five times more likely than those licensed to be involved in hit-and-run incidents.
Unlicensed individuals could include those with revoked licenses or undocumented immigrants who previously couldn’t legally get licensed.
That study was done before January 2015 when California Assembly Bill 60 went into effect, officially requiring the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to issue driver’s licenses to applicants without proof of legal California residency. The DMV issued 605,000 licenses through Assembly Bill 60 in its first year of existence, according to a DMV press release. A study published in 2017 by three Stanford University researchers found that after the implementation of AB 60, California’s rate of hit-and-run incidents decreased.
Rebuilding California
Another legislative effort to improve traffic safety in California, Senate Bill 1, was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown on April 28 this year. Also known as the Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017, SB 1 aims to invest $54 billion over the next decade into the repair of roads, freeways, and bridges; for the improvement of public transit and pedestrian and bicyclist safety; and to traffic congestion relief. Several pavement and bridge repair projects are coming to Santa Barbara County, according to information available on rebuildingca.ca.gov.
The outlined projects will be funded by various tax and fee increases, including a 12-cent per gallon increase in gasoline taxes and a 20-cent per gallon increase in diesel that was scheduled to go into effect on Nov. 1. The next phase of revenue increases comes on Jan. 1, 2018, when a value-based transportation improvement fee will begin, according to the bill text.
Although traffic safety is still a clear threat to many Californians, Cochran of the Office of Traffic Safety said the state is closer to solving many of its transportation issues.
“Hit-and-runs have always been a problem and will continue to be a problem as long as people are not taking responsibility for their actions,” Cochran said. “It’s up to all of us to, if we see something, say something. Speak up. It’s something that, in the end, will kind of harm us all if not solved.”
Staff Writer Kasey Bubnash can be reached at kbubnash@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 2-8, 2017.
