Followup news story in today's Los Angeles Times (italics mine):
The calamity was probably caused by driver George Russell Weller ... the National Transportation Safety Board said at a hearing in Washington.
Is the NTSB living in another dimension??? How could they not know? Whether he was conscious or not, aware or not, confused or not, he drove through the marketplace with his foot on the accelerator, and nothing wrong was found with the car itself. That seems pretty clear to me. Or is their conclusion legally required until Mr. Weller's court case is settled?
The NTSB also said
The existence of a black box, like those used in airplanes, in Weller's Buick could have given investigators a much clearer picture of the accident.
and the NTSB urged that such event data recorders be required in all new cars.
I'm surprised that there is no mention of the tradeoffs in cost vs. the odds that black boxes would improve safety for all of us sufficiently to justify those costs. If anybody should know that you have to weigh the costs and other disadvantages of a safety measure against the marginal safety increase, it's the NTSB. I wonder if serious studies have been made before about putting black boxes in cars. And even if their advice was followed, it would be a long time before they would be found in
old cars, like Mr. Weller's. I didn't see the whole report, but my impression is that it's a case of locking the proverbial barn door (and adding 100 padlocks!) after the horse has escaped.
The city of Santa Monica has beefed up the barricades, but hasn't gone as far as some have suggested, putting up the kinds of barricades that are around important office buildings. It's nice to imagine that we can be made safe from freak accidents, but it's not true without barriers that would interfere with the enjoyment of an open air market or that would be very expensive to provide every time any street was closed. This street closure in Santa Monica is a regular temporary closure, and the barricades have to be installed and removed every week, which limits the practical choices. Gee, should we put concrete slabs above the market too, to avoid airplane crashes?
Mr. Weller is still subject to numerous law suits, and so is the city, but I don't think the city needs to go much further in protecting the market area from this type of one-of-a-kind accident. It's sad that it happened, and sad that we can't guarantee that it won't ever happen again, somewhere, sometime.
