To avoid accidents, teach kids physics

A quick question: Who has the right-of-way if a pedestrian in a marked crosswalk is crossing on a green light and a Cadillac DTS sedan is approaching the red light at 30 mph?

Answer: If you're the pedestrian, and the driver of the Caddy doesn't see you, who really cares?

Now, the legal answer is the pedestrian has the right-of-way. But the laws of man cannot erase the laws of physics, which are these: the right-of-way will always fall to the object with the greatest combination of mass and velocity.

I say all this to join the debate about how to avoid some of the auto-versus-pedestrian deaths that have plagued Las Vegas roadways in recent months. According to the Review-Journal, at least 27 people have died as a result of being hit by cars in Las Vegas this year.

And I can't help but wonder if we're overlooking at least one factors that may be causing the problem. For years now, we've imposed strict school zone speed limits outside of our elementary, middle and high-school campuses. Motorists must slow to either 25 mph or 15 mph, depending on the location.

But in the process, we've trained kids to think cars will always slow down or stop for them, no matter how they behave. Anybody who lives or works near a school zone has seen the result: Kids and their parents striding brazenly into the street -- crosswalk or not -- oblivious to the surrounding traffic. Some seem even to challenge passing drivers to stop by walking into the roadway.

Could we prevent tragedies by reminding kids -- as they did back in my day -- to look left, then right, then left again, and only enter traffic when it's safe to do so? Perhaps instead of school zones, we'd have more success by taking kids on field trips to accident investigation schools, where they could see for themselves the results of crash test dummies getting hit by cars.

This method might just get the message across: No matter who has the legal right of way, if you get hit by a car -- even if you're 100 percent in the right -- you could still be seriously hurt (or worse).

I know it's a tall order in a town where drivers seem almost surprised to discover there are other people who also want to use the roads.

Accidents are narrowly avoided every single day when drivers pull slowly into traffic at intersections or from strip malls directly into the path of fast-moving cars. If road rage were legal, Las Vegas would be the homicide capital of the world.

But the fact remains, no matter how much we try to make our communities "walkable," or try to get people out of their cars and into public transportation, Las Vegans don't want to give up their beloved automobiles.

If the inability of transportation managers to synchronize signal lights properly or the seemingly haphazard scheduling of near-constant road-construction projects doesn't convince us to get out of our cars, nothing will. I know there will be some who think I'm being too harsh, or excusing drivers from their responsibility to watch out for pedestrians, bicyclists and especially kids.

Not at all; with the privilege of driving comes the responsibility to do it right, and give everybody on the road a break. In fact, I've been trying to correct my own aggressive driving nature recently and use the roads with a greater sense of compassion for my fellow man, with varying results.

But in the end, staying alive on the road means watching out for yourself. And remembering who has the real, not just the legal, right-of-way.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/SteveSebelius or reach him at 387-5276 or at SSebelius@reviewjournal.com.