TV News Investigations And Projects

Highway Hazards And
Commuting Survival Strategies

Television stations have created many projects and stories that help viewers improve their commutes to work and watch out for driving dangers.

The Street Zapper Documents Speeding, Dangerous Drivers
	Motorists speeding through residential neighborhoods endanger the people who live there, particularly the children. News managers at WTOL-TV, Toledo, developed an innovative feature that addressed the viewers' frustrations. They purchased a radar gun, timed the speeders, and confronted them.
An Investigator's Test: Dangerously Dim Headlights
	In Boston, an investigation by WHDH-TV revealed that your automobile headlights are probably not as bright and reliable as you assume they are.   It can be tragic for the walker and the driver if the driver doesn't have enough light to see there is someone on the road in front of him.
Investigators Revealed Dangerous Tires
	In Houston, KHOU-TV raised major questions about whether certain Firestone tires were unsafe.
Driving Hazard:   Dangerous Highways
	In every area there are certain places that are the most dangerous for drivers.   Year after year these are the spots where accidents are most likely to occur.   The driver who understands these hazards may have a better chance of avoiding a devastating crash.
Driving Hazard: Dangerous Vehicles
	Parts of a car --- from the tires to the brakes --- can fail when a driver needs them most.
Beating The System: Traffic Offenders Get Off
	Several stations have done investigative reports on problems with speeders and drunk drivers having the charges dismissed. It's outrageous that the most flagrant offenders sometimes go unpunished.
Checking the Emergency Response: Truck's Chemical Spill Stopped Traffic
	The Chicago government's emergency response to a major public safety disruption was examined by WGN-TV.  "Danger Downwind" analyzed a big traffic accident.   A tanker truck overturned during a morning rush hour. Hundreds of commuters were stranded in their cars. Trains were stopped.  High-rise apartments were evacuated as a toxic cloud spread across the area.
Upgrade and Differentiate Your Traffic Coverage
	Accurate and up-to-the minute information offered in an interesting way is valuable to people who will be driving on the highways.
At The Edge of Gridlock: A Traffic Congestion Project
	In San Francisco, KPIX-TV ran a month-long investigation of traffic traumas and the possibility that mass transit might offer a solution.
A Life-Saving Campaign: Drive 4 Life
	A campaign to reduce the high number of motor vehicle accidents in South Carolina was created by the managers at WYFF-TV, Greenville.
Teen Driving Project Draws Very Well
	A project on the dangers of teen drinking and driving, and teenagers' basic driving problems connected with viewers at WFSB-TV, Hartford.  They had strong firsthand testimony from an injured girl, advice from a driving expert, and extensive promotion.

Upgrade and Differentiate
Your Traffic Coverage

Traffic headaches --- in the city and the suburbs --- often score high on your viewers' lists of public problems. These issues are quite relevant to people --- they directly experience them every day.
Here are approaches to covering traffic in interesting ways the details of a traffic e-mail service.

Traffic reports offer conditions, features, and fun

In Chicago, WMAQ-TV has had a heavy emphasis on traffic and weather in the morning.
"We do as many as 20 traffic reports in our two-hour morning news block," said Bill Keller, the full-time traffic reporter who also reports feature stories.

They vary their on air presentation.
Two or three days a week, Keller is out on the road either at a feature, or standing by an expressway, or up in the helicopter. Sometimes he reports from the studio. It is never the same thing from one day to the next.

There is a difference between how the radio and the television audiences will use a traffic service.
"For many years, people have been doing radio traffic reports on TV. We wanted to do it differently. The home viewer has a different need than the person who is sitting in his car," said Keller.
"If it is a normal rush hour, and it normally takes you 45 minutes, we'll say it is a normal rush hour --- that it's heavy, which is the way it normally is," he explained.

Chicago has a substantial number of in-bound and an out-bound commutes. "In Chicago, there is a definitive starting point and an end point.
We are able to accurately give people travel times, which is what Chicagoans really need," said Keller.
The Illinois Department of Transportation has sensors along the major roads. These sensors provide real time information.

The travel times appear frequently in the newscasts. They are used as bumps into the commercial breaks and run as crawls on the bottom of the screen.
"When people are in their cars, the radio traffic reporter reads the travel times, and it can take 1:00 to 1:30 to get through the whole list," said Keller.
"For the person sitting on their couch in the morning, they may not need travel times, because they may not be commuting to work. We are giving viewers the information, but we are not wasting part of our morning news block reading it to them," he said.

Keller's reports focus on major disruptions that will impact people.
"What I usually report on are hot spots --- accidents, stalled cars, car fires --- all the usual mayhem. We want to report on things that will definitely affect your commute to work," he said.

Commuter Crew augments coverage, involves viewers

The station is soliciting viewers to be part of its new Commuter Crew.
"This is a chance for our viewers to get involved. They call from their car and we put them on the air. We do phoners with them from their cars," explained Keller.

Viewers can log onto NBC5.com and click on the Traffic Page, where they can get real time traffic information.
To apply for the Commuter Crew, people enter their names, phone numbers, and information on what routes they take and what time of the morning they are on the road.
"If we have something on a particular expressway, we can go into our database and see who normally takes it at that time. We can call them, or they have a number where they can call us," he explained.

It gives the station first-person reports of conditions from the middle of the problems.
"Whenever we have a big weather situation, we call the Department of Transportation and do a phoner with them. We can now call people in their cars and ask them what the conditions are actually like out there," said Keller.
"We want them to tell us what they are experiencing. It may be much worse or much better than we are reporting," he added.

As the Commuter Crew got off the ground, the producers initiated the calls. They hoped that eventually members would call and function almost like traffic tipsters.
"It is a chance for audience involvement. We want to get to know these people. We'll ask where they work, what they do, and how their morning commute is going this morning. Even if it is a normal commute, that is fine, because people who take that expressway can look for a normal trip in," Keller explained.

They began averaging two or three Commuter Crew phoners a week.
It was especially helpful during a storm.
"The weather forecasting is so good these days, our team was able to predict exactly when the storm was going to hit --- and it hit during the morning rush hour," said Keller.
They predicted more snow to the south of the city. The night before he set up a Commuter Crew phoner with someone who drove in from one of the southwest suburbs.
"We had a live phoner on the air from someone who was on one of the worst roads. We timed it so they were able to provide us with information right when they were in the thick of it," he added.

It is important to pre-screen the people who have volunteered to do the phoners.
Keller stressed that you don't want any unpleasant surprises on live television.
"It's important to know if their personality fits and whether or not they are going to be able to communicate with us in a way the viewers will respond to," he explained.

Garage of the week reached men

Another experimental element of the WMAQ traffic franchise was the Xtreme Garage Challenge. The segment ran once a week.
Keller is a former producer, and said he approaches the job the way a producer would.
"I look for ways to vary our presentation. I like doing feature pieces, and this is a lot of fun," he explained.
"There are 'men zones' --- basements, attics and garages. Guys love stuff like this," he laughs.

Garage participants were recruited online. They were asked to attach a computer image of their garage (if it was available) with their e-mail. They described their space and include name, address, and phone number.
If they were chosen, Keller visited, and their special space was shown on television.
They kicked off the segment live from a man's six-car garage/workshop.
Keller said, "It had a tiled floor, was heated and had a mini-bar. Another guy turned his garage into a sports shrine. He had the infield of Wrigley Field painted on his floor --- to scale. All his memorabilia was displayed."
Another piece featured a woman who lived in a high-rise and didn't have a garage.
"She rents a garage across the alley to use it as a patio! These are just fun little features," he said.
The response was good, he added.

This traffic reporter stressed the need to keep in mind the many viewers who didn't need specific road conditions at the time they were watching.
He said, "The people who are watching on TV are still maybe a half an hour from getting in their car. A portion of them are not even commuting. That's where things like the Xtreme Garage Challenge and the Commuter Crew come in. It keeps it interesting."
When the circus was in Chicago, Keller did the last hour of traffic reports from the circus.
"It keeps it relevant to the person who is not commuting. There is a good segment of the audience not commuting," he added.
"The last thing we want to do is go through a litany of road conditions going from Point A to Point D. If I were a viewer, I would tune to something else. We're trying to keep it as an 'executive summary.' Or if we're out doing something fun, we will show viewers that, too," he said.

Listen to your viewers

Feedback from the people caught in the motoring mess is critical to the success of traffic reporting that goes beyond just the conditions at the hour.

Traffic trouble spots were investigated and explained in a weekly report on WTVJ-TV, Miami. Traffic Busters was placed in the 5:30 p.m. news each Monday.
Many of the topics were suggested by drivers.

Reports included:

Citizen activist won a light.  Six people in five years died at a dangerous intersection. A woman involved in one accident led a campaign to have a light installed.

Construction trouble point. This highway headache caused motorists great delays and tension. When it was finally finished it would --- hopefully --- help them move briskly on their way.

Viewers were urged to find car pool partners by using the online bulletin board of WTVJ.
The Carpool Connection was pitched as a way to save money and reduce the stress of getting to work.

Station and newspaper partner on traffic site

In Washington, WRC-TV's Web site partnered with washingtonpost.com for traffic updates, information and opinion sharing.
A person clicking on "Traffic" at the station's home page was linked directly to pages at the site which was maintained at the paper.

Driver comments and questions were a central features.
This included Traffic Talk bulletin boards where people could "share your war stories and weigh in on the many issues facing D.C., Maryland and Virginia commuters."
Partnering with the paper gave WRC online access to Dr. Gridlock, a very popular traffic column. Dr. Gridlock was veteran reporter and editor Ron Shaffer.

Dr. Gridlock drew many letters from interested and concerned drivers.
The result was a full discussion of all the issues facing commuters.

Typical subjects included:

--- Subway security. What do I do if I discover an abandoned briefcase? (1) pull the emergency alarm, leaving us stranded in the middle of the tracks; (2) alert security at the next station; or (3) call the conductor?

--- Driver education advice. What are the names of the driving schools which offer defensive driving?

When you checked the column titles in his archive of articles, you really could see the wide range of strong material that can be covered by a traffic beat.

Some examples:
--- High-power headlights create serious hazard for blinded drivers.
--- E-ZPass can be your ticket to hassle-free travel.
--- Parkway's engineering challenged.
--- Tips for protecting vehicles, valuables at commuter lots.
--- Commuting the sentence: audio books can help break the monotony of driving.
--- Readers toss out ideas for dealing with littering.
--- Key Bridge drivers look for a sign.

See: Dr. Gridlock at the Washington Post

E-mails give user-specific information

Commuters could create their own customized traffic profile by going to the Web site of KRON-TV, San Francisco.
KRON 4 TrafficWarn provided current information about traffic conditions. The person who used the service didn't have to bother with all the regional data that didn't impact his trip. This was useful material personalized for the individual.

This was a tool that could make the daily commute quicker and easier.
"Our market is very large. When people in Marin county are going to and from the city they don't really care about traffic on the eastern side of the bay," said Michael Gay, Internet Coordinator.
"What we have done is to eliminate areas that people don't care about for their commute," he explained.

The station partnered with a California software company to develop an individualized e-mail service.
People accessed the traffic page online and went through and customized the routes they took in order to get to and from work each day. They also selected the times they traveled.
"Each day we e-mail them with the current traffic report for them. They get it before they leave the office or home," said Gay.

The e-mail portion of the service was free. People who wanted the data sent to their wireless devices paid a monthly fee of $4.95.

"The Internet is not broadcasting. We are narrowcasting when it comes to the Web. We do it with our weather forecasts and all kinds of different products. Traffic is the most recent one we launched, and it may be the most effective," he added.

TrafficWarn used information provided by the California Highway Patrol on all traffic calls they respond to, and added traffic information from Shadow Broadcast to provide custom traffic reports.

Registration was about two-to-one male to female. Ages ranged from under 18 to 65+.
"People across the board are interested in traffic," said Gay.
He believed it is an excellent technique for brand extension.

E-mail's biggest impact is at work

People who were utilizing the service were most interested in the afternoon commute.
Gay said there weren't that many people who jumped online before they left the house in the morning.
"But when you're getting ready to leave the office, the chances of going online are much higher," he explained.
"In the Bay Area, our morning commute is a lot longer than the evening commute. It starts at 5:30 a.m. and ends at 10," he said.
With the time difference, people had to get to work early to do business with the East Coast.
The evening commute was much more condensed --- lasting roughly from 4 to 7 p.m. --- so roads might be more congested.

Mike Crossfield, President of Universal Software Systems, said because the system was already set up with the California Highway Patrol data, they planned to roll it out to other California television stations.
"The service can be custom-branded to match the look and feel of the TV station, so it looks like they have engineered this for themselves," he said.

March 18, 2002

At The Edge of Gridlock:
Traffic Congestion

VOLUME IX, NUMBER 9                   FEBRUARY 27, 1989

A major project examining traffic headaches and mass transit possibilities was produced by KPIX-TV, San Francisco.
Traffic frustrations touch many viewers. This project was directly relevant to their daily lives. It was not one more non-surprising story --- not another "someone robbed a liquor store on the wrong side of town."

"In almost every survey which is done in the Bay Area asking residents what the Number One problem is, transportation is always cited as the Number One issue," said Peter Maroney, News Director.

The San Francisco Bay separates many of the communities and there are long bridge approaches to the city.
"It is primarily the bridges which back things up, but the population growth has been so phenomenal in the Bay Area that it has outstripped the capacity of the highways," he added.

The station ran a month-long campaign featuring news reports, announcements, and extensive alliances with other media companies, and public agencies.
The campaign built to a day dedicated to mass transit.
"It's similar to the Great American Smokeout Day," said VP/GM Carolyn Wean.
Motorists who normally drove alone were be urged to try an alternative --- car pool or mass transit --- on February 28th. The hope was: If they do it once, they might do it again. And, again.

Station adapted an advocacy approach

Wean said the role of a TV station was multi-faceted --- to provide entertainment, to be a news source, and to put a spotlight on the important community issues.
"When you choose things which really concern people, it reminds the community you are involved and you are concerned. That goes a long way towards building loyalty," she said.

"We decided to take a very strong advocacy position," Maroney said.
"As a station, we are attempting to position ourselves as being an advocate for long-term solutions, as well as short-term solutions," he said. He added they were doing that on all fronts, in all programming," he added.

Partners were recruited

The television managers recruited a major media partner, plus public agencies and corporations and got them involved in the project.
They met first with the major transit agencies to see if they'd be interested. The 20 transit agencies came up with 25 free year-long regional transit passes which the station gave away as prizes.
Secondly, they approached the Bay Area Council --- a think tank supported by major companies.
"We used them to pull together all kinds of corporations. This is a huge corporate issue," said Special Projects Producer Candy Meyers.
Next, they talked to the officials of the surrounding municipalities, who quickly supported the project.

Finally, one of the most important elements in the campaign: KPIX teamed up with KCBS-AM which had the most active radio traffic reporting outlet in the area.
"In drive time, news and talk radio is going to be able to reach commuters more than TV can. KCBS has 24-hour traffic reporting which ties in nicely," she added.

Promotion was crucial to the project.
"We told the transit agencies we weren't going to do this unless they promoted the heck out of it," Meyers explained.

There eventually were "Beat the Back Up" banners at Golden Gate Bridge and at the Bay Bridge --- promotion it would have been hard to buy.

The cross-promotion with KCBS worked well, too. KCBS ran public service announcements which carried KPIX's call letters.
Maroney said, "We are working hand in hand to do stories which promote each other, too. When we do a story in our Nightcast, we remind people they can tune in KCBS the next day and hear traffic reports on their way to work. During those traffic reports, KCBS is telling listeners what to expect in our reports at 6 and 11 that night."

Bumper sticker survey stimulated interaction

One of the most unique elements was the "Beat the Back Up Day" bumper sticker which was distributed at a chain of grocery stores and a chain of gas stations. This device reinforced the campaign and the station.

The sticker served several purposes:
1. It, of course, promoted the event.
2. On the back of the sticker was a survey on transportation attitudes.
"We can get a good baseline of information," said Meyers. It asked people what they were willing to do to solve the traffic problem --- pay more in sales tax, gas tax, etc.
"We're going to use the results of that poll to do editorials and take it to the governor's office," added Maroney.
3. Surveys which were returned were used to draw names for prize trips to "traffic-free places." The contest was run on the station's Evening Magazine.
"It's an incentive for people to put the stickers on their car, to mail them in, and also to watch our programming," said Meyers.

Traffic subjects were varied

The stories explaining traffic issues ran in the 6 p.m. news. They were interesting --- not the run-of-the-mill transportation stories.

Worst Case Scenario. A typical traffic report in the year 2010. They researched what the traffic conditions would be like in the 21st century, wrote it up like an actual report, and sent it over to KCBS to be recorded up in one of their traffic planes --- as if it were a day in 2010.
The report talked about the number of hours of commute in a day and suggested people who were stuck in the traffic jam have their office fax them some work to their car! It also showed 10-lane freeways running at peak capacity --- 30 mph.

Commuter Race. This pitted a solo driver against a BART commuter. They left the same area at the same time.
"We compared their commutes in terms of time, convenience, cost, and stress. The BART commuter paid less and got there 15 minutes earlier," Meyers said.

Physical Impact. They took a man who alternates between driving and taking the bus and wired him up with a portable EKG and blood pressure monitor.
"We rode with him as he drove along in his car in a huge traffic jam," said Meyers.
The next day, they did the same on the bus to see the difference in stress.
"It was pretty substantial. There was a 30 to 40 point difference. The bus was much less stressful," she said.

Anatomy of a Traffic Jam.
"The premise was that even when there are no accidents, there are still huge traffic jams," she explained.
Why was that? What they found was individuals' driving habits added to traffic jams, such as driving too slowly, pulling off freeways and re-merging, or suddenly changing lanes. They also showed what people could do to minimize the problem.

Car As Kingdom. So many people are spending so much time in their cars, they are equipping them like a second home with computers, fax machines, and car phones.

Traffic Dollars. Traffic is costs a region lost hours and lost jobs when business which locate elsewhere. This focused on a doctor who got stuck in a traffic jam on the Bay Bridge. He couldn't get to surgery and called on his car phone and told them not to put the patient under anesthesia. Unfortunately, the patient was already under.
"We tabulated how many dollars were lost because of that traffic jam," Meyers explained.

Highway Heroes. Planners who were finally planning with traffic in mind when they put up big developments.

Psychological Impact. The telltale signs of commuter stress. Five warning signs of road stress. How you can comfort yourself.

Air Quality. Pollution from autos.

Why Drive Alone. How to get in a car pool and why people don't join them.

Truck Problems. "San Francisco has the busiest truck corridor in the nation," said Meyers. The problems this raises. Plans to limit trucks during peak commuting hours.

Commute of the Future.
"Companies are now offering not only health and retirement benefits, but commute benefits as well," said Meyers. Pacific Bell, for example, offered discount books and shuttle services.
"They're also getting into tele-commuting, which lets people stay at home and work on a computer," she explained.

Water Transportation. The Bay as an unused freeway.

Commuter's Worst Nightmares. The station began soliciting the worst nightmares a month earlier, asking people to send their stories.
"We're going to use these personal stories as springboards to discuss solutions to Bay Area traffic problems," said Meyers.

Project became an on-going commitment

"It is incredible how much we have already learned about this. It's been a real education," said News Director Maroney.
"We knew a lot already having done a series last year on the ten worst traffic jams. But, this has taken us far beyond that in terms of getting up on the learning curve about the issues," he said.

Some elements of the campaign lived on beyond the actual project.
For example, KPIX did a commuter forecast in the 11 o'clock show. They talked about road conditions, road repair, transit problems, changes in transit schedules and how weather will affect transit the next day.
Maroney explained that would continue, and they would continue to report on transit issues.
"We've done it in the past, but we'll be doing more showcasing of it," he added.

Would people change their habits?

While the managers had hoped to have a big impact with their "Beat the Back Up Day," Maroney conceded it was very difficult to get people to change their commuting patterns.
"In California, people love their cars. They love to get in their cars and drive alone on the freeway. To convince people to change that behavior --- even for one day --- is a gimmick. But, it may convince some people it isn't so bad and they can actually save money," he said.
For example, for the commuter who drove, bridge tolls were $2.00 a day and parking could run $5.00. You could take the ferry round-trip for half that.

February 27, 1989

A Life-Saving Campaign
Drive 4 Life

People driving today face many hazards ranging from aggressive out-of-control individuals to drunks to hazardous highways. This is a problem that impacts and interests most of your viewers.
Here are the specifics of a project that is designed to save lives and increase driving safety.

Drivers are educated about the dangers

A year-long campaign to reduce the high number of motor vehicle accidents in South Carolina has been launched by the managers at WYFF-TV, Greenville.

"In meeting with community leaders and law enforcement, we discovered we have a very high fatality rate on our highways, and particularly on the secondary roads," says News Director Andy Still.

The state is tied for second place in the nation for its death rate on highways.
Most of the deaths are occurring on secondary roads, even though that's not where most of the traffic is. More than 65 percent of all South Carolina roads --- some 25,000 miles --- are secondary roads. The problem is that most of the highway money ends up being spent on interstates.
"The secondary roads are narrow and often don't have shoulders. Plus, there are many people driving at high speeds," he says.

Station aggressively stays in touch with community

The idea for the Drive 4 Life project came out of the ongoing community meetings that the station's managers hold throughout the year.
Still explains, "We have a deep dedication to community service. We meet once every quarter with community leaders from different parts of our hyphenated market."

The station representatives include those who are responsible for PSAs, managers and newspeople. They want to keep on top of what key leaders feel are important issues before those issues are part of the general news.
"A lot of what we get is information on festivals that are coming up or community events, but we also get information on real issues," says Still.
For example, if the local relief agencies are seeing an increase in the number of homeless on the street, the station managers want to know about it. If health officials are worried there may not be enough beds to treat influenza victims, this is important for the station to act on.
"We hear about some real deep issues and problems that might come up that we are able to discover beforehand and do stories on," Still explains.

Another significant campaign that came from this process was the highly successful News 4 FireWatch.
Following a string of fire deaths, the station devoted resources to educating the public about fire safety. The campaign continued across several years, and reached many, many people.
"We had days where we sold smoke detectors at cost. We ended up selling about 200,000 of them," Still adds.

Highway safety covers many issues

The news managers realized there would be many possible stories that would come under the umbrella of Drive 4 Life.
"It could be anything from an anchor going to driving school to tips and PSAs to looking at specific problem areas," says Still.

The news team had done stories on cross-over accidents on the interstates --- accidents that happen when drivers fall asleep or lose control of their vehicle and cross into oncoming traffic. The news reports helped lead to the installation of cable barriers to prevent cars from crossing over.
The managers hope to have a similar impact here with this project. "We are doing PSAs and news stories that basically deal with how to help people keep from killing themselves on the road," says Still.

Some information is very basic --- safe driving tips that serve as reminders to everyone.
In one PSA, meteorologist John Cessarich speaks to viewers from a car.
He offers some basic ideas:

--- Plan ahead. Cut down on distractions such as talking on the phone, looking at a map or eating.
--- Be alert. Constantly watch what's ahead of you.
--- Anticipate traffic patterns and road conditions.
--- Adjust the mirrors. Avoid blind spots. Stay alert by checking the mirrors often.

Cessarich's bottom line to viewers: "So pay attention, keep your mind focused on driving. WYFF wants you to Drive 4 Life."

In-depth material is covered in news packages.
There is no set number of stories or specific time when pieces will air.
"There are a number of things we will do throughout the year to heighten the awareness of driving safely," says Still.

One piece showed viewers how they could drive more safely by leaving more room between their car and the vehicle in front of them.
Police traffic statistics showed that 600 times in 2001, Greenville drivers couldn't stop in time to avoid running into the vehicle in front of them.
A police officer showed reporter Tim Waller the problem at a stoplight. As the vehicles lined up, some were clearly too close to those in front of them. The policeman suggested drivers should allow a car length for every 10 miles of speed.
A simple, effective rule of thumb: If you can't see the rear tires of the vehicle in front of you, you're too close.

Investigation: Small Roads, Big Danger

An investigation looked at the reasons for the high number of fatalities on secondary roads.
This ran during February.
South Carolina's motor vehicle death rate is 60 percent higher than the national average, with most of the deaths happening on the secondary roads.
"The most dangerous roads in South Carolina aren't city boulevards or urban interstates, but the two-lane secondary roads that most folks drive on every day," said reporter Chris Cifatte.

"Small Roads, Big Danger" included:

Personal example. A man who was involved in a serious crash and lived told his story. A car with five teenagers hit his car on a narrow, rain-slick road. One of the teenagers died. The man said, "You don't have any where to go, you're off the road or in the other lane."

Demonstrations. The reporter used a tape measure to document the width of the highway where the man was injured. The nat sound: "We have 9 feet, six inches of useable space." That was just one lane.
To convey just how narrow these roads are, Cifatte did a standup in front of a typical two-car garage. It was twenty-one feet wide. It was about the width of a road through the country. The two cars in the garage fit snugly inside.
"So you have two cars driving down the road sharing about this much space," he said.
You also felt how narrow the space was when you saw eight foot-wide school buses moving swiftly past, running in lanes just a little more than nine feet wide.

Authority. The danger was confirmed by an expert, a Clemson University researcher who had studied this for two years. He said that narrow lanes, uneven shoulders and obstacles too close to the road are some of the things that make secondary roads so deadly.
Lawmakers were slow to endorse a solution. It would take substantial amounts of taxpayer money, including raising the gasoline tax, to pay to widen roads and shoulders and install guardrails.

April 8, 2002

Return to top of page.

Checking the Emergency Response:
Truck's Chemical Spill Stopped Traffic

The Chicago government's emergency response to a major public safety disruption was examined by WGN-TV.

"Danger Downwind" analyzed a big traffic accident.
A tanker truck overturned during a morning rush hour in August, 2001,  on one of the city's busiest expressways. The Dan Ryan was shut down for hours.  Hundreds of commuters were stranded in their cars. Trains were eventually stopped.  Nearby high-rise apartments were evacuated as a toxic cloud spread across the area.

It was an emergency with many facets.
"At first it appeared to be just a bad accident. Then it became an environmental problem because there was a chemical leaking, and a cloud of chemicals drifted over the area as the commuter trains passed through," said News Director Carol Fowler.

The news team members took all the time needed to fully investigate what happened.

Crisis responders' actions were precisely documented

The investigative team set out to create a timeline.  The goal was to establish a minute-by-minute account of what happened, and how the emergency personnel responded.
"We looked at why they made the decisions they made," said Fowler.

Right after the incident, investigative producer Jason Jedlinski began checking the emergency response.
"We started looking at it, because we weren't sure how it happened. We knew a truck had overturned on the highway, and the next thing there was a huge cloud," he said.
The truck swerved out of control, flipped on its side, slammed into a barrier, and caught fire at 6:45 a.m. At 7:05, there was an explosion and a cloud of ammonia vapors spread.
Jedlinski said, "Our initial suspicion was the fire department could have started, accelerated, or otherwise caused this to happen by mishandling the situation. When our helicopter got there, it was an overturned truck. When the fire department got there, there was a huge cloud. We wondered if a mistake was made that turned this into a disaster," he said.

The live coverage airchecks provided a foundation of information and video.
"We had the video. But it was a huge undertaking for our investigative unit to dissect what had happened, and go back and construct a timeline," said Fowler.

Response times were scrutinized closely.
In checking their video of the incident, the newspeople found vital equipment actually arrived on the scene sooner than the city computer said it did.

Key public records, including dispatch logs, were requested.
Then the 9/11 atrocities happened, and the expressway investigation was put on hold.
"The time spent investigating terrorism for the next few months allowed the various agencies to get their documents together and respond to our requests. In the end, we had over a four-inch stack of paperwork," said Jedlinski.

Each time they received a response from an agency, they would find new leads in the material. Often when one agency would not release records, the same or related documents would be among the papers released by another agency.

Many departments had useful records.
"Of course you are going to check with the highway patrol and the environmental authorities, but you might not think to check with the Sewer Department," he said.
The Sewer Department workers stopped up the drainage tunnels running under the expressway to keep the chemical from going into the river and killing fish.
"Everywhere we looked there was another agency we could check with," he added.

There were many incident debriefings done by the 18 local, state and federal agencies that responded.
The minutes from those meetings showed problems, including:
--- A delay in identifying the chemical.
--- Failure to communicate just how toxic it was.
--- Confusion over command structure and who was on the scene.

When the news team returned to the expressway issue, 9/11 had given the probe new urgency.
How prepared were Chicago's first responders to handle a Hazmat incident?
What kind of safeguards existed in the licensing process for driver's licenses and permits for hauling hazardous materials?
"As we wrote the story, we wanted to make sure we didn't get into scaring people or to make it worse than it was," Jedlinski added.

The former fire commander (now retired) who created the hazardous materials squad analyzed the response.
It was 20 minutes into the emergency when the expressway was ordered shut down. It took an additional 20 minutes to accomplish it. Several trains went through the toxic smoke. One bus was stopped for several minutes in the smoke. High rises were evacuated after the toxic plume was no longer visible.
The former chief said, "All these people are probably too close ... You can't wait until people start falling over to say, 'Maybe we should have gotten you out of the way.'"
"Some of the things we didn't get into. We learned ambulances were sent into the hot zone on the wrong side of the highway. They had to be decontaminated because they were in the path of the fumes," Jedlinski said.

Look at the communications

Jedlinski feels that other stations' investigators looking at Hazmat responses should focus on the communications (particularly communication between agencies).
"It wasn't that they weren't trained to fight it. The problem was they didn't start making decisions about evacuations or shutting down the commuter train running through the middle of the cloud, until after they had contained the threat," he said.
"Once they knocked down the big cloud, that's when the wheels started turning. It may take 45 or 50 minutes to marshal those resources, but is there a way it can be done faster in the future?" he asked.

With the decision to shut down the trains, there were 10 to 15 minutes between the decision and the time it actually happened.
Jedlinski said, "Is there a way to speed that up? Communication and cooperation are vital. Everyone was quick to point out that there were no turf wars here. No one was getting territorial about who was in charge. Everyone cooperated. What we saw was more of a lack of ability to communicate effectively or to get a unified message out."
In his narration, anchor Steve Sanders said, "Despite the good outcome, we found transit riders put at risk by numerous breakdowns in communication between agencies."

Another area where communication was important was in determining the type of chemical involved.
On the fire dispatch tape, a commander reports, "The only thing I can get from the driver is 3,000 pounds of a flammable liquid."
Actually it was 33,000 pounds. The driver had no real idea what he was hauling.
"There was a lack of communication as to what it was. In this case, it was toxic, but it was not deadly or anything extremely poisonous. But, had it been, would people have known?" he asks.

Conclusion: Tough situation, room for improvement

The story did not turn out to be a damning indictment. But the next Hazmat/traffic mess could be handled better. The emergency teams were lucky the chemical wasn't more toxic.
Sanders felt they did a "pretty good job."
Jedlinski said, "Our ultimate conclusion was we're reasonably prepared. But had this been something more dangerous, this response would not have been adequate. If this was some kind of chemical weapon, we would have been in big trouble."

WGN also raised the fact there was only one Hazmat truck available.
It was the backup unit without computers. The main truck was out of service for maintenance.
Chicago is so big it can take too long for the one unit to get to a scene.
"Had this been something planned, or a chemical weapon, and if there was an incident somewhere else in the city, who would have been able to respond to that?" he asks.

An online opinion poll asked people whether money should be spent to build a second station to deal with Hazmat incidents. People were in favor of it.

The driver and trucking company were penalized

A second segment of "Danger Down-wind" looked at the truck that caused the whole mess. (Besides the outrageous statement this made about highway safety, this showed how easily terrorists could get ahold of trucks and fill them with explosives.)

The driver had received his license using the identity of a dead man!
He was a Mexican national who entered the U.S. through Canada.
"He got his driver's license by purchasing the identity of a man who had been dead for seven years. As we investigated how that happened, we learned the Secretary of State's Office in Illinois does not have a procedure for making sure that anyone who applies for a license is not doing so under someone else's identity," said Fowler.

The state officials claimed they were trying to come up with a system to check the validity of Social Security numbers.
"We proved that it is simply a matter of going on the Internet, and it takes a matter of seconds. There is a Web site you can go to and enter a Social Security number, and it'll say immediately whether that person is living or dead," she explained.

Driver Fernando Ruiz (real name) had incorrect entries in his logbook. He had no shipping papers that would help emergency crews identify and handle the leaking chemical.
He served four months in prison and was deported to Mexico.

The trucking company was not licensed to haul hazardous materials. It was fined more than $2,000. Its federal motor carrier authority was suspended.

Emergency response lessons apply to possible terrorism incident

The news team also looked at the incident as one that might hold lessons larger than a Hazmat crisis.
"In this post 9/11 environment, we are always looking for ways we can be better prepared for terrorism," said anchor Sanders, who reported the piece.
He added, "I thought the story provided a window for us to take a look at how Chicago's first responders dealt with a dangerous situation."
Chicago could easily be a prime target for attacks. It is America's third largest city, and with all the high-rise buildings, mass transit and interstate highways, Sanders saw it as a target-rich environment.

Official response system failed, people drowned

Serious weaknesses in the local emergency response system were documented in 1997 by KCRA-TV, Sacramento.
Severe floods did widespread damage and people drowned.
When massive winter floods threatened, some elected and appointed officials failed. Agencies that were supposedly monitoring the water levels did not properly warn the people in danger.
News Director Bill Bauman created a team to investigate.
They began by putting together a very specific timeline of when decisions had been made, warnings issued, evacuations ordered and lives lost. They built their documentation by including all faxes received, and a careful logging of the airchecks of the live coverage during the emergency.
It was a story of chaos and confusion that cost lives.
The investigation was wrapped up with a half-hour special that ran on a Sunday night at 6:30. Many viewers were interested. The show did an 11 rating/26 share.
Bauman and his investigative reporter explained to The Rundown exactly how they conducted this major investigation.

You can retrieve the story here in our story database.

The Street Zapper Documents
Speeding, Dangerous Drivers

Motorists speeding through residential neighborhoods endanger the people who live there, particularly the children. The neighbors look for the police to enforce the speed limits and are frustrated when enforcement is not aggressive.
Here is how the news managers at WTOL-TV, Toledo, developed an innovative feature that addressed the viewers' frustrations.

SOS: Streets of Speed

"This is one of those low effort/high payoff franchises," said WTOL-TV News Director C.J Beutien.
He explained, "Everybody is always looking for some kind of series or franchise we can do that hasn't been done 100 times before. We were looking for what is unique to Toledo."
They were brainstorming for sweeps. Several staff members mentioned doing something on motorists and the problem of "maniac motorists." Beutien felt that just going out and videotaping people doing dumb things as they were driving wouldn't have much of an impact.

One day he saw a radar gun advertised for sale in a mail order catalog.
"It was for people who wanted to check how fast their golf swing was or if they were at a race track and they wanted to see how fast the cars were going," he explained.

Beutien ordered a radar gun, intending to do speed checks in different neighborhoods.

Viewers were invited to report speeding problems in their neighborhood. The station would send the Street Zapper to document the hazard. Announcements ran on air and the station's Web site.

They had given away trips and all kinds of things, and might typically receive 300 or 400 e-mails in a week's time.

"What we found is there are a lot of people who are very frustrated about speeders in their neighborhood. They have children who play in the front yard, and are worried about a ball rolling into the street. If people go 25 mph, it's not so bad. But there is always someone zipping through," he said.

Too often when someone calls the police about the problem, the complaint seems to fall on deaf ears. Police departments only have so many people they can devote to speed traps and only so many radar units to deploy.
"People were lined up to do this! We started it two weeks ago, and it generated even more e-mails. When people see Channel 11 crews now, they mention Street Zapper. I don't think I have ever had a project that connected this quickly," said Beutien.

It helped on a number of fronts:

Differentiation. People clearly identified the Street Zapper with WTOL.

Interaction. Viewers visited the Web and requested the station to come to their neighborhood. The invitation online was to "Send us your SOS --- your Streets of Speed."

Serving the community. It shined a light on a significant problem and got results.

Speeds documented, violators confronted

A news crew went to the neighborhood for several hours.   They kept track of all the cars shot with the radar gun.
They'd report something like: "For two hours, we were over on Barrington Drive, and we measured the speed of 30 vehicles. Ninety-eight percent of them were going over the speed limit. The speed limit is 25, but the average speed was 38.5 mph..."
The data also went on the Web site.

The person who sent the e-mail was introduced to the viewers. The individual explained why the Street Zapper was needed in the neighborhood.

The violators were asked to explain their driving.
"We document the patterns with the radar gun, and then we confront the motorists," said Beutien.
One newsperson had the radar gun, and the cars were videotaped going along the road. Using a cell phone or two-way, the person with the gun called ahead to another crew stationed at a stop sign up the road, and explained that "the black mini- van was going 42 mph" in the 25 mph zone.

The crew at the stop sign approached the drivers, and told them how fast they were going.
People had many excuses. They were late for a doctor's appointment. They didn't realize they were going so fast. A few were angry about being clocked.

The district city council person was interviewed for a reaction.
The elected officials were generally happy the station exposed the problem and documented the speeding.
"They say that we are putting attention on a problem that really needs to be fixed. All the feedback we have is that people are very thankful," said Beutien.

Beutien's advice: Make sure you purchase a good speed gun. WTOL bought a Bushnell Speedster on the Internet for about $180.
"We've had the speed gun calibrated to make sure it is accurate," he said.

The news managers decided against calling it a "speed gun." Some women in their focus group at the station didn't like calling something a "gun." They decided on the "Street Zapper." The distinctive name connected with people. At the end of the second week, they received about 60 new e-mails and every one Beutien read called it the "Street Zapper."

An added bonus was that the project appealed to an attractive demo --- young mothers.
"The moms with the little kids are the most concerned, but it is of interest to older people, too. Nobody likes speeders in their neighborhood," said Beutien.

He said that people were glad the station was putting a spotlight on the problem. Every year there were children (and adults) struck by cars that were speeding.
"Although it wasn't our intention, the Street Zapper has become a star of Channel 11. Are speeders going to go away? I don't think so. Is the concern about speeders going to go away? I don't think so. This isn't a flash in the pan," said Beutien.

Other Liberty-owned stations also saw instant success

In Lubbock, KCBD-TV launched the franchise in its market.

They jump-started their project by going live from a location where police said speeding was a problem.
"Immediately after the live broadcast at 6, we received 15 phone calls to our hotline within the first five minutes --- and over 200 e-mails!" said Benji Snead, News Director KCBD-TV, Lubbock.

Prior to the live shot, the newsroom managers had created a hotline and a specially named e-mail: SOS@kcbd.com
"We obviously hit a nerve, because viewers really wanted us in their neighborhoods. While we understand that we can't stop people from speeding, we hope to raise the awareness of what appears to be a common problem in residential areas and school zones here in Lubbock," he said.

This reaction followed the research.
"The research said people want news where they live, but that is a hard thing to accomplish. This helps us do that, because we can go to your neighborhood, and there is a common interest citywide --- no matter what neighborhood you live in. This lets us touch that news image of news where you live. Weather is the only way we have been able to touch that so far," said Snead.

KCBD generated more attention by partnering with a morning radio show.
"We sent a reporter and photographer out with a speed gun and did it live for about a two-hour block off and on with the number one morning radio show in Lubbock," said Snead.

Not all motorists were happy about being spotlighted.
"We had to blur out the finger we got from one man," he said.

Snead's advice: If you are reporting on people speeding, you must make sure your own people are NOT speeding.
"People have called a few times saying they have seen our marked units speeding. They have clocked our units speeding, and say 'You can't throw stones if you live in a glass house.' If you are going to do this, your people must obey the speed limit," he stressed.

KLTV, in Tyler, TX, also had "enormous success" with the franchise, according to News Director Kenny Boles.
"We've received more than 550 e-mails and 145 phone calls in the first week and a half. Our audience skews a little older, and so we still have a lot of viewers without computers. We set up a hotline people could call and leave their name, address, phone number and their problem," he explained.

He said, "It's not like they can run the speeders down and give them tickets. They really, really want help, and many of them don't feel their police departments have been responsive enough. They are hoping that the more attention that is brought to their community, the police will have to respond."

Boles' advice: Buy a good radar gun and READ THE DIRECTIONS.
"You need to get a top quality radar gun," he urged. He also purchased a Bushnell Speedster.
"You need to read the directions. Don't do the typical guy thing and take it out and start playing with it. You must read the directions, because the accuracy you bring to the story is very important. There are different angles and ways to get your best readings with a radar gun. You must know how it works most efficiently," he stressed.
Then, you must have a reporter who brings some personality to the story.
The station started soliciting for neighborhoods with speeding problems five days before the first story ran.
"We had more than 125 e-mails and 30 phone calls the first night we went on the air asking people to contact us if they'd like help fighting a speeding problem. We hadn't even done a story, and we got 125 e-mails!" he said.

They wanted to identify the neighborhoods with the biggest problems.
"After soliciting for five days, it was easy to get a sense of which communities we were getting the largest numbers of responses from," he said.

Boles said if your reporter is going to stop motorists who are speeding, you must find locations where you can clock motorists, and then where you can stop them further down the road.

Consider hiring security. He added that depending on where you are doing the story, you might think about providing security from angry and aggressive drivers. Road rage is not limited to aggressive encounters with other motorists.

May 26, 2003

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Beating The System:
Traffic Offenders Get Off

Several stations have done investigative reports on problems with speeders and drunk drivers having the charges dismissed.
It's outrageous that the most flagrant offenders sometimes go unpunished.
Here are the details of three projects.

Speeding tickets routinely dismissed

In San Antonio, WOAI-TV investigators found that speeding tickets were often dismissed because of lack of evidence: a police officer either couldn't recall the stop or didn't show up for court.

Nearly 12,000 tickets were dismissed between 1998 and late 2003. Troubleshooter Brian Collister broke the story.
About 2,000 of those cases were dismissed because the officer failed to show up in court. In the other 9,000, the officers couldn't remember the traffic stop. When you were issuing hundreds of tickets, it was supposedly hard to remember each one.

Speed traps, ticketing patterns and going to traffic court are things many motorists are interested in, and many have experienced first hand.
"Everybody drives. I want to know where that speed trap is. Even though it may not be useful to some people, everyone got a kick out of knowing which color cars get the most tickets and how fast over the speed limit you can go. That information pulled in a lot of people," said Collister.

Starting point: ticket database

The project began by researching the areas where people received the most tickets.
"We paid several hundred dollars for the city's database from municipal court. There was a field on the location where the ticket was written. We were able to come up with the Top 10 Speed Traps --- down to the intersection or the stretch of road," said Collister.

The average speed over the speed limit? Seventeen miles per hour.

"It was information people always talk about, and think they know the answers to. Most people think you can't go more than 5 miles per hour over the speed limit without risking a ticket. The average speed was 17 miles an hour over," he said.

The two-parter began with a quiz, letting viewers guess the answers.
"We did it like a test. We asked people what color car they thought got the most tickets, and edited the soundbites together. Everyone except one person thought it was red. Then we put the answers up," he said.

The second part was a more serious investigation looking at the fact that officers weren't showing up for court, or when they did show up, they couldn't remember the details.

One man told Collister, "I get a thrill out of it ... I was on my Yamaha R-6, but actually I was doing 145 when the cops pulled me over. He got me at 121. I 'm guessing his radar was off."
He didn't pay a fine.
At least eight of his citations had been dismissed.

"How could you not remember a guy doing 145 miles per hour?" asks Collister.
Collister didn't want to go after people who were doing 60 in a 55 mile an hour zone. It was important to show examples where people were doing a high rate of speed.

Speeders' secret: pleading to lesser offense

The idea behind the point system is that bad or unsafe drivers accrue points for every traffic violation, and eventually, they lose their license.

However, in one suburban Kansas City county, speeders were allowed to plead down to a non-moving violation and pay double the fine. It maked money for the municipalities, but it defeated law enforcement's mission of keeping the streets safe.

"We discovered a weakness in the legal system in Johnson County, Kansas, which is one of the five counties that makes up the metro area," said KCTV investigative reporter Steve Chamraz.
"People can plead down to a non-moving violation. Basically, the prosecutor turns it into a parking ticket. You pay double the fine, and it never shows up on your record," he explained.

Chamraz found that some who pleaded down were "serial speeders."
"We discovered a weakness in the system that allowed one driver to rack up 13 pleas in 11 years. This man had three tickets in five weeks. Because the communities don't communicate among themselves, he was able to plead down two of the three tickets, and save his license," Chamraz explained.

After three tickets, the state could take action against a person's license if state officials knew about the tickets. One prosecutor pleaded down seven tickets in eight months for one man.
"It is a major weakness in the system that a lot of people don't want to see changed," said Chamraz.

Everyone who benefited from avoiding the point system wanted to keep this as it was.
--- The drivers. They didn't want to change it, because they liked it when the tickets didn't show up on their records.
--- The cities. They didn't want to change, because they were getting double the fine.
--- The prosecutors. They were part-time employees of the city, and to change would mean extra work.
--- The lawyers. They didn't want it changed, because the speeders didn't know how easy it was to plead down, and they often hired a lawyer.

Each town in the county had its own procedures and its own rules, and none of them communicated with each other.
"They don't have a system in place to make sure they don't let serial speeders continue to drive. In some cases, these people are 'speed demons.' The way it is now, the system lets them keep driving. It lets them off the hook," he stresses.

Thousands were getting away

Using the open records law, the news staffers obtained more than 15,000 records of moving violations that were pleaded down during a two- year period.
Only half of the cities in the county turned over their records. Chamraz said the numbers could be as high as 30,000 speeding tickets pleaded down.

The worst of the worst were confronted.
Chamraz highlighted the case of the man who had 16 tickets in 11 years. He dealt down 13 of them. One violation was for a fatal accident, although he wasn't found to be at fault.
"The other driver ran a red light. The man was doing 63 in a 35 mph zone and just creamed the poor woman," Chamraz said.

Viewers responded to the revelations.
The promotion began on a Thursday night, and the story ran at 10 p.m. on the last Monday of the book.
"It did a very large number, and won the night handily," he said.

Chamraz added that he received a lot of cooperation from police departments, who understandably weren't too happy about the practice.
"The police are out there writing tickets only to have them pleaded down," he said.

Drunk drivers weren't always charged after an accident

Investigators at WCNC-TV, Charlotte, uncovered a disturbing trend: drunk drivers who were injured in accidents they caused often were never charged with DWI.

Investigative producer Rick Yarborough was going through court records for a piece on "Speed Demons" --- people who were charged with driving in excess of 100 mph --- when he noticed a lot of the DWI cases had been dismissed.
"When I was pulling cases by hand to see why the cases had been dismissed, I noticed several of the drunk drivers had been injured, and were transported to hospitals," he said.
"I talked to a defense attorney who was very open, and told me point blank that the worse a drunk driver was injured, the better chance he had of getting off," said Yarborough.

Yarborough went through more than 7,000 DWI cases from 2001 and 2002 and found repeated instances of the case being dismissed because the driver was injured.

The district attorney admitted it does happen, and explained there are a lot of reasons why the case was dismissed.
"When a person is transported to a hospital, a lot of the evidence prosecutors need to make a case is not there. Officers don't do a field sobriety test. Their first priority is to try and save the life and get them to a hospital. Often a person is not arrested, and the accident report is secondary," Yarborough explained.
"Many times the information on the accident report doesn't get transferred to arrest papers for a DWI, so there is a miscommunication," he added.

He discovered the case of a young woman whose car was hit by a drunk driver. Her SUV was totalled, and she was seriously injured. The other driver was charged with DWI, but a few months later, while she was still recovering from her injuries, the case was dismissed.
The man who hit her had a blood alcohol content three times the legal limit, but the blood records were missing.

Witnesses had not even been subpoenaed.
When the investigators tried to find the witnesses, Yarborough easily found them listed on the accident report.
"I talked to them, and they said none of them were ever contacted to appear in court," he said.
"We profiled her case, and pointed out these were the kind of problems that happen all the time when there is an accident involving a drunk driver," he added.

Often these people were repeat offenders.
Yarborough said in going through the records for the last two years in the county, as many as one in three drunk driving cases were dismissed for various reasons. Many of those people were still on the road.

Yarborough was also surprised to learn that while DWI seemed to be such a high priority, there were no grants to help clean up the problem.

While of doing the research, he found a study on the same topic that had been done in Charlotte in the 1990s.
"It showed that more than 70 percent of the people who came into the emergency room, who were drunk drivers and had been injured, were not charged with the crime," he said.

December 8, 2003

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Driving Hazard:
The Drivers Themselves

The biggest danger for a person on the road is often our fellow motorists.

Motoring maniacs
KMGH-TV, Denver

In Denver, KMGH-TV tapped into drivers' pet peeves for two popular series:   "You're Driving Me Crazy" and "You're Still Driving Me Crazy."
"We've been showing people doing things on the road that  really bug other people," said News Director Arlin Stevens.

They covered many angles:

--- Dangerous Drivers. They shot footage at intersections and showed how three or four cars in a row often run the light after it changes to red.

--- Ambulance Blockers.  Drivers routinely ignore emergency vehicles running with red light and siren.
"We rode with them and showed how people refuse to get out of the way, and then we talked with an EMT who told us how getting to the hospital quickly can make a difference," he said.

--- School Buses. Crews followed school buses. Most drivers did very well. But in one suburb, bus drivers went through red lights, neglected to put the stop arm out while discharging students, and routinely exceeded the speed limit.

Stevens told The Rundown,"It has been our single most successful  series because everybody drives and everybody has something to say about drivers."

The feedback portion of it was a key element.
He said anyone else doing a similar project should include it. "They should make sure there is a way for viewers to call in with their comments," he added.
The station had an open line for people to call with their favorite pet peeve. At the end of the week of reports, they did a piece on what viewers said they hated the most.
"In Colorado, what apparently annoys people the most is drivers who get out in the fast lane and drive slowly," he said.
It's a real problem on two-lane, winding mountain roads where it is difficult to pass.
Another pet peeve: mass transit drivers who pull out in traffic without signaling or looking to see if a car is coming. Many Denver drivers felt bus drivers bully drivers of smaller vehicles, and get away with it.
"You could come up with a list of about 20 pet peeves that many of your viewers can identify with," Stevens added.

The station also did a piece on auto repair.
"We put a camera under the hood and referred to it as the 'Sneaky Cam' and showed how mechanics work," said Stevens.
The camera was about the size of a small flashlight and was hidden under the hood. No one discovered it.
The news crew took a well-tuned car, pulled a wire on it and took it around to various places for repair estimates.
"Most of the places we went were very good," said Stevens.
"It was interesting because we were listening to and watching mechanics as they opened the hood and went about discovering what the problem was. In some cases, they found it right away. In some cases, they didn't. Some still charged a good chunk of money for repairing something that wasn't broken," he said.

June 22, 1992

Rude, aggressive drivers in the Bay State
WGGB-TV, Springfield

WGGB produced a series on things that drive motorists crazy.

"If anyone has moved here from any other part of the country, one of the first things they learn is that Massachusetts drivers are extremely aggressive, and don't always follow the rules," said Dan Salamone, News Director.
He explained, "We decided to do a month-long look at people's driving habits. It has an appeal to all demographics, and people can relate to the topic."

Week 1. Highway driving.
Speeders, weavers and other obnoxious motorists.
A news crew spent a week with the state police. Using wireless microphones, they recorded the excuses of the drivers --- everything from "My radiator is leaking, and I'm trying to get to the next exit" to "I didn't know I was going so fast."
The most popular reason: "I have to get to the next exit, because I have to go to the bathroom."

Week 2. Handicapped parking violators.
By staking out handicapped parking places over a three-day period, the photographers were able to get a number of offenders on tape.
"We confronted them as to why they parked in a handicapped spot, and we demonstrated to them by going out with handicapped drivers how inconvenient it is not to get a spot," said Salamone.
"Once again, their excuses were pretty lame," said Salamone.
"I was just going in for a few minutes." "Oh, am I parked in a handicapped spot?" "My leg hurts today." "I bruised my leg yesterday."
"Everyone has rationalized why they do it. It was a particular problem on rainy days when people want to park close," he said.

Week 3. School bus violators.
Some motorists pass buses when the vehicles are loading or discharging students.
One couple talked about how their daughter had been run over and killed by a motorist who passed a school bus.
"It happened years ago, and they are still in pain over the senselessness of someone who simply didn't adhere to the flashing red lights. We were able to demonstrate the problem fairly easily by staking out six or seven different locations where school buses stop," he said.
A news crew rode on the buses and talked to the drivers, as well as talking to parents.
Some bus drivers wrote down license plate numbers, but there weren't enough police to enforce the law.
The news crew chased drivers who passed illegally.
"They said they either thought there was nothing wrong with going around it, because they went around wide, or they had no clue that they had even done it," Salamone said.

WGGB had a tie-in with a radio station.
"We told people after they watched each report that they could call the next day during morning drive on WHYN radio and talk about what is driving them crazy," said Salamone.
During the first three weeks, excerpts of the comments were used on the air each night.
"We installed a camera in the radio station and recorded the talk show host taking the phone calls. The radio station provided us with the audio of the phone callers," he explained.
The TV station used cover video of whatever the topic was people were calling about and ran two or three minutes of comments each night.

Week 4. Follow up on popular topics.
"We left the final week open to explore some of the topics people are calling in about," said Salamone.
For instance, to many Massachusetts drivers, a yellow light meant green. And, rotaries were a problem, too. Many people didn't know who had the right-of-way.
Also, many people didn't know what to do when an ambulance or a fire engine came their way. A crew rode with an ambulance crew for a day to see how motorists reacted.
"You're supposed to pull over to the right and stop and wait for it to pass, but you get some people who freak out and stop in the middle of the road, or who pull over to the left. Some people don't pull over at all, because they have the radio so loud, they can't hear the siren!" he said.
"It didn't take us long to show this is a legitimate problem. The EMTs wanted to drive home the message that if it takes an extra 60 seconds for them to get to someone's house, it may be too late. If someone has a heart attack or is choking, if they are not breathing, after five minutes there is brain damage," he said.

May 30, 1994

Running the light
WFTS-TV, Tampa

Drivers who run red lights are a menace.
"We did this just two days before the report was released by the federal government that said running red lights was as deadly a problem as drunk driving and not wearing seat belts," said Steve Barrett, Managing Editor.
The problem was documented by staking out the intersections.
"We sat at a red light with a police officer and watched people flying through," he said.
Some had excuses.
"We caught them on camera, and then got their reactions.  Many claimed the light was yellow. But we had it on tape showing it was definitely red, and they ran through," said Barrett.

May 25, 1998

Red light camera debate
KOVR-TV, Sacramento

Catching traffic light offenders with a camera and a computer is controversial. The system is supposed to increase enforcement at dangerous intersections and reduce accidents.

In Sacramento, critics claimed:
--- The program was designed to generate the most tickets, i.e. most fines, as was possible.
--- Three-second yellow lights were too short and encouraged drivers to "go for it." A city traffic engineer responded that people would adjust to any time length, and keep gunning it anyway.
--- The private contractor didn't constantly check and maintain the cameras. The companies denied this.

On the city's side, officials told investigative reporter Jon Baird that accidents dropped by ten percent at the intersections involved after the system was installed.

July 30, 2001

Red light photos causing collisions
WBTV-TV, Charlotte

Rear-end collisions have increased since red light photo enforcement arrived in Charlotte, according to critics.
Investigative reporter Bob Knowles found that while the state law enabling the cameras was designed to increase safety, they were not necessarily being deployed at the most dangerous intersections.
Total accidents were down 1% in three years. But, rear-end collisions were up 15%. A motorists association representative claimed red light cameras made city streets more dangerous because drivers were panicking and hitting the brakes for fear of being ticketed.
Knowles also found a controversy over where six million dollars worth of fines has gone. The state constitution earmarks fines to help support public schools. However, the city government has kept the fines collected, and not sent them to the educators.

April 8, 2002

Red Light Photos
XETV-TV, San Diego

An investigation into the city's red light photo enforcement cameras resulted in some red faces at city hall.

Investigative reporter Greg Phillips said the new system caught more than 3,000 people every month running red lights. Most had to pay a fine of $300.
"We wondered who was getting caught by the cameras but wasn't paying these fines," said Phillips.

A public records request to the San Diego Police Department was met with resistance, and led to a showdown with lawyers. Phillips wanted two years of records of the government vehicles caught by the cameras, and the results of those tickets.
"The department's attorney told us we could only get the last two months of violations. We immediately knew we were onto something," said Phillips.

The PD finally agreed to give up the documents.
"What we found was very surprising. Government vehicles --- city, county, state and federal vehicles --- were caught 542 times, and not once were the drivers of those vehicles required to pay a fine!" said Phillips.

The investigative reporter conceded that some of them were on legitimate emergency calls, such as police and fire vehicles.

Phillips said the chief of police admitted serious mistakes were made in the handling of many of the citations. The reporter added that as a result of the station's investigation, the citations were being sent to the appropriate city, county, state or federal agency in an effort to identify the drivers and enforce the tickets.

October 23, 2000

Road construction deaths
WSB-TV, Atlanta

Work-zone fatalities were declining in Georgia, but they began rising.
Actually the drivers were more likely than the workers to be killed in work zone accidents. One estimate was that three out of four who died were driving.
Many motorists ignored the reduced speed limits around work zones, putting their lives and the lives of the highway workers in danger. A laser radar detector showed drivers speeding as high as 74 and 77 mph through one work zone.
Working on the highway was a dangerous job. Often, there were just a few feet that separated the person from life and death. About 50 of these workers were been killed on Georgia roads in the previous 30 years.
One man told reporter Tom Regan that he tried to be always on guard, always alert. The mother of man who had died recently said her only son was going to be married in a short time.
Surviving workers had impressive stories. One survived a wreck involving a tractor-trailer truck. Another man lived through being hit by a car going at least 70.

June 24, 2002

Turnpike construction dangers
WPXI-TV, Pittsburgh

Highways that appear narrow due to construction barriers can be scary and dangerous.
Some drivers panic. Others are caught with barely any extra space between the concrete barrier on one side and a big truck on the other. One woman who had driven through a stretch of the Pennsylvania Turnpike told reporter Alan Jennings, "It was terrible, there is no room for error at all."
A turnpike representative claimed the lanes in the construction zones had the same, standard width. He said the narrow look was just an illusion.
Turnpike records listed speed as the most likely cause of accidents on the road. Most drivers said they'd prefer wider construction zones.

June 24, 2002

0ne For The Road
WTSP-TV, St. Petersburg

Convicted drunk drivers, whose licenses had been revoked, were videotaped getting into their cars and driving again.
WTSP investigators documented dozens of convicted drunks driving illegally --- some were caught on tape coming out of bars and getting in their cars to drive home.

"Nationwide, there were 56,000 people killed in the last two years by drunk drivers," said reporter Kevin Kalwary.
"More people have died in drunk driving accidents in the last few years that all the deaths in the Vietnam War. That was probably the most staggering statistic I've seen."

Florida is the second worst state for drunk driving, second only to California, according to Kalwary.
"The Tampa-St. Pete area is one of the worst in the country because it is a resort area and there are a lot of transients," he explained.

The news managers decided to do the story after photographer Dave Herring saw an item in the newspaper.
"Way down, buried low in a story, was a comment from a judge saying, 'I don't even think you people are following the rules.' When our photographer saw that he said 'Why don't we go out and see if they are?' And, that's how the idea was born," Kalwary explained.

Finding the Suspects

In Florida, drunk driving convictions are a matter of public record. I-Team members went to traffic court and combed through the records looking for people with multiple convictions.

"According to the doctors we interviewed, the likely profile was middle-aged single men. After we looked at them, we looked at some elderly people and some women. Ninety-five percent of them drove and probably about 15 to 20 percent drink while they drive, " Kalwary explained.

The I-Team members spent four months outside of the homes of the convicted drunk drivers --- waiting for them to come out and drive. The photographers shot tape after work, mornings, and weekends.
"We sat in a surveillance van Friday and Saturday night and day waiting for them to go to work or to come home. We couldn't let anyone see us follow them," said Kalwary.

"They are all aware that they're not supposed to be doing what they're doing. They did try to be somewhat cautious, although I was surprised they weren't nearly as cautious as I thought they would be," he added.

All of the 30 to 40 violators they followed were convicted four times or more. One had been convicted 11 times.

Kalwary said, "All we did was go through the court files in our surrounding counties and found the drivers who had the worst records. Then we went down and looked at the ones we thought were most likely to be driving and started watching them. Every single one of them drove. We got video of everybody."

They taped one man going into a bar, coming out, and followed him down the road, where he pulled over and went to sleep.
"We got him up and offered to take him home," said Kalwary. They also interviewed him about why he continued to drink and drive.
"He said he was going to do it as long as they made cars. And, that he is as good a driver as anyone who doesn't drink because he's had enough practice at it," said Kalwary.
The man had served time in jail two times and, totally, had spent close to three years in jail off and on.
"He had a bunch of cases still pending when we caught him. He's now in jail as are all of them for violating their probation," said Kalwary.

Violations were widespread

The news team also went to the DUI program which is a court-ordered session for convicted drunk drivers. They did surveillance of the parking lot and found that five of the ten students drove themselves to the class, which was illegal to do.
Then, the news investigators went into the courtroom and watched DUI defendants turn over their license to the judge.
"They were immediately told not to drive again. We followed them outside and they drove off in their cars," said Kalwary.

All this was captured on tape.
"The judges who saw it were flabbergasted. Everybody was flabbergasted. But, I think they were more flabbergasted that we got the video rather than that the people were doing it," said the reporter.
"But, the gist of the story was that the people we were watching just couldn't help themselves," Kalwary pointed out.
They were alcoholics and he felt that putting them in jail was not going to stop them.
"Our conclusion was, if they were put in the rehab, and kicked the drinking habit, then they wouldn't be drinking and driving," he added.

Legislators and judges asked for copies of the series to see if they could stiffen the penalties.

July 4, 1988

Drunk driving dangers
WFTV, Orlando

A database was compiled to identify the most dangerous drunk driving areas.
The focus was on areas that had the most accidents involving alcohol and the most drunk driving arrests.
"We wanted to let people know what time it happens, and what the most dangerous spots on the road are," said anchor Wayne Havrelly.
"It was interesting, because you could really see the areas. It was primarily all along the bars. The biggest surprise was that most of the arrests don't happen on weekends. The worst time is weeknights at about 11 p.m.," he said.
The college section was also very high.

March 12, 2001

Who's at the wheel?
WMAQ-TV, Chicago

Persons with DUI convictions and suspended driving licenses were regularly driving --- and having accidents --- for the Chicago Transit Authority.

Typical abuses discovered by WMAQ investigators:
--- A man was hired despite a DUI on his record.  He subsequently drew 2 more DUIs and his license was revoked. He kept on driving for the CTA.
--- A man with at least 3 DUIs and a suspended license was training other bus drivers.
--- A driver who killed a bicyclist had had at least five accidents while driving a bus for ten years.
--- Agency officials would routinely ask judges to approve restricted driving permits for problem drivers.
--- Driver histories that could be routinely checked by computer weren't being checked.

December, 2000

Return to top of page.

Over-the-counter DUI
WMAQ-TV, Chicago

Over-the-counter antihistimines can undermine a driver's ability.

News photographer Slyvio Costales tested the theory at the University of Iowa. He "drove" on a simulator after taking Benadryl. He failed to respond quickly to a truck that pulled in front of him. He vowed he'd never again drive after taking this medicine. The manufacturer denied there was a significant problem. However, the Illinois state police reviewed it all.

Researchers concluded a medication commonly found in over-the-counter cold and allergy remedies caused more driving impairment than being legally drunk. University of Iowa scientists made the finding by studying the driving performance of people who had hay fever and were given diphenhydramine (Benadryl), fexofenadine (Allegra), alcohol and a placebo.

The subjects' performance, tested in the Iowa Driving Simulator, was poorest after taking diphenhydramine, even poorer than when they were legally drunk. In comparison, performance after taking fexofenadine was comparable to performance after taking the placebo, an inactive substance.

May 29, 2000

Left lane slowpokes
WWOR-TV, New York

Motorists crawling along in the left or fast lane can be menaces. The impatient drivers, who think they have places to go and things to do, weave to the right and then dodge back to the left. Many of these moves are less than safe.
A slow road hog may also set off rage and anger, stimulating other motorists to become hazards.
When one slowpoke finally slid into a rest area, it was time to find out if he was even aware of the rules requiring motorists to stay right if they are going slower.  He certainly did know about this, even if he had slowly ignored it.

July 26, 1999

Distracted drivers
WRC-TV, Washington

Drivers who aren't paying full attention to other motorists and the highway are dangerous.
A photographer set up a camera for morning rush hour and documented the casual approach of some motorists. They drove and read papers and shaved and applied lipstick and combed hair and ate and drank. Many, many drivers were using phones.
One woman explained how she had been permanently disabled when she was hit by a woman who was talking on her cell phone and didn't seem to realize that she was drifting over the yellow line into the oncoming lane.
One danger is looking down to tap in the numbers on the phone. Another is not having hands securely on the wheel, ready to react.

March 23, 1998

Drowsy drivers
KMSP-TV, Minneapolis

Fatigued drivers are potentially dangerous, and they are common.
A news crew went with a state trooper who uses an EyeCheck (a drug, alcohol, and fatigue detection device that is designed to rapidly assess impairment via a hand-held pupillometer) unit to measure the level of fatigue during traffic stops. They went out on a Thursday afternoon. Thirteen drivers agreed to be checked. The device showed that nine of them were drowsy. They were comparable to at least a .05 blood alcohol level if they had been tested for drinking. One man was shocked, and wondered whether he should be driving home. Experts say you can feel rested, awake, and still be sleep deprived. Dr. Michael Bornemann works at the HCMC Sleep Center. He said, "There is significant cognitive impairment, lapses in judgement, emotional irritability, and mobility as a result of deprivation."
One sign that you're tired is if you suddenly realize that you don't remember just having driven some familiar stretch of road.

August11, 2003

Older drivers
WJBK-TV, Detroit

Should elderly people --- 80 years or older --- be under tougher restrictions for driver's license renewal?
These motorists want to keep motoring. Their activity will be greatly restricted if they are forced out from behind the wheel.

On the other hand, some of these seniors were hurting themselves and others.
"We had some good video of people driving on the wrong side of the road. We just sat and waited for it," said News Director Mort Meisner.

They also used footage of serious accidents in the Detroit area and around the country involving people over 80.

May 30, 1994

Too old to drive?
WBRZ-TV, Baton Rouge

As drivers age, their eyesight and reactions erode.
Sharpness, field of vision, depth and motion perception decline.  However, their cars are of course critical for older drivers to continue shopping, visiting, working, getting out and having freedom.

An uncle told how his nephew had been killed when a 72-year-old woman pulled out suddenly in front of him. The victim's grandmother quit driving when she couldn't see at age 69. However, a records check showed a 105-year-old man still has an active Louisiana driver's license.

July 26, 1999

Saving teenagers
KMOL-TV, San Antonio

Requiring teenagers to gradually grow their driving skills might save lives.

The Texas legislature considered a phase-in program where for the first six months, nighttime driving would be prohibited.  In many cases, passengers under 21 would be banned.
This idea was based on the concept that many young drivers are inexperienced and dangerous, especially when they have friends in the car. The grim statistics told the story of how youngsters and cars could be a deadly combination.
Teens hated this proposal. A veteran driving instructor said it was much needed.

March 12, 2001

Peers impair driving
KSL-TV, Salt Lake City

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