By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

Today I'd like to get something off my chest. An Advertiser front-page headline a week ago announced that we have one of the poorest pedestrian safety records in the nation.

The story said that in Hawai'i in the past 17 years, more than 400 pedestrians have been killed and more than 11,000 injured in motor-vehicle accidents. That comes to an average of almost two pedestrians hurt or killed every day.

I walk a lot — anywhere within a mile of my cubbyhole office — instead of taking the car because it's good exercise, just as fast by the time you find parking downtown, and you get a chance to talk to people on the way. Also, my walking means one less car creating traffic jams.

But over the years I've come to conclude that the traffic engineers in Our Honolulu don't think that way. It's no wonder that pedestrian safety has a poor record in the state.

If you walk in downtown Honolulu, you soon discover that pedestrians get short-changed at almost every street corner in favor of automobile drivers. It's a mindset that may be the reason for our poor pedestrian safety record.

Step out of City Hall and go to the nearest street corner, the intersection of Punchbowl and King Streets. Pedestrians take their lives in their hands to get across King Street so impatient drivers can turn left on Punchbowl.

Try it sometime. Step off the curb on the City Hall side of King street. Five steps after the light turns green, the red hand of the walk signal starts flashing. It's like the Indianapolis Speedway at the start of a race.

That's on the diamondhead side of the intersection. The 'ewa side is more dangerous because the lights for pedestrians conflict with the lights for drivers.

Start across King Street at the public library side of the intersection. Before you can walk across, the red pedestrian hand is up in the STOP signal. But cars going in your direction are still streaming across King Street. They get twice as long as pedestrians.

After a while, pedestrians learn that it's the light that's screwed up. So they cross with the cars against the pedestrian light. The light is teaching pedestrians to break the law and that's dangerous.

There's another glaring example of how our traffic engineers coddle drivers and frustrate pedestrians who are helping to solve the traffic problem by walking. Understand that I drive to work and across the island for stories. So I'm not anti-automobile; just live and let live. At many intersections in downtown Honolulu, pedestrians have to push a button to cross the street, otherwise the "walk" light won't ever come on. You could wait forever.

Why in the world should a pedestrian have to push a button to cross the street? To add insult to injury, the new lights mark how many seconds (in flashing red numbers) a pedestrian has to get across. If you don't run, you're dead.

Drivers learn to look down on pedestrians. They're being trained to. I think this is the environment that's getting pedestrians killed.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.