Posted on: Friday, June 3, 2005
June brings safety teams to Farrington Highway
By Will Hoover
Advertiser Leeward O'ahu Writer
As the state heads into the graduation season, authorities on the Wai'anae Coast are keeping a wary eye on one of Hawai'i's deadliest stretches of road — Farrington Highway between Nanakuli and Wai'anae.
Advertiser library photo • Dec. 5, 1997 Police officer John Coleman, the Community Resource Team leader and the district's statistics expert, said traffic accidents tend to go up around graduation time.
In response, police and community leaders have initiated Operation Safe Graduation 2005, a traffic safety awareness program aimed at keeping the area's graduating seniors alive. The campaign begins Monday and will last through June.
The program is patterned after the Wai'anae Coast's Live & Let Live safety campaign for the Christmas season. That campaign marked its 20th anniversary last Dec. 4.
As in Live & Let Live, the June campaign will feature roadside sign wavers as well as grim reminders of the effects of driving and drinking in the form of mangled cars positioned near the two high schools in the area.
Operation Safe Graduation 2005 will kick off at 10 a.m. Monday at the Wai'anae police substation. The public is invited, said officer John Coleman, Community Resource Team leader.
Coleman is asking for people to participate in the sign-waving campaign at the car-wreck displays at Nanakuli Beach Park and Wai'anae Boat Harbor, from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. June 6, 13, 17, 24 and 29.
For more information, call 692-4250. Farrington Highway has a higher-than-average incidence of accidents involving pedestrians. And since 1990, more than 80 people have been killed on the highway in traffic accidents.
Coleman, who is coordinating Operation Safe Graduation with the help of Teruya and others, said the idea popped into his head a month ago while checking Farrington Highway statistics. He said he became concerned when he realized that Farrington was averaging 90 traffic accidents a month.
"And that's a lot of accidents," he said.
But do car-wreck displays and sign wavers really make a difference on how people behave?
"That's a good question," said Coleman. "That, I can't say — other than when I go to high schools and talk to the kids and ask them if seeing something like this has an impact. Every one of them says it does."
As Kiyuna put it: "Anything that might cut down on the number of accidents is worth a try."
Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8038.
"This has been a bad year for our side of the island," Capt. Mitch Kiyuna, of the Honolulu Police Department's District 8, said this week at the Kapolei headquarters. "We've had 10 traffic fatalities so far."
The safety campaign this month is patterned after Live & Let Live, a winter program in which wrecked cars are put on prominent display.
"This is a total reminder to reduce the occurrence of juveniles and adults drinking and driving during the graduation season," said Patty Teruya, Wai'anae Coast Neighborhood Board member and co-chairwoman of Live & Let Live. "Our community is called 'Stairway to Heaven' — because at crosswalks, drivers do not stop."
You can pitch in
