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Authors Note:  This article was written for and published as an opinion piece in another established mainstream area daily paper, the name of which is not worth mentioning. The publish date was in December, 2004.  It was in response to the traffic accident death of two young local men.  The North Coast Journal Weekly Wrap dated December 9, 2004 stated the following about the accident:

"TRAILER CAUSES FATAL ACCIDENT: After crashing their truck into an abandoned boat trailer that was pushed into a Eureka roadway, two young men are dead and another injured. Timothy Robertson, 21, and Cody Wertz, 19, of Eureka were killed just before 2 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 4. Timothy's brother, Scott Robertson, 19, the driver of the 1994 Ford pickup, collided with the trailer while southbound on Myrtle Avenue in Eureka near the Ryan Slough Bridge, according to the California Highway Patrol. Scott Robertson reportedly saw the trailer at the last minute, swerved to avoid it but still struck the frame, sending his vehicle off the road, flipping it onto its roof and submerging in the slough. Scott escaped from the wreck, was brought to the hospital and released with minor injuries. Residents had complained about the trailer to the CHP and Humboldt County Sheriff's Department beginning on Oct. 15, but both agencies said that the trailer was not posing a roadway danger and therefore would not be moved immediately, citing a backlog of abandoned vehicles. Police believe it is possible that someone took matters into their own hands early on Saturday morning, pushing the trailer into Myrtle Avenue near the Ryan Slough Bridge to intentionally cause a hazard that police would be forced to take care of. The CHP and Sheriff's Department are continuing an investigation to find the trailer's owner and the person who pushed it into the road. The trailer has since been hauled off by CHP and impounded."
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A LOCAL AREA DAILY NEWSPAPER WHOS NAME IS NOT WORTH MENTIONING

County of Humboldt must have resorted to "Actuarial Risk Assesment" strategies
By Robert Reed
Published in December, 2004


Well, it looks like it has come to an "actuarial risk assesment" issue for the County of Humboldt. Maybe now they'll finally start doing something about all the abandoned vehicles and trailers and washing machines on the turnouts of our roads in this county.

"Blood response" is a term used by accident investigators and risk assessors, and it refers to the "after the fact" response to death and injury caused by problems that could have been dealt with in a pre-emptive fashion. It is puzzling to lay persons how dangerous situations are allowed to exist. Sometimes these situations are studied, the predicted losses are calculated, and then the action is taken based on which one should cost less. It is a "bodies versus dollars" contest.

The "bodies versus dollars" equations that risk assessors use determine if it  is more economically viable to let a risky situation exist in a gamble over time or to fix it before someone gets killed. It all comes down to how much the insurance companies and the actuaries consider a life is worth in dollars. If the "bodies versus dollars" equation says that a risky condition will exist long enough without incident before someone dies from the identified risk that is present, then it is sometimes less expensive to allow the accident to happen than it is to invest in fixing the problem.

It doesn't matter that someone will be killed.  What matters is how much money that death is going to cost versus how much it will cost to prevent the death for the responsible party, in this case, the County of Humboldt. If the fix costs $400,000 dollars over 10 years, but paying of wrongful death suits can be done for an estimated $250,000 dollars over the same 10 years, then the decision will be made to ignore fixing the problem.  It is cheaper to let the death happen. 

Some people wonder why certain airplane problems aren't fixed before a horrible crash kills several hundred people due to a design defect.   It's not because the problem wasn't identified during design phases; in fact many of the "design flaws" are studied prior to placing an aircraft into service, and the actuaries crunch the "bodies versus dollars" equation for the 30 year life of the airplane for that particular potential failure and disaster.  If the predicted costs of fixing the problem exceed the predicted losses of paying off the death lawsuits over the predicted life of the aircraft design, then the problem will be allowed to exist until the crash happens and the manufacturer's attorneys will put into action their pre-planned legal defense strategies to keep the wrongful death rewards to a minumum and hopefully keep the costs acceptably within the predictions.

Well, now lets look at how the County of Humboldt handled all of these abandoned cars and other garbage along the sides of our beautiful roads.  One can only imagine that this problem had been studied by the expensive attorneys working for the County.  Hazardous conditions like abandoned vehicles and trailers on the sides of our roads must certainly be an issue that concerns our risk assessors that our taxes are paying for.  After all, how much is it going to cost to fix the problem?  Is it going to cost more than it will to pay for a few accidental death lawsuits? And while we County of Humboldt risk assessors are studying this potentially risky condtion of abandoned vehicles, how many wrongful death suits will we have to pay out on and how many dollars can we get away with for each dead body that results from every abandoned vehicle that we don't get rid of?  The County risk assessors must have looked into this before they did what they did with the funds that were allocated for vehicle disposal, which actually resulted in very few vehicles being disposed of.

With exhorbitant disposal fees being charged for abandoned cars and other abhorant objects being thrown in many road side turnouts in this county, the mechanism is in place to motivate unlawful types to dump derelict automobiles and garbage on the roadside.  From what I understand, the County of Humboldt was issued fees to deal with abandoned vehicles.

It's not rocket science. After all, we are talking about classic bureaucrats here.  If these bureaucrats responded in a private business the way they respond to abandoned vehicle complaints while working for the County, they would be booted out the door of that business by the boss for abusing the customers.  It wouldn't take 6 weeks of complaints either.

So, in my estimation, if everything goes according to the way I think it should, the County of Humboldt will pay out who knows how much in attorney's fees for the wrongful death lawsuits that are going to come about from what I see is a negligent handling of abandoned automobile disposal for which fees were allocated.  Then, the County of Humbboldt will pay out the wrongful death payments either settling out of court and maybe even more in punitive damages.  

I don't know about you but I'm tired of seeing this garbage dumped by the side of the road and having to drive around it.  It finally killed a son of a guy everybody loves over in this part of Humboldt County.

What about the people who left the stuff there in the first place?  How about some "brave bureaucrat" or County politician stepping up and trying to write and pass a bill to make it a felony for anything left near a road that could be a hazard?  Passing something like that could be a feather in the hat of any County polititian who wants to run for election or re-election to a County supervisor seat. 

If they catch the people who moved the trailer into traffic, they should throw the book at them.

May those two young kids rest in peace.

Robert Reed
Arcata, California

(Robert Reed is not nor wishes to be a columnist for this nameless newspapger, but Robert Reed thanks them for publishing this piece anyway.)