House District 14 covers Rehoboth Beach and Dewey Beach. (If you are not 100% sure whether you live in House District 14, you can search here using your address.) If you live in this district your choice on November 8 to represent you in the Delaware House of Representatives is between the incumbent Representative Pete Schwartzkopf and his challenger Carl Phelps. Using a multiple choice format, we asked these two candidates to share their views on four questions related to traffic safety in Delaware. Here’s how they answered:
1) In May the 151st Delaware General Assembly voted unanimously to approve the Everyone Gets Home resolution (SCR 94). SCR94 called for reducing traffic fatalities in Delaware to no more than 100 people each year and tasked state agencies to meet that goal by 2025.
Phelps: “Progress in reducing traffic fatalities is possible and elected state officials have an important role to play in holding state agencies accountable for meeting traffic safety goals.Traffic safety should be DelDOT’s top priority.”
Schwartzkopf: “Traffic safety should be DelDOT’s top priority. If traffic safety goals are unmet, DelDOT’s capital program should be reoriented and reprioritized in order to meet those goals.“
2) There is significant disagreement among transportation professionals about how limited resources for government traffic safety efforts should be allocated.
Phelps: “All types of crashes need to be addressed but greater resources should be allocated to reducing fatal crash types compared to property damage and injury crashes.”
Schwartzkopf: “All types of crashes need to be addressed but greater resources should be allocated to reducing fatal crash types compared to property damage and injury crashes.“
3) Traffic safety professionals often describe their work in terms of the ‘3 Es’ (education, enforcement and engineering).
Phelps: “No infrastructure – no matter how cleverly designed – can be expected to prevent crashes in the face of reckless or stupid human behavior. Education and enforcement therefore are our most important tools for improving traffic safety.”
Schwartzkopf: “All 3 “E”s – education, enforcement and engineering – are indispensable and we need to do more of each in order to make progress in solving Delaware’s traffic safety crisis.”
4) Many of Delaware’s deadliest roads – including Dupont Highway, Coastal Highway, Kirkwood Highway and Pulaski Highway – have become deadlier over time as commercial development along those roads has increased the number of potential conflicts between vehicles, and between vehicles and pedestrians, entering and exiting driveways and changing lanes either to enter or after exiting driveways.
Phelps: “DelDOT should partner with counties to consolidate driveway entrances and exits onto busy, high-speed, multi-lane highways.”
Schwartzkopf: “DelDOT should partner with counties to consolidate driveway entrances and exits onto busy, high-speed, multi-lane highways.”
5) Is there anything else about your record as an elected official, your experience or your views that you think is relevant to improving traffic safety in Delaware for the people you wish to represent in the 152nd General Assembly?
Schwartzkopf “During the past 10 years as Speaker, I have been very instrumental in the creation and funding of the bike trails. I also partnered with Sen López and chaired a committee which resulted in DelDot installing sidewalks on Rt 1 from 5 points to the Forgotten mile which effectively removed pedestrians from the side of the road making them much safer. I also pushed DelDot into authorizing bicyclists to ride on the Rt 1 sidewalks in either direction and using the Hawk signals to cross over the 10- 12 lanes of Rt 1. Of course, that is voluntary and mostly used by the foreign student workers and casual riders. Some of the more experienced riders still ride in the far right lanes.”
