Senate District 7 covers the immediate western suburbs of Wilmington, including Elsmere, Newport, Westminster and Anglesey. (If you are not 100% sure whether you live in Senate District 7, you can search here using your address.) If you live in this district your choice on November 8 to represent you in the Delaware Senate is between the incumbent Senator Spiros Mantzavinos and his challenger Sherm Porter. Using a multiple choice format, we asked these two candidates to share their views on four questions related to traffic safety in Delaware. Mr. Porter did not answer but Senator Mantavinos’ answers are here:
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.
Mantzavinos: “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.“
2) There is significant disagreement among transportation professionals about how limited resources for government traffic safety efforts should be allocated.
Mantzavinos: “Government should focus on reducing fatal crash types.“
3) Traffic safety professionals often describe their work in terms of the ‘3 Es’ (education, enforcement and engineering).
Mantzavinos: “Everyone makes mistakes but in a well-engineered system good infrastructure both encourages safer behavior and also prevents human fallibility from turning into human fatalities.“
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.
Mantzavinos: “DelDOT should partner with counties to consolidate driveway entrances and exits onto busy, high-speed, multi-lane highways.”