The new year is starting off with a bang, or more like a crash. Portland police said someone driving a stolen sedan crashed into multiple parked cars and died. The damaged cars still lined the street Sunday afternoon. This means that the new year is off to a deadly start in the Rose City with Portland. This is the first fatal crash of the year.
It happened in a small, dead-end neighborhood off Southeast Division Street around 2:30 a.m. This deadly crash came on the heels of last year, when more than 65 people died in Portland in car crashes. Police are now calling it an epidemic.
According to Oregon’s official crash record, there are typically between 10,000 and 12,000 reported crashes in the city each year. Portland police responded Sunday to the first fatal car crash of 2023 in the Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhood.
The preventive approach is Portland police calling on the community to help make the streets safer by being vigilant and following the rules of the road. There seems to be some ideas and thoughts going into what should and could be done. The law allows city and county officials to designate speed limits as opposed to traffic engineers and Oregon’s Department of Transportation.
The good news is that Oregon’s 241 cities, along with Multnomah and Clackamas counties, can now begin applying for the authority to designate speed limits in their respective jurisdictions. ODOT will continue to manage speed limits on state roads.
