FRIDAY,APRIL11,2003
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 3A
$230 traffic ticket teaches student highway lesson
Drivers must change lanes to go around emergency vehicles
By JJ Hensley
jhensley@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
When the Legislature passed a law requiring motorists to change lanes to avoid emergency vehicles, it allowed a one-year educational period to inform the public through a combination of warnings, posters and public service announcements.
In January he came upon a highway patrol car on Kansas Highway 10, the highway connecting Lawrence and Johnson County. The police vehicle was pulled over on the right side of the road with its lights on because it had just finished ticketing a speeding driver. Though he could have changed lanes, Goldstein did not and received a $230 traffic ticket for his failure to yield.
Leawood senior David Goldstein didn't get the message.
Fines for the violation range from $60-$180, depending on the type of highway, plus $59 in court costs.
Goldstein's fine was recently upheld in the Lenexa traffic court.
"The person he had pulled over had just pulled away so he was by himself," Goldstein said. "Technically I could've gotten over into the other lane, but I wasn't speeding. When I saw him I cut my speed down quite a bit."
Slowing down was good, but not enough, said Kansas Highway Patrol representative 2nd Lt. John Eichkorm. The highway patrol had 18 pulled-over cars hit from behind in the six months before the law was passed in the summer of 2000. In 1995, a state trooper was struck and killed on Interstate 70 under similar circumstances.
No new numbers were available to determine if those incidents had decreased since the law passed, Eichkorn said.
"We understand that people lead busy lives, they have a lot on their minds, they're talking on the phone or whatever. Even when it's safe to change lanes safely it might not enter a driver's mind," he said.
The highway patrol's goal was to encourage people to change lanes regardless of who is on the side of the road, be it an officer or a stranded motorist.
"There are a lot of people who do violate it though and can't help it they can't get over — or they just don't think about it. We want to make them think about it," Eichkorn said.
Goldstein said he had 230 good reasons to think about it. He said he also anticipated a spike in his insurance rates when his insurance agency learned of his failure to yield to an emergency vehicle. It all added up to an expensive lesson in highway safety.
"I if see those flashing lights on the side of the road I'm damn sure to get over now," he said.
- Edited by Andrew Ward
Dancing for awareness
Pilar Pena/Kansan
Emmanuelle Watonsi, Yaounde, Cameroon, sophomore, and Sira Konare, Mali junior, dance at the African Dance Show at the lobby in the Kansas Union. The event was part of the International Awareness Week sponsored by the International Student Association.
Budget to cause med school to cut jobs
By Nikki Overfelt
noverfelt@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Budget woes have hit the University of Kansas Medical School.
The school has to eliminate 84 jobs before the 2004 fiscal year starts in July, said Ed Phillips, vice chancellor for administration.
"We have to make them now so we can pay our work force in 2004." he said.
Thirty-one of the 84 jobs are vacant now and will not be filled, but the other 53 positions are filled, he said. Of the 53 filled positions that will be eliminated, 22 are classified employees and 31 are unclassified.
The school has to cut $1.6 mil.
sured employees. Of the 31 vacant jobs that will not be filled, 17 are classified and 14 are unclassified.
Classified employees are considered civil servants of the state and some of their jobs include secretaries, custodians, librarians maintenance workers and administrative assistants. Unclassified employees are engaged in teaching, university administration and professional services related to instruction and research.
The jobs have to be cut to adjust to the governor's new budget, Phillips said. The school will have $5 million less in its budget for the upcoming year.
lion in fringe benefits, such as health insurance, he said. It will have to take away money from the leaders of the school departments and reallocate the money to the fringe benefits, he said.
This will take a toll on the school departments, Phillips said, and the school will have less money to carry out its mission.
The school had to notify the employees whose jobs are being cut by the end of March, Phillips said.
"We are working with these people that are negatively impacted by this," he said.
Phillips and the school are trying to help these employees find other jobs, he said. So far they
have helped 16 of the 53 employees find other positions.
These cuts will only affect the school, not the hospital, said Dennis McCulloch, representative for the Kansas University Medical Center.
"The layoffs do not directly affect anyone employed by the hospital," he said. "But obviously we are concerned because of our affiliation."
The Med Center is affiliated with the school but is independently governed and not on the same budget as the school, McCulloch said.
— Edited by Michelle Burhenn
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