Forty Thousand Tragedies (Comments: 2)

On Saturday night, Henry Sun was out walking near his house in Brighton, a Rochester suburb, and was struck and killed by a motorist. He was 14.

We had our first thunderstorm of the season that night. The details are vague and contradictory on the various news web sites, but it appears that Henry was walking in the shoulder of the road, was struck at about 8 p.m., he then later passed away at the hospital, and police have not charged the motorist.

The police have stated that there are sidewalks in the area, but news sources have quoted some who say there are no sidewalks (and Google Street View backs up the lack-of-sidewalk claims). A story in the Democrat and Chronicle discusses neighbor complaints about speeding on that stretch of road, which is known as “The Elmwood Expressway.”

Henry’s death moves me more than most deaths I read about. I was riding just south of the neighborhood where Henry was walking that night, on my way to a dinner, where I complained about the walkability issues in that part of town. But I haven’t actually done anything constructive to make the area safer for pedestrians.

The mother of a six-year-old girl who was struck on the same stretch of road in 2007 shares her frustration in the comments of this story:

I went to the town of Brighton and asked them to help slow Elmwood down before someone else was hurt or killed . . . I want to start a petition of all Brighton residents to present to both the town and the county to get the road right with sidewalks on both sides and if needed, speed bumps.

These are good ideas, I fully support them. They help to mitigate a serious problem. I doubt you’ll see the county install speed bumps on a 35 mph road, but you might see them try other traffic-calming strategies. For example: a narrower street, with a reduced shoulder size (or bike lane!) and raised sidewalks with curbs, can help signal to drivers that this is a neighborhood and not a highway. This is a response, but it doesn’t eliminate the problem.

The statistics are a little old, but the late bike advocate Ken Kifer’s site has a long rundown of the various dangers cyclists (and pedestrians) face. Ken notes that in his calculations (based on 1997 data), one out of every 69 people will either be killed by or kill someone else with a motor vehicle. Sadly, Ken was one of those people – he was killed by a drunk driver in 2003.

We know that motor vehicles are the problem here, directly causing over forty thousand deaths each year in the US alone.

The convenience of owning and operating our own cars is no good reason why so many people have to die violent, tragic deaths.

Of course, there’s a lot of work to do.

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