This past Tuesday about 5 pm I was riding north on High Street when I saw lots of flashing lights and stopped traffic ahead, near the intersection of Torrance and High. My stomach sinks whenever I see flashing lights on High Street for fear that there's been an accident involving a cyclist.( I've actually only witnessed one incident involving a cyclist and he was just scraped up a bit.)
I could tell this one was bad because the police had the entire street barricaded and traffic was stopped in both directions. I followed a long line of cars that maneuvered through side streets and alleys to get around the blocked off section of High Street. As we turned off High, I caught a glimpse of two heavily damaged cars in the middle of the road.
The next morning, the Dispatch reported that a beloved Bexley elementary teacher named Molly Davis had died in the accident.
Thursday morning I was biking south past the accident site and but for a bit of glass along the side of the road there was no indication that a terrible tragedy had occurred there less than 48 hours earlier.
I felt a deep sadness and a bit of anger at the human lives that are senselessly lost each year on our highways. I know we're working hard to make autos safer and keep drunk and distracted drivers off the road--and I know we can't all ride bicycles everywhere, every time. But I can't help but think there must be a better, safer way to travel around our dense urban areas.
On April 1, NHTSA was trumpeting the latest stats, announcing with fanfare the fact that "only" 32,788 people were killed on U.S. roads last year... 32,788 families dealing with the spectre of losing a loved one - a bread winner, son or daughter, grandfather, lover, mom, friend... but, hey, we're down 3% from 2009 - and we've reached the "lowest levels since 1949" so everything is just peachy in Traffic Utopia Land where the writers of these reports apparently reside...
Can you imagine the outcry, the rush to action, if 33,788 soldiers had died last year - or 33,788 people were killed in a terrorist attack, or died from eating bad hamburgers... Because they died one or two at a time, in "traffic accidents" [a nice innocuous PC term that doesn't blame anyone while creating an aura of divine providence] this number is touted as marvelous, spectacular, an amazing improvement and advancement... the best number since 1949...
I guess I just don't feel like joining in the celebration ....
Posted by: steve magas | April 18, 2011 at 07:09 AM