On a recent Newsworks Tonight segment, Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Sarah Clark Stuart talked about our website PhlTrafficVictims.org, and why we decided to compile all traffic fatalities in 2016.
PhlTrafficVictims.org is a Bicycle Coalition-run website which attempts to provide details of every victim of traffic violence in real time alongside a map of where those victims were killed. The site provides the information on as real a time format as we can, and provides whatever details are available to remember the victim of the crash.
Last year, total traffic fatalities dropped to a historic low, but pedestrian fatalities were at an all-time high. This is a big problem. Listen to Sarah Clark Stuart discuss what the Bicycle Coalition and members of the Vision Zero Alliance here in Philly are trying to do about it:
Want to get involved? Click here to sign our Vision Zero petition and tell Philadelphia you care about safer streets for all road users.
It’s time for these folks to start focusing on safety, and get away from their narrow and statistically unfounded focus on speed and motorist guilt. A major New York study found that speed is actually 3rd in like when it comes to pedestrian crash causes. A DOT study found that there are 70 million miles of walking between pedestrian deaths, and that walker deaths almost always involve a contributory action by the person on foot. Why is this kind of objectivity too rarely in the Coalition’s fiery rhetoric? Responsibility for pedestrian deaths and serious crashes relating to auto traffic is about equally divided between the walkers and the drivers. Seeing “accidents” as preventable is a very enlightened view. But, let’s remember that we call them that because the same risky behavior most often does not cause a serious problem–there is a randomness there that we need to keep in mind so we avoid the risky actions consistently whether then seem dangerous or not. Roosevelt Boulevard has poorly conceived crosswalks without any kind of proper division of flow between cars and walkers. The blame likes much more with the highway’s designers than with drivers. The Bike Coalition’s goals are laudable, but the approach is much too anti-driver and anti-car. It’s time for drivers and bike/pedestrian proponents to start to work together and drive changes based on the data, and on a desire to improve infrastructure with the goal of having better, safer transportation for all.