When “1 in 100” comes for someone you love

On a cold morning in December, I stood in Rock Creek Park Cemetery, trying to choke back grief as the remains of my friend were lowered into the ground. Her husband held their young child and stood with her parents, sharing their burden for a few hours with her extended family and friends. She was killed on foot, on the other side of the world, by a driver.

Nothing prepares you for losing someone you love. As the service attested, the death of this vibrant, accomplished woman left a hole in the hearts of many people. Those who lose loved ones to traffic violence mostly bear the pain of their loss on their own. The system that allowed them to die grinds on and on, and fails to protect the next family.

As Jessica Hart, who lost her daughter Allie to DC’s traffic violence in 2021, asked in a recent interview: “My daughter dies, and nothing changes. How could that be?”

Everyone’s problem

My friend was killed far away, and I don’t have the right to call for action on her behalf. But I’m writing to try and share a little of what it costs the world when traffic violence takes someone from it, and how deeply frustrating it is to watch the numbers continue in the wrong direction, not just in DC. When are bereaved families and friends supposed to believe an incremental approach is going to start working?

Many families have turned part of their grief to advocacy. But they shouldn’t bear that burden alone or with a few friends. Those of us who drive but haven’t lost someone to traffic violence may enjoy all the fruits of a cars-first system while bearing few of its financial or emotional costs. But when public policy works decisively to make it harder for drivers to drive into people, we make a collective, moral choice to share a little of that burden.

Crashes aren’t freak accidents, as Dan Langenkamp observed after his wife Sarah was killed by a truck driver in Bethesda last summer. Death is written into the national, regional, and local transportation systems in the US, a leader in traffic deaths among high-income countries. But any system that regularly puts vulnerable human bodies in close contact with fast, heavy vehicles operated by fallible, distracted people, who face limited consequences for behavior that puts them and others at risk, makes this choice at some point, and usually as a matter of course.

Whether it’s vehicle-centric street design, increasing car size with no speed-limiting technology, or bizarrely irresponsible enforcement policies, the road to traffic tombstones is paved with the false assumption that they’re inevitable.

My friend, your friend

My friend cared about everyone she met. She lit up rooms and hearts with ease, love, and boundless humor. Twice during the walk from church to burial site, silly jokes came to me that I could just about hear her laughing at and wryly chiding me for my irreverence.

As family and friends trudged along, I remembered how just six years ago, she’d wowed many of the same people in a stunning red dress at her wedding, where she lavished attention on every young child in attendance including mine, and danced joyously. But that week we stood, saying some kind of collective good bye and buoyed a little by the bravery of her family. Tears streamed down the faces of the rest of us, who hadn’t had to face the pain of her loss every moment since the crash and for whom the news still felt cruelly fresh.

Yet even as I departed the cemetery by car, the irony of which wasn’t lost on me, I’d already slipped back into a world that lays out a blood-red carpet for people driving cars and hands out what’s left over to everyone else (which does not include reliable transit links from my home to the cemetery). I talk a lot about the National Safety Council’s finding that about one in one hundred Americans will die in a car crash, because so much public discourse seems to ignore the staggering near-certainty that someone you love will die needlessly early because of policy decisions that favor cars over lives.

We give more air time to problems that cause a fraction of the number of deaths that cars cause, including crime on transit. The only reason I can think of is that we are less motivated by the actual risk of death to us or anyone we love than we are by the fear of it.

That’s not a serious response to risk. It’s a distraction for which victims, and their loved ones, pay.

Yes, Vision Zero means Zero

To suggest, or imply through failure to act decisively, that zero deaths isn’t an attainable goal doesn’t make a person – traffic engineer, elected official, or member of the public – a realist. It keeps us from making life-saving decisions about the future.

I’m not saying it’s always wrong to drive. I drive once or twice a week. I’m saying drivers should not get top priority in cities.

But cars, right? There’s no debate around whether people getting around by car or transit and other modes in a city is better for safety: cars are less safe. There’s no debate around whether people getting around by car or transit and other modes is better for health: cars are worse for everyone’s health. There’s not even any debate around the economic value of more sustainable modes: investing in transit and bikes has tremendous benefits for urban economies. If we’re all losing loved ones, what exactly are we gaining by making all these sacrifices for cars?

Where there is legitimate uncertainty is whether our transit system’s up to the task of delivering most of our trips. But we only get to the point where it’s better when every municipal leader is able to stand up and say “cars go last, people go first”. There are many entry points to making that transformative shift for a city. One of them is recognizing that one in one hundred is an avoidable tragedy, which bereaved families shouldn’t have to bear alone.