In these dying days of 2022, I find myself thinking of people who didn’t make it through the year. Famously: Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), and Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher); the first ballplayer to steal 100 bases (Maury Wills), and the last leader of the Soviet Union (Mikhail Gorbachev); the Queen of England (Elizabeth II), and the queen of country music (Loretta Lynn). This year, mortality hit close to home: my mother, my girlfriend’s father, my sister’s boyfriend – and my college friend Martin Wooster, a writer and thinker of some note, and one of more than seven thousand American pedestrians killed by automobiles this year.
Martin wrote a column called “First Principles” for the Beloit College newspaper while I was its co-editor. He went on to be an editor and frequent writer for Reason magazine, and a contributor to many other respected publications. He sent me a note several years ago when I had a story in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He was brilliant and provocative and funny. And he didn’t own cars.
That last part I didn’t know until he died, and I read it in one of the many on-line tributes from people touched by his singular wit. But I remember the frequent sight of his tall figure walking along the campus paths with a book in front of his face – the same thing that almost got Stephen King killed along a rural Maine road. Martin was run down while attending a convention in Williamsburg, Virginia and walking from one event to another. The person who hit him drove off and has not been found.
He died alone, but he was not alone in the manner of his death. Sadly, pedestrian deaths on America’s roadways have been rising, even as total driving miles have decreased in the pandemic’s wake. In 2021, an estimated 7,485 people on foot were struck and killed by motor vehicles in the United States. This year’s total could be even higher.
What can be done about these avoidable tragedies?
Drivers are quick to point out that pedestrians can be hard to see. But they say the same thing about bicycles. Yes, people out walking at night should wear brighter clothing, and yes, cyclists should exercise caution. But the onus for safety has to be on the operator of the lethal weapon that is a car. Perhaps one reason that drivers have difficulty seeing pedestrians and cyclists is that they aren’t looking for them.
But the necessary attitude adjustment goes farther than that. Until pedestrians and cyclists are treated as equal users of the public right-of-way, they will continue to die in unacceptable numbers.
For whatever reason, I’ve witnessed more belligerent behavior behind the wheel this year than in years past. I’ve had close encounters in crosswalks, where drivers are required to stop. I’ve seen people running red lights, speeding, and taking dangerous chances in congested areas. I’ve seen people pull in front of the bus so suddenly that the driver has to slam on the brakes.
I don’t know why people are in such a hurry. But perhaps it has something to do with an economy that wants us rushing to and from work so that we can make our car payments so that we can drive to the store and our gigs and our night jobs. An economy that extends little incentives to drivers, like the widespread expectation of free parking, and the tacit “right” to drive up to nine miles an hour over the speed limit.
The long task of steering people away from cars must employ both carrots and sticks. Carrots include well-maintained sidewalks, expanded bus service, and cycling infrastructure. Sticks include correcting ingrained bad behavior. When a downtown speed limit of 25 miles per hour means just that, and police ticket drivers for going 28, maybe there will be fewer close calls in crosswalks, and fewer senseless deaths like my friend’s.
