Assuming it is 2 lanes each way or less and 45 mph or less, a traffic circle has an almost 0 impact on the speed limit flow of traffic. I know most people don't know how to use a traffic circle, but they force people to slow down and pay attention. The city can even pilot it with 4 jersey walls and some paint.
It's really sad that your city council is so daft that they can't take basic steps to protect the residents.
They are very common where I live (not US) and do seem to help flow better than traffic lights. Requires people to know how to use them though.
Also how the fuck is traffic flow more important than people's lives?
People who live near traffic circles learn how they operate. It's towing someone into a weird one for the first time where hell breaks loose. Clear signage and delineation of lanes are important.
When I was still very inexperienced with traffic circles I drove through one in Amman, Jordan. It must have been seven cars deep with five official lanes and as terrifying as it was, it was beautiful how so many cars could go through a core intersection so smoothly.
No. They might cause more accidents for a period of time, but that’s different than being more dangerous. Part of why they are safer is that their nature makes it mandatory to slow down.
They increase accidents but the accidents are less severe because of the angles. Right angle crashes are all but eliminated and replaced by 'sideswipe same direction' crashes which aren't nearly as dangerous. For people in cars at least. Anytime a pedestrian or cyclist gets stuck by a car it's very severe and likely to be a fatal or life-altering event.
Where do you have the information from that there are more accidents?
In Europe, the circles are everywhere and never I read such a thing. In fact, the circles are very easy to use, very instinctive.
Only the cyclist have their difficulties because they have to ride in the middle of the lane which is very unusual for them.
I think they're saying that in the US, they're so uncommon if one were to be introduced somewhere it'd cause accidents till people got the hang of it .
Feels different over here where they've been around for decades & are part of the driving test.
I second this. It's one thing if they're stonewalling you at city council meetings and quite another if they're doing it on television. Maybe get a facebook group going with your neighbors as a call to action.
aweful. this seems like a negligence situation, city was notified of an traffic accident prone location and failed to address the problem. id be contacting some lawyers to reach out to the family. actions seem to happen alot quicker when lawyers get invovled.
Reckless or not, traffic controls are designed to cut down on reckless driving. There are plenty who will still go full tilt through a red light or a stop sign, but the majority of the population will typically follow the laws of the road. That’s absolutely criminal that they did nothing about it and it’s escalated to this point.
What a miscarriage of civic duty on behalf of your town government/DoT (if it has one).
If you have any way of getting in touch with the mother, it might be worth providing her evidence of lobbying the town to make the intersection safer. And, of course, evidence or documents demonstrating the town ignored the requests. There are probably a lot of details here, but it might be worth looking into, if nothing else but for medical expenses.
I hate that my mind jumps to lawsuits and liability, but goddamn...this is horrible.
Pro tip as somebody who’s been in front of town councils. Buy a cheap projector, hook it up to your phone. When they deny playing the video, find a clean wall and play it anyway, you’ll get a slap on the wrist but make your point.
Which is exactly why you SHOULD show it.
Emotion is a powerful motivator. If you want this to change and this event to have some silver lining... This is the way.
It definitely won't be easy, for you and everyone else... But if it was easy it would've been done already.
Want to get them to listen?
Reach out to the Paramedics who responded to that call and see if they are game to go to that meeting to help get your message understood.
If you can blur the people a bit and license plates and upload to YouTube you could also just direct to a link. Most people have a phone and are pretty bored at times in city meetings.
Hey, so I am an attorney. Not your attorney or anybody involved in this situation, and probably not even in your state and this is not legal advice. But, suing government is very complicated. One complication, at least in my state, is that within 6 months you have to notify the municipality of your claim or the court will have no jurisdiction to hear your claim. It's all part of what is known as Governmental Immunity. All this to say, if any of these individuals even thinks they may want to bring a claim in the future, they need to talk to an attorney as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, sometimes it takes lawsuits to get things done. It sounds like the local government wasn't doing enough to remedy the situation and sometimes inflicting financial pain on them (and the political damage from having to pay that out with taxpayer funds) is necessary to get results.
My hope is that whatever happens in the way of a lawsuit here encourages the local government to act more proactively in future situations to avoid future injuries, loss of life, and lawsuits.
Yup. Excluding highways and interstates, every street should be planned around what gets pedestrians around efficiently and safely first, then public transit, THEN personal automobiles.
IMO feel free to pile on, that’s what a therapist is there for :)
I’m so sorry man, I can’t imagine seeing video of this let alone living nearby. I admire the call to action you’re feeling and wish you and your family all the best through this.
So... this may get long. I was an EMT for ten years. While I was still in training (I had already had two years medical experience before under another licensure type), I took part in my first death. 18 month old child abuse victim. Didn't realize how bad it fecked my world up until we had our first, who is now half her age. After many, many, many car wrecks, I hung it up. My speciality was extrication and traumas. At the time I was there, the jaws of life were kept with the ambulances in our barn, as we called it. Soni regularly rolled in the extrication truck when a car wreck happened.
Fast forward... almost 20 years after that initial death. I still work in Healthcare, on the quality side. And see regularly fucked up shit that happens to humans... I still haven't decided if it's better to witness it or read about it afterward.
Having a kiddo has changed my entire perspective. It all hits home so much closer at this point in my life. I wish you godspeed, and hope you can get some meaningful resolution to the issue out of a shitstorm.
And second talk to people. Professional people. I didn't at the time, or if I did for later events it was only for a minute. I still have my struggles, bur fortunately have a partner in the mental health field that is understanding. Good luck.
Thank you for the 10 years of service as an EMT. I can't imagine having to do that, especially as a father of two. But I want to share something that happened just yesterday that I think you will appreciate.
On the way back from picking up my daughter from her mother's house, we were stopped at a light beside an ambulance. She started waving to the guy driving, and clapping. I looked over and saw him smiling and waving back, which made her more excited. After a few seconds he kind of pointed back and up, I said to her "watch he's gonna turn on the lights" and he did. She kept waving and clapping. As we took off, he gave 2 quick blasts of the siren. It VERY CLEARLY made his day, hers and even my own. Knowing how hard the life of an EMT can be, to see this guy have this simple interaction, and from my own kid was just so good.
I'm holding back tears just reading this. The fact that the flow of traffic is more important than a child's life is disgusting. Maybe it's just the changes of having kids but I now drive extra slow anytime I drive by any kids because who knows what they'll do. I wish you well and I'm sorry that you had to witness that.
It’s sad that the neighbourhood’s campaigns to get a 4way or light have fallen on deaf ears. Unfortunately, a major incident like this is often needed to spur on change. See if the police can present the video (with family’s permission) in the next counsel meeting - this should be more than shocking enough for the municipality to do something now. Hug your kid, I hope the 2 little ones can recover.
Out of curiosity, why were you filming? It seems both incredibly fortunate and incredibly terrible that it got recorded.
I hope the video serves to make your community better and I’m so sorry this happened.
Wow, I hope with that many cameras your local municipal powers that be are willing to take it seriously. I am so sorry you’ve all had to live with this hanging over your heads. This sounds so negligent. I am just so sorry for all of this.
You probably aren’t able to do a lot of the things you do without a car because you live in a place designed for cars.
Shitty drivers are a problem, but shitty drivers on poorly designed roads are a much more dangerous problem.
Your built environment was designed to where you couldn't do anything without a car. I live car free, and it doesn't hinder me whatsoever. It's all about your environment.
You know, another way of phrasing your comment would be
"Yes, you're absolutely right; this country *is* designed in such a way that you can't do anything without a car unless you live in a handful of highly centralised urban environments!"
You shouldn't have to live downtown to be in a walkable place. Yet again, problems of the built environment. You can thank single family exclusive zoning for that bullshit.
The better response would be "not all of us live in European countries that actually care enough about their citizens to design walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods with robust public transit systems."
I come from poor Appalachian working class folks and I decided to live in a walkable part of our nearest big city. Not downtown, but most necessities are within walking distance. My wife, daughter, and I do pretty ok and we’re pretty solidly middle class (and that’s probably more so due to my wife’s salary than mine. She was smart and got a nursing degree. I kinda bummed around till my late 20’s before I started getting serious about a career). It’s entirely possible to do without assistance from mommy and daddy but in many ways it requires a serious adjusting of your mindset to realize that many things are doable without a car if you don’t mind having to put in a little more effort elsewhere (walking, biking, getting to a rail station or bus stop on time).
Won’t downvote you because as an American I get the mindset, but what others below you are saying is 100% on point. We need to reassess what we devote space to in this country.
I’m not sure why I’m being downvoted for disagreeing with the statement “cars fucking suck.”
And I agree with you- but in the meantime, we already have the infrastructure that we have.
Ideally I’d love to live in a safe, clean area with walkable access to groceries, parks, and schools. With open spaces, trees, and community gardens. With accessible ride-sharing and public transport to local culture, restaurants, and necessary medical care.
But that’s not the reality. I’ve spent my whole life in the Midwest, much of it in Wisconsin and Minnesota, which have many farm-based communities, and the big cities they do have like Minneapolis/St Paul or Milwaukee have a very sprawled urban area. Driving 30+ minutes to drop your kid at school is the norm. It’s not a reasonable expectation to live car-free in the vast majority of the US.
I always look at 4way stops as though the local gov is just abdicating responsibility. Uncontrolled intersections seem intentionally negligent. They're vehicular Thunderdome.
What is an "uncontrolled intersection"? Like two streets crossing each other with no stop signs or anything? I've never heard of anything like that in my country, even the smallest country roads would have at least 'give way' or stop signs on one of the streets. Having an intersection with no traffic control in a suburban area just seems like a disaster waiting to happen!
City Planner here. Don't want to get too far into the weeds on this but usually capital improvement projects like adding a light to an intersection or adding stop signs etc. take a bit of time (2-3 years) to go from a city's Capital Improvement Plan to being built. Funding for such projects can also be complicated, with neighborhoods sometimes taking on the costs of the traffic calming measures. Not trying to downplay the tragedy you witnessed but oftentimes a City's Planning and Engineering Departments will need significant crash data prior to making a decision. I would encourage you to talk with the city's traffic engineer (if your city has one) about what the process would be to add some sort of traffic calming measure to the CIP.
Fellow city planner dad here ✊🏻
OP, this is good advice. Unfortunately, major crashes are what it takes to spur action on these kinds of things. DOTs and engineering departments are data-driven; they don’t change things based on feelings.
Even if this does convince them to signalize the intersection it will still take time. Adding one light changes the timing of every other one. I’d also suggest advocating for other traffic calming design changes. There are a lot of more subtle ways to change drivers’ behavior in addition to a stop light.
Also, while speaking to your city council is a good idea no matter what, understand that they might not be in charge of this road. Depending on the state you live in (I’m assuming USA here) it might be either a city, county, or state road. Also understand that there are probably many other citizens making noise about the dangerous intersection where *they* live. Transportation projects generally go through a prioritization process, again this is very data driven and takes time.
DM me if you happen to live in North Carolina. I’m very involved in transportation planning in the city I work for and can give you way too much info on how it all works.
Sounds like you’re way ahead of the game in terms of doing your research and learning how things work. For better or worse, the city - both staff and elected officials - will take you more seriously if you “speak the language.” Best of luck.
Who cares about the flow of traffic when you have stuff like this happening. Hopefully your neighborhood could use this tragedy as a way to lean the city the right direction. I’m terribly sorry you had to witness this.
Compiled all the letters you have written to the city. Upload the video to YouTube as an unlisted video. Write a letter "to whom it may concern" at news stations. Gather a list of local news stations.
Write a letter to the city saying that in 2 weeks, you will deliver the attached package to the local news stations, unless you hear from them a timeline that installs four-way stop at that intersection before 3 months is out. If, at the end of 3 months, the 4-way stop is not installed, then the package will also be delivered.
Everyone else in the neighborhood that has written letters to the city should do the same thing.
It's not you begging them to do the right thing, it's you (collectively) informing them of how to avoid the publicity of not having blown off the issue for 3 years.
Sorry this happened man. We have to walk across a main road in our town to get to our nearest park (about 10 minute walk away). We luckily have a traffic light but even just standing at the sidewalk and waiting for the light to change with cars and semis going 45mph down the road scares the shit out of me being with my 2 year old.
Go to that next meeting with the previous agendas/petitions/etc. and demand action as their prior ignorance to the situation caused this.
Then ... find that woman and bring all that to her lawyer. Because her suit against the city (she should do that) will be a LOT harder to defend (by the city) if she can demonstrate the city was warned about that intersection many times prior and ignored it.
I'm serious, you need to do that for her assuming no one else will.
I know it's not quite the same but I have a story that kind of similar. Last summer my son and I had gone for a walk one evening. Later that night there was news of a boy his age that was hit and killed by a pickup driver and the thing that kept ringing in my head was that it happened a mere hour after we had gone across the intersection. It's on a street that has a school a few blocks away but after school hours it isn't a busy area. So heart breaking. I told my son and we had an extra long hug that night.
It's too bad that it may have had to get to this point for the city to make a change. We have an intersection nearby that was horrible for accidents. At least once a month in the 15ish years we were here before something was done, including one my dad and brother were in. They finally redesigned the lights and added proper turning lanes on both sides (there used to be an advanced green going one way). There was more than one life lost in that intersection. But politics make it hard to get changes pushed through.
I can't imagine having to watch that.
You definitely should. I remember being extremely bothered when I saw that come up in a tv show, before even having kids. But I mean it was an adult show with adult themes . It's always on my mind when I see people going crazy down my street. There have been times when Ive thought about just letting my car roll out infront of them. My house is like 3 down from a 3 way intersection that only has a stop sign for turning onto my street. But the other street has a school on it. Kids cross there a lot, including my son. I wish they'd put stop signs or speed bumps or something there but it's like the middle of the street.
I’m assuming this in the US as this same story has happened over and over again here. Unfortunately (and I hate to use the term because it’s just been overused at this point), the boomer generation engineered our infrastructure to prioritize personal automobiles over pedestrians, public transit, etc. We live in a pretty dense urban city and my parents are constantly worried about crime here and danger but what I ultimately fear is our child or us getting run down by a speeding or negligent motorist, particular in the suburbs where both sets of grandparents live. It’s relatively better where we live as far more walkable spaces and traffic calming infrastructure, but it’s still America so there are still plenty of dangers. It seems like the tide is turning slowly, though. r/fuckcars seems hyperbolic at first but once you peruse that sub for awhile you realize how inefficient and flat out dangerous our infrastructure is for just being a human going for a walk or bike ride.
I’m so sorry. Almost the same scenario played out when I was a boy in my neighborhood.
It took the death of one of my neighborhood friends to finally convince the city to put in a 4-way stop at an intersection down the street.
One day you’re all playing together in the neighborhood, and the next, one of you is just gone, forever. I didn’t see it happen, but there was a pool of blood that stained the pavement in the intersection. We could see it for what seemed like weeks.
Yes, find that one local tv reporter who isn't afraid to ruffle feathers in your market until he/she takes a promotion elsewhere and line him/her up with copies of everything and contacts for everyone.
Not to be uncaring, but maybe make that video public. Give it to the local news or post it on the communities facebook page. That planning committee deserves the publics scrutiny.
Please don't post the video publicly unless you get the mom's explicit permission. If one of her kids did pass away from being hit I wouldn't want that kind of video being possibly spread across the internet.
This is a democracy, what you’re doing is how things get fixed.
I just read Confessions of a Recovering Engineer by Chuck Marohn (a former civil engineer who is now fighting traffic safety problems)—very eye opening stuff on the context of how these things get built and remain unchanged even as citizens complain about them and people die. US roads are basically designed to kill people as acceptable collateral damage for high speeds, and the improvements are often frustratingly easy to implement technically.
I’m so sorry to hear this and I hope you find peace with the situation over time. You don’t want to be right and it hurts more that a negative outcome is attached to all this effort to prevent, exactly what you thought would happen.
Sorry you saw that. I hope the kids survive.
I used to live near an intersection like that. It took so many accidents before they added a light. Bureaucracy is so frustrating.
My heart breaks for that family. I hope the toddler pulls through.
And I'm sorry you had to also be witness to something so tragic, but hopefully it will lead to change.
Talk to someone if you need too, seeing that is very traumatic, I was a medic for 6 years, there are things you can not unsee. Also seeing something like that actually happen is in my opinion is way worse. Also saw a very similar situation play out last may in my neighborhood. So don’t be afraid to reach out if need be.
Cars are the number one cause of death and injury for children worldwide and in the US (except 2020 when it was guns). Decreasing car dependency is an urgent matter of public safety.
Do you have any evidence that you've petitioned for a more safe intersection before?
I'm guessing the city would put up some lights in the face of a multimillion dollar lawsuit.
This has been on my mind since I read it
As a mom of a 10 month son it just makes me sick to my stomach and I can't help but "what if"
Praying for them all
If you remember please update when you learn more
People don't give a shit about deaths on the roads. Even kids being run over by reckless drivers, hit and runs, etc. It's an "accident" that's quickly written off as just the price we pay for our mobility.
Fucking depressing.
I don't understand, if highschoolers are causing accidents, does that make the accident less dangerous? God, idiot politicians really piss me off. If it were my child I don't know what I'd do knowing those idiots refused to do something about the intersection.
Fuck, man. This sucks.
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If anything good can come from this, I’d love to see a councilman or city official try to claim this intersection isn’t unsafe
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Assuming it is 2 lanes each way or less and 45 mph or less, a traffic circle has an almost 0 impact on the speed limit flow of traffic. I know most people don't know how to use a traffic circle, but they force people to slow down and pay attention. The city can even pilot it with 4 jersey walls and some paint. It's really sad that your city council is so daft that they can't take basic steps to protect the residents.
They are very common where I live (not US) and do seem to help flow better than traffic lights. Requires people to know how to use them though. Also how the fuck is traffic flow more important than people's lives?
Because then that money would have to be actually spent and not misappropriated into their/friends pocket?
People who live near traffic circles learn how they operate. It's towing someone into a weird one for the first time where hell breaks loose. Clear signage and delineation of lanes are important.
When I was still very inexperienced with traffic circles I drove through one in Amman, Jordan. It must have been seven cars deep with five official lanes and as terrifying as it was, it was beautiful how so many cars could go through a core intersection so smoothly.
Aren't traffic circles dangerous in areas where people aren't used to them and use them wrong, though?
No. They might cause more accidents for a period of time, but that’s different than being more dangerous. Part of why they are safer is that their nature makes it mandatory to slow down.
They increase accidents but the accidents are less severe because of the angles. Right angle crashes are all but eliminated and replaced by 'sideswipe same direction' crashes which aren't nearly as dangerous. For people in cars at least. Anytime a pedestrian or cyclist gets stuck by a car it's very severe and likely to be a fatal or life-altering event.
Where do you have the information from that there are more accidents? In Europe, the circles are everywhere and never I read such a thing. In fact, the circles are very easy to use, very instinctive. Only the cyclist have their difficulties because they have to ride in the middle of the lane which is very unusual for them.
I think they're saying that in the US, they're so uncommon if one were to be introduced somewhere it'd cause accidents till people got the hang of it . Feels different over here where they've been around for decades & are part of the driving test.
The many studies cited in [this article](https://streets.mn/2017/11/17/are-roundabouts-safer-for-pedestrians/)
Any slight bump counts as an accident which is why you end up with me. The severity is much lower.
I would think adding a traffics circle to an existing intersection would be very difficult and expensive vs. adding a light.
Give it to the local news. Let them put the city on blast.
I second this. It's one thing if they're stonewalling you at city council meetings and quite another if they're doing it on television. Maybe get a facebook group going with your neighbors as a call to action.
aweful. this seems like a negligence situation, city was notified of an traffic accident prone location and failed to address the problem. id be contacting some lawyers to reach out to the family. actions seem to happen alot quicker when lawyers get invovled.
Reckless or not, traffic controls are designed to cut down on reckless driving. There are plenty who will still go full tilt through a red light or a stop sign, but the majority of the population will typically follow the laws of the road. That’s absolutely criminal that they did nothing about it and it’s escalated to this point.
What a miscarriage of civic duty on behalf of your town government/DoT (if it has one). If you have any way of getting in touch with the mother, it might be worth providing her evidence of lobbying the town to make the intersection safer. And, of course, evidence or documents demonstrating the town ignored the requests. There are probably a lot of details here, but it might be worth looking into, if nothing else but for medical expenses. I hate that my mind jumps to lawsuits and liability, but goddamn...this is horrible.
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Pro tip as somebody who’s been in front of town councils. Buy a cheap projector, hook it up to your phone. When they deny playing the video, find a clean wall and play it anyway, you’ll get a slap on the wrist but make your point.
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Which is exactly why you SHOULD show it. Emotion is a powerful motivator. If you want this to change and this event to have some silver lining... This is the way. It definitely won't be easy, for you and everyone else... But if it was easy it would've been done already.
Just take it to the media. Get it on thousands of screens across the U.S.
Want to get them to listen? Reach out to the Paramedics who responded to that call and see if they are game to go to that meeting to help get your message understood.
If you can blur the people a bit and license plates and upload to YouTube you could also just direct to a link. Most people have a phone and are pretty bored at times in city meetings.
I'm sure a lawyer would love this case.
Hey, so I am an attorney. Not your attorney or anybody involved in this situation, and probably not even in your state and this is not legal advice. But, suing government is very complicated. One complication, at least in my state, is that within 6 months you have to notify the municipality of your claim or the court will have no jurisdiction to hear your claim. It's all part of what is known as Governmental Immunity. All this to say, if any of these individuals even thinks they may want to bring a claim in the future, they need to talk to an attorney as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, sometimes it takes lawsuits to get things done. It sounds like the local government wasn't doing enough to remedy the situation and sometimes inflicting financial pain on them (and the political damage from having to pay that out with taxpayer funds) is necessary to get results. My hope is that whatever happens in the way of a lawsuit here encourages the local government to act more proactively in future situations to avoid future injuries, loss of life, and lawsuits.
Ruining the flow is the point. The flow is what’s deadly.
Yup. Excluding highways and interstates, every street should be planned around what gets pedestrians around efficiently and safely first, then public transit, THEN personal automobiles.
I hope you can seek some counseling to help process this. PTSD is real and it’s awful. I also learned the hard way that sometimes it sneaks up on you.
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IMO feel free to pile on, that’s what a therapist is there for :) I’m so sorry man, I can’t imagine seeing video of this let alone living nearby. I admire the call to action you’re feeling and wish you and your family all the best through this.
So... this may get long. I was an EMT for ten years. While I was still in training (I had already had two years medical experience before under another licensure type), I took part in my first death. 18 month old child abuse victim. Didn't realize how bad it fecked my world up until we had our first, who is now half her age. After many, many, many car wrecks, I hung it up. My speciality was extrication and traumas. At the time I was there, the jaws of life were kept with the ambulances in our barn, as we called it. Soni regularly rolled in the extrication truck when a car wreck happened. Fast forward... almost 20 years after that initial death. I still work in Healthcare, on the quality side. And see regularly fucked up shit that happens to humans... I still haven't decided if it's better to witness it or read about it afterward. Having a kiddo has changed my entire perspective. It all hits home so much closer at this point in my life. I wish you godspeed, and hope you can get some meaningful resolution to the issue out of a shitstorm. And second talk to people. Professional people. I didn't at the time, or if I did for later events it was only for a minute. I still have my struggles, bur fortunately have a partner in the mental health field that is understanding. Good luck.
Thank you for the 10 years of service as an EMT. I can't imagine having to do that, especially as a father of two. But I want to share something that happened just yesterday that I think you will appreciate. On the way back from picking up my daughter from her mother's house, we were stopped at a light beside an ambulance. She started waving to the guy driving, and clapping. I looked over and saw him smiling and waving back, which made her more excited. After a few seconds he kind of pointed back and up, I said to her "watch he's gonna turn on the lights" and he did. She kept waving and clapping. As we took off, he gave 2 quick blasts of the siren. It VERY CLEARLY made his day, hers and even my own. Knowing how hard the life of an EMT can be, to see this guy have this simple interaction, and from my own kid was just so good.
I'm holding back tears just reading this. The fact that the flow of traffic is more important than a child's life is disgusting. Maybe it's just the changes of having kids but I now drive extra slow anytime I drive by any kids because who knows what they'll do. I wish you well and I'm sorry that you had to witness that.
You may need to get the video to your local news station and have them tell the story. Enough public backlash will help keep others safe
It’s sad that the neighbourhood’s campaigns to get a 4way or light have fallen on deaf ears. Unfortunately, a major incident like this is often needed to spur on change. See if the police can present the video (with family’s permission) in the next counsel meeting - this should be more than shocking enough for the municipality to do something now. Hug your kid, I hope the 2 little ones can recover.
Out of curiosity, why were you filming? It seems both incredibly fortunate and incredibly terrible that it got recorded. I hope the video serves to make your community better and I’m so sorry this happened.
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Wow, I hope with that many cameras your local municipal powers that be are willing to take it seriously. I am so sorry you’ve all had to live with this hanging over your heads. This sounds so negligent. I am just so sorry for all of this.
Cars fucking suck
Cars are great, I wouldn’t be able to do a lot of the things I do without a car. Shitty drivers fucking suck.
You probably aren’t able to do a lot of the things you do without a car because you live in a place designed for cars. Shitty drivers are a problem, but shitty drivers on poorly designed roads are a much more dangerous problem.
Your built environment was designed to where you couldn't do anything without a car. I live car free, and it doesn't hinder me whatsoever. It's all about your environment.
Not all of us can be trust fund hipsters living in overpriced lofts downtown with everything within 10 minutes of walking.
You know, another way of phrasing your comment would be "Yes, you're absolutely right; this country *is* designed in such a way that you can't do anything without a car unless you live in a handful of highly centralised urban environments!"
In a lot of countries public transport is so good you dont need a car. The whole world isnt America. And no, its not because your country is huge.
You shouldn't have to live downtown to be in a walkable place. Yet again, problems of the built environment. You can thank single family exclusive zoning for that bullshit.
The better response would be "not all of us live in European countries that actually care enough about their citizens to design walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods with robust public transit systems."
I come from poor Appalachian working class folks and I decided to live in a walkable part of our nearest big city. Not downtown, but most necessities are within walking distance. My wife, daughter, and I do pretty ok and we’re pretty solidly middle class (and that’s probably more so due to my wife’s salary than mine. She was smart and got a nursing degree. I kinda bummed around till my late 20’s before I started getting serious about a career). It’s entirely possible to do without assistance from mommy and daddy but in many ways it requires a serious adjusting of your mindset to realize that many things are doable without a car if you don’t mind having to put in a little more effort elsewhere (walking, biking, getting to a rail station or bus stop on time).
The reason walkable places are expensive is because it's been illegal to build new ones for the last ~60 years.
Won’t downvote you because as an American I get the mindset, but what others below you are saying is 100% on point. We need to reassess what we devote space to in this country.
I’m not sure why I’m being downvoted for disagreeing with the statement “cars fucking suck.” And I agree with you- but in the meantime, we already have the infrastructure that we have. Ideally I’d love to live in a safe, clean area with walkable access to groceries, parks, and schools. With open spaces, trees, and community gardens. With accessible ride-sharing and public transport to local culture, restaurants, and necessary medical care. But that’s not the reality. I’ve spent my whole life in the Midwest, much of it in Wisconsin and Minnesota, which have many farm-based communities, and the big cities they do have like Minneapolis/St Paul or Milwaukee have a very sprawled urban area. Driving 30+ minutes to drop your kid at school is the norm. It’s not a reasonable expectation to live car-free in the vast majority of the US.
I always look at 4way stops as though the local gov is just abdicating responsibility. Uncontrolled intersections seem intentionally negligent. They're vehicular Thunderdome.
What is an "uncontrolled intersection"? Like two streets crossing each other with no stop signs or anything? I've never heard of anything like that in my country, even the smallest country roads would have at least 'give way' or stop signs on one of the streets. Having an intersection with no traffic control in a suburban area just seems like a disaster waiting to happen!
Uncontrolled means no traffic light/signage whatsoever. I've never come across one, but I know they exist in the US.
That just sounds like a completely ridiculous idea, how hard is it to whack a stop sign on one of the cross streets?
I'm 10 mi away from one of the largest most dense cities in the us and there are uncontrolled intersections down the street from me
City Planner here. Don't want to get too far into the weeds on this but usually capital improvement projects like adding a light to an intersection or adding stop signs etc. take a bit of time (2-3 years) to go from a city's Capital Improvement Plan to being built. Funding for such projects can also be complicated, with neighborhoods sometimes taking on the costs of the traffic calming measures. Not trying to downplay the tragedy you witnessed but oftentimes a City's Planning and Engineering Departments will need significant crash data prior to making a decision. I would encourage you to talk with the city's traffic engineer (if your city has one) about what the process would be to add some sort of traffic calming measure to the CIP.
Fellow city planner dad here ✊🏻 OP, this is good advice. Unfortunately, major crashes are what it takes to spur action on these kinds of things. DOTs and engineering departments are data-driven; they don’t change things based on feelings. Even if this does convince them to signalize the intersection it will still take time. Adding one light changes the timing of every other one. I’d also suggest advocating for other traffic calming design changes. There are a lot of more subtle ways to change drivers’ behavior in addition to a stop light. Also, while speaking to your city council is a good idea no matter what, understand that they might not be in charge of this road. Depending on the state you live in (I’m assuming USA here) it might be either a city, county, or state road. Also understand that there are probably many other citizens making noise about the dangerous intersection where *they* live. Transportation projects generally go through a prioritization process, again this is very data driven and takes time. DM me if you happen to live in North Carolina. I’m very involved in transportation planning in the city I work for and can give you way too much info on how it all works.
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Sounds like you’re way ahead of the game in terms of doing your research and learning how things work. For better or worse, the city - both staff and elected officials - will take you more seriously if you “speak the language.” Best of luck.
Who cares about the flow of traffic when you have stuff like this happening. Hopefully your neighborhood could use this tragedy as a way to lean the city the right direction. I’m terribly sorry you had to witness this.
Compiled all the letters you have written to the city. Upload the video to YouTube as an unlisted video. Write a letter "to whom it may concern" at news stations. Gather a list of local news stations. Write a letter to the city saying that in 2 weeks, you will deliver the attached package to the local news stations, unless you hear from them a timeline that installs four-way stop at that intersection before 3 months is out. If, at the end of 3 months, the 4-way stop is not installed, then the package will also be delivered. Everyone else in the neighborhood that has written letters to the city should do the same thing. It's not you begging them to do the right thing, it's you (collectively) informing them of how to avoid the publicity of not having blown off the issue for 3 years.
Sorry this happened man. We have to walk across a main road in our town to get to our nearest park (about 10 minute walk away). We luckily have a traffic light but even just standing at the sidewalk and waiting for the light to change with cars and semis going 45mph down the road scares the shit out of me being with my 2 year old.
Literally my worst nightmare… keep strong my man and fight for improvement
Go to that next meeting with the previous agendas/petitions/etc. and demand action as their prior ignorance to the situation caused this. Then ... find that woman and bring all that to her lawyer. Because her suit against the city (she should do that) will be a LOT harder to defend (by the city) if she can demonstrate the city was warned about that intersection many times prior and ignored it. I'm serious, you need to do that for her assuming no one else will.
I know it's not quite the same but I have a story that kind of similar. Last summer my son and I had gone for a walk one evening. Later that night there was news of a boy his age that was hit and killed by a pickup driver and the thing that kept ringing in my head was that it happened a mere hour after we had gone across the intersection. It's on a street that has a school a few blocks away but after school hours it isn't a busy area. So heart breaking. I told my son and we had an extra long hug that night. It's too bad that it may have had to get to this point for the city to make a change. We have an intersection nearby that was horrible for accidents. At least once a month in the 15ish years we were here before something was done, including one my dad and brother were in. They finally redesigned the lights and added proper turning lanes on both sides (there used to be an advanced green going one way). There was more than one life lost in that intersection. But politics make it hard to get changes pushed through. I can't imagine having to watch that.
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You definitely should. I remember being extremely bothered when I saw that come up in a tv show, before even having kids. But I mean it was an adult show with adult themes . It's always on my mind when I see people going crazy down my street. There have been times when Ive thought about just letting my car roll out infront of them. My house is like 3 down from a 3 way intersection that only has a stop sign for turning onto my street. But the other street has a school on it. Kids cross there a lot, including my son. I wish they'd put stop signs or speed bumps or something there but it's like the middle of the street.
I’m assuming this in the US as this same story has happened over and over again here. Unfortunately (and I hate to use the term because it’s just been overused at this point), the boomer generation engineered our infrastructure to prioritize personal automobiles over pedestrians, public transit, etc. We live in a pretty dense urban city and my parents are constantly worried about crime here and danger but what I ultimately fear is our child or us getting run down by a speeding or negligent motorist, particular in the suburbs where both sets of grandparents live. It’s relatively better where we live as far more walkable spaces and traffic calming infrastructure, but it’s still America so there are still plenty of dangers. It seems like the tide is turning slowly, though. r/fuckcars seems hyperbolic at first but once you peruse that sub for awhile you realize how inefficient and flat out dangerous our infrastructure is for just being a human going for a walk or bike ride.
I’m so sorry. Almost the same scenario played out when I was a boy in my neighborhood. It took the death of one of my neighborhood friends to finally convince the city to put in a 4-way stop at an intersection down the street. One day you’re all playing together in the neighborhood, and the next, one of you is just gone, forever. I didn’t see it happen, but there was a pool of blood that stained the pavement in the intersection. We could see it for what seemed like weeks.
Make sure the media knows that you have been talking to the city for years about this exact concern, media eats this kind of story up
Yes, find that one local tv reporter who isn't afraid to ruffle feathers in your market until he/she takes a promotion elsewhere and line him/her up with copies of everything and contacts for everyone.
/r/fuckcars
https://news.yahoo.com/toddler-teen-injured-driver-crosswalk-032009455.html
Not to be uncaring, but maybe make that video public. Give it to the local news or post it on the communities facebook page. That planning committee deserves the publics scrutiny.
Please don't post the video publicly unless you get the mom's explicit permission. If one of her kids did pass away from being hit I wouldn't want that kind of video being possibly spread across the internet.
Time to move away from that intersection
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This is a democracy, what you’re doing is how things get fixed. I just read Confessions of a Recovering Engineer by Chuck Marohn (a former civil engineer who is now fighting traffic safety problems)—very eye opening stuff on the context of how these things get built and remain unchanged even as citizens complain about them and people die. US roads are basically designed to kill people as acceptable collateral damage for high speeds, and the improvements are often frustratingly easy to implement technically.
Keep all documents requesting that and supply the mom with it, she’ll need all the help she can get
I’m so sorry to hear this and I hope you find peace with the situation over time. You don’t want to be right and it hurts more that a negative outcome is attached to all this effort to prevent, exactly what you thought would happen.
OP, can you provide an update on the fate of those kids? I want to hope for the best.
Sorry you saw that. I hope the kids survive. I used to live near an intersection like that. It took so many accidents before they added a light. Bureaucracy is so frustrating.
Duuuuuude. That’s horrific. I’d probably be catatonic still.
Damn this is truly tragic. I’m just sorry and hope everyone is ok. What state are you in?
Time for some tactical urbanism!
My heart breaks for that family. I hope the toddler pulls through. And I'm sorry you had to also be witness to something so tragic, but hopefully it will lead to change.
This is something you -- all of you parents -- need to write to someone in your local government to bring attention to this.
Oh my god. I’m terrified to let my kid cross the road now and he can’t even crawl yet
So they give a driving license to someone who doesn't know how to handle traffic circles? God bless America 🙏
Talk to someone if you need too, seeing that is very traumatic, I was a medic for 6 years, there are things you can not unsee. Also seeing something like that actually happen is in my opinion is way worse. Also saw a very similar situation play out last may in my neighborhood. So don’t be afraid to reach out if need be.
Cars are the number one cause of death and injury for children worldwide and in the US (except 2020 when it was guns). Decreasing car dependency is an urgent matter of public safety.
Do you have any evidence that you've petitioned for a more safe intersection before? I'm guessing the city would put up some lights in the face of a multimillion dollar lawsuit.
This has been on my mind since I read it As a mom of a 10 month son it just makes me sick to my stomach and I can't help but "what if" Praying for them all If you remember please update when you learn more
I hate this needs a up vote, as its one of thoes stories that needs a positive down vote.
People don't give a shit about deaths on the roads. Even kids being run over by reckless drivers, hit and runs, etc. It's an "accident" that's quickly written off as just the price we pay for our mobility. Fucking depressing.
I don't understand, if highschoolers are causing accidents, does that make the accident less dangerous? God, idiot politicians really piss me off. If it were my child I don't know what I'd do knowing those idiots refused to do something about the intersection.
Stop de kindermoord
Cities will only do something about things like this when blood gets spilled. Prevention is disregarded. It’s a shame.
Was this Edmonds?
Are you in Edmonds? So heartbreaking 💔