Thinking of the Current Transportation System as a Health and Safety Issue

All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

You've got to say, 
"I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!" 


Three vehicular events in the Silicon Valley area this weekend highlight the fact that we are all subject to property damage, trauma, critical injury and even death from vehicles.  With this weekends death of a solo driver in Los Altos, a hit and run pedestrian accident in downtown San Jose, and a hit and run accident involving two cyclists, we need to stop and seriously consider the pain and suffering these events cause.

I am acquainted with Ashley (Ashleigh), through work and we share several mutual friends.  Ashley was riding with her boyfriend  this weekend when she was struck by a car that drove into the bike lane.  As I have written before, death and injury has visited family members, a favored author (David Hallberstam's tragic death near the Dumbarton Bridge), three high school friends, a college friend, and bike riding buddies.  Many years ago, while riding my bike, I witnessed a accident victim's final seconds as the blood from his head flowed onto the asphalt, on that early spring morning.  I was stunned and helpless.  Unable to move the truck that had just slammed his head to the ground and was now pinning his body to the roadway, all  I remember was the color of  his face, and how it seemed to change color the more his blood drained from his motionless head.

Several years after witnessing speeding and erratic behavior by a driver on a southbound San Diego Freeway, I came upon the prostrate body of the driver in the middle lane; motionless as we drove by, suddenly making the connection that the driver had met his end in his own horrific way.

With almost two years of a car free lifestyle under my belt, people often ask me; "isn't bike riding dangerous?  I'm to afraid to ride my bike.  I think I'll just go to a spin class instead."  First, bikes can be dangerous, but not many people fail to consider the large number of car accidents every year; whether classified as solo vehicular accidents, alcohol related accidents, accidents due to youth and inexperience, or just sheer and utter stupidity.  We seem to just accept, "as if that's the way it's supposed to be.   

"We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone." 

Ask anyone who rides or walks and they will tell you horror stories of the streets.  Freeing yourself from the cocoon of your car you notice more.  In the two years since my own accident, I have witnessed four accidents involving a car running a red light ( myself  a victem as well).  Of those four, I was the first responder on three of them.  One involved a person trying to flee the scene.  Six victims required medical attention.  

 In the two years since giving up my car in favor of a lifestyle involving cycling, walking and public transportation as a means of mobility, I have kept tract of most of the accidents involving cars, whether solo, with other cars, with bicycles, or pedestrians.  Also motorcycle accidents; which seem almost to be predictable in rider age and accident location are document.

We strikes me and also troubles me the most however is the continued increase in hit and run accidents involving pedestrians and cyclists.  I have read somewhere that it may approach 50%.  That would be one out of two accidents involve a vehicle leaving the scene; an absolute disgrace on any measure of moral, ethic, or civic responsibility.

Anyway here are three Google Maps so far that I have put together.
(Blue - Vehicle, Red - Pedestrian, Yellow - Motorcycle, Green - Cyclists) Dot in the marker represents a fatality.

2007

2008 

2009