Two twenty-something young women die within three days of one other on area roadways, one crashing into a dump truck and the other a bus, one on route 116, the other just a block from route 116, both in beautiful, bright, afternoon conditions. Not only has the local media not connected them in any way, there have been no follow up articles or reports on the 16 “twenty somethings” (leaving out the 19 year old and the three children) who have lost their lives on the region’s roadways since January 1st.
Most of these deaths have occurred in rural or exurban places like this:
Or this:
Mostly two lane high speed undivided roads.
It doesn’t surprise me that the local media has had nothing to say about the fact that this “long hot summer” has not seen a single homicide in the city of Springfield, you know, during the time of year when “those people” tend to get all violent and stuff, but not writing about distracted driving and the agony untimely death? That is just the sort of human suffering our media is designed to exploit!
Had these deaths involved gangs or drugs you could guarantee that “two dead girls in a week” and “twenty dead young people in a year” would have spawned a whole series of follow ups on the tragedy of violence in our cities and the fear gripping the citizenry as their young people once again run the gauntlet of “Escape from New York” style urban mayhem. On the other hand, thousands of parents are watching their children embrace adulthood in leafy green suburbia, snatching the keys from the hook by the door as they speed off to work, or a date, or just to hang out with friends only vaguely aware that there just might be something really big and terribly tragic going on here.
There are huge campaigns ongoing to end distracted driving.
But no campaigns aimed at the root of the problem: excessive amounts of driving.
We’ve built a system that requires regular human sacrifice. Isn’t that sick?
Yes it is a cost of of society. Root of this specific problem is smart phone use in cars by young folks. I am all in for more interconnected transit options but unless you tax the heck out of gas, and use that $ to build world class transit, you’ll never get Americans to give up their cars which they equate with freedom, esp with the tremendous political power rural America has. Also the vast vast majority of jobs require a car to access them. What do you suggest for public policies to end “excessive amounts of driving”?
What I’m trying to do, limited in scope and effectiveness for sure, is to illustrate that there are “safety” trade offs when you choose to live in an auto centric instead of a walkable place.
I was criticized for raising my daughters, my daughters who still don’t have driver’s licenses, because the city was dangerous. In some ways it is of course, but the data shows that suicide and car accidents are your child’s greatest risks after a certain age, and they are both negatively correlated to density.
I commend you for going carless but it limits opportunities for lots of folks though I do think the trend is in your favor