How Death Can Inspire Us to Build Better Cities
They shared just 206 days as husband and wife, according to their wedding website. I stumbled across that website while looking for answers about his untimely death.
This week my friend Justin became one of the countless victims of traffic violence. He was killed after another driver made a sudden stop in the rain, his correction throwing him from his motorcycle into the path of another moving vehicle. He was transported to the hospital but pronounced dead shortly thereafter.
To our local police department, the hospital system, and our state’s Department of Transportation, Justin will be a statistic — a number tallied among many others who have met a similar fate. These statistics will be thrown around in board meetings and political speeches. They will be studied, reduced to terms like “fatality,” and acronyms like “MVA” (motor vehicle accident). And, worse, these statistics will be used by traffic planners and engineers to justify the very types of roadway projects that lead to these numbers. I know that last part firsthand.
But here’s the thing: Justin is not a statistic. He was someone’s husband, someone’s son, someone’s neighbor, and a friend to many. His texts and GroupMe messages remain in my phone. His loss will long be mourned by relatives, coworkers, and his fellow churchgoers. His loss will be forever noticed.
The same is true for the other forty-thousand Americans who died on our streets during the past year. When we cut through our desensitization, we are reminded that they were all once children who laughed and cried and learned things. As they grew up, they experienced love and heartbreak. And, without exception, their departure from this earth left behind a sea of aching hearts, not to mention trauma for those first responders whose jobs are to clean up the wreckage.
Why do we accept such carnage on our roads, anyway? Is it fine that we sacrifice the equivalent population of cities like Brea, California, or Hagerstown, Maryland, each year? As a believer in the value of each human life, understanding that each person is made in the image of God, I am unsatisfied with the status quo which suggests traffic deaths are simply the cost of doing business.
When I was writing my book, Faith in Cities, I looked to find examples of churches and other faith leaders in support of Vision Zero — the proclamation that there is no moral justification for loss of life on our streets. I found almost none. On the contrary, I found evidence of pastors actively opposing efforts to build dedicated bike lanes on the grounds these amenities would limit parking for their members, even though research shows that slowing cars and encouraging alternate ways of getting around actually reduces traffic-related deaths. And, in global cities that are taking Vision Zero efforts seriously, many more lives are being spared.
Whether or not you consider yourself a person of faith, I think we can all agree that there is dignity in each human life. Young or old, light-skinned or dark-skinned, American or not, none are less worthy of life than another. It is what I believe Jesus demonstrated during his time on earth 2,000 years ago. Therefore, it is not enough to offer “thoughts and prayers” when lives are lost while going from Point A to Point B. As Boston-based pastor and author Laura Everett was quoted in a recent CityLab article, “we can do better than sacrificing people to the road.”
So, then, how do we honor the lives of people like my friend Justin? For starters, we must come to terms with how our choices lead to these tragedies. As we spread out in order to accommodate our appetites for private space — large homes with large yards and space to store our cars — the more roads we need to connect all these places. The more spread out we become, the more we must rely on our cars to move from place to place. They are, in effect, prosthetic devices, but with plush seating. And, because our cars take up so much more space than we do, our roads have grown ever larger, too.
As our street network expands, so does our ability to drive farther. As our driving distances increase, saving time requires driving faster. In order to drive more quickly, engineers design those roads for faster speeds by reducing curves, widening lanes, removing trees and other things that might impede our vision. These designs are funded and built in the name of safety, ironic since we know that speed is the single biggest factor that determines whether a vehicle crash leads to one’s death.
Vision Zero isn’t just about believing that roadway deaths can magically disappear. It is about taking real actions in response to the knowledge that people — whether in cars, on bicycles, or on foot — aren’t perfect, no matter how many laws we pass. We can no longer allow planners and engineers to sell us infrastructure that relies on the false promise of fast-and-safe. Instead, Vision Zero tells us to reengineer our spaces so that our inevitable mistakes don’t lead to more deaths. While I won’t go into all the interventions here, I would say that it boils down to three major themes:
- Redesign our streets so that driving more slowly feels natural and that driving on “autopilot” feels unnatural.
- Create robust enforcement systems so that unsafe driving is actively discouraged.
- Create a complete network of spaces for people to get around without a car if they choose, including comfortable sidewalks, fully-separated bike lanes, and reliable public transportation.
Here’s the amazing part: when we make the effort to build safer streets for all, we don’t just save lives (which should be enough by itself). We also end up with better communities. Less space for fast-moving cars means more space for great places. Places that attract the young and the old back into the public realm. Places that encourage physical activity, foster social interaction, and reduce stress. Places with cleaner air and less crime.
At Justin’s funeral, his family and friends all remarked how welcoming he was to others. He had a warm, infectious smile that won people’s hearts. Out of a genuine love for others, he and his wife frequently invited people to their home and to their church. Imagine how many more lives can be touched by people like Justin if we had better places where we can encounter them? If, rather than risking our lives behind the wheel with barely a second thought, we chose a slower, more deliberate path instead? A path to deeper relationships, to longer lives with more opportunities, and to better health.
To some of you, the humanization of streets sounds too good to be true. The goal of zero traffic deaths too lofty. But, I’d say to you there are people out there today who live in places where these dreams are reality, or at least fast becoming that way. Chris and Melissa Bruntlett, a couple I interviewed for my book, recently moved from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Delft, a mid-sized city in The Netherlands well known for its friendliness to bicycle commuting. On Twitter, they recently described the move this way:
“Imagine spending your entire life standing in a cloud of flies. Hearing, seeing, moving, and breathing are possible, but not without a struggle. Now imagine stepping into a world in which those flies have mostly disappeared.”
That has been my dream for San Antonio, Texas, where I live now, and for all our cities. And, now, it is also my dream so that others won’t have to know the kind of loss that this world now knows without Justin.
