Mayor Bowser, Members of Council, and Members of ANCs 4A and 1C,
I think I linked to this post in my message last night, but I wanted to reiterate something Dave Salovesh wrote, in a conversation about bike helmets with Andrew Trueblood, four weeks before he was killed:
Vision Zero isn’t a cycling program. It looks like that here because #BikeDC is vocal about it, but the 40,000 people a year who die in car crashes all deserved better laws, practices, and designs.
As if to further illustrate the point, Abdul Seck is dead now, too. He’s the Bronx man who was walking on 16th St SE when someone drove through an occupied intersection at high speed, hitting and rolling a second car, which hit Abdul.
Like Dave Salovesh, Abdul Seck was killed by a driver this weekend on a stretch of road where neighbors have said for years people routinely drive dangerously, two blocks from the intersection where Marcellus Rooths was killed by a driver while riding a motorcycle last fall. Kenilworth Avenue NE, where Sherron Pressley was killed last summer; Pennsylvania Ave NW, where Monica Adams Carlson and her mother, Cora Louise Adams, were killed just before Christmas; Constitution Avenue, where Thomas Hollowell was killed last fall—these are all places people have long said are dangerous for everyone around because of the way people drive, and/or where people have been killed previously.
I’ve heard a previous mayor once made the mistake of pitching bike lanes as an economic development program that would help attract new residents. And, indeed, people do prefer to live and work in places that are safe, pleasant places to get around, and will avoid places that are (rightly or wrongly) known as death-traps. But this is not about attracting new residents and tourists to DC, this is about not killing the ones we already have. Whether they are residents like Dave Salovesh, Marcellus Rooths, or Sherron Pressley, suburban commuters like Thomas Hollowell, or visitors from out of town like Abdul Seck, Monica Carlson, Cora Adams, and Carol Tomason, they “all deserved better laws, practices, and designs”.
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