If you read nothing more about these incidents than what appeared in the Twitter feeds of local media organizations, you’d have to conclude that Savannah was being menaced by an autonomous automobile:

WTOC: 1 dead, 3 injured after car plows into workers
WJCL/WTGS: 1 dead, 3 injured after car strikes workers
WSAV: Car Strikes Construction Workers, Killing 1 and Injuring 3

Only the Savannah Morning News described this crash accurately (emphasis mine):

Driver hits construction workers in Landings subdivision, killing one

Unfortunately, that good work was undone in the lede (again, emphasis mine):

“A 27-year-old man was killed Monday when a car struck him and three co-workers at a road construction site in the Landings subdivision.”

Even the make of the car (Acura) merits a mention before the identity of the human inside it. To make matters worse, the story labels the man’s death as “a mishap.” These incidents are truly tragic. Those who survive, including drivers, will deal with physical and psychological consequences for the rest of their lives. When we assign blame to inanimate objects, we allow ourselves to avoid considering the truth about what happened.

Journalists are hardworking people who are under the constant pressure of looming deadlines. Why not cut them some slack? And really, it’s all just semantics, right?

The problem is that constant reinforcement of the idea that cars are killing people has a numbing effect on our attitudes about traffic deaths. Or as more eloquently explained here:

“This personification of vehicles that maim or kill people (e.g., ‘car hits man on bicycle’) is so common, we think nothing of it, any more than we think twice about describing completely preventable crashes as ‘accidents.’”

The aggregate effect is that we have become sadly tolerant of traffic deaths, according to Tom Vanderbilt:

“As the leading cause of death for people aged 1 to 34 years old in the U.S., traffic deaths represent nothing short of a public health crisis, not a collection of ‘accidents,’ and should be treated as such.”

Please understand I’m not suggesting the drivers involved in these crashes intended to kill or injure people or damage property. Perhaps they were suffering from acute medical problems or another issues completely beyond their control. We may never know as the public usually doesn’t learn the results of traffic investigations, unless major charges are filed. After the initial story, there’s usually not follow up coverage revealing factors that contributed to the crash. We are left a but shallow and often incorrect understanding of a tragic event. All we know is that a person was “killed by a car” in an “accident.”

It’s hard to imagine a better example of backwards-looking ideas than House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica’s proposed transportation reauthorization bill, which he announced yesterday. It will eliminate dedicated federal funding for bicycling and walking. Mica apparently deems spending in these areas to be “not in the federal interest.” Meanwhile Sen. James Inhofe, the lead Republican negotiator on the transportation bill in the Senate, has stated one of his top three priorities is to eliminate “frivolous spending” on bicycle facilities, according to the League of American Bicyclists.

These merciless cuts are not aimed at reducing the deficit, reviving the economy, creating jobs, improving transportation choices or serving the American people.

• Did the lawmakers consider a national study finds that bicycle and pedestrian projects create 46 percent more jobs per dollar invested than road-only projects?
• Did they consider the impact of transportation spending that will keep millions of Americans dependent on their cars for every single trip they make, contributing to obesity rates that have climbed at least 90 percent in 17 states from 1995 to last year?
• Did they consider the medical care costs of obesity totaled more about $147 billion on 2008 dollars?
• Did they consider the real economic benefits millions of individual Americans derive from using bicycles for transportation?

It’s clear they did not.

The image above reflects the Savannah Morning News website as it appeared yesterday morning. Look at the headlines on the right side. Is there a common thread?

The individual descriptions of death and injury just wash over us as we read journalists’ accounts of automobile “accidents.” But consider how we would react to these stories if they reported the spread of a deadly infectious disease, which could be prevented in many cases. I imagine there would be public outcry and demand for swift and comprehensive action to reduce and death and suffering.

Yet, we accept the stream of awful news from our streets and roadways as the price of doing business, the cost of maintaining our freedom to drive everywhere we go and get there as fast as we can. This freedom is of course illusory. We are trapped behind the wheel, numbed to the tremendous sacrifices our automobile-centric lifestyles demand. We seem resigned to the kind of human suffering that makes headlines. And we are often completely unaware of the kind that takes its toll over time. Some of us are suspicious of the very things that would help us escape from our rolling cages and into communities that are healthier, safer, more livable, more sustainable and more economically vibrant.

Yesterday’s news wasn’t all bad, though. Here’s the story behind the headline, “No texting while driving law making impact.”

The problem is our dependence on oil is bigger than the Gulf of Mexico and bigger than BP. Deepwater Horizon is arguably the largest and most publicized example of our tragic addiction to oil, but it is no way the first. Our national failure to consider more sustainable ways to live, work and get from place to place will continue to cause us increasingly severe and eventually debilitating environmental, military, political, financial and human rights headaches. And as we move on down the right hand side of the Peak Oil curve, these problems will become more numerous and difficult to solve.

Boycotting BP, then, is kind of like switching from Marlboros to Camels to spite Phillip Morris, while continuing to smoke two packs a day. We might feel vindicated in the short term and RJ Reynolds will be happy to take our money, but we’ll suffer the same terrible consequences in the end.

While our addiction to oil has shown up only at the margins of the national debate of how to best punish BP, some interesting things are happening in the background. As summarized by Richard Florida in The Great Car Reset: “Younger people today – in fact, people of all ages – no longer see the car as a necessary expense or a source of personal freedom.” If fewer young people falling in love with automobile culture, for whom are we continuing to build automobile infrastructure? In a cruel twist of fate, we may be creating it for people now (including our families and ourselves), who will become imprisoned by it later. The question is how much more money and effort we will devote to building an automobile-centric transportation system that future generations will not need and that will work against the interests of the people who are currently demanding it? How many more disasters will we tolerate to feed our demand for oil?

A local trend of note was reported yesterday by the Savannah Bicycle Campaign. A recently completed bicycle census finds that bicycle use in Savannah has increased dramatically, or at least was seriously underestimated in the past. Either way, there is more excellent news about who is riding in Savannah. As described here, “Women are considered an ‘indicator species’ for bike-friendly cities”:

“If you want to know if an urban environment supports cycling, you can forget about all the detailed ‘bikeability indexes’—just measure the proportion of cyclists who are female,” says Jan Garrard, a senior lecturer at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, and author of several studies on biking and gender differences.

Savannah saw a 33 percent increase in the proportion of women cyclists over the 2009 census number. That’s even more reason to provide additional bicycle infrastructure. It also offers cause to pause before spending mountains of money on road projects that will keep us hooked on driving in the short term.

It’s important to remember that some people don’t have that option. Because of financial, health or other reasons, bicycles are not alternative transportation, but transportation plain and simple. The rest of us, who do have the option to drive, may be curious about the beneficial aspects of riding a bike to work. If there’s one day to give it a try, it’s this Friday. National Bike-to-Work Day will be observed in Savannah with a 2Wheels 2Work bicycle convoy, sponsored by the Savannah Bicycle Campaign, The City of Savannah and the Chatham Environmental Forum. Bicycle commuters will enjoy free coffee from Jittery Joe’s and the company of other cyclists. Full details are available on the Savannah Bicycle Campaign Web site.

Local media outlets, over the last several years, have published and aired scores of stories about the dangers faced by pedestrians on our streets. These accounts usually follow the death or injury of a pedestrian and almost always include quotes from law enforcement officials warning pedestrians to use crosswalks, even when doing so would require a pedestrian to walk miles out of his or her way. Even when there’s no compelling evidence a pedestrian would have been safer in a crosswalk. Local journalists have seemed unable to make the connection between pedestrian casualties and streets that are dangerous by design. Until now.

In yesterday’s Savannah Morning News, Eric Curl included the words “street design” in his story “Parents, officials decry speeders at Montgomery Crossroad school zone.” As far as I can tell, this is the first time a local news story has used these words and made the connection between the design of the street and the danger it presents to pedestrians. To be sure, other local media personnel — City Talk columnist Bill Dawers being chief among them — have argued that a Complete Streets approach will make streets safer. However, Curl’s may be the first story about pedestrian safety to suggest automobile-centric street design makes streets dangerous.

Curl begins to zero in on the problem with this passage:

Those familiar with the problem say enforcement is only one component to solving it. Signage, street design and education also play a role.

Yes! He actually wrote the words “street design.” Now we are getting somewhere. Here’s a passage that describes potential solutions:

Many would like to see signs and lights added over the road so that they would be easier to see. In addition, the brush needs to be trimmed back in some areas where it obscures the signs, Stewart said. Road markers are another option being considered.

OK. Now we are talking about things next to the street, above the street and painted on the street. But what about the street itself? Is there something about it that makes it inherently dangerous for pedestrians? Could it be that it is five (and in some places, six) lanes wide and designed to maximize motor vehicle speed? We almost get there. But not quite. Here are some thoughts from two police officers:

“I am not an expert in traffic engineering so will yield to their expertise,” he said. Police Capt. Scott Simpkins said the problem is not unique to St. James. “It’s a continuing problem with the multilane roadways,” Simpkins said. “We’re doing what we can.”

Astute readers will note that yielding to the expertise of traffic engineers is exactly what produced the current dangerous situation. Afterall, Montgomery Crossroad isn’t a natural occurrence. It isn’t a path worn away over the eons by tidal creeks. It was designed by traffic engineers. Its design encourages speeding. Its design makes the street deadly for pedestrians. Without addressing these core issues, it will continue to be dangerous no matter how much enforcement attention is focused on it.

Still, Simpkins defines the scope of the situation and connect the dots between local streets that claim the lives of people who walk. Abercorn Street Extension. Ogeechee Road. Montgomery Crossroad. Mall Boulevard. Hodgson Memorial. All are multilane. All have pedestrian crossings spaced widely apart. All were designed to maximize car capacity and speed. All are dangerous by design.

1. Pedestrian is killed or injured on a local street that’s dangerous by design.
2. News media coverage of the incident uncritically repeats law enforcement warnings that pedestrians should use crosswalks.
3. Readers and viewers of news media coverage  jump at the chance to share stories about “stupid” pedestrians who represent “a nuisance to motorists” because they don’t use crosswalks.

One interesting thing about  WTOC-TV’s coverage was the only cursory mention of a vehicle that hit the pedestrian and left the scene. Instead of exploring that important detail, the report instead spent time blaming the pedestrian for failing to use a crosswalk that does not exist. From the transcript of the broadcast:

“Police say especially when it’s dark the real danger is not using a crosswalk. ‘He was wearing dark clothing the area here is not well lit and it’s not a crosswalk area. Our closest crosswalk is 400 to 500 yards down the road. You know without street lights and dark clothing that’s likely the driver did not see him,’ said [Garden City Police Sgt. Benji] Selph.”

Did you get that? I’ll repeat it again: “Police say especially when it’s dark the real danger is not using a crosswalk.” Sorry, that’s just not true. The real danger is the design of the street itself, which Selph helpfully describes. The crosswalks are hundreds of yards apart and the lighting is poor. And that’s not even mentioning the five lanes of high speed motor vehicle traffic dissecting an urban area in which many residents depend on their feet or bicycles for daily transportation. Crosswalks or not, as long as these factors remain unchanged, people will continue to die on Ogeechee Road. I have no doubt Selph’s advice to use crosswalks was issued with the best intentions. The design of the street, the true culprit in many pedestrian deaths, is beyond his jurisdiction. All he can do is respond to the carnage.

Still, when Selph and his colleagues instinctively repeat the “use crosswalks” mantra, it automatically becomes part of almost every single local news story on pedestrian deaths. Thus, the pedestrian shoulders the blame, even when the closest crosswalk is five football fields away. Do we really expect normal people to walk this far out of the way to cross the street? Really? In a community where able-bodied people feel entitled to park on sidewalks (and usually do so without attracting any attention from law enforcement agencies) in order to save a couple steps?

It appears that we do expect people who walk to endure all sorts of inconveniences we’d never tolerate. And every news story that blames pedestrians for dying on streets that are dangerous by design fuels the unreasonable anger toward people who walk. It reinforces the idea that pedestrians are the problem even when they are not. And it endorses an unfortunate way of thinking about the design of our streets and the behavior of the people who use them, as described in this piece called The Taming of The Motorcar, which was forwarded to me today by a kind Sustainable Savannah reader:

“It is felt that by training the members of the human population, buy teaching them certain tricks, like walking at ‘green’ and stopping at ‘red,’ by putting them behind fences or chains along curbs, their spirit of individuality and independence can be broken so that they will be willing to submit to the regime of the automotive beings.”

Thankfully, that kind of thinking — while still popular among many motorists here in Savannah — was directly contradicted today  by a new United States Department of Transportation Policy Statement. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood described this as the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized. The key recommendations for state departments of transportation  and communities include:

•    Treat walking and bicycling as equals with other transportation modes.
•    Ensure convenient access for people of all ages and abilities.
•    Go beyond minimum design standards.
•    Collect data on walking and biking trips.
•    Set a mode share target for walking and bicycling.
•    Protect sidewalks and shared-use paths the same way roadways are protected
•    Improve nonmotorized facilities during maintenance projects.

Following these recommendations will not only reduce pedestrian deaths and injuries, they will create healthy and vibrant communities. And that’s something no amount of warning people to use crosswalks will accomplish.

Landers describes the study’s methodology, which uses a variety of data sources “to come up with a block-by-block analysis of how convenient it is to choose fresh and healthy over fatty and fast. The group calculated a ‘food balance’ score for each city block by dividing the distance from it to any mainstream food provider (such as Kroger) by the distance to any fringe food venue (such as McDonald’s).”

The story  notes that lack of healthy food options is not exlusive to low income, inner city neighborhoods:

Kathryn Martin, chair of Healthy Savannah, knows that from first-hand experience. She’s lived in Southbridge since she moved to Savannah six years ago. “Southbridge is considered affluent, but when I moved there the closest place to access healthy food was 7 miles away in Pooler,” said Martin, a former administrator of the Chatham County Health Department who now is the Medical College of Georgia assistant dean for Southeast Georgia campus. “Officially, I was in a food desert.”

The difference, of course, between affluent communities such as Southbridge and some other neighborhoods is that nearly everyone in Southbridge has access to a car (sometimes more than one car) and thus easy access to healthy food. In other parts of Savannah, where residents depend on public transportation to travel outside their neighborhoods, the food that’s easy to find is often not the healthiest choice. And the study addresses this in one of its recommendations:

Identify traffic routes, especially pedestrian pathways, to mainstream food venues and identify ways to shorten and improve those routes. The dot maps showing the locations of mainstream and fringe food venues will aid in prioritizing where to start on this task.

The study, “A New Day in the Garden: A Food Desert and Food Balance Analysis in Savannah, Georgia,” can be downloaded here.

On Thursday, Dec. 3 at 7 p.m. the “preferred concept,” produced by the recent Project DeRenne charettes, will be unveiled in a former auto parts store at 131 W. DeRenne Ave. I’m interested to see what the folks from Kimley-Horne, working with city officials and citizens of all walks of life, have created. In a recent column in the Savannah Morning News, Project DeRenne coordinator Susan Broker explained how fortunate we are that previous ideas for the corridor never became realities:

“Imagine if we had built the first concept proposed to solve DeRenne’s traffic problems. The mid-city gateway into Savannah would now be an elevated expressway, greatly devaluing some of Savannah’s best neighborhoods and closing dozens of existing businesses. The second round of concepts was no better: Expanding lanes of pavement would have consumed the very neighborhoods they were intended to support. Neither of these concepts was deemed acceptable to the communities surrounding DeRenne Avenue.”

The common element between both the plans Broker mentions is that they focus on only one thing: Moving more cars at faster speeds. Cities around the country are currently spending mountains of money to undo the damage done to their communities by similar projects.

Project DeRenne presents an opportunity for our community to look toward the future, instead of repeating others’ past mistakes. It offers an opportunity to ensure that Savannah neighborhoods remain livable for years to come, instead of aiming solely to shave a couple minutes off the commutes of folks who don’t even live here. It provides an opportunity to understand that Project DeRenne has implications beyond traffic, including public health.

For more information, visit the Project DeRenne Web site.

First, Dawers’ accurately describes the recently reduced jaywalking fines for what they are: a distraction from the main issue. Yes, the original fines were exorbitant, but the idea that the crackdown is an effective public safety measure remains unchallenged by almost everyone in the local media (except Dawers) and even by citizens who organized a Facebook group and a petition drive.

Will an enforcement campaign, directed almost entirely against pedestrians, reduce injuries and fatalities? Dawers knows the crackdown is unlikely to produce that result because it ignores a critical point:

“The core problem of drivers who are ignorant of the law and who drive recklessly through downtown will not be addressed by going after jaywalkers who are making perfectly safe decisions for themselves.”

Next, Dawers tackles another popular local legend, which holds that pedestrians routinely leap out of azalea bushes and fling themselves into the paths of innocent motorists.

“Never once have I had a pedestrian step in front of me in a way that forced me to slam on my brakes. Tap them? Sure. It’s been mildly annoying a few times, but hardly hazardous. For the most part, I’d say that drivers who routinely complain about having to make drastic maneuvers are going too fast, not paying attention to conditions in front of them, or simply exaggerating the circumstances.”

This reminds me of a recent item in the Savannah Morning News’ Vox Populi comment section, in which a reader reported being “so tired of rude, arrogant and selfish pedestrians deliberately stepping in front of my vehicle.” Another claimed the presence of pedestrians made Oglethorpe Avenue “one of the scarier streets in Savannah to drive down” and complained about the indignity of having to “drive below the speed limit.”

As Dawers mentioned in a previous column, the sense of entitlement held by these drivers has no doubt been reinforced by the jaywalking crackdown. At the same time, motorists are free to impede pedestrian traffic — not for just moments — but hours or days at a time without fear of police intervention. On Saturday I made the 2.5 mile trip from my home to my office and counted five cars parked on or otherwise blocking sidewalks or crosswalks along the way.

While having to walk around a car parked on a sidewalk or in a crosswalk may be a minor inconvenience for pedestrians (perhaps on par with a motorist having to tap the brakes to allow a pedestrian to cross the street) for citizens with mobility or visual impairments, it’s a different story. Motorists create dangerous situations and impassible obstacles when they choose to park where people need to walk.

And it’s the need to walk that ties together the two topics of Dawers’ column this week. He leads with an appreciation of the star of the Savannah-based reality TV show, “Ruby,” noting she is an “inspirational figure” for many people struggling with “the ups and downs of dieting.” A TIME magazine story from this week entitled “Why are Southerners so Fat?” acknowledges the role of deep-fried diets, but also points to physical inactivity, due to poor infrastructure, as a cause. The story’s author notes that many Southern states have “a surprising lack of sidewalks” and this discourages “even the most eager pedestrians.” Add insufficient or nonexistent public transportation and the result is “for most people, the best way to get around is by car.”

Here in Savannah (or at least the parts of town developed before World War II) we are lucky to have plenty of sidewalks. Still, by vilifying pedestrians and failing to hold motorists accountable, we have come up with new ways to discourage “even the most eager pedestrians.” Continuing down this road could bring serious public safety and public health consequences. At the very least, it will convince could people that “the best way to get around is by car,” even when it isn’t.