City News Briefs
Local advocates erect memorial signs to honor people slain from being hit by cars
In response to recent pedestrian deaths, local advocates have installed memorial markers to honor their memory and remind motorists of how dangerous a car can be. It only takes a few seconds of distraction to lead to a catastrophic situation.
The memorials are red boards with a pedestrian symbol and the date of the crash. Local advocates erected the signs at the sites of each of the five most recent crashes.
“Our roads are designed so that people can drive without thinking and without being aware of their surroundings,” says Zack Barowitz, a long-time advocate for bicycle and pedestrian transportation. “While this may sound like a good strategy, it isn’t, because safe driving means being engaged in your surroundings; and the consequences can be dire.”
The advocates want a way to express the problem both in terms of lives lost and the collective harm to the community. “Every person killed in a traffic accident is not just an unnecessary loss, but a damage to us all,” says Barowitz. “So we wanted to make memorials to be colleective, but also site specific like ‘ghostbikes’ for slain cyclists.”
The locations of the memorials are:
- 654 Riverside (near Waldron Way and HSC). Crash date: 2/23/25.
- India/Middle. Crash date: 1/3/25.
- Franklin/Congress. Crash date: 11/6/24.
- Walton/Forest. Crash date: 3/2/25.
- Brighton Avenue (at Taft). Crash date:12/14/22.
