Pedestrians are no match for Houston’s mean streets

Pass given to police chief sets poor example for drivers

Statistics tell a frightening story about how Houston drivers view pedestrians.

Houston is ranked 41st out of 51 major cities in terms of pedestrian safety. A Houston Chronicle analysis in August 2011 also showed that in a 3½-year span of time, only 17 percent of drivers involved in 174 fatal pedestrian accidents were prosecuted.

But nowhere is there a clearer indication of the widespread lack of concern for pedestrians than with last week’s accident involving Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland. The chief hit a pedestrian while driving to police headquarters in a city vehicle. Amazingly, McClelland will not be charged for this accident, despite the fact that the pedestrian had the right of way.

Why should anyone else care how they should drive around pedestrians?

In November 2010, I was hit by a car while walking to school.

At the time of my accident, I was a graduate student at Baylor College of Medicine seeking a doctorate in developmental biology. I thought my contribution to Baylor’s research community would be as an author of scientific papers; instead, my contribution was as a participant in a study of young survivors of mild traumatic brain injuries.

On my first trip into Houston, I looked out the cab window and saw gray highways filled with speeding SUVs, trucks and inattentive drivers. I was 25 and had never owned a car; I preferred not to drive. Parking at the Texas Medical Center cost $175 per month, and the student discount for the Metro bus — 60 cents a ticket — fit my budget.

Every morning, I got off the bus at the intersection of University and Main Street. Every morning, I walked across Main, then Fannin. I could take pedestrian bridges once I entered the Medical Center, but there was no way to avoid crossing Main Street. One day, my luck ran out.

The morning of my accident, I woke up early to go to school. I had a full day of meetings and experiments planned. My busy life — which was slowly unfurling toward a promising future — came to a halt when I saw a car speeding toward me. I had a millisecond to process the event and to understand what was happening before I felt a rolling sensation, a single aching thought of “this is it,” and then blackness.

I woke up on the concrete to pain and the sensation of blood gushing down my face. I was a small and fragile body pitted against the overwhelming traffic of Houston. And I had lost the fight.

Hours after my accident, as I lay on a gurney in an operating room at Ben Taub Hospital, a police officer asked for my statement. After I told the officer what happened — that the car drove up on the median, hitting me along with other pedestrians — he promised me that the driver would never drive again.

At the time, I trusted his words. I trusted that the police were working to keep the streets safe for other pedestrians. Now, with the pass the police chief received, I don’t know anymore.

Because I don’t want my story to be commonplace, I’ve signed a petition that calls on the Houston City Council to open streets to pedestrians once a week.

This initiative, “May 1,000 Night Walks Bloom,” is on MoveOn.org and Facebook, and is designed to make walking a fun and safe activity for the entire community.

Another local effort, Complete Streets, aims to do the same, calling on the city to design streets with multiple users in mind — cars, bicyclists and pedestrians — an initiative that could keep the streets safer for everyone.

There are many points in Houston where pedestrians take their lives into their own hands crossing crowded lanes of traffic. Pedestrians need to do better about staying in crosswalks and obeying traffic laws, sure. But what will that matter if drivers who violate the same laws and hurt pedestrians aren’t prosecuted, like McClelland?

We owe it to the people around us — our family, our friends, our neighbors — to improve pedestrian safety in our city.