She was 10

Davina Afokoba, just 10, was on her way home from school with her older brother when her life ended in a crash of glass and steel. An SUV with a 35-year-old behind the wheel jumped the curb and pinned her to the outside of a Far Rockaway car wash. So much life was in this girl. It all ended in a single, gruesome act, the type that our city used to routinely call an “accident.” We no longer use that word, because we now know that crashes almost all have causes.

In this case, the vehicle’s back bumper included a sticker, “New Driver Please Be Patient,” along with a temporary paper license plate. Witnesses say, in an attempt to make a left turn, the driver went too far into the street as she waited for traffic to slow. “She gunned it and went straight into the building,” said an onlooker. “She meant to take the left, but she went straight.” When she saw what she’d done, she was vomiting, wailing, devastated.

We should all share her agony. A little more than eight years after Mayor de Blasio unveiled his well-intentioned Vision Zero strategy to stop such senseless deaths, the loss of Davina continues a grim drumbeat that made 2021 the deadliest year on New York City streets since 2013. Among 273 total deaths were 124 defenseless pedestrians.

There is no single, simple way to make sidewalks and crosswalks safer, but Mayor Adams must take every sane step, from intersection redesigns to enhanced enforcement to scaling back or eliminating known-to-be-hazardous left-hand turns. Albany, which meddles in far too many ways, must let New York City control its streets.

We need help from Washington, where officials are reeling from a 12% national spike in traffic fatalities in the nine months of 2021. A new U.S. Department of Transportation plan calls, among other things, for accelerating the rollout of anti-collision emergency braking technology and other innovations. Credible estimates say that could save up to 20,000 lives nationwide. Davina might have been one of them. Pray and plan and protest so the next life can be spared.