Danger abounds for city’s walkers
Memphis among worst for pedestrian safety
Before street racers shut down I-240 in January with their antics, local lawmakers had begun working to shut them down.
As they should have.
Sen. Brian Kelsey, R-germantown, and Rep. John Gillespie, R-memphis, introduced a bill in December that would upgrade illegal street racing from a Class B misdemeanor to a Class A misdemeanor. That means anyone convicted of it would face a $2,500 fine and up to a year in jail.
Memphis City Councilman Ford Canale wants the city to pass similar legislation. He’s tabled his bill until Kelsey and Gillespie’s bill passes the legislature.
Yet while outrage comes easy when drivers come face to face with thrill seekers who hold them hostage in traffic and horrify them with stunts that could lead to death, it’s past time for that kind of outrage to be directed at the deaths most people only see in news briefs.
That horror is the epidemic of people being killed by cars who aren’t trying to drive home during rush hour, but who are simply trying to walk across the streets.
“It’s horrible,” said Canale, “and I think drag racing is a piece of that.”
Canale also said he has met with Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner and outgoing Memphis Police Director Michael Rallings on the problem. Among other things, he said he’d like
to develop an ad campaign directed at pedestrian safety.
Something must be done – because that epidemic hasn’t eased for two decades.
According to Dangerous By Design 2021, a report that Smart Growth America released recently, Memphis ranks third among 20 metro areas deemed dangerous for walkers. Between 2010 and 2019, 350 pedestrians were killed here – a death rate of 2.6 people per 100,000.
There’s also this: Between 2005 and 2014, 246 pedestrians were struck and killed on Memphis’ streets. In 2016, the year that report was released, Memphis had a pedestrian death rate of 1.8 per 100,000 people – and was ranked as the ninth-most dangerous city for pedestrians.
“Memphis has been on a steady increase for pedestrian fatalities over the last 10 years, unquestionably,” said Steven Lee Davis, spokesman for Smart Growth America. “It’s been adding pedestrian deaths each time this report has come out…
“Anyway, you cut it, anyway you look at this data, Memphis is headed in the wrong direction in total fatalities.”
The main reason behind Memphis’ streets being so mean for walkers is largely because, as in many other cities, most are designed to help drivers move quickly, instead of helping pedestrians move safely, Davis said.
Many of the pedestrian deaths, for example, are clustered along Highway 79, or Union Avenue. But, Davis said, it shouldn’t be treated as a highway.
“It’s coming right out of downtown (where many pedestrians are),” Davis said. “Marked crosswalks are far apart, and people walking on substandard sidewalks will get hit.”
Many of the pedestrians who are hit by cars are Black. In fact, Black people – who make up 64% of Memphis’ population – are 82% more likely to die from being hit than white people.
Many studies – such as this 2012 study published in the American Journal of Public Health – have found that pedestrian deaths are significantly higher in poor, urban areas than in affluent areas.
In fact, a child was critically injured last month after being struck by a car in South Memphis.
“Cross-sectional surveys have shown that children from lower income families and those living in downtown areas cross more roads, encounter more motor vehicles each day, and have a higher risk of injury,” the report reads.
Yet Memphis didn’t have to be burdened with the title of being a brutal place for walkers.
In 2015, it came up with a Pedestrian and School Safety Action Plan. For the most part, it focused on improving pedestrian infrastructure – such as sidewalks and crosswalks – near schools and other places with high pedestrian traffic.
“It was a data driven effort that looked at crash history, sidewalk conditions, crosswalk conditions all across the city,” said Nicholas Oyler, manager of Memphis’ Bikeway and Pedestrian Program. “There was a list of literally hundreds of projects for improvement.”
But that plan was never implemented because the city was unable to obtain dedicated funding to make it a reality, he said.
“In terms of what we can do right now, people are quick to point to more enforcement, or to write more tickets,” Oyler said. “But that would only be a Band-aid, if that…
“There can never be a solution as long as our streets are dangerous by design.”
There also will be no solutions as long as low-income and vulnerable people continue to be reduced to invisibility. Think about it.
When the street racers kept jamming up local roads, when they blocked the interstate and inconvenienced thousands of motorists of all income levels, lawmakers were appalled enough to act.
And, ironically, the drag racing is an outgrowth of America’s love of speed and cars – a passion that underlies Memphis’ pedestrian fatalities. There’s even a television series, “Street Outlaws: Memphis,” that glamorizes street racing.
Yet when it comes to dedicated funding to protect pedestrians from cars, or, for that matter, to help the Memphis Area Transit Authority add more buses and routes so that maybe some of those walkers can catch the bus, there’s no money.
Help may be on the way, though. U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-memphis, has, along with his congressional colleagues, reintroduced the Complete Streets Act. Among other things, the act is designed to make streets work for pedestrians and bicyclists, as opposed to just motor vehicles. It also requires states to set aside 5% of their federal highway funding to create a “Complete Streets” program.
“This would give the city more access to federal projects, and maybe this money could be used to help improve intersections,” Cohen said.
“We have a lot of places that don’t have sidewalks, and people just walk on the side of the road … just putting in medians and landscaping, these things aren’t as frequent in South Memphis, and people get killed.”
To be sure, this column is not intended to be a criticism of Kelsey, Gillespie and Canale’s efforts to end street racing. It doesn’t take much to see the danger in that, and how it can lead to more carnage on Memphis’ streets.
Yet as those three lawmakers rightfully call for stiffer penalties for racers who threaten lives and disrupt schedules by blocking roads and interstates, it is urgent that all Memphians realize that while the motorists among them may be shocked by drivers who create havoc with their vehicles, Memphians who lack cars are at the greatest risk of being killed in traffic.
By trying to navigate streets built for vehicles and not for them.
You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Tonyaa Weathersbee at 901568-3281, tonyaa.weathersbee@commercialappeal.com or follow her on Twitter @tonyaajw.