There were at least two incidents in August, just in Connecticut, in which a motor vehicle was used as explicitly as a weapon. A teenage girl in New Britain, intent on running down her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend, struck five people, including a child. There were injuries and property damage. She fled the crime scene, but was later charged with five counts of first-degree assault. There has been no follow-up on how those injured people are faring today.

In Meriden, 24-year old Sammy Ortiz died following a combination of assaults — first from a vehicle, and then from a gun.

Those are stark examples of vehicles being intentionally used as weapons, though the vast majority of pedestrian fatalities are the result of vehicles being mishandled — much like someone leaving a loaded gun where a kid could easily grab it. The intention to kill may not be there, but the outcome is often the same due to negligence.

For those keeping count, the year-to-date total of dead pedestrians in Connecticut is 40 and cyclists, three. There are probably a few more whose deaths have not been covered by the news and which will be known later only through obituaries and crime/crash databases. In fact, one of the people in this count only appeared in a database; there was never any news report. Obituaries do not always provide cause of death, and not every person who dies gets an obituary.

The focus of this year-long series has been on pedestrian deaths, but another part of the story is those who do not die. Dividing crashes into two groups — fatal and non-fatal — oversimplifies the impact of collisions.

Reading every news article about pedestrians being hit by cars reveals a standard narrative: A pedestrian (almost never just called a person) was hit at such-and-such location and suffered fatal/critical/non-critical/serious injuries (rarely will one with non-serious injuries be reported). This was a hit-and-run or the driver remained on the scene and is cooperating with police. 

If the victim dies within a few days, there may be a follow-up story, though not always. If the hit-and-run driver is apprehended, there may or may not be a follow-up story. It is not common for the media to provide updates on a victim’s status if s/he recovers. Not every person is going to want the world to know their saga, even if the newspapers and tv channels felt like reaching out, but one result of this formulaic and shallow reporting is that the public is often left in the dark about how life-changing these collisions can be.

The photo at the top of this post is of Hartford’s Capitol Avenue at Babcock Street. In July, somebody drove a car into a pedestrian. One report said the person’s condition was not known. Another said the person had serious injuries. Yet another said the pedestrian’s injuries were non-life threatening. What does that mean? Scrape? Bruise? Concussion? Broken ribs? A few days later, I walked down and took this photo, which shows that the news report of damage to a retaining wall had been quite the understatement. This fence was trashed. Car parts were strewn across the yard. It is possible we will never learn if and how the victim heals following this collision, but for those who need to hear it, getting hit by a car and not dying does not always mean walking away with a few bumps and a story to tell.

Last March, a Connecticut resident was walking his dog when he was hit by someone’s SUV. A fundraiser page was set up to assist with the victim’s medical bills. The page manager shared raw details about the victim’s healing process.

First, he spent six weeks in the hospital. That was at a time when Connecticut’s COVID-19 hospitalization rate was high and people were avoiding medical facilities. During his hospital stay he had a craniectomy, which means that a part of his skull was surgically removed to relieve pressure from brain swelling.

He made enough progress to be released. That should not be interpreted to mean his life went back to normal right away. This was the start of rehab sessions.

After another month, he was able to have cranioplasty — a procedure to replace the piece of his skull that had been removed. An update a few weeks after explained that while the surgery went well, there was swelling and some regression for about two weeks. The victim returned to not making any sense. The swelling subsided and he began to improve, however. An update explains that there will be lasting effects from the traumatic brain injury, including aphasia. The page says that this “is not something that can be cured, but because of the brain’s plasticity, he will recover over time with lots of therapy and hard work.”

This is what being lucky looks like.

It’s not, in many cases, dusting yourself off like you’re a cartoon. It’s cringeworthy medical procedures. It’s months, maybe years, of healing.

You won’t typically read about the extent of victims’ injuries in the newspapers, but there are plenty of others’ fundraiser pages that share similar details. There’s a boy in Massachusetts who was in a coma, endured brain surgery, and needed both facial and hand reconstruction surgeries after he was hit by a car near his daycare. There’s the teen in Indiana who was in a crosswalk when hit by a car; he experienced a fractured skull and pelvis, bruised lungs and kidneys, and was placed in a medically-induced coma to assist with healing. There’s the man who exited his vehicle on a Texas highway to fix a flat; his wife watched him get hit at highway speed, which resulted in numerous injuries including the exposure of intestines and bones.

This should be hard to stomach. Would we all behave differently if not fed sanitized abstractions? It’s one thing to hear from the CDC that “per trip, pedestrians are 1.5 times more likely than passenger vehicle occupants to be killed in a car crash.” It’s another to grasp the depth of trauma that accompanies these collisions — for the people experiencing it in their bodies to those who have seen it. Those who saw the video released after Luis Daniel Rodriquez was killed while riding his bicycle on Hartford’s Wethersfield Avenue in August might now have a more realistic idea about the horrific violence motor vehicles can do to the human body.

Imagine how differently we might regard avoidable crashes if the reporting of them reflected the full range of their violence — not only physically, but all the other ways victims are impacted.

What do these crashes mean for low wage, essential workers? Missing one or more work shift due to injuries can mean job loss for some. Those with more understanding bosses may retain their jobs, but there’s no paycheck if you don’t punch in. What about those whose injuries require weeks, months of doctor appointments? What about those who work physical jobs and who lose mobility for more than a few weeks? What regular household bills are not getting paid while the medical bills come in? Not everyone has a network to fall back on, or if they do, it may be one with lots of love but no money to spare.

What do these crashes mean for those who were injured while on their typical commute to work, the grocery store, or some other place they visit regularly? Depending on the person and the severity of their injuries, what does it feel like for them to have to walk or bike through the crash site routinely? Do they change their route to avoid the area? How much time does that add to their commute? How much anxiety do they experience when getting ready to leave their home? What happens when this person sees a vehicle similar to the one that had injured them?

What do these crashes mean for those whose injuries are severe enough to require pain medications? How many end up dependent/addicted to pain killers?

What about knowing that even if you acted in accordance to the law and did everything possible to keep yourself safe, it was not enough, and that there are people who seek to absolve drivers of blame, every single time? On top of everything else, what does it feel like knowing people will assume you were “jaywalking”? As shown in Hartford’s data, in more than half of cases when a pedestrian has been injured, she was in a crosswalk, on a sidewalk, or in another area where cars are not expected to be. Vehicular violence is not the only kind of violence in which the victim’s clothing or behavior is routinely used to absolve the perpetrator of legal or moral guilt.

Here are the six people killed by vehicles while walking or cycling in Connecticut during August:

  • A 62-year old male (who has not been publicly identified) was killed by an SUV at Burnside and Moore in East Hartford on August 12. The SUV’s operator, a 46-year old woman from Hartford, was driving while under the influence. I have seen no news coverage of this but it is in UConn’s crash data repository.
  • Luis Daniel Rodriguez, riding in the painted-but-unprotected bike lane on Hartford’s Wethersfield Avenue on August 13, was killed when struck by someone racing another car.
  • An unidentified pedestrian was struck and killed on I-95 in Norwalk on August 16. As of publication, this person has not been identified due to the extent of their injuries.
  • Sammy Ortiz was killed after being both hit by a car and shot at Crown and Olive in Meriden on August 19.
  • A pedestrian who has not been identified (at least not publicly) was killed on North Broad Street in Meriden on August 23. The driver was charged with evading responsibility and reckless driving.
  • A driver plowed into a man, killing him around 8:30 PM on August 31. What happened next? The vehicle was crashed into a utility pole and abandoned, with the news initially reporting that the driver fled. A follow-up says the 39-year old male driver was arrested at the scene and charged with DUI, with other charges pending. The victim was a 52-year old man. This happened on New Haven’s Ella Grasso Boulevard near Orange Avenue; this is the second pedestrian in 2020 to die near this intersection. Nobody involved has yet been identified publicly, as of time of publication.