Those who are paying only half attention might believe that the only pedestrian to have been killed this year was the police officer making a traffic stop for a potential seat belt violation on I-84 in Southington. It’s amazing how when a cop is involved, suddenly the local news has the capacity to cover a story from multiple angles and present the victim as being three-dimensional. Almost every other fatal pedestrian crash receives fleeting coverage, at best, which does little more than reprint the statement given to the media by police. I have to wonder how a change in news coverage — as in, reporters doing honest reporting — would impact our society’s tolerance for what we generally shrug off as collateral damage. What if we treated all traffic violence victims the way we treat police who are victims? What would it be like if every victim’s story was told, if each was treated like a hero instead of little more than a statistic?
Southington closed its schools on Tuesday and will dismiss early on Wednesday because of this police pedestrian’s funeral and wake. Can you imagine how powerful it would be in every time a person was killed by traffic violence, the entire town’s school’s shut down?
If that were the case, Hartford would be preparing to make similar arrangements. This morning I woke up to the news that a toddler was killed when she was struck outside of a laundromat on New Britain Avenue. I’ll say more about that next month, but I want readers to sit with this for a minute and let it sting you that Connecticut’s 29th pedestrian fatality of 2024 was a toddler.
If Hartford closed its public schools every time a pedestrian/cyclist was killed, children would have lost four education days so far in just 2024; add to that the casualties last autumn, and that brings the district to six days.
Sit with that.
How many days would schools have closed in your town this year?
The first pedestrian killed in May was cyclist Gilberto Davila, 55 of Hartford. I wrote a long piece about that crash already, but the recap: the driver of a Ford F-150 pickup truck made a left turn without so much as pausing before making the maneuver, hitting Davila head on. This was at the intersection of Hamilton Street and Francis Avenue in Hartford, one block from the city’s large supermarket.
The next day, May 3, the State of Connecticut DOT and Town of Hamden essentially killed another pedestrian on Route 10 due to their unwillingness to meaningfully revise a roadway that has proven deadly again and again. Just one week before, Yusuf Gürsey was killed on Route 10 in New Haven.
One month after the Hamden crash, the female victim has still not been publicly identified.
This happened at 10:52 PM on Friday, May 3, 2024 when a driver collided with the pedestrian on Route 10 which is a stroad lined with shopping plazas.
The early description of the crash site as being in front of Pep Boys helps us to understand the conditions leading to the crash: there are 5 lanes with no median at this location where the posted speed limit is 35 MPH. At the nearest intersection, it appears that one of the ped heads is simply missing — likely knocked over in a car crash and never replaced.
Right now, it is not known if the pedestrian was at the intersection or not.
Nearby bus stops are not right at the intersection.
Because drivers are allowed to make right turns on red at the closest intersection, it can feel pointless to walk to it knowing that drivers are not being held to high standards when it comes to respecting your right to travel safely on foot. The old advice that pedestrians simply make eye contact with the driver is known to be utter nonsense in reality: vehicles are above eye contact-level for many, illegal dark tinted windows are common, and when it comes to busy intersections, it can be hard to begin knowing which leg of it needs the most of your attention.
Two pedestrians killed on Route 10 within one week are results, not accidents.
Because Route 10 is a State of CT DOT maintained road, contact them to demand a road diet on Route 10:
CT DOT: 203-238-6240
Additionally, contact the Town of Hamden’s engineer swhite@hamden.com or 203-287-7040
Days later, on May 7, the driver of a Ram 5500 truck struck and killed TJ Jennings, 39, of Hopewell Junction, New York at 5:29 PM on I-91 in Enfield. It’s unclear what went down, and the details are unlikely to be shared until the report is given to the CT Crash Data Repository. WTNH claimed the vehicle came to a controlled stop on the shoulder. WFSB said “a Channel 3 photojournalist captured video of an overturned vehicle in the woods.” WFSB reported: “Jennings was out of his vehicle in the right lane and was struck by a vehicle.” No other media indicated that Jennings was affiliated with a vehicle.
Days later, on May 11, another driver killed another pedestrian on Waterbury’s East Main Street, a known problem spot. This collision happened after 10 PM on a clear, dry evening. The news has not yet identified this victim of traffic violence.
This was not an accident. This was a pattern created by negligent street design.
You can see the pedestrian fatalities since 2015 mapped out for what is functionally the same street — West Main and East Main Streets in Waterbury. This is a heat map, so dots that are larger and more orange or red than yellow mean multiple fatalities have happened in the same location.
The site of the preventable fatality on May 11, 2024 is right near the back entrance to Brass Mill Center (mall). There are no pedestrian lights at that nearby marked crosswalk.
Until they fix it, contact:
Waterbury’s Chief of Staff:
jgeary@waterburyct.org
Waterbury’s City Engineer:
rcavanaugh@waterburyct.org
Waterbury’s Acting Supervisor of Streets:
EDelPriore@wateburyct.org
Waterbury’s DPW Director:
dsimpson@waterburyct.org
Contact them because one week later, in the early morning on Saturday May 18, 2024, yet another pedestrian was killed in Waterbury. This happened at 62 Chase Avenue. As someone who steps foot in Waterbury about once a decade, I should not be able to envision a location or even recall an address, yet I knew exactly where this was: by the Aldi, on a road that had been two lanes but was expanded to four lanes several years ago. After lanes were added, pedestrians began getting killed here. Dwayne Hunter, age 46, of Waterbury, was the fourth pedestrian to be killed at/near the intersection of Chase Avenue and Hill Street since March 2020. The red flag should have gone up the second time someone was killed here, though in all honesty, engineers should have known better before making this street worse. This was not a stroad until fairly recently. They made a choice to convert a safer model of street into what will continue killing pedestrians, just the way they allow East/West Main Street to do the same. Perhaps the decision-makers have thought they could ignore this, blame it all on hit-and-run driver behavior, the impairment levels of either victim or perpetrator. Tell them that these are not accidents — these are the consequences of their decisions.
Let Waterbury’s decision-makers know that this area needs a road diet, better street lighting, and useful pedestrian infrastructure.
And on May 30, 2024, the driver of a pickup truck crossed the white painted line into the shoulder/breakdown lane and hit Aaron Pelletier, age 34, who was standing outside of his vehicle near exit 31, eastbound on I-84 in Southington. There were no adverse weather conditions at the time. This happened around 2:30 PM.
Aaron is the 28th pedestrian killed in Connecticut in 2024, sixth pedestrian killed in Connecticut in May, the fifth pedestrian to be killed on Connecticut’s interstate highways this year, and the second in May to be killed outside of a vehicle on an interstate. He is the third pedestrian to be killed on Southington’s stretch of I-84 since 2015; previously, pedestrians were killed there in October 2023 and July 2021. Information from the October 2023 fatal pedestrian crash on I-84 in Southington has not been uploaded to the Connecticut Crash Data Repository yet.
It is worth contacting the State of CT DOT 203-238-6240 to request that they evaluate the Southington segment of I-84, in particular looking at rumble strips.
If your inclination upon learning about another traffic violence victim is to say “that’s too bad” or something like “hug your kids tighter,” I’m challenging you to step it up. We don’t need more stories of communities coming together to crowdfund funerals or victims’ children’s college funds. We need fewer victims.
The top photo is of a car bumper on the lawn of Burns Latino Studies Academy, an elementary school in Frog Hollow, a Hartford neighborhood with a high number of car-free residences. Traffic violence is pervasive.