It is rare for car crash debris to be cleaned up quickly, if at all. The bumpers, smashed headlights, broken glass are reminders of the ever-present violence of collisions. Most of these do not make the news.

There were hundreds of incidents so far this year in Hartford alone that involved a driver smashing into something or someone (car, cyclist, pedestrian) and then evading responsibility, or as I prefer to call it, running away like the fucking coward they are. Of these, nearly 100 resulted in injuries. Several of these crashes were fatal.

I want to give a total number of pedestrians (foot, wheelchair, etc) and cyclists who have been hit by motor vehicles in Hartford so far this year, but data is flawed. UConn’s Connecticut Crash Data Repository is the most extensive when it comes to breaking down what happened in the crash, who was where, who was distracted or under the influence, what the weather was, and how injured the victim may have been; yet, there are crashes noted in HartfordData that are not in the former database, and without a doubt, other cases that never made it into either. The reality is that a victim’s status also changes and that is not always reflected in the data. What was a severe injury at the time of data entry may prove fatal days or weeks later.

At least thirteen people have been killed in motor vehicle crashes this year in Hartford, whether they were the driver, passenger, pedestrian, or a cyclist. I do not have time in my day to break down all the non-fatal injuries suffered by motor vehicle occupants, but once you know how often these crashes occur, you can’t have a soul and choose to do nothing.

When a crash involves cyclists and pedestrians, the peanut gallery wants to look at the victims’ actions. Let’s go ahead and do that. Get it all out of the system.

Using the best data that is publicly available for pedestrian crashes (awful term that is shorter than the more accurate crashes caused by motorists in which pedestrians have been struck) in Hartford, year-to-date, this is what is known about where a pedestrian (walking, using a mobility device) was when injured by a motor vehicle:

It’s unknown what “other” or “intersection, other” means, but let’s talk about what we do know: pedestrians are expected to be in crosswalks, on sidewalks, and in non-trafficways. Though not the norm, they should be expected occasionally on the shoulder/roadside. If you lump those categories together, in more than half of crashes, the pedestrian was where one should be. To clarify, the blue section (37.7%) represents pedestrians in marked mid-block, marked intersection, and unmarked intersection crosswalks — all legal crossing points. 

If you hear a pedestrian is in the travel lane, that sounds like misuse, right? You may imagine a person strolling in the middle of the road. But after looking at UConn’s crash diagrams (yes, I have looked at all of them for this dataset) it becomes less black and white. Several of these collisions involved pedestrians who were next to cars parked on the street. Without any extra information, it is unknown if they were chillin’ there, or if they have been entering or exiting their vehicle when they were hit. On-street parking requires the driver to enter and exit the car via the travel lane. I hope nobody expects drivers to awkwardly climb around in the car to exit through the curbside passenger door. 

These diagrams, while not telling everything, tell us a lot. The one above shows a vehicle ramming into multiple people on bicycles during what looks like a last second decision to pass them, ridiculously close to an intersection.

That peanut gallery, no doubt, is going to next find other “excuses” for why the people on bikes were hit. This is exhausting to me, this willful ignorance. This refusal to own that at least half the time a pedestrian or cyclist can be making reasonable choices and still get run down.

The two cyclists on Chandler were hit in the early afternoon, so they would have been visible to anyone looking where they ought to be while behind the wheel. There is both a high school and a pre-k through grade eight school on this block, and though there are technically striped bike lanes, they are not barrier-protected, which renders them useless. (see screenshot of Chandler Street on Google Map below)

If you see cars parked in bike lanes, it means our traffic enforcement is non-existent, and it shows what our City values and doesn’t. It says “we pretend to protect cyclists, but only when convenient for drivers, and if people on bikes need to swerve around parked cars, that ain’t our problem.” Also notice that luscious sidewalk on the side of the technical school.

The diagram below shows a car going where cars should never go; the driver “evaded responsibility.”

There are so many diagrams like this, with the victim being where she ought to be while the driver goes the wrong way or blows a light or stop sign. You can see pedestrians clobbered while in the crosswalk when they had the absolute right (READ: pedestrian light cycle was running) to be there. There are times when the drawings show that they were crossing while the light was on. Again, it may seem like the pedestrian was in the wrong, but that shows assumptions. How long is the light cycle? Is it adequate for a slower-moving pedestrian? Is a countdown provided, or is the person supposed to guess? How many cars blew the red light at the beginning of the cycle, cutting into the pedestrian’s crossing time?

Several people were slammed into while walking through parking lots. At least one had serious injuries. How fast is someone driving in a parking lot to injure a person severely? Another incident was in the parking lot behind 161 Washington Street. The driver “evaded responsibility” by then driving the wrong way down Squire Street. One person was hit in a hospital parking garage.

There are questions, too, about location when it comes to being in the travel lane. Every single day, I cross streets illegally. This does not mean that I am wading out into Albany Avenue whenever the mood strikes. I don’t have a death wish. But on my very short, one-way street that has one travel lane, I absolutely will cross in the middle after looking both ways twice. Since people drive the wrong way, it is necessary for me to look both ways. Because people often park too close to the intersection where the crosswalk is, it is actually safer for me to make an illegal mid-block crossing; however, if I were to be hit by someone barreling down the street with no regard for its character as a residential road by an elementary school, this incident would be oversimplified as yet another pedestrian crossing where she ought not, regardless of how sensible it is. 

What about those hit while walking along the shoulder or roadside? Why would anyone do that? Besides the scenario of a forlorn, stranded motorist schlepping to the gas station, red can in hand, it’s simple: lack of sidewalks. Several pedestrians were hit by one motorist on Tower Avenue by Waverly Street. Going by the diagram, they were on the side where there is no sidewalk. If you’re about to ask why they didn’t just walk on the other side, I can tell you have never tried Froggering Tower Avenue. This stretch, next to several cemeteries, is not flat and from experience walking it in the daytime, can attest to it being a challenge.

Besides Chandler Street by a high school and Tower Avenue by cemeteries and a park, what other roads are missing sidewalks?

Pope Park Hwy #4, which runs alongside Pope Park West, has no sidewalk on the park side, and only a partial one on the other part. As you can see, there is so much debris on the grass that it could be tempting to walk in the roadway, where one can at least see the broken glass. You can see by the pointlessly wide parking lane that this road encourages speeding, and cars are often drive on whichever side of the yellow lines feels groovy at the moment. It is as if they want nobody to ever visit this piece of Pope Park.

There’s no sidewalk along the cemetery on Affleck Street. None along part of Girard Avenue by UConn Law. Mostly missing on Park Terrace along Pope Park South. There are plenty of other missing sidewalks in Hartford, but I tire of pointing out what should be obvious to everyone and I desperately want to tell all the Important People who can fix these problems that they can’t borrow my notes and it’s time they did their own homework for a change.

I would be wrong, though, to not mention the temporary sidewalk closures that also push people into the street. Multiple people reported overgrown vegetation on Laurel Street to the City of Hartford, over the course of several weeks. It’s still there. It’s not merely annoying; it’s a barrier. Walking in Laurel Street is dangerous.

There are trees blown over from the storm blocking sidewalks on Park Terrace, Capitol Avenue, Woodbine Lot. . . and those are just the ones I have personally observed. There are many miles and I have not traveled them all in the last week, but my gut tells me these are not the only places. Weeks before the storm, a tree came down on Zion Street near Summit Street. It was on a hill, owned by the City, and fell, getting caught on a retaining wall. I wonder how many people have walked straight into this at night. This was reported to the City of Hartford. Twice.

Then there are the pieces of bulky waste, carelessly tossed across sidewalks citywide. Sometimes you can cross onto a person’s yard to get around it. Other times, a fence or steep incline removes that option. You get to choose between walking over a (probably) bedbug infested mattress or walking out into the travel lane.

You can’t take away the few scraps of space afforded to those who travel on foot and then take issue with us when we have to walk in the street. This happens every winter when property owners/managers refuse to clear snow properly. It forces pedestrians to decide between awkwardly trudging through the unplowed snow, or walking on a flatter surface near cars. Who wants these choices?

Maybe this clears up some ideas people have about where people are when drivers strike them, but there is always the question of distraction. The news media have just run with this idea that devices and distraction, on the part of the pedestrian, are to blame for the bulk of these collisions. What the year-to-date Hartford data shows is that at least 81% of the time, the pedestrian was not texting, yammering on the phone, or standing in the roadway taking a selfie. Using the public data, only 10% of injured pedestrians and cyclists in Hartford were under the influence of medication, drugs, or alcohol.

As far as information on cyclists struck during the same time period and city goes, it was noted that three of the six were taking “no improper action,” for what it’s worth. Based on recent news reports, we can assume that the same can be said for the seventh, who died while cycling in the marked bicycle lane on Wethersfield Avenue.

It’s exhausting to show up to endless meetings and have to advocate for your own life while the Important People condescend, “explaining” to you budgets. You get impatient and you cut through the bullshit, interpreting their speech for them. It’s easier to do this if you come from a working class background, when you will always be an outsider in the room. Your language and tone will never be suitable, and you have always been considered expendable, so you might as well embrace it. But it’s tiring all the same.

A budget is a moral document, a budget is a moral document, a budget is a moral document. Want to show someone that their life is undervalued? Never find a way to fund the infrastructure that we know will keep cyclists and pedestrians much safer. Never enforce traffic laws at the level needed; never push ahead with red light and speed cameras. Never make meaningful changes. Put a little lipstick on a pig (paint a sharrow) and then add it to the slideshow presentation boasting about the great work the City of Hartford is doing. Meanwhile, three people have been killed by cars while riding bicycles or walking on Hartford’s streets this year. That is not what Vision Zero looks like.

I have gone to endless meetings and sent numerous emails to those Important People, letting them know which roads were especially dangerous. My complaints about Wethersfield Avenue have been countless.

The bike lane is an afterthought. It does not go from the town line to the center of town. It starts at random and then stops. It’s not barrier-protected, which means motorists park in it constantly. The police have been well aware of this. I have made them aware at meetings, being that abrasive person in the room, utterly tired of bullshit. They brushed off my remarks. Condescended and explained.

Motorists use the bike lane as a travel lane. The speeding on Wethersfield Avenue is outstanding and constant. It pre-dates the pandemic, so let’s not go blaming that.

I have no outrage over the cyclist who was brutally murdered by the fucking coward who sped off and never so much as tapped the brakes. Only exhaustion and sadness for the victim’s family. It was expected. The City of Hartford has known a thousand times over about the road conditions, but they have aided and abetted this crime by claiming their hands have been tied. How does one tie their own hands?

This is the fourth vehicular crash resulting in a fatality on Wethersfield Avenue in only the last couple of years. This map shows fatal crash sites on Wethersfield from 2018-2020:

Here are a few more screenshots of vehicular murder sites on Wethersfield Avenue:

There is nothing about this road that tells motorists to drive at a reasonable speed. Hartford has known of this problem well before (but including) Chief Thody. Hartford has known well before (but including) Mayor Bronin.

As for the Important People, they can shove their prayers and empty promises. City of Hartford, your hands are bloody. Fix the damn road already.

[Let it be known, if/when I end up mowed down by some reckless driver on a road that the City of Hartford has neglected to fix, don’t waste time with a vigil. Gather up my corpse — even if it has been torn into multiple parts — and drop it on the Mayor’s front steps.]