Triple Threat: National Experts Destroy “Reckless Driving” Narrative
(Source: The New Republic.)
After the onset of COVID-19, people drove less, but traffic crashes and fatalities rose sharply in the United States. Over the next two years, that number continued to rise faster than before, resulting in more than 42,000 traffic-related deaths in 2021.
Episode 44 of The Politics of Everything brings on three great minds who are taking a sledgehammer to the North American transportation system and rebuilding it to be safer, to be more productive, and to actually bring people closer to one another.
Jessie Singer, author of There Are No Accidents; Jason Slaughter, creator of Not Just Bikes; and Chuck Marohn, national transportation expert and author of Confessions of a Recovering Engineer, explain why people keep dying while trying to get where they need to go, and how we can save tens of thousands of lives from being lost on our roads each year, in this must-listen podcast.
As hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pereene mention in the episode’s introduction, journalists are grasping at straws to explain the tragic uptick, and the popular (but unsupported) conclusion is that COVID-related isolation is driving people to recklessness on our roads. In reality, say the guests, the cause of death on our streets is designed into the system.
Nearly every street and road is designed to allow (and encourage) drivers to travel at the highest speed possible, even when it puts their lives and the lives of others at risk. (2:15—Chuck Marohn)
Wide lanes—even in urban centers—encourage the use of large vehicles, which are more fatal to people traveling on foot in the case of a collision. (13:30—Jessie Singer)
And the prioritization of automobile travel over all other modes of transportation means that other travelers carry a disproportionate risk. This is distinctly not the case in many other developed countries. (25:25—Jason Slaughter)
Most importantly, the guests discuss how to bring about a sea change in the way our streets and roads are built so that no one has to lose a loved one to a traffic accident.
Lauren Ronnander, the Director of Communications for Strong Towns, is an actual idealist who loves making things and double-spacing the end of sentences. Before joining the Strong Towns team in 2020, she worked as a journalist and an editor. She lives with her husband and an almost uncountable number of animals (including cats, dogs, sheep, chickens, and rabbits) in a super-awesome neighborhood in the American Midwest. Her experience in the Alaska Bush, downtown living in an up-and-coming Midwestern city, and now residing in a rural Chippewa Valley, Wisconsin, community has provided her with precious insight into the many ways our places can grow stronger.