When I was growing up, my nuclear family would periodically go to visit my maternal grandmother, in the next town over. Although she’d spent a lot of her life moving from place to place, by the time I was born, she’d settled into one home and didn’t leave again until all the grandkids had grown up. I remember well how her house always smelled of cigarette smoke, how all the furniture felt just a little bit dusty from cat dander, and how the old-fashioned clock in the living room chimed each hour, sounding grandiose despite its humble setting.

It was in that living room where we would gather for lunch: me, my brother, my mom and grandmother, and sometimes my aunt or cousins. My uncle, Mark, always joined us for meals, too—even though, actually, he didn’t. At least, not in a physical sense.

You see, following Japanese tradition, my grandmother always set out a plate of food for Uncle Mark, next to the lace-covered box that holds his ashes. That plate of food made me keenly aware of his absence in our lives, and the fact that, without fail, my grandmother fed him at every meal, every day, for over 40 years. That’s something like 40,000 meals, give or take: 40,000 meals her son never got to eat in person.

Uncle Mark died at the age of 22, when his motorcycle was struck by a car at a four-way intersection. I don’t know all the details of the event and have never had the heart to ask, but I’ve heard that at the funeral, my grandmother, in her grief, attempted to climb into the casket to die with her son. She’s said she can’t remember doing this. I’m guessing her mind had to block it out to cope with the trauma—a trauma that most of us, if we are lucky, will never have to face.

Yet, unfortunately, many Americans have had to face this exact trauma, because 40,000 isn’t just the number of meals my uncle has missed since his death; it’s also the average number of people who die every year in car crashes in the United States. That’s one of those numbers that’s too big, really, for the human mind to appreciate, at least at face value. When I think about how my mom’s family was affected by the death of Uncle Mark, though, and I multiply that grief by 40,000 every year… Well, it’s still too hard to fully wrap my mind around. It’s a lot of needless tragedy.

Like I mentioned, I don’t know the exact details of the crash that killed my uncle, and I don’t know what happened to the driver who hit him. But I feel sorry for them. It’s bad enough that my family had to deal with Uncle Mark’s death; it’s worse knowing a stranger had to walk away from the crash feeling like they had killed a young man, because, as a society, we have accepted the narrative that driver error is to blame for car crashes.

I now realize how misguided that narrative is.

While riding the bus in middle school, I witnessed a car crash in which everyone was instantly killed, save for the driver who caused the collision. There was a lot of talk afterward at school about how the lone survivor was driving while drunk, and so, of course, everyone blamed him for the deaths. In the years since that day, I have often wondered what that would feel like for the driver, and I used to think (with a great deal of pity), “How does that guy live with himself?”

Now, having learned more about traffic engineering through my work with Strong Towns, I’ve wondered if I should be asking, “How do the engineers who design our streets live with themselves?”

That’s unfair, of course, and it’s not how I actually feel. After all, engineers don’t design streets with the intention of killing people. I wouldn’t go up to the engineer who designed the street that Uncle Mark died on and say, “You killed my uncle,” any more than I would say that to the driver involved in the crash.

That said, the engineer designed the street to prioritize the movement of cars over the safety of people—and did so without accounting for basic human error. Nevertheless, the driver is the one who gets the blame, on the societal level.

The driver shoulders the emotional burden for street design choices that cause crashes. The driver, not the engineer, has to live the rest of their life with the belief that they’ve accidentally killed a person. That’s another kind of trauma that most of us, if we are lucky, will never have to face.

Yet, there are tens of thousands of us every year who do.

The website Accidental Impacts states that “[t]hose of us who have caused accidental death or injury … experience a wide range of emotional and cognitive difficulties.” Many such people end up developing post-traumatic stress disorder from their experience. This is evident when reading some of the quotes and comments on the website from people who have “caused” fatal car crashes:

“I would hallucinate while doing the dishes. All of a sudden it wasn’t bubbly dishwater but bubbly blood coming out toward me. I was afraid of being left alone. I was afraid of the children leaving the house. I was hyper-alert, hyper-vigilant.”

“I had recurrent thoughts of the accident and a sense of reliving the experience. Although I felt very emotional, I was unable to cry. Sleeping was almost impossible.”

“The accident is still under investigation. And even if it deems the accident wasn’t my fault I still feel completely responsible for what happened. And if it is deemed my fault, I can’t even imagine what I’ll have to say in the courtroom to the victim’s family. And how terribly sorry I am that this happened. I prayed every day that this man would be okay and the worst ended up happening. I blame myself. I just have these recurring nightmares and thoughts. I know it was just an accident, but nothing seems to make this any better.”

“My heart feels like it died that day. My whole life has been affected and I can’t seem to grasp it back. I feel as if I can’t breathe at times.”

“Friends and therapists later suggested that I ‘think about it like he killed himself on your car.’ But knowing he was at fault didn’t help then and still doesn’t help now. … I participated in another person’s death.”

There are many more comments like these when you browse the site, and the sense of horror and shame in them is palpable. These individuals did not mean to cause harm to anyone, yet they are overwhelmed by guilt anyway, because—again—the societally accepted narrative is that the driver is to blame. Even when the driver understands that it was an accident, they don’t have the language to describe why it was an accident, beyond that they didn’t mean to do it.

The truth of it, though, is that car crashes are a consequence of an “accidentally-on-purpose” approach to road and street design. We’ve embraced a development pattern that forces most people to drive (or be driven around) in order to get anywhere, and yet we’ve simultaneously prioritized speed over safety on our streets. When you force millions of people to engage in a risky activity every day, and you make it so that they’re set up to fail in that activity, and the consequences of failure are fatal… Well, how can that result in anything other than tragedy on a mass scale?

The design of our streets killed my uncle. It kills tens of thousands of people every year. And it kills the inner peace of untold numbers of drivers who walk away from those crashes, wrongly convinced that they are to blame.

I’ll never be able to speak to the driver who was present in the crash where Uncle Mark died, if they’re even still alive now. I’ll never be able to tell them that I hope they’re okay. So, in lieu of that, if there’s someone out there reading this right now who feels responsible for the death or injury of another because of a car crash, then please let me share this with you: I can’t imagine how your life has been affected, and I don’t doubt that your recovery from this may end up being long and difficult. Maybe it’ll start with professional help, or with reaching out to others who have gone through a similar experience. I, of course, would also gently recommend learning more about the role that street design and auto-dependent development plays in causing crashes, in the hopes that it’ll ease some of the guilt you might be struggling with. You have a right to know—to fully know—that you are not a bad person just because of your involvement in this, even if you were distracted, even if you were intoxicated, and even if you were driving “recklessly.” It’s one thing to say, “It’s not your fault.” It’s another to know exactly why you shouldn’t have been put in this position, in the first place.

That said, maybe none of this is helpful to you right now, and that’s alright. You’ll have to figure things out in your own way, in your own time. But I wish that you, and I, and Uncle Mark could sit down and share a meal together, so that I could tell you all this in person and let you know that, if nothing else, I hope you will be kind to yourself. You deserve kindness. You deserve forgiveness. And you deserve to live a life unmarred by guilt.

To the 40,000 Drivers Who “Cause” Car Crashes Every Year

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