'Completely Avoidable': Strong Towns Advocates Fight for Safer Streets
Advocate Ben Hultquist wearing a Strong Towns t-shirt while championing safer streets and swifter action.
Every day in Fayetteville, North Carolina, thousands of residents rely on their cars to get from one place to another. But for many, walking or biking isn’t a choice—it’s a necessity. And on streets like Reilly Road, that can be a deadly gamble.
Army Master Sgt. Ben Hultquist knows this danger all too well. Since transferring from Korea to Fort Bragg, Hultquist has biked down Reilly Road every day. Along the way, he noticed something alarming: a near-total absence of crosswalks and a growing toll of pedestrian fatalities. “It’s not safe to cross,” Hultquist told ABC11. “And people may get impatient and they cross, and it ends their life.”
That tragic pattern repeated on April 14, 2025, when yet another person was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver while trying to cross Reilly Road around 8:30 p.m. The driver, operating a white Kia Forte, fled the scene. The victim later died at the hospital.
“It seems so normalized here that people don't seem to care about the loss of life where it's completely avoidable,” Hultquist said. In a Facebook post, he added: “...What we do know for sure is that Reilly Rd is not safe to cross anywhere near this intersection. It is 5 lanes wide with a speed ‘limit’ of 45 mph and there is no crosswalk within half a mile. NCDOT needs to make their roads that run through our city safe for our residents.”
Fayetteville’s roads aren’t designed like traditional neighborhood streets—they function more like high-speed thoroughfares, blending the worst elements of streets and roads into what’s often called a “stroad.”
These are wide, fast, and busy corridors meant to move vehicles quickly, even though they cut through places where people live, work, and walk. Hultquist described them as dangerous by design: speed limits are set at 45 miles per hour, but he suspects they’re engineered for even higher speeds. “There are no bike lanes, let alone protected bike lanes, and sidewalks are sporadic,” he added. “Traffic lights are spread out with very few having crosswalks, and almost all work off of sensors that are designed for 3,000+ lb vehicles, not my 50 lb bicycle.”
The danger isn’t theoretical. A pedestrian hit at 45 mph has just a 90% change of sustaining severe injury, according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. In Fayetteville, that risk is playing out in real time: pedestrian deaths tripled from five to fifteen between 2023 and 2024, according to local police.
Footage of Reilly Road taken by Ben Hultquist.
But this crisis has also sparked a movement. Hultquist is one of the founding members of Strong Towns Fayetteville, a growing grassroots group pushing for safer, more people-centered streets. “After failing to find any local organizations doing this kind of work, I posted on the Fayetteville Subreddit,” he said. “A few of us got together and made it official.”
Strong Towns Fayetteville is now calling out what they see as a dangerous failure of leadership. “There is a new pedestrian fatality almost every month,” Hultquist noted. “Yet the city has taken little to no meaningful action.” Still, he remains hopeful. With a city council ally running for mayor, and statewide reforms like parking mandate eliminations and zoning reform gaining traction, he believes change is possible.
“Given the current national political climate, I feel there is more interest in creating change at the local level,” he added. “I think it is going to be a good year.”
Too often, communities feel stuck—waiting for funding, plans, or approvals while dangerous conditions persist. But you don’t need a massive budget or a multi-year capital plan to begin making change. What you do need is a way to focus attention, ask better questions, and start working with what you already have.
That’s exactly what the Crash Analysis Studio offers: a shift away from a system that blames individuals, and toward a practical, repeatable process that helps you identify dangerous patterns, test immediate interventions, and build momentum toward long-term improvements. It’s not about fixing everything at once—it’s about preventing the next crash tomorrow.
The Crash Analysis Studio is a proven tool for identifying unsafe conditions and responding quickly. It's a scalable model that leverages existing resources, engages local voices, and builds momentum toward long-term change.
Your role isn’t just to plan—it’s to protect. The tools are in your hands.
Asia (pronounced “ah-sha”) Mieleszko serves as a Staff Writer for Strong Towns. A dilettante urbanist since adolescence, she's excited to convert a lifetime of ad-hoc volunteerism into a career. Her unconventional background includes directing a Ukrainian folk choir, pioneering synaesthetic performances, photographing festivals, designing websites, teaching, and ghostwriting. She can be found wherever Wi-Fi is reliable, typically along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.