Many people were surprised when the news broke last July about the elderly man who plowed his Buick sedan through a farmer's market in Santa Monica, California at 60 mph, killing 10 people and injuring 63 along a 995 ft path of destruction.

More recently, in Elwood, Indiana "a man who announced plans to buy a car with $57,000 in winnings from a television lottery game show was run over by a pickup truck and killed a few hours later while walking to the grocery store that had sold him the winning ticket," stated the Associated Press on January 24th, 2004.

According to a Jan. 30th report on KSAT News 12 in San Antonio, Texas, a 27-year-old pregnant woman was struck by a pickup truck on Thursday night and was pinned down underneath it.

That same day in Miami, Florida the Associated Press reported that "actress Robin Givens struck and critically injured an 89-year-old pedestrian in a crosswalk," (AP, Jan. 29). Givens was a star in the 1980s TV comedy "Head of the Class," not to mention the ex-wife of heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson. She was driving a 2000 Mercedes SUV, and witnesses had to flag her down after the collision. Authorities never considered any charges whatsoever beyond a traffic summons for "failing to use due care when a pedestrian is in a crosswalk," calling it a "pure accident." The victim was referred to as being in "extremely critical but stable condition."

The above mentions of pedestrian fatalities and injuries in the last week are merely the most publicized ones; thousands occur every week in the United States. Pedestrian accidents are often just minor blurbs in newspapers, or they simply go unreported. Obviously not everyone is capable of operating heavy machinery, which automobiles truly are. Accidents are common place as a result, and penalties are minor (if not completely excused) due to the fact that American culture worships the automobile. There really are no alternatives for people who do not want to be part of the system, and people cannot be perfect drivers all of the time.

Young Americans suffer most from this system--not having the right to even transport themselves around by bike or by foot because the streets have proved too dangerous. Once they are old enough to drive they do not find their lot improving, as their leading cause of death is car related (until they are well over college-age). The reason why drivers must all be licensed and have their vehicles registered and insured is precisely because of the car's inherent potential to do great harm.

Cars kill one pedestrian every 96 minutes in the United States, over 5,000 a year. In Wisconsin in 2001, one pedestrian is killed or injured about every 5 hours. About 350 are seriously injured and 60 are killed every year in this state according to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. Nationwide, 80,000 pedestrians a year are seriously injured or permanently maimed.

A pedestrian rights group called Right of Way documented 1,000 pedestrian and cyclist deaths in New York City between 1994 and 1997. Of those cases, police issued moving violations in only 16 percent of the cases. Since then, things have not improved much. According to the New York Daily News, between 2000 and 2002, motorists killed 580 pedestrians and only 14 percent were charged with a crime.

Death by car is far more common outside of the United States, and actually more common if you are in a car. Car crashes take a life every single minute of every single day around the world, so there's no time for me to move on to the deaths and injuries (injuries occurring every two seconds world-wide) sustained by people other than U.S. pedestrians in this article today.

Irregardless, here are a few brief examples: In the first half of 1998, traffic deaths in New Delhi, India averaged more than three per day. Three quarters of which were motorcyclists, bicyclists, or pedestrians. In one 1965 incident in the African country of Togo, 125 bystanders were killed when two trucks rammed into a crowd.

Okay, you're right, I should probably stop there. Sadly there is nothing comforting I can say when the automobile institution is unsafe for drivers as well as pedestrians who often want nothing to do with it.

Footnotes:
All statistics and statements not cited as otherwise within the text came from the book Divorce Your Car!: Ending the Love Affair With the Automobile, by Katie Alvord (2000). Also check out Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take it Back, by Jane Holtz Kay (1998). (Both available at the McIntyre Library.)