City Planning in Neighborhoods
Right now there is a city planning crisis. According to the CDC in their article “Teen Drivers and Passengers, Get The Facts” about 2,800 teens in the United States ages 13–19 were killed, and about 227,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes in 2020. That means that every day, about eight teens died due to motor vehicle crashes, and hundreds more were injured. We need to make the streets safer. We need to install more street lights, better street signs, more speed bumps, and additional stop lights to make our community a safer place to live.
A major concern that should be observed is the lack of general knowledge on street signs. I live on a dead end street where there is a No Outlet sign. Since most people don’t know what to do when there is a No Outlet sign, most drivers treat it as a regular street. One day, my dad and I were walking my dog. My dog is old, so he could not hear the car coming and the driver didn’t see him. If the sign said “Dead End” the car would have probably not gone down my street and not run over my dog. If there were speed bumps the car would have slowed down, giving my dad time to get my dog out of the street. But since no one knows what a No Outlet sign means, this was not the case.
According to Forbes’ Shelly Simon, “1.3 million people worldwide die in car crashes. There was even a 10.5% increase of deaths from 2020-2021. The leading cause of death in people ages 5-29 is road traffic, and more than half of all road traffic deaths occur among vulnerable road users (pedestrians , cyclists and motorcyclists), and they are also the single greatest annual cause of death of healthy U.S. citizens traveling abroad.”
Road traffic deaths among vulnerable road users, pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists, can and should be avoided. The pointless deaths of those walking, cycling, or motorcycling in our community can easily be fixed. We can make streets more accessible to bikers and pedestrians simply by adding bike lanes in the community. However, all of these simple fixes do not mask the fact that every day, 32 people in the United States die in drunk driving car crashes. That’s one person every 45 minutes.
The most dangerous activity in our everyday life is to get in a car and drive. Safety in our everyday commute is a big issue in not just our community but the whole world and ensuring motor, pedestrian, and bicycle safety will ensure no one will ever lose their loved ones too early.