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As ever more drivers gun ever-higher-horsepower engines, this sort of thing is likely to happen more. Everyone enrolled at Seven Locks Elementary, the wonderful neighborhood school that two of my children attend, is classified by the county as a bus kid--even those who live within view of the school--because it is so dangerous to cross the suburban boulevard near the school. Placing a crossing guard at the intersection would be cheaper than busing everyone, but the county won't do it, reasoning that, with so many suburbanites speeding in SUVs while yakking on the phone, even the guard wouldn't be safe.

Threats to pedestrian safety do not just imperil school kids, the poor, and immigrants. They diminish a sense of community: Adults can't go on strolls and kids can't walk to school because people become predatory behind the wheel. And not being able to walk is also, not surprisingly, bad for public health: Studies show that during the last generation the trend line for obesity has risen at almost exactly the same rate that the trend line for "percentage of trips made on foot" has gone down. Still, the car-commuter lobby is so strong that many local governments don't even try to restrain speeding and hostile driving. Pedestrian deaths have been much discussed in Montgomery County political circles in recent years, and so far the county council and police are planning to do ... nothing.

National policymakers endlessly focus on new safety devices for drivers and passengers. But, measured by collision deaths per mile traveled, it is 36 times more dangerous to walk than to be in a car, according to the Surface Transportation Policy Project. What about heading off pedestrian deaths? Intersections can be engineered to make walking safer; speed bumps and traffic circles can force traffic to slow down. Local governments can increase fines for violating pedestrians' right-of-way and make it more likely that killing a pedestrian will result in a charge of manslaughter, bringing this offense in line with most unintentional killing with a weapon.

(Amazingly, in many cases there is no legal penalty at all for running someone down.)

And why confine technological advances to the people inside cars? Standard traffic-light design could be reengineered so that when someone pushed the "walk" button at an intersection, it would cause a distinctive signal--let's say, a rotating blue strobe atop the stoplight. This would tell drivers there was a pedestrian about to cross, something they don't know now. That night at Rockville Pike and Tuckerman Lane, the driver of the car that killed the pedestrian might have responded differently if a prominent flashing light had warned there was someone on foot directly ahead. We'll never stop the random homicides by people who go berserk. We could stop most pedestrian deaths if only we tried.

GREGG EASTERBROOK is a senior editor at TNR.

Words of Caution For the Wary Pedestrian

By Marc Fisher
Washington Post Thursday, March 29, 2001

When I was 10, I watched as a speeding car rammed into two little girls who had ducked out between two cars and bolted across the street. The driver never braked. For years thereafter, I would see those girls around the neighborhood, in various states of rehabilitation. I still see them occasionally, in nightmares.

If you ask me, I'll say you have to be nuts to dart into traffic or to drive without regard to pedestrians. Yet I've done my share of mid-block runs across speeding traffic, and I pay as much attention to speed limits as I do to serving suggestions on cereal boxes.

I tell you this not because I'm proud of my behavior but because research says I'm typical. Most people know what's right and do what's convenient.

That's human nature, and John Z Wetmore, who has devoted much of his life to improving conditions for pedestrians, is under no illusion that we can change human behavior.

Yet with an apparent spike in the number of pedestrians being picked off by motorists, Wetmore -- who lives in Bethesda and produces a monthly cable access TV show called "Perils for Pedestrians" -- believes our behavior must and can be changed.

It took no trauma to get Wetmore to devote himself to unpaid pedestrian advocacy (he works as a freelance video producer to pay the bills). He was in sixth grade when his family moved from Evanston, Ill., to Bethesda, where he was annoyed to find no sidewalks near his new home. By the time he was out of college, he was leading the fight for sidewalks.

The trick to pedestrian safety, Wetmore believes, is not to harangue people into walking out of their way to distant crosswalks, but to redesign our streetscape to conform to how people behave. Example: Look at the rounded curbs on suburban corners; they're there so drivers can take the turn at a higher speed. Square them off as on city streets, and motorists would have to slow enough to see pedestrians.

With pedestrians dying left and right, it would be nice to think something could be done. This week, a Prince William County high school senior was struck and killed while walking along the shoulder of Interstate 395 in search of help for his broken-down car. Last month, a Montgomery Blair High senior

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