A group of advocates, politicians, and state and local officials gathered on Sunday to mark the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims.
The event took place at the Washington Gladden Social Justice Park on East Broad Street.
Several speakers shared stories about their own personal experience with car crashes – some told of close calls, while others shared how they had been seriously injured, or how a crash had taken the life of someone they loved.
Lourdes Barroso de Padilla, a Columbus City Councilmember and chair of the council’s public service and transportation committee, talked about being in a minor car crash as a teenager.
“I remember being at the scene and someone telling me…seeing an upset teenager, they said to me, ‘don’t worry kid, this is your first accident, it’s like a right of passage,'” she said.
Barroso de Padilla was also in a more serious crash as an infant, she said, when her family’s car was run off the road by a truck. And later, as a young adult, she was hit by a car when crossing a downtown street, suffering “injuries that I still have and deal with today.”
“I wonder if they told that driver, that truck driver, ‘this was a right of passage,’ or that woman who didn’t pay attention when she hit me, if that was a right of passage,” Barroso de Padilla said. “It’s that idea, that traffic crashes are accidents – that it’s an everyday thing that all of us have to live with – is what we’re contending with, that’s what we’re actually fighting.”
Ginger Tornes, of Friends and Families for Safe Streets Columbus, organized the event. She said that traffic crash rates in Columbus increased by 14% in 2021 compared to the year before, and stressed the importance of moving forward with the types of interventions that have been proven to work, like road diets or other efforts to slow cars down and provide safe infrastructure for pedestrians, cyclists, and other vulnerable users.
Other speakers at the event included Clarissa Epps of the BREAD Organization, Ohio Department of Transportation Director Jack Marchbanks, State Representative Latyna Humphrey, OSU Professor Harvery Miller, Vision Zero Columbus Coordinator Maria Cantrell, as well as advocates Bob Ream, Sharon Montgomery and Patricia Kovacs, among others.
Tornes made a specific call for progress on one street in particular – Broad Street, which has been the focus of many plans and proposals over the years, including a recent concept from the Downtown Strategic Plan that showed the street with center-running bus lanes and a two-way, protected bike lane.
Barroso de Padilla and Cantrell both spoke of work the city is doing to implement safety improvements to streets more quickly – like recent tactical urbanism installations on Mt. Vernon Avenue and Sullivant Avenue – and promised that more announcements would be coming soon on that front.
The city’s Vision Zero safety initiative is reaching the end of the two-year timeline laid out in the initial planning document that was released in March of last year. Currently, staff is in the process of producing a new document that will set goals for the next several years.
For more information on Friends and Families for Safe Streets Columbus, see facebook.com/SafeStreetsColumbus.
Additional Reading:
Some Say City’s Actions Don’t Match Rhetoric on Pedestrian Safety
City Looking at Upgrading Existing Bike Lanes, Updating Bike Plan