Pedestrian safety

On our walk down the memory lane of 2011 so far, we’ve talked about some downers, some inspirations, some triumphs, and some struggles. Check out our first two installments of year-end Streetsie award nostalgia. Here’s some more.

Leave it to the Brits to create an incredible tool for examining America’s own crisis of traffic fatalities. Behold this somber map, made by ITO World, a UK-based transportation information firm. Each dot on the map is a traffic-related death. The entire eastern United States is blanketed with them.

Bike/ped funding is pitching a perfect game in the Senate after Republicans swung (and missed) at the popular Transportation Enhancements program for the third time in two months. The final strike came this morning, when Kentucky Republican Rand Paul's amendment to divert all TE funds to bridge repair failed spectacularly, garnering only 38 votes in favor, with 60 senators voting against.

The first shocking thing about Raquel Nelson's conviction for vehicular homicide was simply that it happened at all. After all, the mother of three wasn't even driving a car -- she was crossing a wide street with poor pedestrian infrastructure when her four-year-old son was killed by a hit-and-run driver.

UPDATE 7/27: Raquel Nelson has, in fact, chosen the option of a new trial.

We've written quite a bit about Raquel Nelson over the past week or so, but now, we'll let her speak for herself. The Today Show devoted an eight-minute segment to her case this morning, including an interview with Raquel.

Last week, we reported on the horrific story of Raquel Nelson, whose four-year-old son was killed as she attempted to cross the street with him to reach their home. Nelson was convicted of reckless conduct, improperly crossing a roadway and second-degree homicide by vehicle -- all for the crime of being a pedestrian in the car-centric Atlanta suburbs. The conviction carried a sentence of up to 36 months. Meanwhile, the driver who killed Nelson's son -- who'd been drinking and using painkillers before getting behind the wheel -- got off with six months on a hit-and-run charge.

We don’t normally report on vehicle crashes here on the Capitol Hill blog, but this was so outrageous we couldn’t help ourselves.

Over the last decade, nearly 48,000 people were killed in the simple act of walking. Many of them were on streets built only to accommodate fast-moving cars, without safe places for people to walk or cross the street.