"Metro Kills:" Ghastly Sight, No Solution

"Pedestrian death, like drug addiction and teenage pregnancy, is one of those issues that everyone agrees is a blight upon the land, a serious yet seemingly eternal problem that eludes practical solutions and frustrates the governed and the elected alike."

This is the intro to the Washington Post article which talks about a DC Metro bus that ran over and killed two women that was caught on security cameras. Some of the comments to the article are truly sad "Jesus, this was an accident...." that happened because it was more important to bully your way through on coming traffic then to look for pedestrians. It comes down to traffic fatalities, the LEADING cause of death for kids and the bicycle and (mostly) pedestrian traffic fatalities that occur in urban areas is simply alarming. For Baltimore 36% of our traffic fatalities involve a pedestrian (5.4% travel mode share) and 2% involve a cyclist (0.4% travel mode share.) There is something terribly, terribly wrong of calling this just an accident.

Please note the video is very disturbing, the bus makes a left turn through a not big enough gap in traffic and it looks like he never saw the people the people he hit straight on in the crosswalk.

The Washington Post article: <a href="http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2007/12/metro_kills_ghastly_sight_no_s.html">http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2007/12/metro_kills_ghastly_sight_no_s.html</a>;

WARNING: The video on this link is extremely disturbing; you will not forget it and you may regret watching it. It was posted by Schoenborn's family to make a point, which it very plainly does. <a href="http://www.wmata.us/metrokills.html">http://www.wmata.us/metrokills.html</a>;