Portion of I-71 near Weber Road closed due to pedestrian death
All southbound lanes of Interstate 71 are closed near Weber Road in Columbus after a pedestrian was struck and killed by a vehicle, according to police dispatchers.
First responders pronounced the unidentified person dead on the freeway at 7:07 am after they were struck by a vehicle.
Police have not released any additional details about the traffic crash. Motorists are encouraged to find alternate routes during the morning rush.
Pedestrian dies after being struck by vehicle in Clintonville
A pedestrian died Thursday night after being struck by a vehicle outside of a grocery store in Columbus' Clintonville area.
Columbus 911 dispatchers said they received a report of a person struck by a vehicle at 9:24 p.m. outside of the Giant Eagle grocery store at 2801 N. High St.
Columbus police and fire medics responded and transported the person to OhioHealth Riverside Hospital in critical condition. The pedestrian was pronounced dead at the hospital at 9:57 p.m., dispatchers reported.
No further information about the incident, including whether the driver of the vehicle remained at the scene, was immediately available late Thursday night from Columbus police.
Ball woman dies after being hit by car on US-165
A Ball woman died early Friday morning after she was hit by a vehicle on US Highway 165, according to the Pineville Police Department.
Heather Lynn Basco, 36, died at the scene of the wreck around 12:12 am.
Basco was walking in the middle of the roadway outside the city limits of Ball, wearing dark clothing, when a driver hit her. The driver remained at the scene.
At this time, no charges have been filed, and the investigation is ongoing.
Why WANDA
I created WANDA as a means to maximize my visibility to nearby vehicles when walking the streets, particularly in areas devoid of sidewalks and in areas where pedestrians aren’t typically encountered. Borrowing from the safety culture of the electrical/construction industry in which I work, the idea is to be seen by operators of the heavy machinery working alongside me, well prior to any opportunity for collision to occur. The need to be easily seen grows more imperative when on today’s roads, where the attentiveness of the average driver falls far short of that of a skilled construction worker.
I am tired of the absurd number of times in which I meet someone who’s been struck by a vehicle in Columbus. I am tired of reading in the local paper this week’s pedestrian fatality - most often, a low-income Black person simply trying to cross the street. Most galling of all is how, long after the driver speeds away unidentified and scot-free, the victim will often get blamed for the incident - as if it was their fault for having the audacity to “jaywalk” across a road despite its lack of anything resembling a sidewalk, crosswalk, or “walk” signal. I’m tired of the condescending assumptions associated with the choice not to own a vehicle.
“Speak softly, and carry a big stick.” - US President Theodore Roosevelt
Over time, WANDA has evolved for me into a sort of political creed - a firm rejection of our nation’s stubborn addiction to its cars.
Why Are So Many American Pedestrians Dying at Night?
Sometime around 2009, American roads started to become deadlier for pedestrians, particularly at night. Fatalities have risen ever since, reversing the effects of decades of safety improvements. And it’s not clear why.
What’s even more perplexing: Nothing resembling this pattern has occurred in other comparably wealthy countries. In places like Canada and Australia, a much lower share of pedestrian fatalities occurs at night, and those fatalities — rarer in number — have generally been declining, not rising.
In America, these trends present a puzzle that has stumped experts on vehicle design, driver behavior, road safety and how they interact: What changed, starting about 15 years ago, that would cause rising numbers of pedestrian deaths specifically in the U.S. — and overwhelmingly at night?
“This is something that, quite frankly, our profession missed,” Rebecca Sanders, the founder of Safe Streets Research and Consulting, said of the toll of nighttime deaths. “I think we missed that for a long time.”
In 2021, more than 7,300 pedestrians died in America — three in four of them during the hours between sunset and sunrise.
This trend exists on top of what is already a growing gap in roadway deaths between the U.S. and other countries. Speed limits on local roads are often higher in the U.S., laws and cultural prohibitions against dangerous driving can be weaker, and American infrastructure in many ways has been designed to enable speeding cars.
Those baseline conditions may mean, researchers suggest, that American roads — and the pedestrians walking along them — have been especially susceptible to potential new risks like smartphones and bigger vehicles.
But even that is only part of the picture.
“I don’t have any definitive answers for this,” said Jessica Cicchino, the vice president for research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Ms. Cicchino, like many observers, has puzzled over how rapidly nighttime deaths have risen. “What is it that’s happening specifically in the dark?”
Once You See the Truth About Cars, You Can’t Unsee It
In American consumer lore, the automobile has always been a “freedom machine” and liberty lies on the open road. “Americans are a race of independent people” whose “ancestors came to this country for the sake of freedom and adventure,” the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce’s soon-to-be-president, Roy Chapin, declared in 1924. “The automobile satisfies these instincts.” During the Cold War, vehicles with baroque tail fins and oodles of surplus chrome rolled off the assembly line, with Native American names like Pontiac, Apache, Dakota, Cherokee, Thunderbird and Winnebago — the ultimate expressions of capitalist triumph and Manifest Destiny.
But for many low-income and minority Americans, automobiles have been turbo-boosted engines of inequality, immobilizing their owners with debt, increasing their exposure to hostile law enforcement, and in general accelerating the forces that drive apart haves and have-nots.
In the consumer arena, cars have become tightly sprung debt traps. The average monthly auto loan payment crossed $700 for the first time this year, which does not include insurance or maintenance costs. Subprime lending and longer loan terms of up to 84 months have resulted in a doubling of auto loan debt over the last decade and a notable surge in the number of drivers who are “upside down”— owing more money than their cars are worth. But, again, the pain is not evenly distributed. Auto financing companies often charge nonwhite consumers higher interest rates than white consumers, as do insurers.
The pathway that leads from a simple traffic fine to financial insolvency or detention is increasingly crowded because of the spread of revenue policing intended to generate income from traffic tickets, court fees and asset forfeiture. Fiscally squeezed by austerity policies, officials extract the funds from those least able to pay. This is not only an awful way to fund governments; it is also a form of backdoor, regressive taxation that circumvents voters’ input.
Deadly traffic stops, racially biased predatory lending and revenue policing have all come under public scrutiny of late, but typically they are viewed as distinct realms of injustice, rather than as the interlocking systems that they are. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it: A traffic stop can result in fines or arrest; time behind bars can result in repossession or a low credit score; a low score results in more debt and less ability to pay fines, fees and surcharges. Championed as a kind of liberation, car ownership — all but mandatory in most parts of the country — has for many become a vehicle of capture and control.
Urban Sprawl Defines Unsustainable Cities, But It Can Be Undone
In the US, decades of city-planning policies have supported huge areas of urban sprawl and sparsely populated neighborhoods. The towns we know today often lock residents into lengthy car journeys to go about their daily lives, leading to congestion, air pollution, long commutes, and a lack of exercise. As the world struggles to undo unsustainable systems, as well as the growing inequality between the rich and the poor, cities are making their way back into the spotlight as potential solutions—and missteps.
It’s estimated that more compact development in the US would lead to a 7-10% reduction in total transportation CO2 emissions (the largest source of emissions by sector in the US) by 2050, compared to continuing urban sprawl.
What’s more, urban sprawl lends itself to big, detached houses, which consume considerably more energy than compact apartments and homes. As of 2015, a single-family detached home in the US used around 3 times as much energy as an apartment in a building of five or more different units. They also mean less land for everything else—like public parks and city green belts.
In sprawling areas, there are more traffic fatalities, prevalence of obesity, and worse air quality. And this car-dependent transport system also fails to provide mobility to people who are too poor to afford a car, or cannot operate a car for other reasons such as age or disability.
For decades, some 80% of America’s transportation spending has gone to roads and car-related infrastructure, with a max of 20% going to public transit, sidewalks, and bike lanes. This leads to a negative feedback loop, where low investment in accessible, clean, and timely buses means people don’t take them, leading city planners to invest in them even less. We’re subsidizing the costs of building new roads and widening existing roads to benefit the suburbs, and essentially starving our public transportation systems. We have made public transit slow, inefficient and unreliable. And then we’re shocked when nobody wants to ride it.
The US is seeing a move away from urban sprawl, such as the redevelopment of old commercial areas for mixed use. Zoning code changes are helping to allow more compact development. And research has shown that development around public transit stations can cut car trips in half.