This week’s issue of TIME Magazine topped off three weeks of nationwide coverage of Transportation for America’s Dangerous by Design report ranking communities according to the risk for pedestrians. The excellent TIME piece opens with the tragic story of Ashley Nicole Valdes, “a smart, pretty 11-year-old girl” who was killed while crossing the street in Miami earlier this year and became “a heart-wrenching symbol of South Florida’s notoriously reckless car culture.”

Skyrocketing prices may be making life hard for many Americans, but with four-day work weeks becoming popular, sprawl being curbed, and fewer people dying on the roads, Time finds at least a few nice things that come with $4-a-gallon gasoline. (Time — Amanda Ripley)