A new academic study looking at the numbers of pedestrians killed while wearing headphones ignores the overwhelming majority of pedestrian deaths, providing a healthy dose of blaming the victim while turning a blind eye to the actual problem.

At first glance, the numbers sound incredible. “The number of headphone-wearing pedestrians seriously injured or killed near roadways and railways has tripled in six years…” Wow, they’ve tripled? That must be a lot, right?

When you examine the numbers closely, though, it’s clear that this study is examining a share of pedestrian fatalities so small as to be almost statistically insignificant when compared to the problem of pedestrian deaths writ large.

The study has been highly successful at winning credulous news coverage and shifting blame to the victims, but by focusing on a tiny sliver of fatalities it does more to obscure the true causes than explain what is happening.

“Oh, they’re all wearing headphones now. That’s why pedestrians are getting killed.”

Let’s stop for a minute and acknowledge that being distracted is never a good idea, whether driving or walking. Especially if you’re navigating busy streets, you need all available senses at your disposal to make sure you arrive at your destination safely. That means not texting and keeping your eyes on the road while driving, and making sure that you can hear and see when walking.

From 2000-2009 47,700 people were killed while walking in the U.S. This University of Maryland study found 116 deaths in 8 years where headphones were said to be involved, or about 0.3% of all pedestrian deaths during the study period.

Spending our time focused intently on this tiny aspect of pedestrian deaths is like coming across a person who’s been stabbed in the chest, and worrying about finding the band-aid you need to patch the scrape on his elbow.

Which further proves just how loony the headline is in this story. (“Study: You are more likely to die walking with headphones”) This study doesn’t prove that you’re more likely to die while walking and wearing headphones, it just shows that those deaths have been increasing.

You want to know how you are more likely to die while walking? By walking along or trying to cross a busy arterial, state highway or other bigger/busier road eligible to receive federal funding, where fully two-thirds of all pedestrian fatalities from 2000-2009 took place.

Are headphones the primary problem living and walking along here?

The primary reasons for the other 35,885 or so pedestrian deaths in the last 10 years hasn’t changed with the rise of smartphones, iPods and ubiquitous white earbuds. That song remains the same: millions of people live on or near streets and roads that aren’t safe for walking; streets without sidewalks, streets without safe crossings, streets that force far too many people to brave unsafe conditions on foot simply to get from A to B.

Are we concerned about making these roads safer? Are we studying smart solutions and ways to use federal funds to retrofit these dangerous corridors to make them safer for everyone — an appropriate decision, since federal funds and design guidelines helped create many of these dangerous corridors in the first place.

Nope, we’re studying what may (or may not have) contributed to the death of 0.3% of all people killed while walking in the last 8 years. And using the numbers for even more ammunition in the never ending quest to blame the victim

Admittedly, with problems so big that any solution will be complex and layered, there’s a tendency to look for a simpler explanation and try to find a more manageable problem that we can solve. Just like coming across a person with the sucking chest wound and having no medical experience under our belt, sometimes we’re just overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem. So we focus on the elbow scrape we can fix that just needs a band-aid.

But this problem demands and deserves our immediate attention. Instead of spending our time concerned with why the 0.3% were killed, how about we stop and have a serious look at the larger, and much more serious problem of the 99.7%?

Every year we don’t, another 4,000-plus people die preventable deaths.

“The child, along with an adult and other children, were attempting to cross the street and they had crossed the northbound lanes and were standing in the middle turn lane when, according to the adult, the boy pulled away. He was then hit by a car traveling in the southbound lane,” DeKalb Police spokeswoman Mekka Parish said.

Just like Raquel Nelson’s story, the nearest crosswalk wasn’t “near” at all. The family could have walked either 0.4 miles roundtrip to the south, or 1.2 miles roundtrip to the north — a long trip which also would’ve taken them across the narrow bridge over I-285 where, incidentally, two other pedestrians have been killed in the last 10 years.

Image from our Dangerous by Design interactive map

Now, this point of this post isn’t to say that this driver was in the wrong — the preliminary reports indicate that the child pulled away from his stepfather and stepped out into the southbound lanes and the driver probably couldn’t have stopped. Though they’d done it dozens of times, perhaps the father made a poor judgement to try and cross the street there. But just like Raquel Nelson, this story does illustrate the insanity of how we fund and plan our transportation network in urbanized (and urbanizing) places like this.

Look closely at this graphic of the area.

This short section of Flat Shoals south of I-285 has no fewer than three relatively high-density apartment complexes, as well as a handful of restaurants, stores and other retail offerings fronting the roadway, ostensibly hoping to serve the nearby residents, at least in part. The street does have sidewalks on both sides, yet the two nearest crosswalks on Flat Shoals in either direction are at least .8 miles apart. Federal dollars (or at least federal design guidelines) were likely used when this road was widened to 5 lanes. The city or county approved high-density apartment complexes and retail on both sides of the road in a corridor without making any attempts to ensure those residents would be able to walk in the area safely, save for the tacked-on sidewalks on each side.

The planning and design of this corridor and the land use around it hasn’t kept up with the needs of the people living in it.

Should we legitimately expect residents of the apartment complexes on one side of Flat Shoals to walk nearly half a mile to reach the Jamaican restaurant across the street? According to several other media reports on the incident, the family wasn’t alone in trying to cross there that evening, and some residents have been asking for improvements to make a safe crossing there for a long time.

The family told CBS Atlanta that the street in front of their apartment complex has always been dangerous. There is heavy traffic and no stoplight or crosswalk. ”It’s very dangerous, very dangerous,” said Isaac.  “You would think they would have a crosswalk if you have a plaza right across the street and apartments right here.

There isn’t a crosswalk, even though dozens of people cross the street in this very spot each day. How many other streets like this are there in Atlanta? In Georgia? In the United States?

Will the stepfather will be charged in the child’s death, as Raquel Nelson was? Probably not, since the incident didn’t happen in Cobb County, where the prosecutor is prone to bringing such charges. Perhaps Dekalb County officials remember her recent trial and subsequent national media attention shining an angry spotlight on their neighboring metro county.

Beyond that, one would hope that local officials have learned the more important lesson about providing safer streets for people to get around on — no matter whether they’re on foot, bike or in a car. Local and state officials have great power in making some of those decisions.

While needed, that’s a piecemeal approach to a problem that is truly federal in scope. Two-thirds of all pedestrian fatalities in the last 10 years occurred on roads just like this one — state highways and busy arterials built with federal funds and federal design guidelines. Shouldn’t the federal transportation program be used to help fix these dangerous mistakes that it created in the first place? What we really need is a transportation bill that makes the safety of everyone on our roads a priority, so stories like this one — and Raquel Nelson’s among thousands of others — can become a distant memory.

No family in an urbanized area should have to choose between crossing a dangerous street or walking half a mile out of their way just to cross the street to their house. We can do better.

Updated (1/12/12): PEDS, a partner of ours that recently helped us deliver a petition in Atlanta on behalf of Raquel Nelson, submitted an op-ed to the AJC that ran last week.

Pedestrian facilities are often seen as a local issue. The proposed project list adopted by the regional roundtable, for example, dedicates just one-third of 1 percent of the regional funds to pedestrian and bicycle projects.

Yet the Atlanta Regional Commission’s 2010 on-board transit survey confirmed that nearly three-fourths of transit trips begin with walking trips. Research by the ARC also suggests that people who walk to transit are among the region’s most vulnerable road users. From 2004 to 2008, one-fourth of all pedestrian crashes occurred within 100 feet of transit stops.

Busy bicycling bridge Originally uploaded by Steven Vance to Flickr.

Send a message to your Senator to tell them how you feel about their vote on this amendment.

Senator Paul’s “misrepresentation” of the facts in his amendment, as the Associated Press termed it, sought to force the Senate into a false choice: either safety in our cars while driving on our bridges or safety while walking and biking on our streets and roads. A bipartisan group of Senators made it clear that’s a choice we don’t have to make and voted against the amendment, reaffirming the importance of making our streets safe for everyone, no matter how they’re traveling.

Senator Paul claimed that the amendment would take “beautification” dollars and direct them toward bridge repair. But that money (which largely goes to help keep people safe while walking or biking) is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to what we need to actually make a dent in repairing our bridges.

The FHWA estimates that we need almost $71 billion dollars right now to repair all of today’s deficient bridges, to say nothing of the bridges that will be deficient by next year. This small program that is mostly used on bike and pedestrian facilities was around $900 million last year. Under this plan, at the cost of safety for everyone who uses a road, states would have gained enough money to repaint a few bridges.

AASHTO, the trade group that represents state transportation officials, pointed out to the AP that “the stipulation that states set aside enhancement dollars has survived for nearly two decades because it’s popular with local officials and metropolitan planning organizations.”

This relatively small amount spent on safer streets and roads is popular because they save lives and give millions of people another option for getting around.

We do deserve a serious plan to address the woeful condition of our nation’s bridges. But taking the one or two pennies of each transportation dollar that help keep people safe while walking and spending it on bridge repair isn’t the serious proposal that we need. That’s akin to going on a diet by eating Big Macs everyday — but leaving out the lettuce to lose weight.

Here’s one fact about bridge repair that you likely haven’t been told by the people cooking up these plans:

States can already take up to half of their money for bridge repair and spend it on new highway capacity, no matter the condition of their bridges. And states can already spend most of what’s usually the biggest pot of transportation funding on almost anything they want. It’s entirely flexible. They could fix bridges, build transit, highways, bridges, sidewalks; it’s all eligible, and totally up to the states. No mandates from Washington.

The breakdown of the vote is below. If you want to send a thank you message — or send a message of disappointment to your Senator who voted the wrong way — we’ve modified our action for the amendment to do exactly that. Send a message to your Senator here.

You can also use that page to give the “No’s” a call and a thank you, which is always appreciated and rarely given.

And for all of you that called or sent a message urging a “no” vote in the last two days, thank you for your support. Your action had real impacts on this particular bill.

Here is a sampling of some of what we’ve received so far.

Bladensburg-22 Originally uploaded by wtrecat to Flickr.

MD 450 just west of junction with MD 202. Very busy road with no pedestrian crossing at this spot across from El Primo international market, 5403 Annapolis Rd.

Note that this photo from Maryland just outside D.C. is taken at a Metro bus stop. And there appears to be no safe crossing immediately nearby.

Incomplete Street Originally uploaded by Boenau to Flickr.

No sidewalks? No problem!

There’s no sidewalk at all along this road. And the overgrowth forces anyone trying to walk out into the roadway. If there is a crosswalk at the light up ahead, pedestrians have to cross at least 8 lanes of traffic and a median to make it across.

Incomplete Street Originally uploaded by Boenau to Flickr.

As if walking on the goat path isn’t bad enough, rainfall drains and collects on the grass, forcing pedestrians into the street.

Just because there aren’t any sidewalks doesn’t mean that people won’t or aren’t walking. It has to be terrifying to walk on this narrow strip of grass next to 3 straight lanes of high speed traffic. And once again, if there is a crosswalk 200-400 yards down behind this pedestrian, people on foot will have to cross at least 6 lanes of traffic and a median in one light cycle.

elkton_rd3 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America to Flickr.

Submitted photo by Frank Warnock of Bike Delaware. www.bikede.org/ (Please credit photographer, not T4 America.)

Smooth, graduated turning radii like this are especially dangerous to pedestrians. Turns are engineered like this so traffic can make a right turn while only having to barely slow their speed, making it extremely hazardous for people on foot to cross from the island back to the side of the road.

IMG_6603 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America to Flickr.

Bee Caves Rd/RM 2244 west of Walsh Tarlton Lane in Austin, Texas. Roadway under TxDOT jurisdiction. Submitted photo by Joan Hudson, P.E., of the Texas Transportation Institute. (Please credit photographer, not T4 America.)

The photos we got from this supporter in Texas were all taken on roads managed by the Texas DOT. Pedestrians here have to walk in a ditch with nowhere to escape to if a car veers slightly out of the lane.

Photos like these could be taken in almost any place in the country. These conditions are far too common and much too accepted by the people who plan and design our streets and roads. Two-thirds of all pedestrian fatalities in the last 10 years occurred on roads much like these — high-speed arterials designed first and foremost for moving speeding traffic as fast as possible with little consideration for the needs or safety of people on foot or bike. Federal dollars and design guidelines have helped create these dangerous situations across the country, and the federal government shouldn’t be able to walk away and pin the problem on the states.

Simple policy changes and priorities for spending at the federal level can help save lives immediately.

We’re not finished collecting these photos — we want to see yours! When you send them in (click here for instructions), feel free to include location information as well and we’ll plot and share the location. And bonus points for photos that show people in them.

Thank you so much to the dozens of people who sent us photos or submitted them to our Flickr group. Keep it up!

Many of you were shocked by the story of Raquel Nelson, the single mom in Atlanta charged with vehicular homicide when her son was killed while crossing an unsafe street with her. While shocking, head-scratching stories like hers are thankfully rare, it’s emblematic of the road design in many places that we live, and we want to make sure that Congress gets that picture loud and clear.

We want to show them that roads like Austell Road by Raquel Nelson’s apartment — 4 lane speedways with few considerations for pedestrians — are far too common.

So send us your photos of dangerous, unsafe and poorly planned streets out there across America.

We want to see what streets look like out there for people trying to walk. We want to see the missing crosswalks, the 1/2 mile treks to the nearest crosswalk along a 50 mph highway, and dangerous roads designed for speeding traffic rather than safe walking. More than 47,000 people were killed while walking from 2000-2009, and a large majority of them occurred on roads fitting these descriptions.

A few details about how to send in photos or video:

• Email: You can email photos to us at photos@t4america.org. When you send them, please let us know if we can upload these to our Flickr account (with your credit information in caption like this one.) Anywhere we use your photos, we’ll always give you credit.
• Flickr: Add photos to the T4 America Flickr group, and tag them with “dangerous by design” so we’re sure to see them. If you have photos but don’t want to add them to the group, you can just add the tag “dangerous by design”. We always prefer photos licensed with Creative Commons, so we can use these photos in meetings with Congress or on the blog with credit given to the source.
• Video: You can upload videos directly to our Facebook page, but Youtube or other video sharing sites are fine. Send us a link. If you send in videos directly to the email address, they need to be under 10 mb.
• If you’ve got another way to show us your photos other than these, drop us a line at photos@t4america.org

Over the next few weeks we’ll highlight some of the most heinous conditions and worst design here on the blog.

Poorly designed streets — often built or designed with federal dollars — endanger pedestrians, cyclists and drivers alike. Too many people are walking in these places where they’re likely to become the next statistic because of streets that are dangerous by design. Show Congress what this looks like and help us paint a compelling picture of why we need to invest in safer streets in the next transportation bill.

Your photos will help us in our meetings with Congress and other transportation officials as we press for policies and funding in a transportation bill that will help make walking and biking safer on streets around the country.

Here are some examples of the dangerous and inconvenient conditions pedestrians face in our cities and communities every day.

The New York Times photo by Chip Litherland

New York Times photo by Chip Litherland

Sidewalk Infill_ 82nd 022 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America to Flickr.

Credit to April Bertelsen Pedestrian Coordinator Portland Bureau of Transportation

image003 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America to Flickr.

(Please credit photos to Dr. Scott Crawford. Posted here with his permission)

Walking & Roads Originally uploaded by Transportation for America to Flickr.

Credit to Stephen Lee Davis/Transportation for America

Walking in the ditch Originally uploaded by Transportation for America to Flickr.

Photograph by Stephen Lee Davis/Transportation for America.

David Goldberg, T4 America communications director, penned a thoughtful op-ed on the Raquel Nelson story that ran in the Washington Post today.

The prosecution of this grieving mother was shocking. In truth, though, no one should be surprised that tragedies like this are happening every day across America: Transportation officials and local planners routinely create the very conditions that underlie these “accidents” and allow them to persist…

…This is a major issue in inner-ring suburbs across the country, places originally built as auto-only suburbia that now are home to many lower-income families who don’t have access to cars. Neither the public transportation system nor the highway designs work for those who live, work and walk in these areas. People are being punished and killed simply for being pedestrians. Our research shows that thousands of lives could be saved — and millions more lives improved — by retrofitting these dangerous roads, as many communities are trying to do.

In related news, Nelson has officially announced her intention to seek a new trial, which will begin October 25. She talked about her decision with Ann Curry on the Today Show in a second interview. While Nelson is concerned with clearing her own name, she knows that others face the same situation every day.

“It’s for myself, my children, single mothers, anybody who has to take public transportation and had to be in a scary situation like that,” she told Today.

We’re still gathering signatures to join with the others petitioning Gov. Nathan Deal and the Cobb County authorities to pardon her and clear her of the previous charges without having to go through another trial. Add your name and spread the word.

Watch the full video below:

Despite the enormous pressure she must be feeling, she was poised and articulate. Listening to her, it was hard to imagine the horror that this past year has been for her, to lose a child and then be faced with such a heartless prosecution.

“You’re always going to relive the moment. It’s hard to explain if you’ve never been through something like this. But you can’t let it dictate what you do. When I’m at work I have to push it away. … My other two daughters are the only way I could have survived this situation, giving me a reason to push forward.”

We were a little disappointed that the Today piece did not give viewers a better picture of the conditions that Nelson and her children faced that day in April 2010. Ken Edelstein of Green Building Chronicle in Atlanta helps to fill that gap with this video he sent us a little while ago:

The response to our post on the Atlanta mother who was charged with vehicular homicide when her child was struck by a hit-and-run driver while crossing a street has been, to put it mildly, staggering. At last count, David Goldberg’s post has more than 150 comments, and many of the referring posts on the same topic have been similarly busy, some reaching into the hundreds of comments. More than 35,000 people read our post in two days and spread the story like wildfire on twitter. (Share the story with the #RaquelNelson hashtag.)

Though the response has been enormous — positive and negative — perhaps it really shouldn’t be all that surprising.

Considering that a huge percentage of Americans live in places not all that different from Austell Road in western Cobb County — once sleepy places near a larger city that were suburbanized around the automobile through the last few decades — many people could immediately relate to the story in some way.

Some may have been in Raquel Nelson’s shoes before, using sporadic public transportation or having to walk on streets where pedestrians are treated as an afterthought at best or a nuisance at worst. Some may be drivers who’ve seen pedestrians crossing without crosswalks from a similar bus stop and looked on in horror, having never considered what life is like in America’s suburbs without a car.

The comments on our story ran the spectrum. From sharing our outrage at the miscarriage of justice, to belief that the mother was wrong yet shouldn’t be charged, to people who would’ve obviously made the right decision in hindsight (with little understanding of what Nelson’s life was like), to shockingly callous comments suggesting she got what she deserved.  (Oh, and a fair helping of just plain offensive, racist, nasty things. We had to edit, delete or otherwise moderate more comments on this one post than in 3 years of comments on the T4 America blog.)

Most people commenting on the story were entirely focused on the question of whether or not Raquel Nelson was at all to blame, ignoring the larger question we asked: Isn’t this a systemic failure of how we design, plan and build our towns and cities?

One commenter did pick up on this, also hinting at a deeper issue of justice and fairness:

“The comments do not address the underlying problem. It is not a matter of who is at fault in this specific incident as much as what is being done about the problem wherever it exists. This incident is proof that there is a problem with the way transportation is planned.  The funding to fix these problems is being voted down. The ones voting against the funds are likely fine with that as the people affected will mostly not vote for them. Win Win for them.”

The people who are most likely riding the bus, walking along highways without sidewalks or crossing midblock to avoid 20 extra minutes of walking to cross a street in West Cobb County are people with few other options. They’re the people who the elected leaders in a place like Cobb County, that’s largely white and prosperous, probably aren’t going to spend a whole lot of time catering to.

This issue really is one of fairness and equity.

Should we be treating the people who have to walk (to say nothing of the people who want or choose to) as second-class citizens, forcing them to walk 20 minutes out of their way just to safely cross a street near their house or the store? Should we be more concerned with all the people who use a road, rather than just the ones who can afford to use a car? Is moving traffic as fast as possible, no matter the consequences to people on foot or bike, the only important function of our streets and roads?

One thing is certain: there are stories far too similar to Raquel Nelson’s all over the country. People walking along or crossing streets that weren’t designed for them, in places where the planning hasn’t caught up to the function — demonstrated in this instance where bus stops are placed across from residences with no safe, convenient way to get between the two.

We simply must do better. As long as we continue building and designing streets like these below, we’ll continue to see people die unnecessarily.

Photo courtesy of Dr. Scott Crawford	Photo courtesy of April Bertelson, Portland Pedestrian Coordinator	Photo by Stephen Davis, T4 America

In the 1991 transportation authorization, the first that took a multi-modal approach to transportation investment, a small slice of funding was set aside for a program known as Transportation Enhancements (TE). This required states to spend about 1.5% of their total funds on other innovative, community-based projects to enhance the travel experience by all modes, outside of typical highway or transit projects. Among the major eligible uses were bike trails, rail-to-trail conversions, sidewalks and additional streetscape improvements and other projects to make walking and biking safer.

The House bill outline proposes to eliminate this small percentage of funds dedicated to providing safer ways to walk and bicycle, though Mica has said states would not be prohibited from investing federal funds on bicycle and pedestrian projects. It would continue to be an “eligible use” of funds, but states would no longer be required to invest that small share of their federal funds in making walking and biking safer.

Considering more than 47,700 Americans were killed while walking from 2000-2009, and two-thirds of those deaths occurred on roads eligible to receive federal funds, should the federal government be stepping back from a commitment to making walking and bicycling safer? Left on their own with federal dollars and no accountability to make walking and biking safer, plenty of states will simply stop investing in the safety and convenience of walking and biking.

It’s certainly a local issue as well, but many local communities are working hard to fix these design flaws and to provide more options for safe waking and biking, and shouldn’t be forced to shoulder the burden alone.

Also lacking in the outline is a national complete streets policy, which would require that the federal dollars that states spend on federal-aid roads result in streets and roads that are safe for everyone that needs to use them, regardless of their age, ability or preferred mode of transport. The outline doesn’t explicitly mention complete streets, so the final verdict will come when a full bill is released. But without dedicated funding for bike and pedestrian facilities, a complete streets policy would at least require that states spending federal dollars on roads or highways can’t ignore the needs of those who want or need to get around on foot or by bike.

This is an advocacy blog, but typically we’re rather measured in our tone. Sometimes, however, we see something so utterly outrageous, so emblematic of the failure of our current transportation system, that “measured” just won’t cut it.

The prosecution and conviction this week of Raquel Nelson – a metro Atlanta mother who lost her four-year-old son to a hit-and-run driver – on the charge of vehicular homicide is one of those times.

You heard that right: According to the office of Cobb County prosecutor Barry Morgan, Nelson – who had no car at the time – committed vehicular homicide by attempting to cross a five-lane highway with her three kids to get to her apartment, after being let off the bus.

This photo shows the bus stops (located on both sides) of Austell Road, and the path taken by Raquel Nelson across Austell Road to get from the bus stop to her apartment complex across the street. No marked crossings are visible in the photo.

Nelson, 30 and African-American, was convicted on the charge this week by six jurors who were not her peers: All were middle-class whites, and none had ever taken a bus in metro Atlanta. In other words, none had ever been in Nelson’s shoes:

They had never taken two buses to go grocery shopping at Wal-Mart with three kids in tow. They had never missed a transfer on the way home that caused them to wait a full hour-and-a-half with tired and hungry kids for the next bus. They had never been let off at a bus stop on a five-lane speedway, with their apartment in sight across the road, and been asked to drag those three little ones an additional half-mile-plus down the road to the nearest traffic signal and back in order to get home at last.

And they had never lost control of an over-eager four-year-old as they waited on a three-foot median for a car to pass. Nor had they watched helplessly as a driver who had had “three or four” beers and two painkillers barreled toward their child.

That’s right: Because Nelson did not lug her exhausted little ones three-tenths of a mile from the bus stop to a traffic signal in order to cross five lanes of traffic, she is guilty of vehicular homicide. Because she did as her fellow bus riders, who crossed at the same time and place, and because she did what pedestrians will do every time – take the shortest reasonable path – she is guilty of vehicular homicide.

What about the highway designers, traffic engineers, transit planners and land use regulators who allowed a bus stop to be placed so far from a signal and made no other provision for a safe crossing; who allowed – even encouraged, with wide, straight lanes – prevailing speeds of 50-plus on a road flanked by houses and apartments; who carved a fifth lane out of a wider median that could have provided more of a safe refuge for pedestrians; who designed the entire landscape to be hostile to people trying to get to work and groceries despite having no access to a car?

They are as innocent as the day is long, according to the solicitor general’s office.

Look, accidents happen because people make misjudgments. Raquel Nelson probably made a mistake in following her fellow bus riders and trying to get home sooner. The driver made a series of errors, and was convicted of hit and run. But these are “accidents” waiting to happen, thanks to poor planning and dangerous designs.

If you look at our pedestrian fatalities map for metro Atlanta (or any other metro, for that matter) and zoom in, you see that the dead bodies line up like soldiers along certain corridors – your first clue that the design is not matching up with the use of the street. Austell Road/SR 5 is one of several such corridors in this area of Southeast Cobb County, which was built as auto-only suburbia but now is home to many lower-income families who often don’t have access to a car.

This is a major issue in inner suburbs all across the country. Neither the public transportation nor the highway designs work for the new populations that are living, working and walking in these areas. People are being punished and killed, needlessly, simply for being pedestrians. Incidentally, these are also the areas where millions of older Americans are expecting to “age in place”, so we’ll see more seniors trying to cross the road or catch the bus. Our research in Dangerous by Design showed that thousands of lives could be saved – and millions more lives improved – by retrofitting these dangerous roads, as many communities are trying to do.

Right now some in Congress are attempting to kill the small slice of funding dedicated to these kinds of projects. In truth, communities need many more resources to fix these safety issues and make our neighborhoods safer and more hospitable. As the vast majority of these roads were built under federal programs, this should be a national project.

“The Atlanta region has a plan to spend billions of federal and state dollars on projects that shave one or two minutes off a 30-minute driving commute,” said Sally Flocks, the executive director of a pedestrian safety group in Atlanta, who closely followed the trial. “But we think nothing of expecting transit riders and pedestrians to spend another 20 minutes walking out of their way.”

As a friend said, the prosecutors “stuck a knife in a grieving mother and twisted it.” Now she’s awaiting sentencing of up to 36 months in jail and working desperately to make provisions for her kids, should she be sent away. Prosecuting people like Raquel Nelson, who truly are the victims of poor planning and bad design, is like closing the door of the proverbial barn and then burning it down. One well-marked crosswalk would save more lives, and in all likelihood it would cost less than this malicious prosecution cost the taxpayers of Georgia.

Tip of the hat to Streetsblog Capitol Hill for getting the word out about this story and bringing it to our attention.

Update: This AJC story from 2010 sheds a little more light on exactly what happened. And it appears that Nelson wasn’t initially charged, according to the story:

Nelson said she’s read the blogs and wishes people knew what happened that night.

On April 10, she and her three children — Tyler, 9, A.J., 4, and Lauryn, 3 — went shopping because the next day was Nelson’s birthday. They had pizza, went to Wal-Mart and missed a bus, putting them an hour late getting home. Nelson, a student at Kennesaw State University, said she never expected to be out after dark, especially with the children.

When the Cobb County Transit bus finally stopped directly across from Somerpoint Apartments, night had fallen. She and the children crossed two lanes and waited with other passengers on the raised median for a break in traffic. The nearest crosswalks were three-tenths of a mile in either direction, and Nelson wanted to get her children inside as soon as possible. A.J. carried a plastic bag holding a goldfish they’d purchased.

“One girl ran across the street,” Nelson said. “For some odd reason, I guess he saw the girl and decided to run out behind her. I said, ‘Stop, A.J.,’ and he was in the middle of the street so I said keep going. That’s when we all got hit.”

There’s a great post on the story from Sarah Goodyear at Grist worth reading, and there’s a petition circulating if you’d like to get involved further.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/669/545/347/