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This Newstip edited by Curtis Black
Contact:
312-369-7783
| fax 312-369-6404
| curtis@newstips.org
Pedestrian Rights and Pedestrian Deaths
Newstip Date: 03-12-2004
In an action modeled on Critical Mass bike rides, northwest side residents will walk together on March 20 to assert pedestrian rights and memorialize pedestrians killed in auto collisions.
They will mark the deaths of two community residents who were killed by cars within a 24-hour period last month. One was popular local musician Chris Saathoff, who was struck early on February 14 by an SUV running a red light at Western Avenue and dragged for two blocks. Early the next morning, Benjamin Dominguez Vazquez was run over in the crosswalk at North and Western.
Joined by friends and relatives of victims and led by a new pedestrian-rights group, Logan Square Walks, marchers will meet at noon on Saturday, March 20, outside the Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, and walk to the crash sites. (Saathoff was leaving the Empty Bottle when he was killed, and the club is hosting a benefit on March 19 for a memorial arts and music center planned in his name.)
Pedestrians must constantly "navigate motorists who speed through intersections, pass illegally, impede crosswalks and ignore signs," said Christy Prahl, chair of Logan Square Walks. She said that 4,000 traffic collisions involve pedestrians each year in Chicago, and cites a 1997 study reporting an average of 245 deaths of pedestrians in traffic collisions each year in Chicago. "This is a growing public health crisis," she said.
Over 13 percent of traffic fatalities in Illinois are pedestrians, yet only 1 percent of federal transportation hazard reduction funds go to improving pedestrian environments, said Johanna Nyden of the Center for Neighborhood Technology. "Even sidewalks are usually an afterthought" in roadway projects, she said. CNT is backing the Safe Routes to School Act (SB 2396) to ensure that a larger portion of federal funds go to pedestrian infrastructure around schools and parks.
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