Death By Car: The Normalization of Atrocity
by David Ezpinoza
At the beginning of this summer, I sat down to reflect on the anniversary of the death of a co-worker. Mary Melville, mother of two, had been killed in a head-on car collision in May 2006 while coming back on Highway 46 from a family trip to Disneyland. Mary died along with her husband Mike, and six-month old daughter Katherine. Mary sat across from me at work. Needless to say, I couldn't bring myself to share my feelings on the matter then—even now it is hard.
It is hard because Mary was the second person I'd known within half a year's time to die in a car crash. My wife's aunt Cindy had also been hit when her car spun out of control during a storm and landed in the opposing lane in August of 2005. Then on May 26, 2006, a UCSC student activist friend named Audrey Castellanos died in a car collision near southern California only a few weeks after Mary. Three people in three separate fatal accidents—car accidents.
Though I'd been riding a bicycle for years, it wasn't until these tragic events hit close to home that I fully comprehended how inherently dangerous automobiles are. Just this past April, Bob Clark, director of one of my favorite childhood films, "A Christmas Story" was killed in southern California when his car was hit head on while driving on the Pacific Coast Highway.
If there's a pattern worth mentioning here, it's that none of these people were riding bicycles. They were driving cars. When accidents happen whether they involve cars or bicycles, questions abound, asking who is to blame. Phrases like "riding safely", "obeying traffic laws", and "reckless riding/driving" are tossed out. Never is the argument re-calibrated to challenge the basic notion that driving a car is a safe activity. Instead of treating the technology of the automobile as a threat to public safety—animals, pedestrians, other drivers, and, yes, bicyclists—we are encouraged to follow the same kind of myopic reasoning that allows groups like the NRA to claim with a straight face, "guns don't kill people, people kill people."
Examples of this mentality aren't hard to find. When 25-year old local bike commuter John Myslin was killed on Mission and Bay by a semi-truck at the beginning of August, the Santa Cruz Sentinel online discussion was inundated with readers weighing in. Many postings included the suggestion that bicycles should be banned from Mission Street. If we follow this line of reasoning, shouldn't we also consider banning motorcycles too? After all, motorcyclists are killed in car accidents. If we ban motorcycles, shouldn't we also ban pedestrians? And if we ban pedestrians, would it not also be wise to ban drivers since they are also in danger of being killed by cars?
Solutions that involve banning cyclists from roadways only reaffirm the automobile's dominance in everyday life. Rather than banning bicycle traffic from main arteries, I would propose that certain streets should be closed off to cars and restored with bike paths, walkways, and fountains in the same way that wildlife refuges are restored. If such a proposal seems preposterous, it is only within the context of a culture dominated by the automobile.
For my part, the people I've known who have been killed by cars has forced me to rethink the reason why I choose a bicycle over an automobile as my main source of transportation. It is not just because of the wars overseas or the rising oceans, it is for the safety of my friends and family, and a tiny step to a quieter, peaceful earth. I only hope more people won't have to experience what I have in order to reach the same conclusions.