The Dutch take a proactive, systematic, and swift approach to road safety
The loss of Louisa Gag, a bike-share and transportation planner for the City of Boston who was killed Thursday while riding her bike to work, hits us particularly hard (“Cyclist’s death sparks furor over road safety efforts,” Metro, July 11). Many people want to know what happened and why. We believe that officials should look to the Netherlands for a better approach to answering this question than is typical in the United States.
When a fatal crash occurs in the Netherlands, the investigation focuses first on identifying problems with the current street design so that corrective action can be taken immediately. A forensic traffic investigation unit within the police department working alongside municipal engineers begins identifying these flaws within days. There is an immediacy built into the process enabling street design changes to be implemented within weeks.
By contrast, police investigations in the United States serve only one purpose: a legal determination of who was negligent and the assigning of blame, leading to a criminal prosecution or insurance claim. This means that certain details of the crash remain secret for upward of a year. Critically, the investigation ignores altogether the question: Did the road design contribute to this crash?
Unlike us, Dutch traffic engineers take a proactive, systematic approach to road safety. With the recognition that people make mistakes, Dutch roads are designed to minimize the likelihood of mistakes and, when they occur, to ensure that they are less likely to result in serious injury or death. This approach works: The Netherlands has one-third fewer road deaths per capita, for all users, than the United States.
Future tragedies are predictable and preventable. Gag devoted her life to making Boston’s streets safer. What more must it take for us to prioritize making them safer right now?
Jeffrey Rosenblum
Cambridge
Peter Furth
Milton
Rosenblum, a professional engineer, and Furth, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, co-teach a Northeastern University summer course in the Netherlands on systematic safety.
Boston and state officials must shed their car-centric policy
Louisa Gag devoted her career to the basic right of safe travel, first with advocacy groups, then as an aide to Mayor Michelle Wu.
Last week she was killed while riding to work at a time that the city government has backed away from making streets safer for bikes and pedestrians, following pressure by a wealthy opponent in last year’s mayoral campaign.
Meanwhile, the government subsidizes car travel. Just as one example, Boston gives every resident car owner a permit to park on the street for free. The benefit is worth several hundred dollars every month, but it accrues only to those who actually own a car. Road construction and maintenance, climate effects, and dangers to vulnerable road users are other obvious high costs of this persistent policy.
The fact is that a car-based transportation system extracts an extraordinarily high cost from everyone. The mayor, as well as the governor and the Legislature, should be making every effort to make our streets safer for cyclists and pedestrians.
Alan Wright
Roslindale
Paul Basken
Winthrop
Short and long term, Mayor Wu must do more to ensure safe streets
Following the tragic death of advocate and transportation planner Louisa Gag, residents and other advocates are right to point to Boston’s failure to put safe streets in the category of necessity, not amenity.
In the short term, more vigorous, sustained traffic enforcement and accountable police attention to hazardous behavior could save lives.
In the two days following Gag’s fatal bike crash, in my own neighborhood, I witnessed two vehicles going through a red light at the intersection of Forbes and Centre streets in Jamaica Plain, one vehicle making a U-turn on Centre at the same intersection, and a large moving truck double-parked on Centre, requiring two-way traffic to navigate the remaining one lane.
On side streets, cars routinely park in tow zones and fire lanes. Electric bikes cruise the sidewalks, and meal delivery motorcycles weave in and out of stalled traffic. All of these conditions put drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians in danger and highlight the need for more vigorous enforcement of existing laws.
In the long run, we must do nothing less than reduce the number of all motorized vehicles on our roads. Employers should offer public transportation perks, but they should not subsidize employees’ downtown parking costs. Universities should register students who bring cars into the city, then work with the city to assess a fee for their use. We also need to restrict the use of Amazon and other delivery services, which account for a significant percentage of traffic.
Boston is often considered one of our country’s most livable cities. It’s up to Mayor Michelle Wu and all relevant city departments to act to maintain this reputation.
Anne Wheelock
Jamaica Plain