Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America by Angie Schmitt

Abstract

Reviewed by: Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America by Angie Schmitt Cade Gouin and Yujie Hu Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America Angie Schmitt. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2020. 248 pp. $28.00 paperback (ISBN 9781642830835). Over the last 100 years, the automobile zeitgeist has evolved into an unforgiving powerhouse, sinking its talons deep into the cultural psyche of the United States. Accompanying and underlying the dominion of the automobile is a disturbing and inequitable epidemic of violence against pedestrians, the second-rate users of an infrastructure which was systematically developed against their best interests. As the vehicles we drive and the roadways we use become more hostile to pedestrians, the consequences of this problem are distributed unequally across the population—as is the case with many systemic problems in the US. This dynamic is the motivating force behind Angie Schmitt's Right of Way, an illuminating, exhaustively researched yet intimate and down-to-earth exploration of the "silent epidemic" of traffic violence and pedestrian deaths. Right of Way presents the facts and the research, explores how we arrived where we are, and points toward a better future, illustrating cold statistics with raw, personal stories of key players in the movement for pedestrian safety—many of whom were thrust into their roles without warning and without desire—instead born out of necessity and desperation. The introduction chapter provides a broad overview of the topics covered in the book, including the central systemic problem, explanations for why the problem exists, and the response to the problem from society at large. Kicking off chapter 1 with the story of a Philadelphia family almost entirely wiped out by night-time street racers, "the Geography of Risk" explores the idea that the danger to pedestrians is not distributed evenly across space. But this is not just an idea, it is reality; firstly, pedestrian-friendly infrastructure (crosswalks, crossing signals, protected shelters and bus stops, protected bike lanes, etc.) is often severely lacking in low-income, transit-dependent, and minority communities. To make matters worse, these communities—which are also typically lacking in political power—frequently find their neighborhoods split mercilessly by the most dangerous type of roads we build—wide, high-speed, entirely car-centric roadways called "suburban arterials." Most pedestrian deaths within any given city are concentrated on these roads. Current demographic trends show an upper-class return to the city from suburbia, forcing the lower class outward to areas that were designed [End Page 119] specifically around car commuting. Regional culture, politics, and the era in which a city developed are also predictors of the level of pedestrian support. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 center on the victims and their plight against the vehicular paradigm. Simply put, the biggest risk factors associated with victimization to traffic violence include being black or brown, being elderly, being low-income, having less than a high school education, speaking a primary language other than English, being homeless, abusing drugs or alcohol, living in the Sun Belt (due to most cities being developed almost completely under the car-centric paradigm), and walking at night. Importantly, these pedestrian risk factors are intersectional and additive, meaning that an individual with multiple risk factors is orders of magnitude more likely to be a victim. Despite unquestionably being the more vulnerable of the two parties in an interaction between a pedestrian and a vehicle moving at speed, the burden of responsibility is culturally placed on pedestrians much more than drivers, evidenced by the language used by the media, by traffic safety officials, and by policymakers. This culture of "pedestrian shaming" or "windshield bias" has led to increasingly strict criminalization of walking, despite drivers, developers, and policymakers having more power to change their own behavior, and despite much evidence of widespread failure by drivers to appropriately yield to pedestrians where required by existing laws. Chapter 5 directly challenges the most popular vehicle design trends of today, and Chapter 6 goes head-to-head with the norms of the traffic engineering profession. The rise of "killer cars" may sound dramatic, but it is true: Americans have become obsessed...