On October 20th, three children were hit by a car driver while trying to walk across a four lane mini-highway called Jackson Drive. One tragically died, 12-year-old Andrew Olson.
Jackson Dr. tears through the residential San Carlos suburb of eastern San Diego, and in the last year four children were hit there. Locals knew the road endangers students walking to school and had requested the city to make changes. Yet traffic engineers said the intersection “meets City standards.” Soon after the killing, the City installed stop signs on the road, began considering reducing the speed limit from 40mph to 35, and halving lanes. Yet I wonder what more could prevent the killing of children by cars from ever happening again. How do we challenge the expansive priority that cars — not people, certainly not young people — receive in shared urban space?
Adding crosswalks and bike lanes are other actions San Diego has taken alongside micro-mobility programs, low-hanging-fruit investments for pedestrian, bicycle, multimodal margins, and one-off events like Ciclavia. But I want to consider the root factors of car-centered urbanism in San Diego. How and why has so much space been surrendered to motor-normativity that kills kids?
A modicum of pedestrian space
I’ve biked, walked, and ran the seasides and rugged canyons of “America’s Finest City.” Non-car mobility in San Diego is, frankly, bleak and unsafe. Due to sprawl, low density, and ubiquitous pavement, we lack car-free space. Interstates rupture communities and pollute airways, now the majority of San Diego’s greenhouse gas pollution (42%) is from cars (mostly from personal vehicles not industry usually blamed for climate change)…