The road that killed Legend Jenkins was working as designed
strongtowns.org
strongtowns.org
There's a house near here that was written about in an article - it's at the end of a long straight road, and then there's a curve, and often-enough people go way too fast on the road, don't catch the curve, bounce through a bunch of grassy median and end up HITTING THIS HOUSE!
It's been hit so many times.
so, I really like bollards (https://josh.works/bollards) and I went to his house to see about adding some. He'd already had large rocks (1000lbs) placed in his yard, and after the most recent car hit them (and bounced one of them into his house) he added some 3000 lb rocks. It's still not a full layer of protection, but it's better.
Anyway, the real danger is the junction, not him having good enough or not good enough bollards. So, there was a meeting at his house the next day with city traffic engineering staff, police, city council, lots of neighbors...
and I'm popularizing a fix that I'm calling 'the traffic bean' - it's a shared-space junction, that is as effective as the existing junction, and much, much safer:
https://josh.works/traffic-bean
The director of Denver's DOTI has been looking it over, as a city council person has been pushing for it to get approved, and it might get approved! This would be basically the first real improvement in how american junctions are designed in decades.
It's currently just my side-project wish. All I want is to live near and use a road network that doesn't deal death constantly to others.
i fear for my kid's life, the same way these kids lives were affected. American road networks are horrific, I cannot take seriously anyone who takes them seriously.
[0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/LQ9kSNZxQwYV8S9C9
[1] https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/bodmin-round...
Or, put another way, why is it shaped like a circle, and not just a normal 4-way uncontrolled intersection?
Indeed, the junction can be a bit unfamiliar, and it looks like the one in Bodmin could be less confusing - I think delinieating the inner space and keeping cars to the edges (to make it more of an actual roundabout) would improve things for everyone.
Maybe I should call it a 'traffic doughnut' to highlight the difference between the inner/outer space of the junction.
American road networks were designed to be impervious to the opinions of everyone who uses them, so I'm very pleased with myself to have gotten so close to the permission I need to do a novel junction design.
Is it just a free-for-all zone that makes drivers slow down due to being confused? This seems to be a philosophy that's gaining ground - make no-rules areas and cars will be forced to slow down to navigate the zone, and this makes things safer (I'm skeptical about that bit).
before it was just a crossroads. The tree in the road wasn't there - you could blast straight through if you didn't crash. Must have reduced crashes 10x.
If you can do UK-style traffic circles, you'd be fine on this junction.
My proposal to to shape down all inbound lanes of traffic to a single lane, then connect them all to the inner circulating channel - it's a little lumpy, thus 'bean shaped' instead of 'circle shaped'.
But as far as using it, from the POV of the driver of a vehicle, it's identical to a roundabout.
The death of a 7 year old is a tragedy. Why do we then need to feel the need to hit bereaved parents with a manslaughter charge? Either there's something missing from the story or we're blaming a systemic issue on individual negligence.
Criminal negligence involves a "gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would exercise in the same situation".
Given the 7-year-old was escorted by a 10-year-old, I think that alone demonstrates a reasonable level of care was taken to protect the younger child.
If the streets are too dangerous for a 10-year-old to cross safely, then you need to look a lot deeper for the true source of the risk.
> West Hudson Boulevard is a high-speed arterial road with narrow sidewalks, a tiny median, and no truly safe crossings. Even a healthy, alert adult is taking their life in their hands by walking to that store. For a child, it’s playing the worst kind of roulette.
The fact that it did have a sidewalk, even a narrow one means that it's meant for walking. If it's unsafe then the existence of the sidewalk is only asking for trouble. It either has a sidewalk and is safe, or it isn't safe and shouldn't have a sidewalk. Having a sidewalk and being unsafe is the fault of the city/construction not the user.
Claiming a child was playing with roulette amounts to it also implying that lethal roulette games for kids is something that should be legal.
There's a skinny sidewalk on one side. No sidewalk on the other. No signaled crossings for blocks. High-ish speed traffic.
Given an option, nobody would walk that particular stretch of highway.
Should the parents have been charged? Probably not (unless there are details missing from the artcile). Should we reconsider how we build our suburbs? Absolutely.
https://www.google.com/maps/@35.2348779,-81.2052672,3a,75y,2...
The missing piece is a picture of the parents. The author argues that the system needs to lay blame somewhere, and the parents present as a soft target.
We quizzed the prosecutor about it, and he said he understood that, but, as he put it, "A child is dead." He hoped to use the seriousness of the charge to get the mother to accept counseling and supervision as part of a plea deal; but his office couldn't just let it go, which is what a lesser charge effectively would do in my state. After he explained that, he got the indictment. Maybe this prosecutor is thinking the same way.
> So we do the next best thing for our consciences: we blame the victims. We prosecute the parents, demonize the driver, or scold the pedestrian for “not being careful.” And in doing so, we avoid indicting the real culprit: the American development culture that produced this environment.
That area is not walkable and I wouldn't trust a 7 year old to go there alone, period. And then to allow them to jaywalk at the spot where the kid was struck is downright unconscionable. And the median looks like it's easy to lose your balance over (I suspect that's what really happened).
I'm not generally against the notion of letting a 7 year old walk alone in public but this isn't some cornerstore at the end of a 25mph residential street. This is basically a highway. Although the speed limit on that stretch is 45mph, I'm pretty certain drivers would be hitting 60 there since the road leading into it looks like a 60 road.
The fact that we have a sidewalk that's "obviously" not fit to purpose is a massive failure on the part of the local transit authority/DOT.
The 7 year old was not alone, he was with his older brother.
> They had sent Legend out to the grocery store with his 10-year-old brother when he stepped out in front of traffic.
https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/nc-lawmaker-bring-attentio...
A normal ethical system would say the obligation to not kill anyone with a vehicle is on the operator of the vehicle. The environment should also support safe handoffs between priorities.
The parents are not at fault - they were born into this shitty country. It is the road engineer, the city engineer, full stop.
Consider this book: [Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies our Transportation System](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/201978334-killed-by-a-tr...)
Jaywalking is a supremacists, propagandistic term, I would propose it be excised from your vocabulary: https://josh.works/jaywalking
It was used mostly to imprison formerly enslaved people for walking around. In some american cities in the 50s and 60s, thousands of people PER YEAR were ARRESTED for jaywalking!!!!
It's how deputized slave patrols (police) can easily initiate harassment against the enslaved/formerly-enslaved class.
On the other hand, if you do it wrong it can be way worse. Considering that we're talking about children who have no experience behind the wheel and no ability to accurately predict what the drivers will do I think "use a crosswalk and wait for traffic to let you cross" is likely the best advice.
All that said, your race baiting language policing game is stupid, malicious and actively detracts from the discussion.
I think it's the latter.
I took the time to read a couple articles on your blog, and they are wildly inflammatory and inaccurate to put it mildly.
I don't find most people in the USA to be worth taking seriously, either. Liiiike if someone thinks the primary purpose of police is something like "protecting and serving" vs. being deputized slave patrollers.
How could I take that person seriously?
If I don't think political authority is real, and 90% of the us population does think it is real, and votes, I'm already out of sync with all of those people.
And I've got at least one or two additional hot takes that could alienate another few percentage points.
race and gender are constructs of supremacy thinking, the US government commits 100x more acts of terrorism than the next most terroristic group, evangelicalism is a cult, all religion is self-and-other harming, monogamy is way over-rated, marriage is harmful to everyone...
honestly, I'd be concerned if it seemed like lots of people agreed with me, especially lots of people in America! One doesn't get a nation that did 400+ years of chattel slavery without most people being pro-slavery.
You sure use an awful lot of self-citations for someone who is only writing for themselves.
> I don't find most people in the USA to be worth taking seriously, either. Liiiike if someone thinks the primary purpose of police is something like "protecting and serving" vs. being deputized slave patrollers. How could I take that person seriously?
You realize you both can be wrong, correct? Because you absolutely are in most of the US, for starters.
> If I don't think political authority is real, and 90% of the us population does think it is real, and votes, I'm already out of sync with all of those people.
So you don't think political authority is real, yet you work with government authorities to enact the changes you want to see in your area?
I mean it makes sense to me to advocate for your preferred solutions to problems, but I think political authority is real (because it is, just look around you).
> And I've got at least one or two additional hot takes that could alienate another few percentage points.
Yes, it's very clear that pretty much everything you say is poorly thought out and researched and designed almost entirely to incite a strong reaction and attract attention. I agree with some of your claims and disagree with others, but there's no point in discussing any of them in depth with you.
What was your first claim again?
It sounds like you think I use more self-citation than you would expect, for someone writing only for themselves.
Are you saying I'm wrong about police originating as deputized slave patrollers?
I suppose I'd refine my statement from "political authority is not real" to "political authority _is not legitimate_."
That someone holding the fantasy of political authority is willing to murder someone else because of that fantasy doesn't make political authority legitimate, though it's obviously 'real' from the POV of the oppressor/victim.
My first claim was that 'jaywalking' is a propagandist term that actively harms every subsequent part of the conversation. It's a slur ('jay'), and supports a narrative supporting, basically, vehicular homicide.
We are rounding a surface street with a 45 limit to a highway at 60 and then pretend its obviously unsafe. This is obviously wrong, given the crosswalks.
Also, we have 0 idea if the child was allowed to jaywalk. We know they were on the phone with the older one at at least some point. That's all.
It's a tragedy, but, hard to get my head to the idea that its manslaughter that both parents are culpable for. As noted in coverage, it's an odd gap compared to how unsecured guns are treated.
If you’ve marked the right spot, I count one single intersection within credible walking distance that has crosswalks at all, and it only has crosswalks in two (!) of the four places where they ought to be.
I guess that, if you happen to be at the SW corner of Lyon and W Hudson, then you’re just stuck there? There’s even a “SCHOOL” marking without a crosswalk a short distance to the south.
> one single intersection
What other roads did you find that intersect that are relevant?
> within credible walking distance
Let's put some ground beneath the possible skew I may have injected by just assuming it was a credible walking distance: 2.5 minutes at 2.5 mph.
557 feet from leading edge of crosswalk to trailing edge of supermarket, via Google Maps.
Taking the 2.5mph low range for human walking speed, that's t = 557 ft / (2.5 × 5280 ft/hr) ≈ 0.04219 hr = 151.8 s = 2.5 min.
> I guess that, if you happen to be at the SW corner of Lyon and W Hudson, then you’re just stuck there?
I guess that too!
Does it obscure or shed light to talk about an unrelated path when discussing whether parents should be charged for manslaughter?
I don't like suburban traffic infrastructure either, just, think we might have gotten a bit into that in a way that makes me want to make sure we're also signalling we're not talking about the parents anymore, or at least, if we are, I want to make sure it's clear what facts we're using when talking about it, at least for the audience.
> There’s even a “SCHOOL” marking without a crosswalk a short distance to the south.
What's a SCHOOL marking?
Are you discussing the school speed limit sign?
Do SCHOOL markings or speed limit signs denote an intersection immediately adjacent to the sign / SCHOOL marking?
If not, why does this one need a crosswalk? AFAICT the limit sign is on the same side of the street as the school, with a sidewalk.
There is one crosswalk at the E side of the intersection with Lyon. There is not a crosswalk on the W side, nor is there there one before W Hudson ends a ways to the west.
If you follow Lyon to the south, you will find the word “SCHOOL” in big letters in the road, with no associated crosswalk.
If you go east a couple thousand feet, there’s another crosswalk. Sure, a couple thousand feet is a credible distance to walk if you’re going for a walk, but it’s rather far to detour as a pedestrian to get across a street.
Okay, maybe the kids in question should have used the crosswalk at Lyon. If your mark is right, I buy that.
But this road looks awful. Suppose you’re at Southwest Jr. High and you want to go to La Bodega Food Mart or Subway. How do you get there while using crosswalks to cross major streets? The obvious locations that seem like they should have crosswalks don’t have them.
> What's a SCHOOL marking?
Check out satellite view and go south a little way on Lyon. “SCHOOL” is painted on the street. Notably, no crosswalk is painted on the street.
Then add in modern cost disease on top of it and it starts making sense.
Sure you can, just look at Indiana.
as for footbridges they were uncommon in towns at least.
It's the single family home buyer with two cars and is a registered voter that is demanding the human unfriendly architecture at this point. We are getting more integrated architecture and people seem to like it, but it doesn't replace the millions of miles of bad design we already have.
Everyone always thinks "why don't we make it harder to make things and that way they'll be nice" but they can't connect the dots to "but to do that we have to grandfather in the existing stuff" and from that to "nothing new will happen and all the old things will stay that way".
Thing of the obvious effects, man. Come on.
I don't see how that's true - if you create cities or neighborhoods which are more walkable, such as New York's Chinatown, then you'll have less civil liability than suburban car-centric infrastructure. I would think that NY style neighborhoods would be MORE incentivized
But I'll give it one last try:
One can only hope that you're either exceptional enough to succeed or that when you fail you understand that it wasn't because "suburbanites ruined a perfect plan because they can't imagine a blah blah blah" and learn that you're constraint solving in a democracy where other people have voices and your perfect solution needs to have graceful degradation as it makes allowances for their opinions so that it can get sufficient support to pass.
If all you do is create additional liability with grandfathering in of existing designs, all you do is lead to propagation of current designs.
Unfortunately the answer isn't going to be telling people they can't do something. We already don't give a damn about the number of deaths we cause, so the actual answer is probably somewhere closer to attempting to educate people so eventually we won't want it.
Maybe that analogy is a little off.
1. The cases where parents are charged with negligence in the context of guns is extremely rare, and like.... kid is a mass shooter or something like that. Or kid shoots someone (or themselves accidentally, and often parents are not charged in that case). The analog here - charging the parent of a kid who is accidentally shot by a total stranger, never happens.
2. It's also wrong order of magnitude on numbers? Accidental stray bullet shootings of kids do happen, but they are extremely rare compared to kid-accidentally-shooting-self-or-friend or car-on-pedestrian-kid. Stray bullet hitting you is not predictable at all. You're talking like <40 per year across all ages <10 per year for just kids. A closer analogy would be accidental self shootings or shot-by-friend (~50 child deaths per year?). An even closer analogy would be swimming pools (hundreds per year for both kids drowning in swimming pools and kids hit by cars).
All that said, it's worth pointing out that kids getting hit by cars has declined a ton in the last 3 decades: https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/fatality-statistics/deta...
Some of that is due to better road design, some of that is due to better car safety, but a lot of it is... due to kids not being outside as much (30-40% decrease compared to previous generation).
Screens probably don't help.
People calling CPS on innocuous stuff that wouldn't have raised any concern 30-40 years ago doesn't help for sure.
Crime is like wayyyy down in the last 30-40 years so that's not it.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_de_Kindermoord (redirected)
Everytime I visit the US, it astonishes me that some places in the US are totally aggressive towards pedestrians, specially in US suburbs, with paths without any sidewalk, no protected pedestrian crossing. If you have to walk around is pretty much like american ninja warrior course.
Is there any history on why cities are planned ignoring pedestrian needs?
Is a marvellous phrase. Public opinion can be changed, and it's good to see people doing the hard work to bring that about. It often seems these days that the only people willing to put that long-term effort in have the worst goals in mind.
Now that we recognize these effects, we can start addressing them.
What about an overpass?
I find this to be a very disingenuous take. No one "exactly designed" this road to kill children. There were clearly tradeoffs made for vehicle vs pedestrian usefulness and it's worth examining those if we want the space to be used differently, but this is exploitive rage bait.
At least this is my impression from ppl who have lived in the US and told me about how it is like in some places there, have never been myself.
Was it designed to allow someone living in that apartment to cross the street to buy a sandwich? No? Then it's no surprise that it didn't.
Traffic deaths are a public health crisis in the U.S. - https://harvardpublichealth.org/policy-practice/car-accident... - December 13th, 2023
The car is king in the US – and pedestrian deaths are rising. Where is the outrage? - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/27/car-ro... - June 27th, 2023
US pedestrian deaths reach a 40-year high - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36490283 (92 comments) | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36480122 - June 2023 (607 comments)
Counterpoint:
Helsinki records zero traffic deaths for full year - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44736025 - July 2025 (651 comments)
Hoboken Hasn’t Had a Traffic Death in Four Years. What’s It Doing Right? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31799733 - June 2022 (15 comments)
Oslo got pedestrian and cyclist deaths down to zero. Here’s how - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25197102 - November 2020 (109 comments)
New York’s success provides road map for others taking aim at pedestrian deaths - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17710199 - August 2018 (149 comments)
HN Search:
pedestrian deaths - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
traffic deaths - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
These things are simple facts about the road. They would have been known when it was designed and they massively raise the risks for pedestrias as compared to alternate designs. Splitting hairs in the sense that the designers did not "want" to endanger people is hyperbolic as the article. The intent is less important than the effect.
This is literally TFA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
Wait, sorry, that's trains. You're talking about sandwiches. Let me check my notes...
Often curved, with a center berm and trees, etc. Sure the major streets are a different issue, but then those aren't residential streets.
https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4041926,-111.559976,3a,75y,8...
https://www.google.com/maps/@30.5705053,-98.2668855,3a,75y,3...
I wonder how many social issues would be rapidly solved it we just rejected people from the discussion for spewing overly simplistic opinions on the basis that they clearly don't "get" all of the nuances of whatever is being discussed.
For reference, I live in a "culdesac" neighborhood (3 big ones smushed together). The main suburban street that we use to actually get anywhere is 2-5 lanes wide, 40mph posted but 50mph actual speeds, with limited pedestrian crossings and in the 8 years I've lived here at least 2 pedestrian fatalities on a 2 mile stretch.
This is pretty typical of the DC suburbs (largely built in the 70s-present). Smaller enclaves that are "walkable" in the sense you can walk around the block. But they aren't walkable in the sense you can live your life sans car/bus/whatever.
People want to walk their dogs and let their kids play in the yard and they're pretty aggressive about trying to prevent fast through traffic where those specific things happen.
Good grief... not true. Suburban subdivisions use these, as well as curved roads as pushback against the grid system of city planning.
Because nobody wants hundreds of cars going 40mph+ buzzing past their house every day. And instead of taking the time/money to fix the root cause, people who can afford to do so build culdesac neighborhoods.
Edit - and to be clear, I don't blame any individuals for making that choice. We're kind of stuck with what we have for now - any change/progress will be slow and incremental. None of which means we shouldn't design better/safer neighborhoods/roads.
(Now, if your vision is flawed it becomes quite another matter. Figuring out how much time you have before that oncoming car gets there requires decent vision--but a driver must make a pretty similar judgement every time they make an unprotected left turn.)
Lanes are narrow, forcing cars to go slowly. Side walks are large[1], stop signs, roundabouts, or even curves in the road, exist to force drivers to pay attention to their surroundings and not just speed straight ahead.
> it's something that demands caution and is completely impossible during rush hour,
Cities should be safe for people all day and night. "Can't go out now, too many cars" shouldn't ever be a thing.
My city (Seattle) is working hard on ensuring 0 pedestrian deaths (they were doing good on this goal up until this year), and a driver it is super annoying. As soon as I get out of my car I appreciate the changes that are being made to the city.
[1] I actually saw some exceptions to this in Spain where the side walks were level with the road and there was just so much foot traffic that cars obviously came second in importance to people. I've seen similar design principles in China as well. Really narrow one way streets with only a few feet of set back from the road, lots of foot traffic and the occasional slow moving car.
I see the wide-laned Hudson Boulevard on Google Maps. I see the median. I see why it might be tempting to cross there. But I also see that ~345 feet to the west is a crosswalk.
I'm a parent. I get the impulse to protect your kids and ensure that they grow up with a healthy level of independence and freedom and the ability to be their own person and know how to operate in a world by themselves. But I struggle, as a parent, to understand how, if I were on the phone with them, I would've let them cross via the median rather than insisting they walk themselves a little ways down to the crosswalk.
I'm not attempting to blame the parents, and am sorry for their loss. But I'm generally stumped as to why they would've allowed that and, further, why there's outrage about an "unsafe median" when people have a crosswalk ~300 feet away.
I am very much typically on the side of, "Cities are too car-centric and we need to redesign them for people and bikes," but, seriously... how have we reached the point where, "It's a few extra minutes of flat walking," is the primary argument against something?
Really?
And you're not even including the time waiting for the crosswalk to change.
It should not take 5 minutes of extra walking to cross the street here. The extra time is itself causing a dangerous situation.
Why is this an either/or? Can't someone who believes that spending an additional five minutes to cross the street at a theoretically-safer point also believe that the street could be designed to support pedestrians more safely?
That's what I'm saying is missing the point.
Talking about crosswalks misses that this is probably a common crossing spot for lots of people. The parents thought nothing of the kids crossing the road here, so this is likely where they always cross. So in the "crosswalk paradigm" it should have had a crosswalk built.
Personally I live on a fast road and I've taken to only mowing the frontage and clearing snow with a 2000lb tractor. About half of drivers simply give zero fucks about soft fleshy blobs outside of steel cages, regardless of right of way or other legal considerations. It's only when you add something that might scratch their car that they magically become considerate.
There's a spot where the crosswalk is marked, with lights and signage, where the curb even just out a little extra to make the "unprotected" part of the crosswalk a shorter walk. Cars blow through the light all the time, it's totally unsafe to cross until oncoming traffic comes to a complete stop and makes eye contact. And this stretch is single lane, not designed for the speed of the Gastonia intersection. (Yes, there have been pedestrian fatalities on this stretch.)
The bigger issue is that the road is designed in such a way that a driver would not feel uncomfortable driving at highway speeds, regardless of the speed limit. Adding pedestrians into a system like that will always result in pedestrians being hit.
This road would be super dangerous even if the city moved the crosswalk to the place(s) where people want to cross.
For example, regarding this particular scenario, it actually very often is safer to break the rules and jaywalk, than it is to cross at a signaled intersection. Drivers at intersections are paying attention to a half-dozen different things: is my light green yet? can I take this turn on red? is the car behind me stopping in time? what portion of the stoplight cycle is currently happening? what did my friend just text me before I stopped? Notice that none of these things are pedestrians. As a pedestrian, it's a very common occurrence to get a right-turner almost colliding with you because they were looking left instead of where they were driving. In car-heavy areas, drivers frequently just forget pedestrians can even exist, they're not even a concern. The zebra striping indicates where they should stop their car, it's not a pedestrian zone.
None of that happens if you as a pedestrian cross in the middle of a straightaway. The drivers are (mostly) looking straight ahead, they're focused on where they're going, they don't have a ton of other variables to contend with like they do at intersections. It's a much simpler place for a dangerous interaction (crossing the street) to occur. There's often a median in the middle, so you as a pedestrian only have to contend with one flow of traffic instead of 2 or 3. It still sucks, don't get me wrong. But it sucks less than an intersection.
For the past 50 years, we have built our cities for cars and exclusively for cars, and our pedestrian accommodations follow that rule. Just because an accommodation exists, doesn't mean it's actually safe.
Also, why there's no crosswalk on the intersection where the Food Lion exit is?
It's an area that's shitty to pedestrian traffic. And it's fair to point that out.