This blog post was originally published by Brent Finnegan of the Friendly City Urbanist.
It is worth noting, the same week of this crash on South Main St., another person was fatally struck by a driver in the 5500 block of South Valley Pike on June 18.
Similar victim-blaming rhetoric was shared by WHSV. “In a report given to WHSV on June 19, Demlein said a 2012 Volkswagen was driving on South Valley Pike when the driver could not avoid a pedestrian walking in the right travel lane. According to Demlein, the pedestrian — who was not wearing reflective clothing — died at the scene.”
It is important to note that there is no shoulder on that stretch of highway.
TV3 reported that a pedestrian was hit just after 10 a.m. on Thursday while attempting to cross the 1500 block of South Main Street in Harrisonburg. The 88-year-old woman from Harrisonburg was was transported to University of Virginia by Air Care, and was considered “critically injured.”
The crash happened as a Toyota sedan was driving south on South Main Street in the left lane, and the pedestrian was traveling from east to west across the roadway but not at a designated crosswalk, according to the release.
The phrase “not at a designated crosswalk” is victim-blaming language, copy-pasted from a police report without context. So here’s some context: There are crosswalks on Pleasant Hill and South Avenue, but none in-between. The distance between those crosswalks is 0.7 miles. That’s 15 minutes by foot along a sidewalk full of curb cuts where cars regularly exceed the posted speed limit.
This is precisely the kind of stroad I’m referring to when I say that sidewalks alone do not make a place walkable. Although there are residential neighborhoods on both sides of South Main Street, and a city park and restaurants in the area, this 5-lane road was designed for automobiles alone. People not in cars, whether on foot, on bike, or in a wheelchair, were an afterthought (these are among the most narrow and most dangerous bike lanes in the city).
While it’s possible the driver could be at fault in this instance, this road is dangerous by design. Considering the majority of cars speed here, and there’s almost a mile between crosswalks, we need to shift our focus away from assuming every crash must simply be the fault of a careless driver or pedestrian, and focus on addressing the dangerous design of the roadway itself.
