A crisis on America’s roads

Last month, a group of families whose loved ones were killed by drivers successfully lobbied the New York state legislature to pass a law allowing New York City to set its own speed limits.

Sammy’s Law allows city officials — rather than the state’s Department of Transportation — to determine the speed limits on their streets with input from community members. The bill will allow the city to drop the speed limit to 20 miles per hour on some streets in an effort to reduce pedestrian deaths.

Until relatively recently, good data on the problem of distracted driving has been hard to find. The government estimates that 3,522 people died because of it in 2021, but experts say the official number probably majorly undercounts the number of deaths, in part because police are rarely able to definitively prove that a driver was distracted right before a crash. 

In the last few years, though, the data on distracted driving has gotten better. Cambridge Mobile Telematics is a company that partners with major insurance companies to offer downloadable apps that drivers can use to save money on their rates. Via the apps, Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT) uses mobile phone sensors to measure driving behavior, including whether a person is speeding, holding their phone, or interacting with an unlocked screen while driving (the company says it doesn’t collect information on what the drivers are doing on their phones). Its work gives the company insight into the driving behaviors of more than 10 million people.

“Is there a reason we’re driving, like, 80 mph, blowing red lights?” the police officer asked the driver of the black Lexus SUV, according to his body camera footage. It was just after 1 am on a March night in Washington, DC, and there were two people in the car he had just pulled over. The officer noticed a cup of what appeared to be liquor in the passenger’s hand and informed them that having an open container of alcohol was illegal. He asked to see their IDs. Moments later, the driver sped off. 

The officer didn’t chase the Lexus. Like the guidelines of many other police organizations across the United States, his department’s rules dictated that officers give chase only when they believed a felony was being committed or a driver was a “clear and immediate” threat to the public. 

How many deaths does it take to get the government to take a crisis seriously?

That’s the question raised by the Governors Highway Safety Association’s latest preliminary report on pedestrian deaths in 2022. The annual overview of state data on pedestrian fatalities helps the public and policymakers get a better understanding of the overall picture of road safety in the US. 

It was the third Saturday of the month, which meant that Shala Waines was up early. In a few hours, she had to set up for the Soul Swapmeet, a monthly open-air market she founded in 2018 for Black entrepreneurs. To get to the swap meet that morning, Shala had to transport herself, her 17-year-old daughter, Damiyah, and Damiyah’s two friends, plus a large, A-frame plastic sign advertising the event, and a tent for her DJs. Shala drives a silver 2015 Hyundai Elantra, and fitting the kids and supplies in a compact four-door requires some creativity. She made it work by asking the teens to hold the tent in their laps. 

To look at Shala’s car is to get a sense of the woman who drives it: a small business owner, a single mom, and the type of person who volunteers to bring all of the food for a friend’s lakeside birthday bash. There are the empty cups her teenager and friends left in the back seat right after she cleaned it; boxes and bags rolling around in the trunk. There’s a “minding my Black-owned business” sticker, and some scrapes and dents on the driver’s side doors and bumper that Shala hates but can’t afford to fix right now.

Part of the discrimination issue of The Highlight. This story was produced in partnership with Capital B.

When a Nevada police officer pulled over Leisa Moseley-Sayles in 2010, she was new to Las Vegas. She was getting a divorce and going through a custody battle, raising four young children, and working on a political campaign. Money was tight. So when the officer issued a ticket for $299 because her California license plate had expired, it couldn’t have come at a worse time: Moseley-Sayles didn’t have the money to pay. She signed up for a payment plan, not anticipating how that traffic ticket would haunt her for the next several years of her life. 

Traffic stops, usually over minor infractions, are one of the most common ways that people interact with police. The frequency with which they turn deadly, often with impunity for the officers responsible, has made them a major focal point in the effort to combat police brutality.

In one recent case, police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, pulled over 29-year-old Tyre Nichols for “reckless driving.” Over the next several minutes, officers brutally beat, kicked, and pepper-sprayed Nichols while screaming conflicting orders at him. Three days later, Nichols died from his injuries. Investigators have since said they were “unable to substantiate” the claim that he was driving recklessly, and five officers have since been charged in Nichols’s death.

How do you commemorate the life of a 5-year-old girl?

Here is what it looks like on one street corner in Washington, DC: a tiny bicycle, painted all in white, with a little wicker basket filled with purple and white silk flowers on the handlebars. A teddy bear in a princess dress sits on the seat, and on the ground nearby, a pile of stuffed animals — monkeys and puppies and lambs and bears and elephants — turn gray from exposure to the elements. 

Part of the July 2022 issue of The Highlight, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.

Drive along this part of US-19, a stretch of highway in Pasco County that parallels Florida’s Gulf Coast, and you’d be forgiven for not noticing the danger. It looks like a lot of American roads, especially in the South: flat, straight, and wide. Three lanes move in each direction, and extra turn lanes on the right and left bring the total number of lanes to eight or nine at most intersections. The road runs through several cities and places — Hudson, Port Richey, New Port Richey, and Holiday — but because of all the sprawl, you never really feel like you’ve left town.

From the desk of my home office in Washington, DC, I can see a four-way intersection with stop signs on each corner. About a year ago, I started to notice something alarming: The cars seemed to be going much faster, and they were running stop signs much more frequently than usual.

More than 31,000 people died in car crashes on America’s roads in the first nine months of 2021, a 12 percent increase over the previous year, and the highest percentage increase during the first nine months of a year since the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration started tracking the numbers. The problem only seems to be getting worse.