ALEXANDRIA, Va. — There is a renewed push from local street safety advocates to end the avoidable killing of pedestrians after a week of multiple deadly pedestrian crashes in the region, and on the remembrance day for road traffic victims.
“World day remembrance is a day to draw attention to the traffic violence that is happening on our roads," Michael Doyle said.
Doyle founded Northern Virginia Families for Safe Streets after he was hit by a car and nearly killed as he was crossing the street in a Fairfax County crosswalk in December 2016. He has since dedicated his life to preventing others from experiencing similar trauma.
“Otherwise it’s a nightmare so you try to make something good out of it,” Doyle said.
Road safety advocates warn this time of year is the deadliest for pedestrians, with fewer hours of daylight.
“This time of year, November, December, and it’s proven again, tends to be the most deadly," Doyle said.
Local governments have made a push towards vision zero programs with strategies to eliminate all traffic fatalities and injuries, but Doyle said while good work has been done he believes it's not happening fast enough.
“My common question to them (local and state leaders) is how much blood do you need to see on the street before you start to expedite things," Doyle said. "People are being killed, people are being injured. If we had some type of gang in the area mugging and killing, everyone would be upset. This is a silent killer and some of these things can be improved to make it safer.”
There was a virtual remembrance ceremony Sunday evening for victims of pedestrian crashes with state and local leaders in attendance committing to continue to fight for safer roadways.
“We’re going to be talking the next year about neighborhood slow zones and doing pilot projects on that around our city as part of our plan,” Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson said during the virtual remembrance ceremony. “We continue to implement some of the automated speed enforcement around the city and that’s on our action plan and something we’ll continue to work on.”