And here are reflections from the those of us who covered these lives and deaths.
A Broken Heart Is Not a Metaphor — Andrea Bernstein
There’s an old joke in newsrooms: When something happens to an editor, then it becomes news. For me, that adage has had a grim resonance. Back in October 2013, a family close to my family lost their 12-year-old son, Sammy Cohen-Eckstein, to a traffic crash just blocks from my home. For the first time in my life, I understood that the phrase “my heart is breaking” isn’t just a metaphor. It’s the actual way your chest feels when grief hits hard.
Barely three weeks later, Sammy’s older sister and his parents testified before the New York City Council to call for lowering city speed limits. By the end of the hearing, everyone was crying – the family, city council members, advocates, reporters, even the lobbyists who had come to testify against the bill.
“I know it’s not really reassuring,” the chair of the committee, the Bronx’s Jimmy Vacca, told the family, struggling to maintain his composure. “Because you’ve suffered this loss that’s incredible. Unbearable. So I just want you to know that we’re committed to do more. And I’m going to remember this day as long as I live. I can’t say anything more than that.”
Somewhere in the next two months, it became clear that we, as a news organization, also had to do more. Over 250 people a year die in traffic crashes in New York City, and most of these deaths go unacknowledged. We could start to chronicle those deaths, to explain who was dying and why, and in the process, we hoped, give our listeners and readers a greater understanding of what steps could be taken to prevent so many tragic — and often needless — deaths.
(We couldn't gather all the information we wanted about all of those who died -- it was too overwhelming a task. If you can add any information or photos to our project, please email us at transponation@gmail.com.)
What We Owe Each Other — Jim O'Grady
The winter sun was weakening and the wind was picking up and Hsi-Pei Liao was starting to shiver. He and I were standing on a corner in Flushing, Queens — a corner that resembled any of a million non-descript places in New York. There was no mark, no physical clue, to tell you that here is where a little girl was crushed and killed by an SUV while holding the hand of her grandmother and crossing with the light.
That’s why Hsi-Pei agreed to meet me there that day, to tell the story of his daughter Allison’s death. We’d been talking for more than an hour and it was clear that he was shivering not just from the cold but from the emotional cost of recounting events from the worst day of his life.
He was suffering. So I asked him, why? Why was he doing it? He said, “We do this to make sure people are aware that you have to be more careful.”
In that moment, listening to a father describe a daughter he could no longer take to the playground, which he'd loved to do, I felt awful. But I also felt good about his story becoming part of the conversation about how we live and move around this city, and about what we owe each other.
Bearing Witness — Kate Hinds
Years before we began this project, I began paying attention to car-pedestrian conflicts in my neighborhood. Living near a police precinct, it was common to see crashed cars, often with airbags inflated and windshields blown out, parked on my street with NYPD evidence tags on them. This sight took on even more menace as my children became old enough to walk to school on their own — and would often come home bearing stories of how cars swung around them in crosswalks.
When I began covering transportation, this personal unease became professional concern. Who was dying? Where? Why? What did the data say? As late as 2013, the city was still defending their decision not to release the locations of crashes. Even this year, under Mayor de Blasio’s Vision Zero program, we've found that the public isn't notified of nearly a quarter of all traffic fatalities.
The city says it's ironing out problems in record-keeping and notification. But until those efforts bear fruit, we can bear witness to the people whose lives were lost.
Their Lives Mattered — Rhona Tarrant
While working on The Mean Streets Project, I showed up at the home of a man who had recently lost his only daughter, Crystal Gravely, in a car crash. She was 20 years old and the love of his life. He had grown up in a rough neighborhood and was determined that her life would be different. He told her that she was too special to become another statistic of crime. He wanted her life to matter.
When she died in April 2014, his life stopped. He was unable to work, crippled by a deep depression. In the early, raw stages of grief, he couldn't understand how his wonderful, smart daughter had become a statistic of the streets.
Mean Streets allowed us to say: We see you. We hear your story. Her life mattered.
Take Care Out There — Kat Aaron
After a year of tracking traffic deaths, I am so much more careful. I don’t text when I walk. I don’t look at my phone in the crosswalk. I don’t wear headphones. I don’t stand in the street waiting for the light to change. I don’t jaywalk. In a taxi, I tell drivers that I tip for safety. On a bike, I wear a helmet, lights and a reflective vest. When I drive, I don’t rush to make the light.
None of this is a guarantee that I will be safe, as a driver, passenger, cyclist or pedestrian. Cooper Stock, Illuminada Torres, Sui Leung, Mohammad Uddin and so many others were struck in the crosswalk, with the light. Charity Hicks was waiting for the bus. Rebecca Ramnarine was driving home from church with her family. Joie Sellers, Christal Aliotta and Rylee Ramos were all standing on the sidewalk.
On New Year’s Eve, home with my family, I thought of all the people starting 2015 without their loved ones. Here they are.