Georgia Pedestrian Deaths in Spotlight
The Raquel Nelson saga is revisited in the wake of other fatalities across the state.
The Cobb County woman convicted of vehicular homicide last year after her son was struck and killed by a car is in the national headlines again.
On Thursday, the Raquel Nelson saga was the focal point of a blog post on The Atlantic Cities website examining the high rate of pedestrian deaths in Georgia.
The blogger, Sarah Goodyear, wrote about how "the rate of pedestrian fatalities in Georgia is now 25 percent higher than the national average."
She mentions the failed TSPLOST referendum and other public transit initiatives that have been unpopular in the metro Atlanta area but that she asserts need to be considered if suburban areas are to become more pedestrian-friendly.
More than anything, the death of Nelson's son, Goodyear concludes, should have brought on an attitude change that clearly hasn't come about:
"In a perfect world, the Nelson case could have led to much more than a better judicial outcome for the grieving mother. It might have resulted in more attention to pedestrian facilities, and more funding to construct them. Lives could have been saved as a result.
"So far in the Atlanta area - including Cobb County, where A.J. died - it’s not going that way. According to the Georgia Department of Transportation, things actually might be getting worse for pedestrians, with fatalities steadily on the uptick, especially on roads in the Atlanta area."
your own luck
9:17 am on Saturday, August 25, 2012
If people who just use the legitimate crosswalks at the appropriate times instead of trying to cross a 4 lane street in the middle of a block, there would be far fewer deaths.
MD
10:26 am on Saturday, August 25, 2012
So you'd walk a qtr mi to a crosswalk from where the bus drops you? I doubt it. Sadly, this woman's son broke her grasp following someone else trying to cross. Nobody talks about the spending man who had hit someone before!