A ten-year-old boy riding his bike on Dixie Highway was struck Sunday by an MSD truck but fortunately only suffered minor injuries that didn’t require hospitalization. A C-J report on the accident says the boy made a turn in front of the MSD truck and the driver was not cited.
The incident occurred on Dixie Highway at Nobel Place in a fairly dense part of Shively north of the intersection of Seventh Street Road. The boy is young enough to legally ride on the sidewalk, if there had been one. The majority of the area is without a sidewalk. Some sections of the street have a shoulder no doubt littered with gravel and debris and characterized by wide curb cuts.
It’s fortunate that the injuries weren’t too bad, but we need to better ensure our neighborhoods are safe for everyone—of all ages—to get around.
If we are going to allow bike riding in the neighborhoods, which I think is a good idea, we neet bike lanes if possible or sidewalks to keep this type of thing from happening.
There are really four parties to blame here.
1) the kid did not obey the rules of the road, he failed to yield when turning onto a major road from a minor road. Okay, obviously, 10 year olds are going to do this sort of thing. Their brains are not fully developed enough to process complex rate*time calculations.
2) the kids parents failed to adequately constrain his travel to a region he was competent to handle. But parents can’t handle everything in a hostile world…
3) the designers of Dixie Highway built an automotive sewer, complete with high speeds and high speed psychology, through a neighborhood with kids. They were given a job to do (increase automotive capacity at all costs), and they did it without regard to the neighborhoods it suffocates, or it’s impact on the mobility of those without cars – including this kid!!!
4) ourselves, for letting our politicians get the idea that we wanted insane kid-killer roads for a minor improvement in our own selfish mobility. What were we thinking?
Great points, David. Our current system is really no good for the young and elderly among us, and we must rework our infrastructure to be inclusive of everyone’s needs.