Pedestrian and bike collisions are a policy failure

An 8 year old in Texas was struck and killed this week and police blamed the kid for “riding in an area that isn’t safe for pedestrians or people riding bikes”

Google street view of the stretch of road where the child was struck

According to a KHOU report, an 8 year old child was riding his bike near his home in the Houston area when he was struck and killed by a driver. The media report said that police claimed the boy was riding in an area not safe for bicycling or pedestrians.

This detail jumped out to me when I first read initial reports on Twitter this week, so I decided to take a closer look at what happened here. You can see in the title image above and the following image below that the crash happened in a pretty standard residential neighborhood. The street is not a major thoroughfare and expensive looking newish construction line both sides of the street.

Google map view of the neighborhood where the crash took place

This neighborhood is, by all outward appearances, to be the American dream. The street is wide enough for two way traffic going either way, as well as street parking. There’s a wide median between home and street and a standard sidewalk…