Letters to the Editor: Windsor Hills crash shows L.A. is desperate for safer streets.
To the editor: On Thursday, in unincorporated L.A. County, a driver was able to speed at an estimated 100 mph and kill at least six people. This particular incident is incredible in scope of disaster and lives lost, but it's not something that happened in a vacuum. Every day in Los Angeles, especially in South L.A., there are car crashes, speeding and street takeovers.
There are solutions to these problems, and no, it is not enforcement. Street design can save lives. By designing our streets for speed, putting seven-lane highways in our communities and calling them avenues, we are asking people to drive recklessly and kill.
We can design better streets, take away traffic lanes and add dedicated bike and bus lanes. Add bollards. Add trees and curb bulbs. We can turn on speed governors in our cars.
I'm sick of seeing people die on the altar of the car. Car dependency kills us quickly in crashes, and slowly by poisoning our environment. It does not have to be like this.
Heather Johnson, Los Angeles
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To the editor: We were stuck in traffic heading home from the beach Thursday because a Mercedes-Benz careened at high speed through the intersection of Slauson and La Brea avenues, where it collided with other cars. Among the dead was an infant reportedly ejected from a vehicle into the street.
The Mercedes-Benz that killed all those people wasn't just a Mercedes-Benz. There was a person driving it who, for whatever reason, decided not to stop at the light and put all those lives at risk.
I've seen that scene before in Los Angeles. I've seen countless police officers watch people fly through red lights and stop signs without even blinking, let alone chasing them down to write a ticket.
What I can't stop thinking about is how often we drive through that intersection. It's just pure chance that those people were at the intersection when the Mercedes-Benz killed them all. Driving in Los Angeles, it is pure chance that any of us survives a drive to the grocery store or work.
Why was that car designed in a way that it could cause so much destruction and death? Why are our streets designed for people to drive fast enough to slaughter whole groups in an instant? How do we allow the city to create that hell for us?
Society’s obsession with the automobile and petroleum built this city. Traffic flow is our obsession. What if we became obsessed with walkability, transit, safe streets, clean air and people surviving their communities?
Kort Havens, Los Angeles
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
