On World Day of Remembrance, families of killed Philly bikers advocate for safer streets
Over 60 people gathered at Lil’ Philly Safety Village to honor the 115 Philadelphians killed as a result of traffic violence in 2023 and called for better legislation.
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For Laura Fredericks, not one second goes by without thinking about her 24-year-old late daughter Emily, who was struck and killed by a commercial trash truck while biking to work in 2017.
On Sunday, Fredericks, the group she cofounded, Families for Safer Streets Greater Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Bicycle Coalition, and more than 60 people gathered at Salvatore Pachella Field in Roxborough for a two-hour memorial bike ride to Lil’ Philly Safety Village in Hunting Park in honor of World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims.
“When Emily was killed, there were 94 fatalities, among those, two cyclists,” Fredericks said of road deaths in Philadelphia that year. “This year [...] we are up to 115 fatalities with 10 [being] cyclists. We are going in the wrong direction!”
This year’s data, provided by the Philadelphia Bicycle Coalition, includes Julia R. Masterman School’s former teacher, coach, and dean Kevin Saint Clair — who became the 10th cyclist to be killed this year, on Nov. 6., after a car struck him while he rode his bicycle from his son’s house in Roxborough to his own home in Chestnut Hill, turning from Wises Mill Road onto Henry Avenue. That impact pushed the 65-year-old Saint Clair into a northbound lane, where he was struck by another car.
Kelley Yemen, director of the city’s Complete Streets program, said traffic deaths are “unacceptable and preventable.” They are the focus of Vision Zero, a Kenney administration initiative to reduce traffic deaths to zero by 2030.
“We are installing road diets, separated bike lanes, speed cushions, and neighborhood slow zones,” Yemen said Sunday. “These interventions work; overall complete street projects have reduced fatal and serious injuries by 34%,” she added, urging for citywide recommitment to Vision Zero ahead of the 2024 mayoral transfer of power.
But as the group named every Philadelphian who has died in “traffic violence” in 2023, it also used Sunday’s ceremony to push for bigger changes, urging Pennsylvania to pass pending statewide preventative legislation, including:
House Bill 1283, which would provide more protections to bike lanes.
House Bill 1284, which would make automated speed enforcement available statewide — a measure organizers said reduced crashes on Roosevelt Boulevard by 36% between 2020 and 2021.
Senate Bill 730, which would create an alert system to make it easier to catch hit-and-run drivers and reduce speeding through residential neighborhoods.
Mari Sanchez Smith, whose 23-year-old son, Jorge Andre Muñoz Sanchez, died in 2018 after being hit by a car on his way to work, said: “It’s a shame that we are still fighting for this.”
“So many people rely on their bike to go to work, their livelihood depends on [their bicycle ride] to be safer,” said Sanchez. “This is not a problem that affects a few, it could happen to anyone — we never in our wildest dreams thought this could happen to our family.”