My daughter was killed by a truck in Center City. It was no accident.

Five years ago, a commercial trash truck driver killed a bicyclist who had the right of way in a designated bike lane at 11th and Spruce Streets in Philadelphia. That bicyclist was my daughter, Emily Fredricks.

On November 28, 2017, Emily rode her bicycle to work at Le Chéri, as she did every morning. Spruce Street, she had told her father and me, had a painted bike lane and was a safe way to get to work. But that morning, while riding through the intersection, the driver of a privately owned trash truck crashed into her while turning right, ending her life. She was 24.

» READ MORE: The Philly DA’s Office dropped all charges against the truck driver who fatally struck a bicyclist in 2017

Last Wednesday, charges against that driver were dropped. It was a sad and humbling conclusion to what has been the worst experience of my family’s life. Emily was our sunshine, but this ruling makes it seem like her life didn’t matter at all.

Since Emily’s passing five years ago, we decided to dedicate our lives to making Philadelphia’s streets safer. Our family has worked alongside local advocacy organizations like the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia as we co-founded Families for Safe Streets Greater Philadelphia, to bring enhanced attention to the ongoing dangers our streets pose to cyclists and pedestrians. We want to create a city where no one goes through what our family has.

Our work at Families for Safe Streets Greater Philadelphia has helped lead to incremental changes on Philadelphia’s bike lanes, speed cameras on Roosevelt Boulevard in Northeast Philly, and safer pedestrian crossings around the city. But last week’s decision to dismiss the homicide charges against the man who killed my daughter shows how far our movement still must go.

At virtually every level of government, traffic crashes remain a low priority. And it shows: in the years since Emily’s passing, deadly crashes have increased while arrests and tickets for reckless drivers have decreased.

This has consequences: A review of publicly available data from the Philadelphia Police Department shows that there were 63 traffic fatalities in the first six months of 2022. This number is higher than the deaths from the first six months of 2019 (46 deaths), 2020 (56 deaths) and 2021 (58 deaths). And yet, statistics from the Bicycle Coalition show that arrests have occurred in only 12% of all fatal crashes this year.

Most of these crashes happen in lower-income areas of the city and predominantly affect Black and brown communities. A look at the city of Philadelphia’s traffic fatalities and serious injuries map shows the worst crashes happen in North and West Philadelphia, as well as large boulevards around the city like Washington Avenue in South Philadelphia and Roosevelt Boulevard in North Philadelphia. Efforts to fix these historically inequitable roads are often met with light but loud opposition, leading to inadequate changes. There is also a mindset problem. We have been taught to see these crashes as “accidents,” taking blame away from the driver or the system that designed our streets.

I believe Emily’s death, and the deaths of other cyclists and pedestrians, are no accident. They are the direct result of a city that has not prioritized their safety.

» READ MORE: Traffic deaths in Pa. and N.J. continued to rise in 2021. Nationally, fatalities hit a 16-year high.

The upward trend in traffic fatalities for 2022 tells us that policy and road infrastructure changes must be pursued even more aggressively by the city to eliminate all traffic deaths by 2030, a goal set by Mayor Jim Kenney in 2017 as part of the city’s Vision Zero road safety program. Adequate funding and accelerated implementation of Vision Zero projects are imperative.

Passing new state laws that advance road safety — including more capital projects to fix dangerous intersections and corridors, legislation expanding the presence of automated speed cameras to reduce rampant speeding, and HB140, which would allow parking-protected bike lanes on state roads — is urgently necessary to eliminate the traffic violence that kills residents and forever alters the lives of their loved ones. We can design our streets to make pedestrians, transit users, and cyclists more visible to drivers.

Unfortunately, it’s not all up to traffic engineers or community members. We have seen City Councilmembers obstruct and delay safety projects through councilmanic prerogative. These actions harm the most vulnerable users of the road: pedestrians, transit users, bicyclists, the elderly and the youth. They must step aside and allow the city to make our streets safer for all.

We want Philadelphia to fix its streets, so that conditions encouraging and allowing traffic violence are eliminated. But we also want to see something — anything — done in the name of so many victims of traffic crashes whose lives have become a footnote in our society. After five years, our fight for legal justice is over. But the battle for a Philadelphia where no family buries their loved one because of traffic violence has only begun.

Laura Fredricks co-founded, with her husband Rich, Families for Safe Streets Greater Philadelphia, the Emily Fredricks Foundation and PA Safe Roads PAC in order to inspire more elected officials to build a future with zero traffic fatalities.