Colorado Springs/El Paso County Remembrance for Road Crash Victims

Name: Colorado Springs/El Paso County Remembrance for Road Crash Victims
Start: 2024-11-17T11:00:00-07:00
Location: Colorado Springs City Hall

Schedule

Sun Nov 17 2024 at 11:00 am

UTC-07:00

Location

Colorado Springs City Hall | Colorado Springs, CO

Traffic Deaths and Serious Injuries Are Preventable:
Colorado Springs/El Paso County Organizes with communities across the U.S. on November 17th, 2024, for the Day of Remembrance for Road Crash Victims. We invite the community to mourn and remember the people who lost their lives to fatal road crashes between December 2023 - November 2024, those killed in years past, and those injured in crashes. Please join us as we advocate for safer road design in Colorado Springs alongside families who have lost loved ones, local political figures, people centered planning advocates, and safe streets for all activists who will be in attendance. El Paso County has had the highest fatalities in the state for the five out of six past years (CDOT fatal crash data: https://tinyurl.com/ms5rudw9).

Media welcome.
Date & Time: November 17, 2024 from 11 a.m.
Location: 107 N Nevada Ave, Colorado Springs, CO 80903
Where to park: https://downtowncs.com/parking/
How to dress: Dress for the weather. Please wear warm clothes as event is entirely outdoors rain or shine.

About the event:
Memorials will be placed at intersections where a person was killed in a car crash between December 2023 and November 2024, which will consist of a placard and a bouquet of artificial flowers. There will also be a map of the crashes on our website (which will be updated in November). We are also working on a dashboard with info on crashes and a map tool to better understand how the built environment impacts crashes in late 2024/early 2024.
Rep. Stephanie Vigil, Council Member Henjum, families of crash victims including Bobbie Romero, whose father was killed in a crash at the General Palmer Statue, will speak and Makaylyn Lee’s father, whose 9 year old was killed on their neighborhood street will be in attendance, Laura Furia will speak about her daughter being severely injured in a crash at Rampart High School. We have other speakers however as this is an intense deeply emotional experience we want to leave space for them to decide whether they will speak. Afterwards, we will read the names of those lost in crashes and have a moment of silence for those who passed away this year, those who passed away in years past, and those who were injured from crashes.

Our specific asks include:
- In the next two years, school zones and traffic calming must be established at all city and county schools, including all middle and high schools.
- Install a roundabout at the General Palmer Statue. Please sign our petition here: https://tinyurl.com/yc5zjzs6
- Install traffic calming where Makaylyn Lee was killed on Overton St and Michigan Ave. Please sign our petition here:
https://tinyurl.com/5hemxsaj
- Ultimately, our city and county would benefit from adopting Vision Zero, “a strategy to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safe, healthy, equitable mobility for all (visionzeronetwork.org).” Implementing the above requests would mean taking steps towards Vision Zero and making our city and county safer, healthier, more connected, a less stressful and more neighborly place for everyone.
In the U.S., car crashes killed 40,990 people and sent 2.7 million people to the emergency room. America has the highest rate of crashes among 29 high-income countries, according to the CDC. In Colorado Springs/El Paso County, we have tracked at least 60+ crash fatalities and 350+ crashes in the news this year. We need to stop widening and lengthening our roads and instead focus on making our streets safer for people with better multimodal transportation and overall better planning for all modes of mobility.
(Hoboken, NJ is a great example of the benefits of Vision Zero, they haven’t had a crash fatality in seven years. Read full article here: https://tinyurl.com/3k7saerk)
#WDoR2024