Driving her kids to school, a South Carolina woman, Amy Lynn Stewart, encountered a group of teens walking in the middle of the road. She honked but they would not get out of the way, so she plowed into them, hitting four. They were 12, 13, 13, and 14-years-old. “I wanted to knock some sense into them,” she would tell the police. Four victims were treated at the scene. One was taken to a hospital.
At that intersection, there are no sidewalks. All over America, there are many roads without sidewalks. Many communities are built just for the car. Lawns, often vast, encroach right to the curbs. 307 million Americans own about 150 million cars. Entire blocks are reserved for parking garages. Walking on a road shoulders, one can feel like a vagrant or a prowling criminal.
My parents grew up in Beaumont, Texas, a town of no sidewalks and plenty of strip malls. As a kid, visiting, I found the lack of sidewalks extremely strange. Where are people supposed to walk? On the street?
The rest of the linked post has some ableism going on and other things that gave me pause, so warning for that if you click through. But I’m always really grateful for the sidewalks in Milwaukee. We might be just a mid-size city without an Ikea, but dammit, we have sidewalks and a city bus system.
