‘This is a public health issue’
WORLD DAY OF REMEMBRANCE
BY MATT MARTINEZ
The Berkshire Eagle
PITTSFIELD — At a roundtable discussion about road safety, Galen Mook suggested a reframing: look at traffic calming measures as an extension of civil rights.
Mook, executive director of MassBike, was speaking Wednesday at a World Day of Remembrance for Traffic Victims event at the Pittsfield Community Design Center on North Street. The discussion was part of a day of observance honoring all victims who have lost their lives in roadway crashes, including pedestrians, cyclists, motorists and motorcycle riders among others.
The event also included a vigil to honor the lives of the 13 Berkshire County residents who died this year in traffic crashes. Berkshire Regional Planning Commission Senior Transportation Planner Nicholas Russo read the names of the victims, including Michael DeMarsico, who died Sunday in a pedes-train collision in Adams.
Mook discussed the importance of advocating for traffic calming measures, such as bike lanes and raised crosswalks, while also presenting them as net positives for everyone on the road. He argued that Americans should be able to get on a public way safely, regardless of their mode of transportation.
That’s an outcome that only can be achieved when cars slow down and behaviors among drivers change, he said — putting the onus of responsibility for safety on motorists, who are capable of the most harm in a collision.
“It helps when we don’t even feed into the argument of ‘Oh, how many bikers does it take to make that bike lane worthwhile?’” Mook said. “That bike lane should exist regardless, because it makes the road safer for everybody.”
Much of the conversation revolved around ideas for getting more traffic calming measures installed in the Berkshires, as the county moves toward a future with zero traffic deaths and zero serious injuries. Russo stressed the importance of viewing traffic deaths as a cause similar to cancer or disease, which can be addressed through investment and advocacy.
“This is a public health issue that takes people away from their families and their friends,” he said.
Residents sounded off with their own experiences and ideas. North Street resident Jeanne Kempthorne suggested that public education needs to happen in schools and on the street — she has personally seen the confusion drivers have about bike lanes, and has had near misses with electric scooter riders on sidewalks where they shouldn’t be.
She called for a soft level of enforcement by police to have some corrective action when people are violating the rules.
“Right now, it feels random,” she said. “It’s like when cars were first invented and there were no rules of the road.”
Noting the solution is installing more traffic calming infrastructure is “obvious, but not simple,” resident Chris Farrell said a constituency has to be built to advocate for it. He suggested an effort to establish biking clubs at schools and local bike shops for a continued effort to recruit more people for the cause.
And Laura Fredricks, a Becket resident whose daughter Emily Fredricks was struck fatally by a sanitation truck while riding her bicycle in Philadelphia, challenged urban planners to be more forward-thinking in designing safer streets.
“Why does it have to be that we know that that’s a ‘problem area?’” Fredricks said of only making improvements in areas where crash rates are already high. “Why does somebody have to die there before the change happens? Where’s the proactiveness?”
Mook encouraged those in attendance to write letters to their lawmakers urging them to secure state and federal funding for traffic calming projects.
He also urged residents to signal their support for legislation, noting that in recent years state law changed to designate anyone on the road without a car as a “vulnerable user.”
That change will be a springboard for getting more regulations to protect vulnerable users, including a recent change mandating that motorists give cyclists at least four feet of distance when they pass. White signs have been going up since the law passed in 2023, letting motorists know about the new requirement.
Mook said it’s more about awareness than enforcement.
“This is not to get police officers out with their tape measure. ... It’s really an educational tool for motorists … and a wholesale way that we can teach from the Berk-shires to the Cape that every road in Massachusetts now has this requirement.”
Matt Martinez can be reached at mmartinez@berkshireeagle.com.
