How many people have been hit by cars in Springfield this year?

I don't know, all I can tell you is that you won't find out by reading this article.

“We’re studying a lot of these crosswalk locations and places where we might need more,” said Kristen Milam, City of Springfield Communication Coordinator in May. “Our crash studies have shown that it’s kind of 50/50 responsibility-wise.”

Oh brother we have a lot of hearts and minds to change in this town. This isn’t some unexpected result. Traffic engineers design our roads for maximum thorough-put of cars and nothing else. Human life outside of the car is the last thing taken into consideration. This creates a mountain of negative side effects for our cities. The first that comes to mind is the stroad. A stroad is a bad combination of two types of vehicular pathways: it is part street which is defined as a "complex environment where life in the city happens", with pedestrians, cars, buildings close to the sidewalk for easy accessibility, with many (property) entrances / exits to and from the street, and with spaces for temporary parking and delivery vehicles—and part road, which is defined as a "high-speed connection between two places" with wide lanes, limited entrances and exits, and which are generally straight or have gentle curves. In essence a Stroad attempts to be both a street and road and does neither well. Think of South Campbell or North Kansas as perfect examples. They’re places where you would never want to be outside of a car and hazardous to your health for many reasons. Just ignoring the fact that you might have to walk a 1/2 mile or more to a “safe” crossing, when you get there you’re greeted with 6-8 lanes to play fucking frogger just to get to work or get some food. I’m going to get real worked up if I keep going but it really strikes a nerve in me seeing the city officials, who should be working to actively make this city a better place to live and instead are victim blaming people who are simply living their lives. This place just feels hopeless and destitute sometimes, I don’t know why I bother.

I had the fun privilege of being hit my a car on my morning run in January.

I can tell you that the woman never even turned her car off, just yelled through the window, and when I went into flight mode she didn’t even wait the 30 seconds it took me to come back to my senses.

The police were also zero help.

So one broken toe, caused me to lose 6 weeks of my marathon training, and a bunch of therapy later I’m still finding fun little side effects from it in my life.

I've been hit by a driver. I had a "WALK" symbol to cross, but a driver decided to make a right-on-red across the crosswalk and hit me straight on with one of those enormous pickup trucks. Luckily since he'd been stopped he wasn't going fast enough to seriously damage me.

It could be that he legitimately looked and did not see me--there's a reason pedestrians are disproportionately hit by trucks and SUVs--the vehicle's heights mean shorter people and children crossing in front of them cannot be seen because the hood sits so high they're blocked from view. But he probably just wasn't looking in the first place, because drivers are not taught to be pedestrian-aware or look for humans rather than cars before making a turn.

I didn't bother calling the cops so it wasn't included in the pedestrians-hit stats. I doubt I'm the only that brushed myself off and went on without calling it in, so the stats are probably higher than what is shown.

I drive by the area where the lastest person was hit and killed very often. Lots of people, including kids, walk down that street and cross the road to get to Casey's. If there's ever a street that needs sidewalks, it's that one.

5? maybe 6?

A better question would be how many random homeless people just run across busy streets like Glenstone during rush hour traffic.

“The city said more education for both drivers and pedestrians is needed”.

So in addiction to teaching cursive, schools now need to add don’t walk in front of cars and when driving don’t hit people.