Two weeks ago, fourth-grader Nadir Gavarrete was crossing the intersection at New Hampshire Avenue and 4th Street in Koreatown on an e-scooter alongside his 19-year-old brother, Carlos, when both were struck by an alleged drunk driver turning left through a stop sign. Nadir was pronounced dead at the scene, and Carlos was taken to a hospital in serious condition.
Although we often refer to incidents like these as “accidents,” the truth is they’re entirely preventable. We live in a city where a pedestrian is injured every five hours and killed every two days. The status quo places L.A. among cities with the highest per capita pedestrian death rates in the U.S. (2.9 per 100,000), according to Los Angeles Police Department data.
Koreatown is one of the densest parts of Los Angeles — at 44,000 people per square mile, it’s more crowded than most New York City boroughs. Nearly every major street in Koreatown is on the city’s “high injury network” list — the 6% of streets that cause 70% of the traffic injuries and deaths. In other words, L.A. knows how dangerous Koreatown’s streets can be.
As a result, 14 years ago, in 2011, L.A. applied for a federal grant to improve safety along several city streets, specifically choosing to focus on the intersection of New Hampshire and 4th for one of its projects. The city won the grant money and kicked off community meetings to discuss installing a roundabout at the intersection, as well as adding enhanced crosswalks and other safety improvements to the immediate area.
When I was appointed to the Los Angeles Bicycle Advisory Committee in 2019, eight years after those initial community meetings, we were given a presentation by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation that showed a rendering of a beautiful and significantly safer intersection at New Hampshire and 4th, full of crosswalks and traffic calming, and featuring a roundabout.
Six years later, there is still no roundabout. The city has yet to even break ground despite holding years of community meetings. Meanwhile, now a 9-year-old boy is dead and his family is left shattered.
There are numerous bureaucratic reasons why a single intersection improvement could take more than 14 years. I’m not interested in them. What city leaders need to understand is that when they fail to act with any sense of urgency — even when they’ve won funding to do so — the inaction has real-life consequences, this time in the form of a little boy’s life.
What will it take for Los Angeles to have a sense of urgency in actually making our streets safer? We currently spend more on legal settlements to those hurt and killed on our streets than we do on Vision Zero, the city’s half-baked effort to reduce traffic deaths. Since Los Angeles declared itself a Vision Zero City in 2015, with the ultimate aim of having no one killed in car crashes on city streets by 2025, deaths and injuries have only gotten worse. In the last few years we’ve had at least three children hit and killed while walking to school. And yet the city’s leaders — facing a budget crisis, much of it of their own making — perpetually underfund LADOT and street safety in general.
If a rash of falling elevators killed someone in L.A. every two days and injured someone every five hours, we’d immediately stop using them as the city stepped in to investigate and solve the problem. Yet we seem to just accept the deadly status quo of traffic fatalities as the cost of doing business while walking L.A.’s streets.
We don’t have to live this way. There are cities that have actually achieved Vision Zero, such as Hoboken, N.J., which has now tallied eight consecutive years without a traffic-related death thanks to significant updates at curbs, crosswalks and intersections.
New York City is also steadily making progress on its Vision Zero goals, leading to a per capita pedestrian death rate nearly one-third that of L.A.
Los Angeles remains an outlier and will continue to be one unless we properly and urgently fund our Vision Zero efforts and remove the bureaucratic red tape that slows progress: There’s no need for 10 community meetings and buy-in from an entire neighborhood to make smart, lifesaving improvements.
Michael Schneider is the founder of Streets for All.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
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Traffic deaths in Los Angeles are entirely preventable incidents that should not be dismissed as mere “accidents,” with the city experiencing a pedestrian injury every five hours and a death every two days, placing LA among cities with the highest per capita pedestrian death rates in the U.S. at 2.9 per 100,000[1][3]. The author emphasizes that Koreatown, where the recent tragedy occurred, is one of LA’s densest areas with 44,000 people per square mile, and nearly every major street there appears on the city’s “high injury network” list.
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The city has demonstrated inexcusable delays in implementing known safety solutions, with the specific intersection where 9-year-old Nadir Gavarrete died having been identified for safety improvements 14 years ago when LA won federal grant money for a roundabout project[2]. Despite years of community meetings and detailed planning presentations showing safer intersection designs, the city has failed to break ground on the project, representing a catastrophic failure of municipal responsibility.
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Los Angeles has fundamentally failed its Vision Zero commitment, spending more money on legal settlements for traffic victims than on actual safety improvements[1][5]. Since declaring itself a Vision Zero city in 2015 with the goal of eliminating traffic deaths by 2025, the situation has only worsened, with traffic deaths nearly doubling and pedestrian deaths increasing from 88 in 2015 to 176 in 2023.
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The city’s chronic underfunding of the Department of Transportation and street safety programs, exacerbated by budget crises, demonstrates misplaced priorities that treat traffic fatalities as an acceptable “cost of doing business.” The author argues that if elevators were killing someone every two days, immediate action would be taken, yet the deadly status quo of traffic violence continues unchallenged.
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Successful examples exist of cities actually achieving Vision Zero goals, such as Hoboken, New Jersey, which has maintained eight consecutive years without traffic-related deaths through significant infrastructure improvements[5]. New York City has also made steady progress, achieving a per capita pedestrian death rate nearly one-third that of Los Angeles, proving that substantial improvements are possible with proper commitment and funding.
Different views on the topic
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Technological innovations, particularly autonomous driving systems, represent a promising alternative approach to reducing traffic fatalities that may be more effective than traditional infrastructure changes alone[4]. Community leaders in Koreatown believe that autonomous vehicle technology, which can see other road users and make safety-based decisions, could significantly decrease fatalities in high-risk areas where human error and impaired driving contribute to crashes.
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Comprehensive community engagement and extensive planning processes, while time-consuming, may be necessary to ensure proper implementation of safety improvements that account for diverse neighborhood needs and stakeholder input[6][8]. The Safe Routes to School program demonstrates that meaningful community participation, including student involvement in street safety initiatives, can create more effective and locally-supported safety interventions.
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The complexity of urban transportation systems requires careful analysis of safety data and development of comprehensive policies that address multiple factors beyond just infrastructure design[8]. Traffic safety experts emphasize that effective Vision Zero implementation involves multiple protections and shared responsibility among all road users, rather than relying solely on rapid infrastructure deployment.
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While infrastructure improvements are important, addressing driver behavior, enforcement, and education may be equally crucial components of reducing traffic fatalities[7]. The nationwide surge in pedestrian deaths has been attributed to factors including distracted driving, speeding, and road rage that emerged particularly during the pandemic period, suggesting that behavioral interventions alongside infrastructure changes may be necessary for comprehensive safety improvements.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
