Deadly Stroad Kills Pedestrian, Divides Community...and Galvanizes One Resident Into Action
Lockwood Ridge Road in Bradenton, FL, where a pedestrian was struck and killed. (Source: Strong Towns/Danny Williams.)
From deadly stroads to dangerous intersections to curbless streets without sidewalks, the built environment in Southwest Florida is not designed for human power. After deciding to live what he calls a “car-lite” lifestyle, Strong Towns member Danny Williams of Nokomis, Florida, experienced these struggles firsthand. And like Strong Towns advocates across North America, he decided to stand up and fight to make things better and safer in his community.
Williams identified and nominated a deadly crash in nearby Bradenton to be the subject of Strong Towns’ latest Crash Analysis Studio. In that crash, a pedestrian was struck and killed in broad daylight crossing a four-lane road with a 40 mph speed limit. For Williams, the crash struck close to home, occurring on a road he has bicycled many times that is designed like countless others in the region. Also, like the driver and the victim of the crash, Williams’s mother is an older resident trying to navigate a similar landscape.
When he was investigating the details before the Crash Analysis Studio in May, Williams carefully examined the scene from both the driver’s and the victim’s perspective. During the session analyzing the crash, Strong Towns Founder and President Chuck Marohn called the intersection “insanely dangerous at those speeds,” and observed that the human brain can’t calculate all the factors needed to cross an intersection so complex with cars moving that quickly. Williams experienced that firsthand: “I wanted to see what the pedestrian saw and walked his path and ended up standing on that corner for four minutes before enough of a gap came where I felt safe attempting to cross.”
A native of Sarasota County, Williams has witnessed the effects of population growth—and the Suburban Experiment—on his region. One glaring example he sees is when a supposed bypass was built to steer faster traffic around the city of Venice. Yet somehow, “it's always had businesses on both sides … It's never been a bypass,” observes Williams. Today, Route 41 bypass is a quintessential stroad, with high-speed traffic alongside strip malls and car dealerships.
Williams’s mother, 83, lives along that stroad. He was grateful that she made the decision not to drive anymore, but her struggles mirror what countless Americans go through without a car in places designed for them. She lives directly across the “street” from a pharmacy. But that street has six lanes of 45 mph traffic, and even when she reaches her destination, she still has a treacherous driveway and parking lot to traverse. She also lives about a mile away from the center of a small-town main street with many events geared toward seniors, but, again, the pedestrian infrastructure is so challenging that she can’t get there without a ride. Williams dreams that Venice could turn one of its three bridges to a pedestrian and cycling gateway into town (it may sound like a fantasy, but there’s a much-loved example in Chattanooga).
Danny Williams, with his bike.
By trying to conduct so much of his daily and work life on two wheels, Williams sees the disconnect between the rhetoric of transportation officials and reality on the ground. Sarasota County touts its commitment to cycling with a well-used rail trail. Williams agrees that the Legacy Trail is lovely, “but if you want to go anywhere that's not on the trail, It's kind of an extreme sport.” He wishes the county would go beyond the interests of recreational cyclists and seek to understand what people who depend on bicycles go through just to get to and from work and errands. Even when you have a bike lane, “there's windshield glass, and a sheared-off light pole … and then the bike lane disappears and there's no obvious place for where you should go. Or there's a crosswalk, but there's no button to push. It's just painted stripes on the ground,” says Williams.
He also notices another aspect of this style of development that stifles safe cycling and walking. With so many gated communities, it can be all but impossible to choose a route with a slower, safer place. Even worse, that restricted entry can add miles to a ride or walk and force it to be on the least forgiving roads and streets.
But Williams refuses to cede the playing field to the drivers who ignore and intimidate cyclists. He will use the roads he’s legally entitled to use “to be visible and make a point that I'm trying to go from my house to the hardware store, to the grocery store and back home.”
He faces the same challenges using public transportation in the area. Service is infrequent, connections are unreliable, and county boundaries create added complexity. His frustration with the service led him to volunteer for the Citizens Advisory Council for Transit for Sarasota County, where he hopes to advocate for people who depend on it. “If [using] transit is harder, people won't use it. People go where the friction is least,” says Williams, and over several decades “we built everything to always be friction-free for cars.”
Williams has advice to anyone with similar frustrations in their communities. Just start “showing up” to city council meetings, advisory committees, planning board workshops. “They can’t keep you out, they’re public meetings,” he quips. Share your experiences where you struggle, start asking questions and do the math. Also seek out a Strong Towns Local Conversation, where you’ll find knowledgeable and passionate local advocates like you looking to take action close to home.
And, of course, you can join the movement by becoming a Strong Towns member. You’ll join with thousands of other advocates like Williams, who are identifying the stroads in their communities and speaking out to stop further loss of life.
Ben Abramson is a Staff Writer at Strong Towns. In his career as a travel journalist with The Washington Post and USA TODAY, Ben has visited many destinations that show how Americans were once world-class at building appealing, prosperous places at a human scale. He has also seen the worst of the suburban development pattern, and joined Strong Towns because of its unique way of framing the problems we can all see and intuit, and focusing on local, achievable solutions. A native of Washington, DC, Ben lives in Venice, Florida; summers in Atlantic Canada; and loves hiking, biking, kayaking, and beachcombing.