Sitting in front of the Town Council in a wheelchair, Kelly Hamann-Book emotionally relayed what's happened to her since she was hit by a vehicle on South Main Street on Dec. 17.

"I was the pedestrian who was hit on Main Street," the West Hartford resident said at Tuesday night's meeting. "I spent 15 days in the hospital. I had suffered two broken legs, two broken cervical vertebrae that have been fused, two surgeries on my right leg, which may or may not be usable in the future, spinal nerve injuries, a traumatic brain injury."

Hamann-Book spoke on the night the Town Council would consider and later approve a resolution that commits West Hartford to a Vision Zero policy to eliminate all roadway fatalities and serious injuries. The move came after five roadway deaths — two of which were pedestrians — in the span of a week at the end of December. Three people died in a two-vehicle crash on Christmas morning.

Hamann-Book said she is the living result of the aftermath of vehicular violence.

"Prior to my injury, I was a nurse practitioner at Hartford Hospital in endocrinology," she said. "I don’t know that this is something that I’m going to be able to do after what has happened. I’m scared I might not be able to do my job again. I hope that I can. It’s not just the people who died; it’s the people who survived, too. While my injuries might not have been life-threatening, they’re definitely life-altering. It’s really important to recognize that we live in a town right now where people don’t feel safe."

- Casey

Well established, cheap, frequent public transportation is the only real solution to this problem. The average citizen is too dumb to operate a motor vehicle safely. The problem is the state isn't looking at this seriously enough. We need light rail between our large towns. We need high speed rail down the 84 and 91 corridors and along the shore. We need an effective and frequent bus system to bridge the gap between rail stations. We need to redesign our roads so people aren't comfortable driving megatrucks 30 mph over the speed limit down residential roads.

The more people we can get off of the roads with quality transportation, the fewer deaths and injuries there will be.

It would have been so easy for this woman to not go to Town Hall, not go before the Council, and not share her story.

So glad she showed up and spoke up because her voice is indispensable in this conversation.

I appreciate the rail comments and would support such proposals but they are not solutions to auto-related fatalities and serious injuries. Such rail proposals are not only impossibly expensive with no realistic option of ever being built (aside from maybe high speed rail on 84 and 91 corridors - but even that would be decades away), but I'm also skeptical of how much traffic they would take off the road in a place like WH.

I do agree that road re-design is helpful and that would be more cost-realistic.

Increased enforcement should also be part of the solution.

Cross walk light isn’t working outside of CVS in the Elmwood district. I pushed it (about 40 times) and stood for 20 minutes today, even video taping it. I called my husband who said he would let the towns public works or transportation department know. glad this women spoke up!

Edit: I’m not useless, my husbands an attorney that’s why I called him

> but they are not solutions to auto-related fatalities and serious injuries

This is not true. Increased public transportation usage directly corrolates to reduced traffic accidents: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-11/cities-with-good-public-transit-have-fewer-road-fatalities

And this makes sense logically. If more people are using public transit, fewer people are driving. If there are fewer vehicles on the roads, there are fewer opportunities for accidents. If you can take the bus home from the bar, why would you drive? This isn't the end-all-be-all solution, which is why I mentioned road re-design. But it needs to be seriously talked about.

Vision Zero talks about this too: https://visionzeronetwork.org/public-transit-an-undervalued-effective-vision-zero-strategy/

> Such rail proposals are not only impossibly expensive

A common misconception. For one thing I bet this is cheaper than you're thinking. Sure it costs a few hundred million dollars (edit: per mile, sorry), but the state is eager to drop 5 BILLION dollars on repairing a stretch of I-84 that's shorter than a mile in length. So clearly this level of cost is not an issue for us.

Also, every dollar spent on public transit returns four to five dollars in economic benefit: https://www.apta.com/research-technical-resources/research-reports/economic-impact-of-public-transportation-investment/

So even if this ended up costing 20 billion dollars, that means we can expect a return of nearly 80 billion back into the economy. Are you willing to turn down 80 billion dollars of economic growth? Because I'm not.

> I'm also skeptical of how much traffic they would take off the road in a place like WH

Entire cities in Europe are completely car-free and they're doing just fine. And they can do that because of strong public transit.

> but even that would be decades away

If we aren't building and planning for future generations, what the fuck are we even doing??

Good. It's unacceptable for people walking around their own hometown to have to operate in constant mortal peril.

"This is not true. Increased public transportation usage directly corrolates to reduced traffic accidents: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-11/cities-with-good-public-transit-have-fewer-road-fatalities"

- Thanks for sharing but I'm not sure how the experience of these cities would be useful for a suburb like West Hartford.

"And this makes sense logically. If more people are using public transit, fewer people are driving. If there are fewer vehicles on the roads, there are fewer opportunities for accidents. If you can take the bus home from the bar, why would you drive?"

- Yes, I agree - in places like NYC or Boston, but not in WH.

"A common misconception. For one thing I bet this is cheaper than you're thinking. Sure it costs a few hundred million dollars"

- I've never seen new inter-town rail costing only a few hundred millions dollars. Have you? If so, where?

,"but the state is eager to drop 5 BILLION dollars on repairing a stretch of I-84 that's shorter than a mile in length."

- Which project is that?

"Also, every dollar spent on public transit returns four to five dollars in economic benefit: https://www.apta.com/research-technical-resources/research-reports/economic-impact-of-public-transportation-investment/"

- Yes, i'm quite familiar with that but I'm not sure how it is relevant to WH's vision zero goals.

"Entire cities in Europe are completely car-free and they're doing just fine. And they can do that because of strong public transit."

- Those places are very different than WH and the Greater Hartford area. i'm not sure how the experiences of these cities in Europe would at all be instructive here.

"If we aren't building and planning for future generations, what the fuck are we even doing??"

- My sense is that WH is looking for solutions in the near term, not merely in 40 from now ;-)

> nuh uh

Thanks for your constructive input

More lies for headlines. Out of the blue they have a few bad accidents and think they can Magically make them disappear. Yes you can look for deficiencies and address those which will help. You can never eliminate them.

Huh? No lies here. The town itself has said this is an issue, hence their pledge to take action and make roads safer. - Casey

Can you elaborate? Because your comment doesn’t make much sense? And also calling all these deaths “a few bad accidents” is impossibly stupid.

Sure. Even though You called me stupid I will be happy to elaborate. First thing is we all know all accidents and deaths will never be eliminated. No matter what you do there will be fatal accidents in the future. So to promise you are going to end them is a politically motivated lie. I will guarantee West Hartford will continue to have fatal accidents as every other populated city will.

When there is a fatal accident the police do a thorough investigation and fault and contributing factors are brought to light for each incident. Any defect or contributing factors are brought to the attention of whoever maintains the road. (State or municipality). They normally aggregate this information and remedy deficiencies as needed. It is wise for the town to do this and prioritize any solutions that could prevent further accidents. I mean they should be always doing this but nothing wrong with a fresh look.

It’s not like all of these recent accidents occurred at the same spot or due to a recent change in the area. It is more likely going to be chalked up as S**t happens. Or an unusual coincidence to have a cluster of bad accidents in such a short span. I mean I consider an accident where someone is killed as a bad accident. But somehow that was rude. Was it a good one then?

Back the the headline. “West Hartford pledges to eliminate roadway deaths”. It’s a lie.

I didn’t call you stupid I called you comment that.

I think the first thing you need to look over is calling this amount of deaths “a few bad accidents” sorry, call me stupid but it’s an aggressive amount that’s only growing, and literal dead people isn’t a joke. Also where do you see that police are doing “ a full investigation”

The police always do a full investigation for any fatal or serious injury accident. Much more thorough than your typical accident. They have special accident reconstruction investigators. There is much at stake and usually million dollar lawsuits.

You think the police do a full investigation?

Hey - I'm the reporter of this story. I'm sorry you have issue with the headline, but I wouldn't say it's a lie to make this pledge. Vision Zero is really about doing everything you can to make a roadway safe.

In my previous story (https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/west-hartford-fatal-crash-vision-zero-17693929.php) the mayor mentioned that part of this is the fact that human error is inevitable. The other part of this is that roadways can be made to be more forgiving, i.e., if a road is designed with traffic calming in place and speeds are reduced, it's less likely that a crash caused by human error or whatever other mitigating factor will be a fatal crash. As advocates have told me: things do happen, but things can also be put into place to ensure those things aren't the worst case scenario when they do happen.

It would obviously be a bit naïve of all of us to think that New York City, which also has committed to Vision Zero policies, would literally eliminate all roadway deaths. But that doesn't mean they, West Hartford and the other 40-something municipalities in the country that are going Vision Zero can't pledge to do their very best to make roads as safe as possible. That's really what this is about.

Happy to answer any questions on this topic in West Hartford, by the way. I've been reporting on it in-depth since June, when the town had its first pedestrian fatality of the year, and it's a topic close to my heart as I also navigate this town as a pedestrian much of the time.

Thanks for reading!

I appreciate your response and clarification.

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I'm so sorry, wish you a full recovery

Time to ban cars.

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You CAN eliminate them. A car free city cannot have any traffic accidents. Public transit provides this solution and provides an incredible 5-to-1 ROI. We can start building this RIGHT NOW.

Better road and neighborhood design greatly reduces the opportunity for vehicle accidents where there must be roads.

Don't live under the lie that traffic accidents are an unavoidable consequence of every day life.

If people don't feel safe then they'll be likely more careful when they cross the street. This is a good thing.

Or, ya know, aggressive MV enforcement... But I'm sure the cameras will take care of that /s

Can you give any examples of effective "aggressive MV enforcement" that has had a measurable impact on traffic fatalities without costing a fortune?

Personally I think every driver should just have a shotgun in the passenger seat to shoot any pedestrian they see that dares go outside and walk. That way they'll all feel very unsafe and not even think about going outside without a motor vehicle, thus drastically reducing pedestrian fatalities.

Thanks lol

I think WeHa should make lasalle road a few other areas of town car free…sorta like Church street in Burlington, VT. We got closer to that with the outdoor dining space in the summer months. There’s just too many people on all the sidewalks and too many cars flying down Farmington avenue IMHO.

It dropped off the past 2 years, and we now have decade high deaths on the roadways... Maybe people can look at that correlation...

But the legislature feels throwing expensive cameras up all over the highway is going to fix this problem. Throw a cover over your plate, or don't use one, and youre not immune to speed cameras.

This is a good comment but for West Hartford the road redesign should be prioritized over rail because it’s the low hanging fruit…I mean there aren’t even speed bumps in WH where certain streets are extremely busy with pedestrians

I wish you a full recovery!

Good luck with that. Unless they plan on banning cars completely from town.

There’s well established currently free buses. They go all over West Hartford.

You’re willing to spend a fortune on light rail, but enforcement isn’t worth it?

Public transportation includes vehicles that can kill pedestrians. Trains can too. So, no you can’t. Unless we al go back to walking.

That’s why the passenger seat is called shotgun.

The town can do whatever they wish, but there’s really not a way to make drivers pay more attention. Tickets for distracted driving have increased over the years and not done anything. Enforcement has gone up pre Covid and nothing changed. There are constant messages/commercials in media on dangers of distracted driving (I think they may now outweigh drunk driver commercials now) and nothing changes.

People just seem to not care anymore and I don’t think there is a whole lot a town board can do to change it.

I’ve been advocating for this for years! From Arapahoe to the parking entrance.

Absolutely, and minimize parking on Farmington.

The only solutions are built solutions. Speed bumps, constricted roadways, hard barriers around bike paths, etc. Let the distracted pricks take their carelessness up with concrete instead of flesh.