Stop blaming victims for traffic violence

RoadsGGWash PolicyBy Caitlin Rogger (Deputy Executive Director) March 7, 2022 34

A DC crosswalk by the author.

Barry Taylor. Gary Minor. Zy’aire Joshua. Each of these people was killed by traffic violence, and they also have something else in common: with the words ‘outside the crosswalk,’ the authorities and media reports blamed them (and many others) for their own deaths, sometimes before the full facts were known.

In our 15-minute news cycle, an initial account that blames someone who can no longer speak for themselves can set the narrative not just for what befell those individuals, but for how we think about the causes of violence on the roads. Highlighting a victim's perceived role in their own injury or death diminishes the case for taking a more effective public health approach to traffic violence, which emphasizes causality over blame.

The root cause couldn't be clearer: when we do so much to make driving easy in cities, we make every other mode of transportation hard, inconvenient, and risky.

Contested urban spaces

Why would an institution with as much narrative-setting power as the police or the media highlight the positionality of the victim over, say, the speed of the car, the distance from car to cyclist, the width of the road, nearby lighting, or if it happened at a known crash hot spot? The nature of traffic violence, pitting 2-ton speed machines against the vulnerable human body, means that the location of casualties’ bodies once authorities arrive will almost never be where the impact occurred. Both the media and police know this as well as anyone.

A Twitter thread highlights another fault in this causal logic: it's not rare to see the argument in traffic planning discussions that sometimes the safest crosswalk is the one that isn't there at all!

Drivers, the logic goes, might not respect them if the vibes aren't right, so better to avoid giving pedestrians a false sense of security; but if pedestrians don't respect the absence of a crosswalk and get hit, they’re the ones at fault. Pedestrians are killed in crosswalks, too, even raised ones. Drivers run into buildings and schools. Where exactly can they expect to be safe?

It's not just about the crosswalk. How many times have you heard a report that emphasized a car crash victim supposedly doing something risky over broader causal factors, implying some sort of just-desserts? Where have you heard that before? Probably any time there was a structural problem that no one seemed keen on solving.

But modern health promotion techniques don't deal in sins, real or imagined. They look at why something happens, not why it should or shouldn't happen and who deserves blame. They deal in causality that can be addressed, or failed, on a population level.

It's time we stop putting up with this systemic misinformation cycle. It's more than a matter of respect for victims and their families, who have already suffered for the deference our society gives cars. It's about whether we content ourselves with random spot fixes or get to the root of the problem using the lens of public health.

Why is it important to get the causal framing right?

Traffic violence is recognized by experts as a public health crisis. A public health crisis occurs when authorities recognize that a large number of people are experiencing negative health outcome(s), and a multi-layered and targeted approach is required to interrupt the causal chain.

For society, and decision makers like politicians, to understand and support an appropriate response, it's crucial to communicate that the crisis is happening because of a broad web of causes. It's never as simple as lots of bad people making the same bad choice. The latter framing leads to ineffective health services, and a culture of shame and blame that discourages people from seeking help. In other words, it might let the rest of society feel superior, but it doesn't work.

By nature, any health outcome a person can experience - diabetes, injury, kidney stones, leukemia - can be said to have multiple causes. (This is one of many reasons why socialized medicine helps everyone: we are all healthy people, until we’re not). Nowhere is this more obvious than in injuries, illness and death caused by people driving cars: the road design, the cars’ technology, the way drivers view their responsibility toward others, and indeed when and how a pedestrian chooses to interact with the road: these all play roles in determining whether crashes happen or not.

These factors have something else in common: they are more about the environment in which people are making decisions than they are about the decisions themselves. Put ten people in a situation where a shortcut they think is probably safe, for them or for others, will make their lives easier, and some will take it.

A public health approach accepts this, and looks at what can be done to make the safe or healthy choice the easy choice. This goes as much for road diets and bike lanes as it does for making fresh fruit and vegetables available or promoting condom use. For example, two bills introduced by DC's Council in early December and under consideration this month, could make crosswalks, and improved crosswalk design, a more intentional part of the urban environment.

Is this social engineering? Everything about our cities’ design reflects intentionality about how people will use public space. Things would be pretty chaotic if it didn't!

Root causes

Advocates listen out for when authorities highlight an action of the victim that contributed to a crash. What other details are given? Would the source have enough information at this time to say this? More broadly, if you hear a media report or a public official talking about the actions of victims (distracted walking, shades of clothing, proximity to a crosswalk), how are they weighing those risk factors against the actions of the driver (if those are mentioned at all)? Better still is to understand the contextual factors that authorities can fix with safety benefits for everyone: roads designed for slower streets, greater visibility, or driver education.

A DC crosswalk by the author.

GGWash and other outlets are keen on getting the "crash not accident" framing right for just this reason: a 2019 study of news coverage on crashes found that calling them "accidents" reduces recognition of them as a systemic public health problem and relegates them to inevitability. It's a reductive view that prevents real action. Say it with us: crash not accident.

There's some debate as to whether "awareness" campaigns for pedestrians and cyclists are helpful or not. In theory, I’m broadly supportive of efforts to remind all road users of how to keep themselves and others safe. It's undeniably self-protective for example, for drivers to wear seatbelts, for cyclists to wear helmets and for pedestrians to be visible. But in practice, such campaigns can be counterproductive and distracting, by taking up far more public and public sector attention than is appropriate.

That attention is better directed to structural interventions that help a lot of people at once rather than trying to shift individual decision-making. This is the essence of public health: a clear understanding of what influences health outcomes, combined with constructive pragmatism. How many people does a ‘wear bright colors’ poster save vs. a road diet that slows down vehicle speeds overall? When the message people see and hear is ‘pedestrian beware’ instead of ‘we are making your road safer by removing a lane of traffic’, we absorb the idea that the fault is with the victim rather than structural problems that can and should be fixed.

It boils down to a truly pernicious idea, not least in an urban setting where interaction is life: that you spend in public space at your own risk.

Understand the cause, understand the solution

The instinct to blame victims for their own outcomes is grounded in a very human instinct to ‘other’ those who suffer. Isn't it reassuring to assume someone had it coming, so we don't feel at risk of the same outcome? But it doesn't make sense if you recognize the signs that these problems are systemic in nature, as are their solutions.

Let's expect more focus and less distraction from the stories we tell about responsibility for traffic violence. The clearer we are about the root causes of traffic injuries and fatalities, a combination of road design and most commonly driver behavior, the faster we can get to work fixing them.

Editor's note: GGWash maintains a firewall between its policy team and editorial activities, and editorial staff are not involved in advocacy. To learn more, see our editorial policy.

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Caitlin Rogger is deputy executive director at Greater Greater Washington. Broadly interested in structural determinants of social, economic, and political outcomes in urban settings, she worked in public health prior to joining GGWash. She lives in Capitol Hill.