Homicide charges dropped for Georgia woman, cause celebre for pedestian activists

The three-year ordeal is over for Raquel Nelson, the woman who was convicted of vehicular homicide in 2011 after her 4-year-old son was killed by a hit-and-run driver as the family attempted crossing an arterial road in suburban Marietta, Georgia.

The Cobb County prosecutor dropped the charges of vehicular homicide and reckless behavior, while Nelson pleaded guilty of jaywalking and paid a $200 fine. After the first conviction widespread outrage ensued: Nelson and her family were living without a car and had little choice but to walk in hostile environments in their spawling community. A judge gave Nelson a choice — accept the judgment with probation, or face a new trial. Nelson chose to fight rather than accept responsibility for her son’s death.

A petition on change.org to have the charges dropped and install a crosswalk on the arterial, started by new urbanist planner Eliza Harris, collected 160,000 signatures. “Raquel Nelson went through hell but if there is any silver lining it is that this case seems  to have put a spotlight on the plight of people that don't have cars,” says Norman Garrick, an associate professor in civil and environmental engineering at the University of Connecticut.

Nelson lives with her children in a place that is completely designed around automotive travel. The Walk Score is 23 out of 100, the average block size is 26 acres — way beyond walkable dimensions. Nelson and her three children used buses and their feet. There was no crosswalk at the bus stop on the other side of the highway from their apartment complex. They were expected to walk a 0.6 mile round trip by fast-moving traffic to a legal but unpleasant crossing at a traffic signal. Not surprisingly, they took the direct route. One evening in April 2010, her son A.J. darted ahead of her and was killed.

Cobb County is now reevaluating the crossing and the bus stop, but the larger issue of people living without cars in areas that are dangerous to pedestrians is, if anything, growing worse. The suburbs are diversifying racially and economically, with growing numbers of immigrants. Marietta, with a third African-American (like Nelson) and 17 percent Latino population, exemplifies that trend. Poverty is rising twice as fast in US suburbs as in cities, and this trend will likely continue as many suburbs convert from homeownership to rental. More people need to live without an automobile for economic reasons — and more are also choosing to do so as the less car-oriented Millennials come of age. The conflict with the built environment is growing.

Austell Road in Marietta, for example, is designated as an “urban arterial” and therefore designed for fast-moving traffic that is deadly to pedestrians should a collision occur. This situation is the rule in suburbs, and even many city sectors, nationwide.

Fixing this problem is a vast endeavor that will likely take decades of work, investment, and changes in public policy. Yet the problem is fixable. These roads and communities can be made much more livable than they currently are.

But the answer is not so simple as getting angry at a case of prosecutorial overreach. As Garrick noted, the case brought attention to the plight of people without cars in suburban America. Yet people are dying and seriously injuried by the thousands on thoroughfares similar to Austell Road, and most of these tragic events never achieve notoriety. Beyond that, the danger and humiliation of having to schlep on foot across unpleasant and scary roads designed for steel-box travel is considerable for growing millions of Americans.

To make these roads more walkable, the culture among transportation engineers and planners in departments of transportation and municipal planning organizations must change. They operate by arcane formulas that affect all of our lives. This brings me to another change.org petition, which is asking US DOT to change the “functional classification” system, which designates roads as arterial, collector, and local thoroughfares in urban and rural areas. The small proposed change requested could make a very big difference.

As an urban arterial, the current system makes designing Austell Road in any way that is not hostile to pedestrians difficult. The petition could set parameters for how these roads could be transformed. If you care about preventing further tragedies like the one in Marietta, please sign it.

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