Note: Don't chip in it goes to Change.org and not Makaylyn

On April 11th, 2023, nine year old Makaylyn Lee was hit and killed by an SUV while playing on her scooter in front of her home at Overton St. and Michigan Ave. She was expressive and outgoing, always working on some type of art project. She loved playing in her neighborhood with other neighborhood kids. She touched many lives including her family, her teachers, classmates, and neighborhood kids.

Her family is devastated and would like action now to ensure that no more children in this area are hit by a vehicle.

Children should be able to play in front of their homes. Children live and play here. There is a sign on Overton that a deaf child lives on the street and there's Mary's Dream, a residence and wraparound programming for families transitioning out of homelessness across the street on Michigan Ave.

This is a quiet neighborhood yet the design of the road is wide open. These streets deserve effective calming measures. The street would be safer with speed bumps which can reduce speeds to 15-20mph. When a vehicle is traveling at 20mph there is a 5% fatality rate for pedestrians compared to a 45% fatality rate at 30mph, and an 85% fatality rate at 40mph. The neighborhood would also benefit from sidewalks which are 5 feet in width, the sidewalks are currently 4 feet wide which means people are more likely to forgo the sidewalk for the street. Other interventions to explore can include bump outs, chicanes, and tighter curves around corners. We can prevent another tragedy like this one if we are willing to invest in long term solutions.

This is an opportunity for our community to show that it values the lives of children playing over the ability of vehicles to speed through neighborhoods.

Let's make sure children playing in Makaylyn's neighborhood are safe by instituting traffic calming measures by the 1 year anniversary of the crash, April 11th, 2024.

Let's prevent her family and friends from experiencing another tragedy in this neighborhood.

Signed,

Zuri Horowitz

PeopleCenteredCOS.org

with input from Marvin Lee, Makaylyn Lee's father.

Sources:

https://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-design-guide/street-design-elements/vertical-speed-control-elements/speed-hump/

dot.state.mn.us/complete-streets/safety.html 

https://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-design-guide/street-design-elements/sidewalks/