PETITION FOR PEDESTRIAN SAFETY (2024)

FOOTBRIDGES,

MANY MORE CROSSWALKS, NEW LAWS,
AND ENFORCEMENT OF EXISTING LAWS

To: State Senator Kearney, State Representative Delloso, and the Pennsylvania Legislature in general:
We, the undersigned, in memory of our beloved Damien Hocker, a 17-year-old junior at Ridley High School in Folsom, Pennsylvania, who was hit and killed by a car on MacDade Boulevard (a state road) while crossing the street at the intersection of MacDade Boulevard and Fairview Avenue as he was walking home, petition you to take action to greatly improve pedestrian safety in our area and across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

We urge you to start with the following improvements:

1. Build footbridges for the safety of pedestrians (especially students) crossing MacDade Boulevard at the intersection of MacDade Boulevard and Morton Avenue and at the intersection of MacDade Boulevard and Fairview Avenue. These intersections are both dangerous, and numerous students and other pedestrians cross these intersections daily. Apparently, Damien was not the first pedestrian to be killed at one of these intersections. There have been others over the years. For compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, if ramps cannot be placed at those intersections, then use weather-proof elevators, designed for outdoors. (Plenty such outdoor elevators at reasonable prices can be found via a quick Google search.)

2. Arrange to have many more pedestrian crosswalks created. Crossing the street should be made easy for pedestrians; they should not have to walk a great distance to find a crosswalk. Walking should be encouraged since it is better for the environment than driving. Ensure that officers ticket drivers every time they proceed through a crosswalk when pedestrians clearly wish to cross.

3. Enforce existing laws for both drivers and pedestrians. In our area, multiple times a day, we see drivers violating driving laws – speeding, running stop signs and red lights, driving while distracted, being aggressive toward pedestrians and other drivers – with no repercussions. Many more officers need to be on the roads at all times whose sole job it is to give out tickets to those who are driving in unsafe ways.  Studies have shown that around here and elsewhere, unsafe and aggressive driving has greatly increased since COVID-19; pedestrian deaths are way up since COVID-19.  Hit and run incidents, as happened in Damien's case, have also increased dramatically. Ticket pedestrians when they are not following existing laws as a way to teach them that, under current laws, pedestrians are considered liable for accidents when cars hit them if a pedestrian is outside of a crosswalk, walking against a light, and the like.

4. The right turn on red law should be repealed.  Drivers regularly bully pedestrians who are simply trying to cross the street because the drivers are in a hurry to turn right at a red light. Pedestrians should not have to run across the street and fear for their lives every time they cross streets. 

5. Change existing laws so that PEDESTRIANS ALWAYS HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY, regardless of the situation. Driving is a privilege. Those who drive are operating dangerous and potentially lethal machines. They must always be on the lookout for pedestrians and yield to pedestrians in every situation.

6. Cellphone use – whether handheld or not – should be banned while driving. A well-researched study by the National Safety Council discovered that whether hand-held or hands-free, talking on a cell phone while driving is equally distracting to drivers and actually limits the field of vision that the brain can interpret while driving.
NSC Distracted Driving White Paper

7. Start an educational campaign to advertise to the general public the importance of driving safely and to remind drivers that, when they are distracted and/or driving recklessly, speeding, and so forth, they put others at risk of losing their lives. Such an educational campaign could be modeled on similar campaigns run by Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the Keep America Beautiful advertisements.

(signing for the Petition for Pedestrian Safety in Damien Hocker’s memory – 2024)