Every Day is Murder a Pedestrian Day!
By 
A member of my local gym was run down and killed last weekend.
Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn has released the name of a woman who was killed while walking across a crosswalk when a vehicle ran through a red light at Nicholasville Road and Rosemont Garden and struck her. Mia Alayna Ibrahim, 33, of Lexington, died of multiple blunt force injuries, according to Ginn. Ginn said her manner of death was an accident. The Lexington Police Department said “no charges are expected at this time,” according to Sgt. Guy Miller. Miller said the investigation was ongoing Monday. He explained that while any case remains open, the status of whether to file charges could change.
Mia preferred they/them, but whatever. Traffic signal enforcement is non-existent in Lexington for reasons that escape me. I have watched a pickup truck barrel through a busy intersection as the light shifted from yellow to red while pedestrians on either side prepared to enter the crosswalk, with a police cruiser literally sitting in the left turn lane. Truck misses me and my daughters by inches, and the cop (I could have reached out and touched the cruiser) simply makes his left turn and by all appearances does not even consider pulling out the offending driver. Driving habits differ a bit in every city, but this lax enforcement has either created or abetted a driving culture in which red lights are habitually ignored (the joke runs “it’s fine as long as the car in front of you goes through the light”).
Lots of reasons why Americans have collectively decided that pedestrian lives are worthless (big cars, distracted drivers). The best and easiest solution to at least this manifestation of the problem seems to me to be automated enforcement of traffic signals enabled by traffic cameras. Everyone hates getting a ticket by mail, but we’ve effectively demonstrated that we absolutely are not responsible enough to let pedestrians live without them.