This is regarding the Tribune articles “6-year-old boy killed in hit-and-run accident” (Metro, April 20) and “Fatal hit-run site has seen its share of tears; Boy’s death is latest in series of accidents” (Metro, April 21).
Six-year-old Shatwon Enochs was hit and killed by an SUV or work truck April 19 while riding his bicycle on a residential street in Englewood.
He was doing what children are supposed to do: He was playing outside, exploring his world on a bicycle.
In doing so, Shatwon placed his trust in many people:
In the traffic engineers who designed the street.
In the government that wrote the rules of the road.
And, finally, in the grown-ups who drive the cars and trucks in his neighborhood.
And why shouldn’t he have trusted adults to be careful when driving their cars around children?
After all how could a 6-year-old have known that motor vehicles kill more than 160 pedestrians and bicyclists each year in metropolitan Chicago?
In all likelihood, the person who hit Shatwon didn’t know this either.
It’s not a well-known statistic.
The driver probably didn’t realize another little-known but important fact:
When a car going less than 25 m.p.h. hits a pedestrian or bicyclist, most live.
As speeds increase over 25 m.p.h., the severity of injuries and deaths increase rapidly.
It makes a difference to the safety of a neighborhood whether cars are going 25, 30 or 35 mph.
And when people are driving 40 or 50, it is criminal.
Many of those criminals are your neighbors who don’t realize how fast they are going or that their speed matters.
What can be done?
It has been noted in the news that the intersection where Shatwon was killed, 72nd Street and Racine Avenue, is a place where there are many children playing.
The answer isn’t to stop children from being active and riding bikes on neighborhood streets.
The answer is to make neighborhood streets places where children can be children without dying.
