Two incidents of pedestrian roadway deaths have occurred this year in San Jose after a record high last year with 65 fatalities, according to a Jan. 1 Mercury News article.
With the increased amount of pedestrian fatalities in the last year, students and staff reflect on their feelings of getting to campus.
Kelly Snider, San Jose State’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning director, said the city needs to do better regarding the areas surrounding campus.
“This city has done a very bad job for decades,” Snider said. “The city doesn’t have to do anything except stop putting money into automobile infrastructure and start putting money into pedestrian infrastructure.”
According to a Feb. 15 San Jose Mercury News article, E-scooters accounted for 68 deaths from 2017-2021.
“There is no way a student on a scooter can be safe when a bus is driving at 30 miles per hour over the crosswalk or over the bike line,” Snider said. “A student on a scooter or a bike is not capable of controlling the buses and the trucks . . .”
On Oct. 21, 2022, freshman football player Camdan McWright was killed while on a scooter, after being struck by a bus at the intersection of South 10th and Reed Streets, two blocks away from campus.
Snider said asking the question, “What can students do to be more careful of drivers?” is the wrong question.
“To me the questions should be ‘what are the drivers doing to slow down? Why don’t they have a stop sign at every single intersection?’ ” Snider said. “[Students] are going to keep getting killed . . . until people stop allowing murder vehicles to speed through pedestrian neighborhoods adjacent to schools.”
In 2015, San Jose became the fourth city in the country to adopt Vision Zero, a program that aims to eliminate traffic deaths.
The Vision Zero Task Force meets every three months with the goal of improving roadways to make pedestrians, bikers and strollers safer, according to sanjose.gov.
Information systems graduate student Venni Yu bikes to school because of the proximity of the campus to her house.
“It’s better for me to choose a bike over a car because that way I don’t have to pay for car insurance, car maintenance or anything relating to cars,” Yu said.
Yu said the 15 minute bike ride for her is safe and that she’s never seen anyone close to being struck by a driver.
“I think this is a very slow neighborhood,“ Yu said. “I never see a car that’s driving super fast, that’s not going to happen in this neighborhood.”
Yu said she splits riding her bike on the road and sidewalk depending on if there’s pedestrians on the sidewalk, but suggests the city implement clearer bike lanes.
Theater arts senior Lauren Suiter said she commutes to campus using the VTA light rail because she doesn’t want to deal with parking.
“I feel like cars are generally okay,” Suiter said. “Sometimes they race down the streets – I’m kind of the asshole pedestrian that will step in front of cars since there’s a yield sign there.”
Students who commute using VTA transit have to cross three streets, all of which are one-way streets, in order to get to campus.
Students who walk across S. Second Street have to cross the road without a pedestrian signal letting students know when to cross.
Suiter said buses along S. Second Street always yield to pedestrians while other drivers don’t.
“A lot of people look annoyed when I step into the crosswalk,” Suiter said. “They have to yield.”
The most recent pedestrian fatality happened on Feb. 6 when two people were both struck and killed on the same day, according to a Feb. 7 NBC Bay Area article.
“There’s like big trucks parked there who are construction so I can’t see if cars are coming in and cars can’t see I’m stepping out there,” Suiter said.
