Seattle is marking the World Day of Remembrance with a citywide effort to remember pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers who have died or been injured on the city’s streets.
Volunteers and friends and family who want to remember the loved ones lost will gather at the E Pike Victrola on Sunday before heading out across Capitol Hill and the Central District to mark the places in our neighborhoods where people have died in traffic collisions in the decade past.
Since 2006, 234 people have been killed and around 2,400 have been seriously injured in traffic crashes, the SNG group says. Nearly 30 collisions occur on Seattle’s streets daily.
Sunday, SNG says families and groups plan to distribute 234 white silhouettes to place at crash locations around the city. The Capitol Hill group will meet Sunday at noon at Victrola E Pike before heading out to place three silhouettes. Other silhouettes will be placed between now and then so that they’re in place by Sunday, organizers said.
One will mark the intersection near Pike and Boren where 18-year-old Nap Cantwell died in 2012 in a collision with a van. Two will mark the turn on Lakeview Blvd E where two 24-year-old men died when their car flipped in a crash along the winding street on New Year’s 2014. And another will mark the site where 79-year-old Capitol Hill resident Max Richards was killed when he was struck by a car as he tried to cross Belmont Ave E while walking his dog in September. There are more.
Here is the list of those who have died in the last 10 years around Capitol Hill and the Central District provided by SNG:
“This a difficult time for many of us right now,” the Seattle Neighborhood Greenways announcement of the event reads. “World Day of Remembrance, while not a joyous event, is something that we can come together on, as well as to help raise awareness among our friends and neighbors. World Day of Remembrance is not a political event, but it is the kind of community building and coming together process that will help us keep America great.”
Sunday’s meetups and silhouette placements will happen in neighborhoods across the city.
I really appreciate this effort. I’m wondering if there is a way to have a lasting commemoration for somebody who was killed by a driver – something like a small white outline of a person with a name and a date, maybe? There’s something about the machine-poweredness of driving that makes it easy to forget that we are vulnerable, slow-moving people. Any reminder, anything that a driver might see when s/he is walking around, will help.
Have you seen the special plaques and cobblestones in many European cities? They usually keep alive the memory of a person who was murdered or abducted by fascists and other political criminals. One of them is not doing much on its own, but if you keep seeing them – you understand better
To be clear. silhouettes will be showing up around the neighborhood in the next few days. Join us on Sunday at noon to discuss safe streets and then place the final 3 markers: on Broadway at Denny, on Harvard at Thomas, and on Belmont at Bellevue Place. We should get to Bellevue Place around 1:00pm.
Funny how the Ghost Bikes were a trip hazard and the city wouldn’t allow them Now, all of a sudden they are no longer trying to hide the appalling amount of deaths on Seattle streets. If they think sweeping speed limit changes are going to replace actually going out onto the streets and finding and fixing the massive problems that drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists face even trying to use the streets they are delusional.