Another Gilroy child in a crosswalk on his way to school has
been struck by a vehicle. That’s frightening and terrible news. The
good news is that 8-year-old Isaiah Mollinedo-Navarro escaped with
only minor injuries.
Another Gilroy child in a crosswalk on his way to school has been struck by a vehicle. That’s frightening and terrible news.
The good news is that 8-year-old Isaiah Mollinedo-Navarro escaped with only minor injuries.
“He’s a very, very lucky boy,” Las Animas Elementary School Principal Sylvia Reyes told reporter Emily Alpert.
But the bad news is that our community still has a serious traffic safety problem on its hands.
This incident shows the lack of foresight in the city’s decision not to pursue a Safe Routes to Schools grant, and it ought to move pursuing a grant next year to the top of the city’s to-do list, eclipsing even pursuing the purchase of Gilroy Gardens.
In the meantime, city and Gilroy Unified School District officials cannot ignore this problem: Four pedestrians struck by cars in recent months, three of them fatally, three of them children in crosswalks near GUSD schools.
Perhaps parent groups or teen service clubs could organize “walk to school” groups so that children don’t have to walk to school alone. A large group of a dozen or more children, escorted by a responsible teen or adult, would be much more visible to drivers than a one or two small children.
But the most important step is increased enforcement. The Gilroy Police Department has hired a traffic enforcement officer, and the department has to shift into a higher gear on organized traffic enforcement as our city grows. Drivers must become trained to see police officers enforcing the laws, especially around routes to schools at high-traffic times in the morning and afternoon. Enforcement is the key to conditioning creatures of habit – human beings – to learn that rolling stops, speeding, ignoring pedestrians in crosswalks and the like will earn them a ticket, a fine and potentially increased insurance costs.
Perhaps the GPD can schedule rotation enforcement in the places where the traffic safety officer determines it’s needed most.
We have to create a culture in Gilroy where unsafe driving is not tolerated. Traffic safety is just as important a public safety function as any of the police department’s other duties. Because, clearly, lives are at stake.
