We worry when we go to bed over whether our belongings will be there in the morning, or pilfered by neighborhood thieves.
We wonder when we make a nighttime stop at a convenience store or ATM if someone will pull a knife or gun and rob us.
We shudder at the news of yet another person shot and killed in the city we call home.
The fears and worries that arise daily in Tucson arenβt baseless, as we see in the daily grind of crime reports. In fact, crime has been perhaps the hottest topic in this yearβs city election, tied in, as it often is, with addiction and homelessness.
But, in terms of pure risk analysis, we could probably stand to worry a little less about being victimized by violence and a lot more about something many of us do daily β driving. If youβre not involved in a risky or criminal lifestyle, driving is probably the riskiest thing you do.
The driving we see on a day-to-day basis is bad enough β red-light-running, speeding and the occasional minor crashes, collisions that police often donβt even respond to. Whatβs worse are the gruesome and tragic crashes we hear about regularly but usually donβt witness.
So far this year, Tucson police have recorded 82 deaths from motor-vehicle collisions. Of those, 34 victims were in vehicles, 24 were pedestrians, 18 were motorcyclists and six were bicyclists. Thatβs up from 73 such deaths at this time last year, when pedestrian deaths led the numbers.
Mind you, these are just the crashes inside Tucson city limits. It doesnβt count collisions like the one that happened Friday evening near Ryan Air Field on Arizona 86. A wrong-way driver was traveling westbound and struck a vehicle full of Tucsonans coming east.
A 9-year-old boy was killed, and his two siblings were seriously injured. The Arizona Department of Public Safety didnβt identify the wrong-way driver but said that, once released from the hospital, the driver will be charged with aggravated DUI, aggravated assault, endangerment and criminal damage.
In Tucson proper, traffic deaths have followed a steady upward trajectory that plateaued at new heights in 2020 and subsequent years. In 2010, a total of 46 people were killed in collisions in Tucson. Then there were 69 in 2018, 89 in 2020, 88 in 2021, 97 in 2022.
Itβs not just a local thing, though: From 2013 to 2022, nationwide traffic deaths increased by 30%, from 32,893 to 42,795, with a recent national surge beginning in 2020.
How and why we accept this scale of death, Iβve never understood. But it feels like, with the new increase in traffic deaths that began in 2020, we may have found the limits of our tolerance. I hope so.
Traffic enforcement drops
Some of what causes all this unnecessary death is structural. Our city β and much of our country β is designed for people to get around in cars, and our roads are designed for maximum throughput. People drive constantly, jumping in the car without a thought, and at the speeds that the roads seem to invite β much faster than the speed limits.
We also have dark streets in Tucson, as part of our effort to conserve dark skies for the observatories scattered around the metro area.
But these characteristics have been around for a long time. The increase in deaths began over the last decade and surged in 2020.
The Governors Highway Safety Association, a national group, points to distracted driving from the ever-present cell phones as one of the key factors that has changed over the last decade-plus. In more recent years, they cite the lack of traffic enforcement.
βTraffic enforcement decreased in a lot of places in 2020, due to the pandemic and the national conversation about the role of policing and social justice,β said Adam Snider, the groupβs spokesman. βTraffic enforcement needs to be fair, but having police on the road shows drivers they canβt get away with unsafe things.β
Tucson police have been doing a lot less traffic enforcement over this period, though it is slowly rebounding. Officers issued 59,556 citations in 2019; then 41,593 in 2020; 23,217 in 2021; 27,238 in 2022; and 25,314 through most of 2023.
After he took office in December 2021, Tucson Police Chief Chad Kasmar re-established the motorcycle unit that focuses strictly on traffic enforcement. It has 19 members now, Kasmar told me Friday.
Thatβs enough people to increase citations by maybe 5-10% this year, Kasmar said, but not enough to return to the pre-pandemic highs in traffic citations.
βMy call to action to the broader department is: I donβt care if they write the ticket, but I want them to have the traffic contact. I want to create a culture where the community knows weβre back out there paying attention if youβre distracted, if youβre driving aggressively, if youβre running red lights.β
βIβm not interested in generating revenue for the city. Iβm interested in changing driving behavior.β
Long-run solutions
While TPD is trying to resume traffic enforcement at a higher level, there are countervailing forces. Across the country, police pulled back from traffic stops because they are so often the flashpoints for conflict. With increased scrutiny on police, and the everpresent danger in a traffic stop, it was easier to avoid all that by not pulling people over.
βI donβt think thatβs playing a role now,β Kasmar said. βI think it certainly has in the past.β
Another local factor: We unwisely banned red-light cameras in 2015, instead of making the system fairer. I would love for us to put them back into use, but it would require another initiative or City Council referral, and thatβs unlikely to happen.
Even if we reintroduce red-light cameras and local police go gung-ho into traffic enforcement, thatβs not going to change the structural issues that encourage unsafe driving.
The Tucson City Council established a Complete Streets policy in 2019, which intends to rebalance the way our roads are designed, giving more attention to pedestrians, cyclists and others who arenβt driving cars.
Itβs good on paper, and will probably help over the long run. But our existing roads are what they are, and our drivers are used to them.
The arteries where most people are killed in Tucson β Speedway Boulevard, East 22nd Street, North First Avenue, Valencia Road and the like β remain little urban highways. Even Prop. 411, Tucsonβs new road-improvement tax that is expected to put $150 million into safety fixes, can only do so much.
These arteries will be fundamentally what they are until major reconstructions happen under a Complete Streets philosophy.
Till then, remember driving anytime in Tucson is probably your most dangerous behavior. So keep two hands on the wheel and your head on a swivel.
