Streetfilms: New Yorkers Walk and Ride for Safer Streets

Yesterday New Yorkers gathered on city streets to honor those killed while walking or biking in the past year. Organized by the Street Memorial Project, three rides and one march converged at Delancey and the Bowery, where Rasha Shamoon was struck and killed while biking home this August. Streetfilms’ Elizabeth Press files this account of the tribute to 14 fallen cyclists and more than 100 pedestrians who lost their lives.

The Daily News, Gothamist, and the Village Voice also covered the day’s events. Speaking to Rasha Shamoon’s sisters, Saba and Suhair, the Voice’s Roy Edroso brings home the need for tougher NYPD traffic enforcement and more thorough investigation of fatalities:

Suhair hopes that the memorials will “change police
protocol” in bike accidents, she said. “Nine out of ten times they
assume it’s the fault of the rider. And that’s not how it is… they
should talk to other people in the area if they’re willing to give a
statement, and take more caution at the scene and not just move things
just because traffic gets backed up,” as they did in her sister’s case,
which she feels adversely affected the investigation

“It was really hard to get answers” about the accident,
said Saba’s husband Jeff. He said that, in the reports the family saw,
the police only took statements from the driver and two of his friends,
and there were “no consequences” to the driver as a result of the
investigation.