On Saturday, May 18th, Streets Are For Everyone and partners from the County invite you to a comprehensive community symposium dedicated to addressing the issue of illegal street racing and street takeovers. This event will assemble experts actively combating these activities alongside residents like yourself to exchange perspectives, generate solutions, and formulate recommendations for ending illegal street racing and takeovers.

Here we are again, about to host our 11th Annual Finish The Ride and Finish The Run Griffith Park. It’s hard to believe we’ve been doing this now for 11 years. It’s incredible how much it’s grown in that time.

Many of you know the basic history of Finish the Ride, how I was hit cycling in Griffith Park in 2013, dragged nearly a quarter mile under a car onto and down the 5 Freeway. How it was a hit-and-run, and I lost my leg and nearly my life. How Finish The Ride started as an advocacy campaign on hit-and-run crimes to help make roads safer for everyone. For those who have been at a Finish The Ride event, you’ve heard me describe the story, and I’ve described the story every year since the first year. I’ve told the simple story so many times I can almost say it in my sleep (check with my wife, I likely do!)

Most of you don’t know that Finish The Ride, the deep roots of Finish The Ride, actually goes back to 1-2 days after I was hit. I was in intensive care at LAC+USC Hospital (now LA County General Hospital), and I was waking up from my first emergency surgery, where the doctors officially amputated what was left of my right leg.

After years of advocating for speed cameras as a non-police method of enforcing speed laws, Streets Are For Everyone was thrilled this past October when Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill 645, allowing Los Angeles, Glendale, Long Beach, San Francisco, and Oakland to pilot a speed camera safety pilot…

Why Los Angeles Gets an “F” Grade for 2023

I am starting this report with a question that anyone reading this must think about:

How many more Angelenos need to die before we, as a collective city, start treating traffic violence with the urgency it deserves?

Good news! The Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) is continuing its safety and mobility improvements on Hollywood Blvd with additional work planned on the section of road between Gower St and Fountain Ave. LADOT will continue its engagement with the community regarding safety for those who walk, bike, and use public transit.

When it comes to street safety, it’s important to think about the language we use. Instead of using the term “accident,” let's refer to them as preventable crashes. The term "accident" suggests things happened by chance, and nobody is to blame. But by referring to them as "crashes," we can understand the importance of human actions, infrastructure, and policies in road safety and saving lives.

In addition to other challenges, our schools are facing a public health crisis because of speeding, and it is only getting worse. Children and teens are dying, and they will keep dying unless change happens. While writing this report, yet another tragedy occurred near our SAFE office. On April 25th, 2023, 33-year-old Ghadah Abduljabbar, and her 6-year-old daughter were struck by a speeding vehicle in Hancock Park, a community of Los Angeles, CA. The mother was pronounced dead at the scene, and the daughter, a six-year-old, was severely injured but survived. The pair were hit while walking across a crosswalk near Hancock Park Elementary School, where the child attends the first grade. We cannot ignore speeding. Measures must be taken to mitigate speeding and keep our children safe.

On Saturday, January 21, 2023, hundreds of community members – kids, parents, cyclists, pedestrians, elected officials, and dogs (don’t forget the dogs) – came together at LA City Hall for a massive die-in protest for safer streets in Los Angeles. 312 lives were lost in 2022 due to traffic violence, and thousands more were seriously injured – the highest on record in over 20 years.

For the last several years, the holidays in Los Angeles have served as a grim reminder that the streets of this otherwise world-class city are fast and deadly. As Streets Are For Everyone (known as SAFE) rang in the new year, we learned that 2022 was no exception.