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?

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.