Traffic Fatalities

Since June 2023 there have been at least five pedestrian and bike fatality crashes on Pulaski, plus other deadly collisions. How can we make the road safer?

While CPD's Community Alert described this as a pedestrian fatality, the crash report says Aurea Gutierrez was on the roof of an SUV before the driver hit a chain link fence.

We must learn from stories like his and implement policies and street designs that prioritize human life over convenient driving.

Most of the increase was due to motorist deaths, but bicycle fatalities also spiked.

Data analyzed by CMAP shows that the number of traffic fatalities trended upwards during the 2010. The agency is working on a new plan to reduce crashes.

The city's traffic fatality rate declined by roughly 50 percent between 1996 and 2006. Key to that result was an initiative to address traffic deaths and homicides in tandem.

In particular, the number of people in cars who died in Chicago crashes spiked dramatically, from 63 in 2016 to 80 in 2017 -- a 27 percent increase. 

America's traffic safety record is going from bad to worse -- and federal transportation officials aren't speaking up about it.

Chicago transportation commissioner Rebekah Scheinfeld is voicing support for a proposal to use a device known as a "textalyzer" to crack down on distracted driving with cellphones. Two aldermen, Anthony Beale Beale (9th) and Edward Burke (14th), have introduced a resolution asking the Chicago Police Department to look into using a $10,000 device from Cellebrite, which makes phone data extraction and hacking tools, that would allow officers to immediately copy the data on a motorist’s phone to determine if they had been using it while driving.