Scholarship Essay: Are Pedestrians Safe?

Updated on: 1/26/2023

This essay is by Francesca Feltrin, one of the contestants in Davis Law Group's Law and Justice scholarship essay contest. Francesca is majoring in criminal justice. Her dream is to make a difference in people's lives by working for the United Nations. Vote for Francesca by visiting Davis Law Group's Facebook page and following the instructions for this essay contest.

In every neighborhood there is something dangerous from a branch of a tree falling, holes in the street to lack of sidewalks these things they don't make or life impossible but a little bit uncomfortable. Most of the times, this problems are not only created by the lack of interest of the town or the administration of the community and lack of funds but most of the problems are generated by the disinterest of the people. If nobody complains, well that means that there is no problems but if somebody starts a complain the problems will start to surface and this will generate a chain reaction and others will agree with the complain.

In my neighborhood i think that one the most big problems are the missing sidewalks. There are none for no reason, because the roads are wide and a great sidewalks can fit without problems. When i go for a walk i’m always scared to get run over by a car because I’m walking on the side of the street and the cars drive really fast without respecting pedestrians. In addiction to the missing sidewalks also pedestrians crossing are missing and when I have to cross the street is always a such a challenge! Why something that easy like walk across the street for a coffee consist in a fight for my life? I just want a coffee and get back home all in one piece!

But  It seems that the missing of the sidewalks doesn't bother anyone because everybody use the cars to move around but for those like me who don't have a car and I have to walk around, it is actually an everyday problem.  I don't mean to build beautiful sidewalks but just something  small that can permit us pedestrians to walk without having somebody looking me bad because i’m walking in their front yard instead of the side of the road; but I wanna live so I don't care if neighbor is annoyed by that.

Crossing for pedestrians I think is actually the real problem. There is actually none and the only one that there is not even working so every time I need to cross the street is a guessing game after which car can i try to run to the other side of the road without been killed?

I think that this matter should concern the town and they should try to find funds for the safety of pedestrians. for example instead of spending money to change the flowers in front of the town hall they could save that money and I think that after a while they would have enough money to paint some pedestrian crossing on the road and put new lights!

Also the habitants of the town should be concerned because even if since now with haven't deadly accident that doesn't mean we are safe. we need to prevent before something bad is going to happen.

One of the statics that scare me a lot is ”In 2013, 4,735 pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes in the United States. This averages to one crash-related pedestrian death every 2 hours.” ^[1] This is really concerning, every 2 hours a person die because hit by a car, how can we prevent this tragically event? we need to make people aware and make sure that the money spent on making roads safe for pedestrians are not a waste of money but we are actually saving someone life.

In conclusion i would like to say that we all need to respect the roads rules, even pedestrians: we all need to take care of each other to make sure we can have a long and safe life.