Last month, my friend shattered her leg when she was hit by a car at the notorious Ridgeland and Van Buren intersection. She was walking home from dropping off her first-grader at Longfellow School, returning to her 9-month-old baby at home. The driver was speeding down Ridgeland, with snow on their windshield blocking visibility.
She now faces 10 weeks in a wheelchair, a year of intense physical therapy and a likely knee replacement in her 40’s. A community organizer who works face-to-face at the neighborhood level, she’s now on short-term disability. She’ll miss milestones she was looking forward to as her baby becomes a toddler: walking with her as she takes her first steps, stroller trips to the park, summer days at Rehm Pool, followed by ice cream at Hole in the Wall.
The irony is, she moved to Oak Park for its walkability, and now she has no choice but to be driven everywhere she needs to go — just another car on the road.
The best I can say about this terrible situation is that, thankfully, she was hit by a sedan. At 35 miles an hour, the weight and height of an SUV would certainly have pushed her forward and run her over.
I’m sick and tired of hearing about my friends and community members being victims of traffic violence. I use that term intentionally; crashes like these are rarely “accidents.” They are the predictable outcome of street design that prioritizes speed and a car culture that conditions drivers to center their own convenience over the lives outside their vehicle.
Change can happen; the Netherlands proves it’s possible. In the 1970s, they were just as car-centric as America, until rising child traffic deaths sparked a movement called “Stop de Kindermoord” (Stop the Child Murder). They transformed their streets through protected bike lanes, traffic calming and policy change that prioritized people over cars. Culture followed infrastructure. We can use those same tools here in Oak Park.
Last year we adopted Vision Zero and the Bike Plan Update — our road maps for transformation. The village is already moving forward with bike and pedestrian signals along Ridgeland, which is great. Now we need to keep the pressure on to ensure full implementation. Because right now, while we wait for these solutions, we remain vulnerable.
So what can we do while infrastructure catches up? Report close calls, dangerous driving, and infrastructure failures like broken beg buttons or faded crosswalks through the village’s “Report an Issue” tool. Your reports help prioritize both immediate fixes and long-term investments.
Organize through PTOs around bicycle education and safe routes to school walking, school buses, bike trains, the works. When more families walk and bike, we reduce car congestion at pickup and drop-off while demonstrating demand for better infrastructure.
We also need to keep the pressure on the village to make safe streets a priority. Ask our elected officials: what would it take to accelerate implementation of these plans? What if we talked about funding traffic safety as much as we talk about funding pools? Forty million dollars for a new indoor pool is a non-starter for me, but I’d gladly pay $140/year for accelerated implementation of safer streets.
Oak Park’s walkability is one of its defining features. It’s why my friend, like so many of us, chose to live here. Let’s make sure our streets live up to that promise.
Nicole Chavas is an urban planning nerd and member of the board of Bike Walk Oak Park.
