Until a motorist struck and killed her 5-year-old daughter, Jessica Hart’s life revolved mainly around motherhood and her job at a think tank.
Now she has taken on a new role: activist.
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“We are shattered,” Hart said Sunday, standing a few feet from the Northeast Washington crosswalk where a van struck Allison “Allie” Hart on Sept. 13 as she rode her bike. “I can’t imagine not speaking out and letting another family experience this.”
As a spate of traffic fatalities involving pedestrians and bicyclists has rattled the city, safety advocates staged a rally Sunday at the intersection where Allie was struck, handing out chalk to dozens of kids and parents who composed messages on the pavement.
Hart and her husband, Bryan, who live nearby, did not speak at the “chalk-in,” as the event was called. But they greeted neighbors and watched as everyone knelt on the asphalt and drew hearts and flowers and wrote messages such as “Protect Our Kids” and “Safe Streets.”
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The rally was held two days after a car hit a 9-year-old boy as he left KIPP Elementary School in Southeast. Also on Friday, in a separate incident, a vehicle struck a 9-year-old boy on a bike at the corner of 21st and Gale streets NE.
“Allie wasn’t the first and she hasn’t been the last,” said Bryan Hart, 38, the girl’s father. “It just keeps happening. We want the world to know it’s just not okay.” He began to cry as he took in the tableau of children on the ground, writing words and drawing designs in bright blues, reds and pinks.
“The idea of making something beautiful is nice,” Bryan Hart said. “It takes all of us. The streets aren’t safe. They’re not built safe. We need to make them safe.”
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The event drew residents who live near the intersection of 14th and Irving streets NE, a neighborhood of single-family homes and sloping streets a mile east of the Catholic University of America and the Basilica of the National Shrine.
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“The neighborhood is just collectively shocked,” said Aaron Denu, 42, a management consultant who lives nearby. “I get goose bumps just thinking about it, and I think about it all the time. We’re just all filled with grief.”
Some came from beyond the neighborhood.
Gretchen Goldman, 37, a scientist, said her outrage over unsafe road conditions moved her to come from Takoma Park with her husband and two small boys.
“It could have been me, it could have been my family,” she said. “We accept as a fact of life that our streets are not safe. And it’s totally unacceptable. I’m angry that it takes a child’s death to catalyze people coming together.”
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In 2015, the administration of Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) inaugurated a Vision Zero policy, with a goal of eliminating traffic deaths by 2024. The number of fatalities has risen over the past two years — from 27 in 2019, to 37 in 2020, to 39 so far this year, including 16 pedestrians and three bicyclists, according to statistics on the city’s Vision Zero website.
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In 2020, 10 pedestrians and one bicyclist were killed, the statistics show.
On Nov. 14, a motorist struck and killed Nina Larson, 24, an American University graduate and an aspiring opera singer, as she crossed Columbia Road NW in Adams Morgan.
In the case of Allison Hart, police said at the time of the incident that the driver of the van, after halting at a stop sign, hit her as she rode her bike into the crosswalk “unable to stop” and “into the path of the moving vehicle.” No criminal charges were filed.
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Bowser, who is seeking reelection to a third term, on Friday showed up at the site where the motorist ran into the boy in Southeast, standing alongside police officials and urging drivers, especially near schools, to exercise “extreme caution and slow down.”
The crash, in the 3300 block of Wheeler Road SE, occurred two blocks from where a driver struck a parent and two children on “Walk to School Day” in October. The incident also occurred less than two weeks after Bowser and police officials unveiled a new traffic enforcement campaign near schools.
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“We are all very focused on how to make our streets safer for all users of our streets,” Bowser said Friday, adding that drivers need to “put the phones down” and avoid distractions.
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Civic leaders and traffic safety advocates have criticized the administration for moving too slowly to beef up enforcement and add infrastructure — measures such as stop signs, speed cameras and speed bumps — to slow down motorists.
“There’s a huge lack of political will because you don’t want to inconvenience people,” said Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who attended the chalk-in. Allen recalled that a car recently came within “inches” of striking his 5-year-old son as he and the boy crossed Sixth and G streets NE.
“We passed Vision Zero, but the mayor is not implementing it,” Allen said. “It’s frustrating. Several of us have been shouting at the mayor and DDOT [District Department of Transportation] to do more. There will be a lot of people who will keep pushing.”
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Jessica Hart, 38, who is seven months pregnant, is among those now joining in the clamor for more precautions. Before her daughter’s death, she said the scope of her community activity was volunteering at Allison’s school — “normal mom stuff.”
Since then, she has found herself following council hearings about traffic safety and using Twitter to voice her outrage.
“When will this city start to care about vulnerable road users?” she tweeted soon after the youngster was hit in Southeast on Friday. “How many more have to be injured or killed to see meaningful action?”
At Sunday’s rally, she recalled that her daughter liked to say “that’s not right, that’s not fair,” when responding to what she believed was a wrong. Now Hart is embracing her daughter’s words as she pushes for safer streets and roadways.
“I have been activated,” she said.