In 2021, a heart-wrenching incident occurred when 5-year-old Allie Hart lost her life after being hit by a van while cycling through a crosswalk. This tragic event led her mother, Jessica, on a powerful journey of advocating for safer streets and vehicles. No parent should ever have to endure what Jessica did.

"The Fight for Safer Roads After a Child's Fatal Accident"

Section 1: The Hart Family's Story

Allie was one of two children and 20 people who lost their lives while walking and biking on Washington, DC, streets in 2021. This was part of a broader crisis of fatalities on US roads. By the next year, pedestrian fatalities had reached a 40-year high, equivalent to three Boeing 737s dropping from the sky each month. This trend made the US stand out among peer nations.Even though airline travel is extremely safe overall, the rising deaths of people trying to navigate our streets rarely receive the same level of scrutiny as airline safety failures. The Hart family's story is a powerful reminder of the importance of addressing this issue.

Section 2: The Growth of Deadly Vehicles

The American penchant for larger, taller, and heavier vehicles has indirectly led to more fatalities. Vehicles with hoods higher than 40 inches are about 45 percent more likely to cause fatalities in pedestrian crashes. The design of these vehicles, with boxy, blunt front ends, is more dangerous than low-angled hoods. Heavier vehicles also strike pedestrians with more force and are more likely to cause them to end up underneath the vehicle.In the last two decades, more US consumers have turned to SUVs, and the number of people killed by what are sometimes called "light trucks" has grown. The supersizing of vehicles on US roads, combined with a lack of meaningful regulation, has created perverse incentives.

Section 3: The Need for NCAP Changes

After Allie's death, Jessica began volunteering with Families for Safe Streets to push for reform. Last July, she published a Change.org petition urging the government to improve its vehicle safety ratings to consider pedestrians and other vulnerable road users.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) finally announced last month that it is updating NCAP to adopt the European model of testing vehicles for how deadly they are when they strike pedestrians. The new program will also test for advanced driver assistance technologies. Previous changes to NCAP have shown that they can make a meaningful difference, such as in 2004 when better testing for vehicle rollover risk led to a significant reduction in rollover-related deaths.The reasons US roads are so deadly come down to unsafe road design, deadly vehicle design, and a culture that doesn't prioritize pedestrian safety enough. The NCAP changes are an important step in addressing these issues.