My dog Drizzy at the intersection where we were hit by a driver May 7. Photo by the author. Image by the author.
May afternoons on Thayer Avenue in Silver Spring are just perfect. It’s the kind of street that still has big old trees, and at 5 o’clock the sun hits just right and casts these golden shadows on everything fortunate enough to be in the way. Kids are out playing in apartment building yards, and cheers ring out from a soccer game at the elementary school up on the hill. Drizzy and I are on our post-work, pre-dinner walk. We know everyone we pass, if not their names, at least their faces, or their dogs.
Among them are three little boys on bikes, weaving around us on the sidewalk. The smallest one wipes out in front of us, landing in the street–I recognize him from our neighborhood block party the week before–then picks himself up and asks me, “When is there going to be another party?” Next year, I say, but it was so much fun, maybe we’ll have one sooner.
Five minutes later and 500 feet away, I am kneeling in the street cradling my dog after he’s just been hit by a car.
We’re crossing the street, just one block from our house when I see the blue-grey Nissan coming as it ran the stop sign and swung right onto Thayer. It takes me a second to realize it’s not slowing down. I wave my arms and yell before I hear the thunk and a squeal and the car finally stops at my feet. I scream. I search my dog’s body for any sign of injury and look in his eyes; he stares back, a little stunned. Another car swerves around the Nissan without stopping.
“What’s wrong? Your dog is fine,” the driver says when he gets out of the car. He keeps repeating it.
I see a neighbor tentatively step out of his house, and I wave him over. I take my dog, limping, to the grass. His paws are bloody and some patches of fur are missing, but otherwise intact. I call 911, who sends me to animal control, who tells me to go to a vet and I say of course, but I want to report that a driver hit my dog. Can you get the driver’s information, the dispatcher says, and I hand the phone to the man, who is now on his phone. He waves me off.
The neighbor says, people fly through here and a few years ago my neighbors and I asked for speed bumps here, and a crosswalk. They put one in down there–he gestures towards the school–but not here. We gave them signatures and they said we submitted them incorrectly. I tell him I can relate, because my neighbors and I had also spent a year fighting the county for a stop sign and crosswalk on our block. “If this were Bethesda,” he adds ruefully, “it would have happened already.”
***
“Did you get hit?” My friend texts me while I wait for my dog to get an x-ray at the emergency vet, 25 minutes away in rush hour. I say I don’t know. I can feel some stiffness in my neck. My shoulder is sore. I think I feel something in my back. Then I look down at Drizzy’s leash and see the hand sanitizer bottle that usually hangs from it has been ripped off, with only the lid remaining.
The doctor comes in. “We didn’t see any broken bones,” he says, “but your dog was very stubborn. He tried to jump out of the x-ray machine.” I breathe a sigh of relief: he’s fine.
Another friend surprises me at the vet and gives me a hug before my dog is discharged, and my mom meets us in the parking lot. She points to my shirt, which is for a podcast. “Wait, what does your shirt say? The War on Cars?” she asks. “Well, that’s right. Now you have a war on cars.”
***
The police didn’t take a report at the scene, so two days later I call and they sent an officer to my house. I tell him the story while sitting on my porch with Drizzy on a leash, and he clenches whenever my dog gets near him. I make clear that it’s the law in Maryland to stop for someone crossing the street, including at unmarked intersections unless there is a sign saying don’t cross there.
My block spent a year fighting Montgomery County to have this stop sign and crosswalk installed, one block from where a driver hit me and my dog. Image by the author.
“What…would you like to happen?” he asks. “Well, I’d like you to find the guy that did this, and for him to get whatever the penalty is for not stopping and hitting somebody,” I say, “and I’d like for him to pay our medical bills.”
There isn’t enough proof that the driver hit your dog, the officer replies, and I ask: what about the witness? the vet bill? the photos I took of the car, the driver, and his license plate? He shrugs, and hands me his business card. “When you get more information, we’ll file a report.”
Five days after the crash I step out of the shower and in the mirror I notice a giant bruise on my back. In the adrenaline rush after the crash and my panic over whether my dog was safe, I hadn’t even realized that the driver hit me too. And now I have proof.
***
These ghost shoes mark the Rockville intersection where Brett Badin, age 32, was killed by a driver after stepping off a bus in 2020. Brett and I went to middle school together. Image by the author.
One out of 100 Americans will die because of traffic violence in their lifetime. Another 60,000 pedestrians and 42,000 bicyclists will be injured in a car crash this year. In the process of writing this I get stuck: I want to bring in some stories about car crashes, or people I know who were hurt or killed because of a driver’s actions, and there are so many.
It’s a Sunday in September 2004, my senior year. I’m 16 and have my learner’s permit. My mom is watching the morning news, and I see kids I know laying flowers by the side of Norwood Road, right by our school. A girl died, she said. Her name was Alicia Betancourt. The reporter picks up from there: a boy I knew—we had friends in common—lost control rushing to take his date home, and crashed into a pole.
Five teens in Montgomery County died in crashes that weekend, and officials promise to do something about it. “We don’t let kids drink until they’re 21, but we put them in killing machines before they’re really able,” Alicia’s father tells the Washington Post. Dr. Betancourt leads a campaign to make teen driving laws much stricter in Maryland, and within a year it’s successful. Her shadow hangs over our entire senior year, and when the driver comes back to school, people try to fight him. At the time I was just frustrated that I had to wait longer to get a driver’s license, even though I’m in college by the time I actually do.
***
Two weeks after my crash I get an MRI for the bruise on my back. It’s in Olney, 16 miles from my house, and I drive by the site where Alicia died, the parking lot where I learned how to ride a bike, and the side of the highway where my friend’s dad was hit by a driver while biking to work (he lived, thankfully.)
“It’s very loud, so I’m going to give you headphones,” the MRI technician says, as he places them on my head. While I’m in the machine I can hear a playlist he made for his patients. The first song is “See You Again” by Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth, a tribute to the actor Paul Walker. In 2013, he was on his way from a charity event when his friend, the driver, lost control and crashed, killing both of them.
***
A car parked on the sidewalk on Sligo Avenue in Silver Spring. This is a common sight in my neighborhood. Image by the author.
It’s a gorgeous, sunny September afternoon in 2019, and I’m sitting on a bench outside the Starbucks in Pike & Rose with a local pastor. We both know each other from blogging, and decided to meet up for the first time. We get to talking about Jake Cassell, a student at Winston Churchill High School who was biking a few miles away on Old Georgetown Road, swerved to avoid a trash can, and was hit and killed by a driver. I had gone to his memorial ride a few weeks prior.
His family goes to our church, the pastor says, and his parents asked us to be there when they met the driver. And Jake’s father said, I forgive you.
I have been thinking about that conversation for weeks. I am furious at the driver, who could have killed my best friend and was so indifferent to the harm he caused that he wouldn’t even give me his name. I am furious at the police, who refused to take me seriously. I am furious at the Montgomery County Department of Transportation, who treated a crosswalk and speed bumps as an indulgence that people had to beg for. I am furious that I have spent the past three weeks juggling doctor’s appointments and insurance claims. Most of all, I’m furious that drivers in my neighborhood continue to speed and ignore stop signs and park on sidewalks because they know they won’t suffer the consequences.
And still I say to myself: I know I am going to forgive this man, eventually. It is the only thing I have control over.
We treat driving as so essential that we don’t acknowledge that drivers also have a responsibility to other people. I am still choosing to live my life believing that people are capable of good things. I think about all of the love and kindness I have received from my friends and family and complete strangers over the past few weeks, if only because we’re all members of the same very unfortunate club.
***
It’s another perfect May afternoon on Thayer Avenue, a week after the crash, and Drizzy and I pass a house where the front porch has been ripped off. Insulation and trim dangle around the front door, which now hovers five feet above the ground. I stand there staring at it, when I see the next-door neighbor and her friend are standing in her driveway. She tells me, someone was backing up and mistook the gas for the brake. Was anyone hurt? I ask. No, she replies, then pauses: I think so.
We keep talking and it turns out that we’re all connected: her friend works at the salon where I get my hair done, and we all have other friends in common. I love moments like this, that make me feel rooted in this community and connected to everyone around me, and I think about how so many of them seem to happen on this street.
I saw your post on the neighborhood Facebook page about you and your dog, the neighbor says, and adds that a driver hit her son in downtown Silver Spring while he was biking to school. He’s fine now, she adds, but it was so scary.
A car revs its engine behind us, and I flinch and grip Drizzy’s leash as it passes us. I wonder if I’ll always feel this way.
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