8:10 am
“Lucy, wake up! You’re going to be late for your test.”
In the haze of a stress dream about precalculus, Lucy’s mom sounds like her school’s Vice Principal growling an announcement over the intercom. But after Amber repeats herself twice more from the kitchen, Lucy finally realizes it’s her mom calling. She rolls over and checks her phone. Slept through the alarm again! Only 20 minutes to throw on her Zombie Elizabeth Holmes costume, inhale a bowl of cereal, grab her backpack, and run to school. No time to do her face. She throws the face-painting kit in her backpack so she can do it after the test. Who schedules a midterm during first period on Halloween?
Lucy runs out the door yelling to Amber, “Bye, Mom!” As she turns down the sidewalk, she notices her block’s Traffic Danger Today sign is set to Extreme. No wonder - in Street Safety, they learned that Halloween is the most dangerous day of the year for pedestrians. Usually the sign is on Moderate during the day (it’s never Low in the city), but it’s higher at night and when there’s bad weather. Mr. Gomez said the city even issues a red flag traffic warning every Halloween, so today all speed limits are 10 miles an hour lower than normal.
At the end of the block, Lucy turns right on Pico Boulevard and runs toward the Masselin crosswalk. She notices a car parked right next to it. Somebody should tow that thing - it’s a total crash hazard!
She hits the crosswalk button and waits impatiently at the crossing gate arm alongside an old lady. The robocars on Pico slow to a stop, metal barriers rise to block them out of the crosswalk, and the arm finally goes up. Lucy bolts across the street. But just as she gets to the median, the crosswalk’s crash alarm suddenly blares, and warning lights flash.
A vroomer.
Behind Lucy, brakes screech, and metal slams deafeningly into metal. She turns to see the old lady standing in the crosswalk in front of a totaled car, stunned. The woman quickly regains her senses and starts yelling at the vroomer, who barks back anonymously from inside an airbag cocoon.
“Are you okay?” Lucy calls to her.
“Fine. Thank heavens for these barriers.”
Lucy doesn’t have time to linger. She has a midterm to take.
As she runs through the neighborhood, Lucy realizes she’s pretty shaken up. During crash drills at school, they learned to stop, lock eyes, and go. But she was in such a hurry that she didn’t even think to watch for vroomers. Good thing the city finally started taking that crosswalk seriously.
Lucy thinks about her mom. What if that driver was her?
When she gets to the street in front of the school, Lucy runs right down the middle, past the robocar line. The block has been closed to human drivers ever since the state started requiring 100 feet of defensible space around schools. This street belongs to her. Feels good. Breathe. She makes it just in time.
8:30 am
How loud an alarm clock does a teenager need, Amber wonders for the umpteenth time? That child could sleep through an 8.5 on the Richter scale. Third time this month, and with a midterm today! Lucy was in such a rush she forgot the big cardboard syringe she made for her costume. Amber decides to swing by the school in her car on her way to work and drop it off.
Her car. Lucy likes to tease Amber for still driving. It’s not like Amber does it out of principle or anything. It’s just habit. She likes being behind the wheel.
At least this car has most of the newer safety features. Amber had to get rid of her SUV a few years ago when State Farm canceled her insurance policy. These days, that old thing probably wouldn’t even be code-compliant. They keep tightening the standards. Now the hood can’t be higher than the shoulder of an average 6-year-old.
Back when Lucy was a baby, several insurance companies pulled out of Los Angeles altogether for a few years because traffic deaths got so out of control. That was when the city really started taking Vision Zero seriously.
Amber grabs her stuff and Lucy’s syringe and gets in the car. But before she can start it, the distraction detector announces it’s time for its monthly test. It just takes a minute. “Obstacles” project onto various parts of the windshield and side windows, and Amber presses the brake pedal every time she sees one.
After passing the test, she starts the car and drives toward the school. But when she gets to Pico, a barrier blocks the street. Amber is confused. Her phone said Pico hadn’t reached maximum occupancy yet this morning, so she figured she could take it.
Then Amber sees the sign. “This street is temporarily closed for an emergency safety inspection.” She wonders what happened.
Amber finds another route to Lucy’s school, drops off the syringe, and heads to work. The car tells her today’s commute toll will be only $13.50. Must be light traffic today. That’ll be nice. On the freeway, Amber realizes driving under the speed limit has become second nature. Making speeders pay ten times the toll seems to have worked. Who can afford that?
It must be because of holdouts like her that they haven’t taken the speed cameras down yet. Her car doesn’t have a speed limiter - they just started requiring those on new cars last year. Once the last vroomer is gone, they won’t need the cameras any more.
When Amber exits the freeway, her phone chimes with a text from her brother. He’s been visiting their sick dad, and she’s been eager for an update. Impatient, Amber picks up the phone to read his text instead of waiting for the car to read it to her. The distraction detector activates an ear-splitting alarm inside the car, and exterior lights flash as a loud recorded voice warns, “Distracted driver!” She sheepishly puts the phone down and tries not to make eye contact with the angry cyclist in the bike lane next to her.
It’s gotten pretty tough to be a vroomer. Maybe she should have bought that robocar after all.
3:30 pm
School’s over. What a relief, Lucy thinks. That midterm was brutal. But whatever, Lucy and her friends have big Halloween plans tonight. As they walk down to Pico to get a snack from the pizza place, Lucy tells Sophia and Nayeli about her near-miss in the crosswalk this morning. Nayeli looks at her.
“Are you ok?”
“Yeah, it’s fine.”
Sophia just rolls her eyes. “Stupid vroomers.”
They reach Pico, and what’s this? The street’s closed? Whoa. Lucy looks down the street and sees crash investigators gathered near the Masselin crosswalk. The vroomer’s car is still there, its front end crumpled into the barrier like a recycled soda can.
At the crosswalk, she approaches an investigator. She always thought their green uniforms looked sharp, even with the goofy Spokey Bear patch on the arm. She asks the investigator what’s going on.
“Hi there,” he replies. “Sorry we had to close the street. But a human driver almost hit an elderly pedestrian in the crosswalk this morning. I’m not surprised - this street’s design is out of date. We’re condemning it until it can be brought up to code.”
“But why?”
“Young lady, can you imagine if we just let people use unsafe streets like this one? We already tried that. Cars used to kill ten times as many people as fire. Thousands of people every year. Ask your parents.”
“But I saw it. I was in the crosswalk. It was just one guy.”
“You witnessed the crash? When we got here, the old woman was alone. Why didn’t you stay to help her?”
“I was running too fast to stop. I had a-”
“You ran across the street? Young lady, what on earth were you thinking?”
“I’m…I’m sorry.”
“Try to be more careful, okay? Those barriers don’t always work.” The investigator touches the bear patch on his sleeve and looks Lucy in the eye. “Remember: only you can prevent traffic deaths.”