Dying in the Streets

Posted by John B. Kelly

Mary Johnson of the Ragged Edge Online has just posted a crucial story: how people in wheelchairs and scooters are being run down and killed on city streets across the country, because the sidewalks are inaccessible -- no curb ramps, broken up sidewalks, no access maintained during construction, and our local favorite, nightmarish brick sidewalks.

Above: Saddle the guide dog, Alyson Perry, and John Kelly on Beacon Street heading towards Kenmore Square. Photo Rob DuBuske.

I discovered this inaccessible sidewalk on my trip from City Hall on September 29, where I listened to Commissioner of Public Works Joseph Casazza tells some access advocates that he trusts the "good sense" of his supervisors to maintain access. It was a torrential downpour that night, and I spent much of my trip in the street. Alyson Perry and I checked out the route again two days later on Saturday. The sidewalk was still out of service.

Some Choice Paragraphs:

Wheelchair users nationwide risk their lives daily by being forced into the street because their communities, despite the Americans with Disabilities Act, have not bothered to install curb cuts or maintain sidewalks.

No national statistics are compiled on the numbers of wheelchair riders' deaths caused by inaccessible sidewalks. No national group monitors these incidents. And far too many communities ignore legal requirements to install and maintain sidewalks, virtually ensuring that sooner or later some wheelchair rider, forced into the street, will meet with an accident or death.

And in what can only be called a bigoted double-whammy, wheelchair users often risk arrest for traveling the streets in their wheelchairs. Local communities' responses to the "problem" of wheelchairs in the street is not to provide curb ramps and safe sidewalks but to cite and ticket them for operating an unlicensed vehicle in the roadway.

Perhaps the most famous case of someone harrassed for riding a wheelchair in the street because of missing curb cuts and bad sidewalks was Kelly Dillery of Sandusky, Ohio, who was repeatedly cited -- and arrested -- in the late 1990s for driving her wheelchair in the street. Disability rights advocates rallied to her cause. A lawsuit was filed against Sandusky, charging that the city violated Title 2 of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The city appealed, asserting that Title 2 was "not enforceable as a private cause of action." The Sixth Circuit finally overruled the city's appeal, telling Sandusky that "Title II does not merely prohibit intentional discrimination. It also imposes on public entities the requirement that they provide ... meaningful access to public services. (The case was Ability Center of Greater Toledo, et al., v. City of Sandusky). More on the case from The Ability Center.

Disability groups continue to sue communities over a lack of curb cuts -- a suit was filed against Vacaville, CA in the spring of 2004; the previous year, the U.S. Supreme Court had refused to hear an appeal from Sacramento over a lower court decision that required it to make its sidewalks accessible.

And just a few weeks ago, the Michigan Paralyzed Veterans took Detroit to court over the same problem -- missing or poorly constructed curb cuts. (Read more.)

The problem is that these suits are spotty and infrequent. There's no nationally coordinated effort to require cities to install curb cuts and maintain sidewalks. And in many cases, even when a lawsuit is won, it's a long time before a city gets around to putting in the curb cuts, or doing them correctly. Money is always the excuse.

Meanwhile, people continue to die. And most commuities, like St. Louis, have no idea why disabled people drive their wheelchairs in the street, or realize that disabled people are dying nationwide while city councils wring their hands over the requirement for curb cuts.

When the city of Sacramento appealed its loss in federal court to the Supreme Court (Sacramento vs. Barden), guess which city administration had signed on from the very beginning? Boston, cradle of liberty. No local media even mentioned it.