Road traffic victims remembered, march calls for safety

World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims brought neighbors and local leaders into the streets of Sunset Park on Nov. 16, as they marched down Fifth Avenue to honor people harmed or killed in crashes and to call for safer streets in the neighborhood.

Since 2020, more than 35 Sunset Park residents have been lost to traffic violence, a figure that organizers say only reflects officially reported cases.

Ángela Azzolino, founder and chief operating officer of Get Women Cycling and askMO, has organized the neighborhood’s World Day of Remembrance march in partnership with the Sunset Park Fifth Avenue Business Improvement District and Brooklyn Community Board 7 since 2020.

This year, Brooklyn Community Board 7 chair and Assembly District 51 Democratic district leader Julio Peña III, and fellow Assembly District 51 Democratic district leader Jacqui Painter, along with Sunset Park Fifth Avenue BID executive director David Estrada, joined residents and supporters in the march.

For Azzolino, who grew up in Sunset Park, the impact of traffic violence is deeply personal. In 2016, a member of Get Women Cycling was struck by a vehicle twice in just 18 months. In 2019, her friend and Sunset Park resident Jose Alorizz was killed by a van while biking home from triathlon training. And in 2020, nurse practitioner and Sunset Park healthcare worker Clara Kang was hit and killed by a motorcyclist while biking home from an overnight shift at NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn.

Those earlier crashes are part of a larger pattern that has continued into this year. In July, a hit-and-run driver on Third Avenue at 52nd Street killed two pedestrians, 80-year-old Kex Un Chen and 59-year-old Faqiu Lin, as they crossed the street under the Gowanus Expressway. In October, 75-year-old Jody Byron was struck and killed in a hit-and-run while crossing Seventh Avenue at 41st Street, just a block from her home, as she walked the family dog.

“Major cities around the nation saw spikes in traffic violence during Covid even though fewer people were traveling on streets,” Azzolino says. “After Clara’s passing, Melissa Del Valle Ortiz, longtime community resident and advocate, urged me to lead a safe street march in our community. Our first march in November 2020 honored Jose and Clara. This day is a global day of recognition that honors victims of traffic violence but it is also a day to act and know that death and serious injuries caused by collisions are preventable. More and more locations around the world are reporting zero fatalities due to traffic collisions. It is possible to achieve, but we all have to put the work in to make change a reality.”

As Azzolino has pushed City agencies and elected officials to address dangerous streets in Sunset Park, she has also focused on building relationships across the broader safe-streets movement.

Rose Uscianowski, the Staten Island and South Brooklyn organizer for Transportation Alternatives, has partnered with Azzolino across borough lines. Transportation Alternatives is a New York City nonprofit that organizes residents to push for safer policies and designs for public streets, with projects that aim to make city streets accessible, welcoming and safe for everyone, especially pedestrians, cyclists and people who rely on public transit.

“Transportation Alternatives has supported Get Women Cycling for many years. Our organizations have worked together to encourage commuters to make safer decisions on the road and help close the gender gap among cyclists,” Uscianowski says. “I joined Sunset Park’s World Day of Remembrance march to help draw more attention to the toll that dangerous streets are taking in historically underserved immigrant neighborhoods like Sunset Park, which are home to some of our most vulnerable New Yorkers.”

Azzolino believes that lasting change depends on how everyday people interact with traffic, and it all starts with higher awareness, education and a commitment to act responsibly. Her newest venture is askMO, an online platform that allows the public to submit anonymous questions about traffic, street design and safety. This fall, the Sunset Post partnered with askMO on a new monthly column that answers readers’ questions about traffic rules, street safety and how to share space on Sunset Park’s streets.

“For the past 10 years, since I started Get Women Cycling and now askMO, I have been creating tools and services for the public to help them travel streets safely,” Azzolino says. “From mechanical workshops, to traffic education classes and presentations, I have written curricula and instructed operators of motor vehicles and operators of lighter vehicles like bikes, mopeds and scooters.”

As in previous years, participants in this year’s march paused to read aloud the names of Sunset Park residents lost to traffic violence, joining together in the response, “We remember you.”

“More than 3,000 New Yorkers have been killed in traffic crashes since Vision Zero launched in 2014. That’s an average of over 250 New Yorkers killed each year,” Uscianowski says. “For each person killed in traffic violence, almost a dozen others are seriously injured. Every one of those tragedies can be prevented by designing our streets for safety instead of driver convenience or speed.”

During this year’s Sunset Park march, Azzolino asked participants to pledge to protect their neighbors like family, to look out for vulnerable people traveling on foot, by bicycle or with mobility devices, and to yield with intention. Marchers pledged to be accountable for how they move on the streets, to support those involved if they witness a crash, and to teach their friends and families basic shared-street practices for automobiles: checking over their shoulder before opening car doors, looking and looking again for people traveling by foot, bicycle, scooter, moped or motorcycle, yielding the right of way to more vulnerable street users, obeying the speed limit, and taking turns at no more than 5 miles per hour.

For more information on street safety and traffic safety efforts, visit:

Get Women Cycling

askMO transportation advice column

Families for Safe Streets

National Safety Council: Road to Zero Coalition

Vision Zero Network

Sharing New York City Streets: Tips for Driving, Get Women Cycling video

NYC Vision Zero