As Cleveland Kicks Off Memorial Program for Pedestrians and Bicyclists Killed in Accidents, an Urgency for Protective Infrastructure

In the early morning of November 3, 2021, Ben Chronister woke up, as usual, enmeshed in his life with his wife Danielle.

They made inside jokes. They ate leftovers. They discussed plans and projects to come—namely, Danielle's plan to segue from teaching at MC2 Stem High School downtown to the world of forensic science, for which she'd studied for years. The couple had relocated Downtown from Cleveland Heights for both a sense of convenience and progress.

"She had, like, 85 million browser tabs open in her browser," Ben recalled on Thursday. "She always had a bunch of things going on."

A half an hour later, around 8 a.m., Danielle was clipped by a Mack dump truck as she was crossing East 21st and Chester Avenue on her bike. Her body hit the truck's sideview mirror as it was turning right. She fell under its tires. She died almost instantly.

On Thursday, two-and-a-half years after Danielle's death at the age of 33, friends and family of hers joined City Hall officials and traffic safety advocates on the corner just feet away where she was struck that November. Flanked by Danielle's portrait, those present spoke in the former CMSD teacher's honor and to commemorate a "Watch For Pedestrians" sign to be installed to ideally prevent any further deaths.

Such a commemoration, with its funeral tones and emotionally tinged advocacy, seemed to pair fittingly with the city's slow rollout of its Mobility Plan , a five-year mission to re-do certain Cleveland streets as to better protect cyclists and walkers . Not, as advocates urged on East 21st and Chester, just for drivers.

As for the advocacy portion, Chronister seemed a bit perplexed as to why such a sign—memorializing his late wife and alerting reckless drivers—would be needed in a society so embroiled in car culture already.

"We should not need to 'increase awareness' or 'get out the message' that driving cars and trucks into pedestrians is bad," Chronister said at a podium from behind sunglasses. "There is no one over the age of five who is confused on this issue. Cars hitting people is bad. We all get that."

"So why are we even here?" he added. "Because while everyone agrees that people being hit by automobiles shouldn't happen, it still does. And much more often than you might think."

Last year, some 550 Clevelanders were hit by cars while walking or biking, a Crash Report by Bike Cleveland found. Nine were killed. In his speech, Bike Cleveland director Jacob VanSickle said with alarm that nine Clevelanders had "already been killed so far this year . "

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Besides the Memorial Street Program that led to the city's installation of Danielle Chronister's sign, Cleveland's Mobility Team, represented Thursday by team director Calley Mersmann, has touted a range of solutions—in-progress and potential—to achieve the city's Vision Zero mark of bringing that nine down to zero.

In her speech and in an interview afterwards, Mersmann reiterated that City Hall was going about modifying city streets in the right way despite the urgency culled by a reminder of Danielle's death. Speed tables are being installed, she said. Clevelanders are opining as to where to put bike lanes.

All ideas which will be presented to City Council when the Mobility Plan wraps up in "early 2025," Mersmann said.

But why are there still no buffered bike lanes downtown? Why can't lanes be quickly painted? Why aren't more 35 MPH streets converted, like Lake Avenue, into 30 or 25 MPH?

"Citywide, some things are happening, but the real challenge is doing those at scale, at priority locations where we know there are concerns," Mersmann told Scene, hinting at the point of the Mobility Plan. "And that is the piece that we're really trying to build up capacity: to do those types of one-off things at a meaningful level."

When pushed back, Mersmann clarified that the administration was working in a timely, concerted manner. After all, most quick-to-build bike lanes—like those in California created after traffic deaths— take at least five years , from conception to install.

"We're trying to line up the budgets, we're trying to go through procurement to get the supplies, we're trying to get the contracts in place to design protected bikeways and then be able to install them," she added. "And all of those [things] are new in the history of the city."

That whole gap between life-saving urgency and political reality was what pushed Patty Knilans into the world of cyclist safety activism. Knilans, who spoke Thursday, had lost her husband, Randy, in June of 2019 after the then 67-year-old was killed by a drunk driver while riding his bike in Avon Lake.

Like Chronister, Danielle's parents, Bob and Laura Wood, Knilans was jolted. She helped form the Northeast Ohio Families for Safe Streets chapter, which, other than pushing for safer streets and lowered speed limits, urges harsher sentences for drunk drivers who kill—the maximum of which is eight years in prison.

"You can get in your car under the influence and kill someone, receive no more than eight years as a penalty," Knilans said, "but if you use a gun while robbing someone but you don't kill them, you are looking at a maximum of eleven years."

She paused, then added with vehemence: " Why is our legal system so tolerant of drunk driving?"

Knilans' frustration matched the Woods, who traveled from Toledo on Thursday to once again talk about their daughter's death. When asked about her activism, Laura Wood urged the public to acknowledge car-caused fatalities, a discussion the American public has been immune to for decades.

"I know we're not alone. We're not alone," she said. "So, if we can save another family from this [pain], it's well worth sticking my neck out, talking a deep breath, saying, we can do this for her."

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