Deaths on I-5 and the Railroad Earlier this Month

Right around the first of the month there were two ambiguous traffic deaths and I hoped more would come out. The initial reports echoed the trope of improper walking and victim-blaming. They might have been instances of self-harm or of catastrophic misjudgement by a person on foot, but they might not. No further news has emerged, however. 

The deaths also happened on roads, not streets, to use the streets vs. roads typology. One was on the interstate, the other on a railroad. If it is reasonable for drivers and cars to proceed on urban streets at non-lethal speed and shorter stopping distance, and to ask for greater care from drivers for travelers outside of cars, the situation is different for those on highways and railroads, where inertia is so much greater and there is a greater burden on people walking to stay out of the road.

Charles Dwayne Hatfield

July 30th

From Oregon State Police:

On Friday, July 29, 2022, at approximately 12:02 A.M., Oregon State Police Troopers and emergency personnel responded to a single-vehicle crash on Interstate 5 near milepost 229.

A pedestrian entered the lane of travel on Interstate-5 and was struck by a Toyota van operated by Poblano Lopez (39) of Lynnwood, WA. on I5 southbound near milepost 229.

The pedestrian, identified as Charles Dwayne Hatfield (49) of Salem, was pronounced deceased at the scene. The operator of the van remained on the scene and cooperated with the investigation. The investigation is ongoing.

OSP was assisted by ODOT, Linn County Sheriff's Office, Salem Police Department, and Tangent Fire Department.

Maybe if the "investigation is ongoing," the release shouldn't so confidently state "a pedestrian entered the lane of travel..." placing blame squarely on the person who is now dead and cannot give their side of the story.

Salem Reporter erased the driver and wrote with active voice, "A vehicle struck and killed a Salem man on Interstate 5 early Friday morning in Linn County."

The SJ echoed this and added passive voice, "A Salem man was struck and killed by a van while walking on Interstate 5 in Linn County early Friday morning."

Both accept the description of the person as walking in the travel lane. 

Maybe this is an instance of reckless walking, or an instance of walking with intent for self-harm, but the default template is nearly always sympathy for drivers with an assumption that the person on foot was in the wrong place.

Even if the police maintain an outdated template for press releases, journalists do not have to churn the same biases in their own reports.

Wesley James Crossman

August 3rd

As with high speed cars on access-controlled highways, trains have long stopping distance, even at slow speed.

On August 2nd, a train and Wesley James Crossman collided, and Crossman died, at or near Hines Street SE.

This also could be an instance of reckless walking or walking with intent for self-harm. Walking "along" the track is different from merely "crossing" the track, also. The rail yard is there, the area has a lot of industry and open space and areas for camping. The context for Crossman's travel is not at all clear, but the difficulty in locating family suggests he may have been camping.

A follow-up

Police did later announce they found the family.

There may not be more to say about the deaths of Crossman or Hatfield. As we have seen with Alexandria Tereshka, who took her own life, reporting on self-harm is difficult and takes time. With instances of self-harm there are reasons for a certain reticence and circumspection, and it may not always be helpful to publish more information.

But because cases like Joseph Rodreguez's death in 2019, which did not appear to be an instance of self-harm, are underreported, arising out of and uncritically reproducing police statements that too easily take on a bias for drivers, and because we have an ongoing road safety crisis, we should not be so quick to allow deaths of more vulnerable people outside of cars to slip away without more analysis.

And even if we judge the people on foot to be at fault, our housing crisis, with concomitant mental health treatment issues, yields more people who are likely to be wandering in poorly chosen locations. There are systemic issues also.