Vision Zero Stories
Deaths and serious injuries are not inevitable. They are preventable. And they also affect real lives. Here are some of those stories.
"Vision Zero is not just my goal in this city and in this region. We are all a part of this movement. We all play a role in curing this threat to public health." - Mayor Bowser
Trauma and Tragedy
Angee Tucker was driving on New York Avenue NE on Father’s Day in 2018, returning home from work, when she felt a bump to the back of her car. At first, she thought she had hit a deer but then there was another bump. "And then my side airbag deployed and I couldn't see anything. And then there was another bump, and then my car started to spin across the highway," she says. Tucker had never been in a crash before where the airbag deployed. "When I'm seeing the car spinning out," Tucker says, "I'm just praising God and I'm asking God to forgive me, because I'm assuming I'm going to die. But that didn't happen."
On the evening of September 18, 2020, Logan Buzzell decided to go to a beer garden to socialize with some of his friends. Buzzell took his recently-purchased bike and was riding on Harvard Street NW when he saw a driver ahead of him open his car door into his path. "I saw the door and I immediately knew that I was going to get hit by it," he says. Buzzell then fell and slid on the road.
The bone in his left arm pierced through his red hoodie. "I was trying not to look at the wound because I figured it would hurt more if I did," Buzzell says. "I was in a lot of pain and cursing a lot and chastising the driver for not looking." He left in an ambulance and later that night, Buzzell underwent surgery to repair his fractured ulna and radius. Doctors installed two metal plates that Buzzell still feels when he touches his arm.
Jennifer Cooper still wonders why she isn’t dead. "I could have easily been dead," she says about her November 19, 2020 crash. Cooper was jogging near her home in Park View when as she crossed Warder Street NW, the driver of an SUV hit her.
"They hit me at my hip, and I went flying, I think I got thrown about 10 feet. I have no idea how I landed; I have no idea how my thumb got broken. I have no memory of that, I just remember the car hitting me and then I was on the ground watching my glasses slide across the road."
Afterwards, Cooper says she couldn’t get up: “I had just gotten punched in the stomach by an SUV.” A nearby neighbor picked her up and put her on someone’s front steps.
Meredith Tomason was teaching a cooking class on the morning of October 12, 2018 when her dad called her. She didn’t answer but when he called a second time, she realized something was wrong. Her father told her that her mother, Carol Tomason, was in surgery. Carol was crossing in the crosswalk at the intersection of 15th and H Streets NW when the driver of a pickup truck hit her. At the hospital, a doctor told the Tomason family that there was no way to save Carol’s life.
"He is saying there's nothing we can do, that her systems will start to fail, her brain will swell and she will pass away," Tomason says. "The noise that came out of my father when that was said was something I will never forget, it is imprinted in my brain. He just said, ‘that's my wife.’ And he just kept saying, ‘that's my wife, that's my wife.’ How do you fathom this?"
Laura Montiel remembers how long those minutes in the hospital felt. On June 23, 2018, Montiel was waiting for an update about her youngest son, Malik Habib, who had been struck by a charter bus while riding his bicycle on H Street NE. That night, she says, “five minutes felt like five hours.”
Coping
Jennifer Cooper took a while to grasp the extent of her injuries after being hit as a pedestrian. "I was in shock," Cooper says. "I've never had any injuries that I couldn't fix with tape and ice." Cooper broke her thumb as a result of the crash and needed reconstructive surgery to repair it. The surgery involved putting four pins into her thumb to secure the unstable fracture. Two weeks after her surgery, Cooper’s orthopedic surgeon removed the temporary splint. Cooper saw the pins for the first time and took a photo. Cooper says she hadn’t understood what had happened to her until she took that photo. "I didn't fully comprehend that I had metal putting my thumb back together," she says. "It was at that moment that I realized I could have been killed and understood the severity of my injury."
The following weeks were arduous for Cooper as she struggled to do anything that would involve the use of her left hand. "When I could push my microwave door shut, that was a major accomplishment because I couldn't put any pressure on my fingers. I couldn't slice bread, Ziploc bags were a nightmare," she says. "I couldn't wash dishes. I had to have friends come and help me with everything."
At the scene of her car crash on New York Avenue NE, Angee Tucker was grateful that she wasn't being airlifted away or leaving in a body bag. Since Tucker didn’t break any bones, she assumed she would be back to her normal life quickly. However, she soon learned that she sustained an injury to her upper spinal cord which has left her with life-long nerve damage. For the first two months after her crash, Tucker was confined to her bed. "I really couldn't walk," she says. "I was having to lift the right leg up and drag it along and I couldn't stand to have anything touch my right arm."
Entirely dependent on help from her family and grappling with massive changes to her body, Tucker became depressed and anxious. "It's just such a sense of uncertainty as to, when am I going to wake up and feel like me? When am I going to wake up and be able to just go to the bathroom by myself without calling somebody?"
Now, years after her 2018 crash, Tucker still struggles with the effects of her injuries. She has persistent back pain, trouble turning her head, and tingling sensations in her right arm, leg, and foot. Even simple things like laying on her stomach or going for a car ride are challenging. "I can't lay on my stomach because my leg will feel like it's on fire," she says. "I stiffen up really quickly, I can't do two-hour car rides. Now if I do a two-hour car ride, I might have to stop five or ten times to get out to stretch and walk around."
Tucker copes by finding things that help manage her pain such as regular exercise and wearing comfortable shoes. "You have to learn little things to make life more doable instead of balling up in the corner because psychologically that's how you feel," Tucker says. "They say that your life can change in the blink of an eye and that is so true but we don't know until we actually have to experience it."
Tucker tries to stay positive and remind herself of what she has to be grateful for. "I don't want people to walk around and feel sorry for me, because so many people have a car crash and come out so much worse than I do," she says. "There’s still a lot to be grateful for, instead of a lot to feel sorry for."
Mourning
Jim Pagels died on April 9, 2021 after a driver struck him while he was biking on Massachusetts Avenue NW. His sister Laura Menendez recalls how during the first few weeks after his death, every morning she would wake up distraught.
"I would wake up in the mornings and my eyes would hurt and I think it's because in my sleep, I was crying. Every morning, I would wake up with so much anxiety and fear."
Pagels’ close friend Finn Vigeland is an avid bicyclist, but "was scared to get on a bike in the immediate aftermath of Jim’s death," he says. "But I also knew that it was really important not to stop. I had already thought about, ‘what if that was the last text I sent to my parents?’ While that was sort of always in the back of my mind, I think it's something I've thought a lot more about since his death."
Long-term effects
Logan Buzzell is happy with his recovery from his compound fracture that occurred after he was hit by a car while biking in fall 2020. He still bikes but not as regularly as before his crash. "I still bike from time to time but I avoid lifting anything heavy because I think it still puts strain on my arm," he says. "When I did get back onto my bike, I definitely was a lot more anxious."
Before his crash, Buzzell says he was well aware of the risk of someone opening a car door into him. "I was always cognizant of being doored, but that didn't stop me from being doored." His crash has made his friends more aware of this danger. "I feel like as a walking PSA, I've made the people around me more fearful," he says.
Angee Tucker is more anxious when driving and in the aftermath of her car crash, she would pull over and sit on the side of the road if she saw drivers speeding. "I'm mostly nervous when I drive. I feel more confident, and more comfortable walking, because you can stop at any time and rest. It has gotten better. At first after the accident, I was super nervous and paranoid about everything,” she says. "I would not drive in the rain and there were certain parts of the city that I wouldn't drive in if I felt like people would be driving fast."
Jennifer Cooper says she also experiences more anxiety since being hit while jogging. “Now I fear for my life,” she says. “I’m scared of cars all the time.”
Meredith Tomason, whose mother was hit by a driver making a left turn, says she is more anxious now when driving. “I'm not full of anxiety when I am walking, which is interesting. I am full of anxiety when I drive,” she says. “I am terrified that my foot is going to hit the gas instead of the brake.” When she walks now, she is angrier at reckless drivers. “I get really angry when I walk around and I'm not an angry person but I will honestly stick out my middle finger or yell at people if I see them driving in a way that is I know above the speed limit,” she says.
Tomason says her mother was “very giving and loved her family very much.” Her mother’s sudden death robbed Tomason of any closure. “I don't ever get to say my peace to my mom. She will not know my child. She does not know my husband. She won't get to see her granddaughters grow up,” she says. “Yes, there are happy things going on, but there is something missing. That feeling is indescribable if you haven't had this experience and it's all because someone struck her with their vehicle.
Lives cut short
Laura Menendez was only 15 months older than her late brother Jim Pagels, who died in April 2021, and the two were very close throughout their childhood. As his older sister, she feels it was her duty to protect him. "Even though I know I couldn't have protected him from this, a part of me still feels like I could have done something," she says. "I don't know exactly what happened. Everyone that I know has read all the articles, but I can't bear to do it because my greatest fear is that he was afraid. I really don't want his last moments to have been of fear. I just hope it was as quick and as painless as I imagine it to be in my mind."
Menendez describes her brother as being brilliant, humble, and funny. She admires his passion for economics and his dreams of building sustainable cities. "I believe that everybody in this life has something to offer. Every life is sacred no matter who you are," she says. "He was a truly good kid, he was so smart, he worked so hard, he wanted to do so much good and all of that was taken away. He had a whole life in front of him and it was all taken away in seconds."
Similar to Meredith Tomason, Menendez says even happy moments are now bittersweet. “Even when I'm happy, I'm always sad. To me, everything is bittersweet. My parents just bought a house up here within walking distance to us, which they've always wanted to do. And I can't fully be happy about it, because I'm so sad that Jim isn't here.”
Even her birthday is now a reminder of her brother’s death. "Jim died 3 days after my birthday and 2 days after my youngest daughter's birthday. The last time I ever heard from him was on my birthday. Those days that are supposed to be happy I will now forever associate with his death," she says.
Finn Vigeland shared Jim Pagels’ love for board games and prior to his death, the two friends had been playing Pandemic Legacy, a long board game with complicated rules and several installments. “We were playing the final installment of the trilogy of Pandemic Legacy and that's just been sitting on my shelf since we last played in March,” he says.
“I keep thinking that he's going to call me up and I'm going to bring this game over and we're going to play this game that takes us four hours to play each time. Things like that, it's still so hard to believe that those won't happen.”
Laura Montiel’s son, Malik Habib, was only 19 when he died. He dreamed of buying a house with his older brother, Cyrus, and the pair had just moved to the District weeks before Malik’s death. Montiel remembers the day the two were moving and the brothers’ immense excitement. "I was in an Uber to go to my friend's house and I looked out the window and it was them passing by in their little U-Haul truck. I rolled down the window and started waving to them and they were like, 'Ah mom we're moving, we're moving!' They were so excited," she says.
To save up for the house, the brothers started delivering Postmates on their bikes. Montiel says she was proud of her youngest son who had just finished his first year of college. "He wanted to work, he was very young and ambitious, he wanted so many things for himself," she says. Her oldest son witnessed his brother’s death. "My son witnessed all of this so his life has changed and all those dreams that he had too," she says. "My youngest son, he doesn't have a heartbeat today. But my oldest son, I walk on eggshells with him." Her oldest son is now an Uber driver and warns people to watch for bicycles when they exit the car.
Montiel says she no longer has "the privilege of not knowing" about the importance of traffic safety and she wishes drivers would be less aggressive and slow down. "I wish people would be more conscious," she says. "I feel like sometimes because we don't have that experience, we don’t have that empathy."
Lessons
Angee Tucker, who was hit by an impaired driver, tries to communicate the danger of drunk driving to her younger relatives: "I tell them that this is what drinking and driving could do. You might not necessarily hurt yourself but you could hurt another person or passenger who walks away with more issues."
Jim Pagels' close friend Finn Vigeland also wants drivers to be more careful and hopes for infrastructure changes that will encourage drivers to slow down. "I'm a more cautious person since Jim’s death but I don't want to have to carry the whole burden of being cautious myself," he says. "We need to make the world a safer place for people biking and that starts with recognizing that cyclists are humans who are at risk with your casual approach to driving."
"I wish that people would slow down and realize that when you hit someone, and you will hit someone, it hurts a lot. My life has changed forever. I don't know if there's ever going to be a day that I don't think about it again."- Jennifer Cooper
"I'm always going to carry this with me and that is sad. I think about how one day, 29 years will have passed and I'll have lived more years without my brother than I lived with him and that really breaks my heart," Laura Menendez says. "I never want anyone to have to suffer like this again, in this way. It's just so sudden and so tragic."
