Safety Town

My mom is a civil engineer named Fionnuala Quinn, and she loves good road design. She loves smooth sidewalks, protected bike lanes, clear signage, sightlines, and safety as a concept. It’s a common misconception that she hates cars, but she doesn’t: she drives one herself. She just hates the idea that car drivers are the only road users who matter. When we pull up in her minivan to an ice cream shop, she grins and says, “This is one of my favorite parking lots.” I take a photo of the parking lot, because I want to understand what it is that she loves.

Growing up with a safety mom was, of course, wildly embarrassing. It was hard to discern where her principles about road caution ended and her anxiety about protecting me began. When I went rollerblading as a child, my body was fully enveloped in protective pads and reflective lighting. When I was a teenager, my mom ran down to the edge of our driveway, where my date was waiting to pick me up; she wanted to talk with him about a tricky intersection in our neighborhood. At the end of my driver’s education course in high school, parents attended a mandatory class with students, a PE teacher, and a police officer. I sat in the class, tense. I knew my mom would have something to say, and that nobody would leave the room unscathed. Although she knew from her own research that the state’s curriculum covered how a driver should behave around people on foot or bike, the instructor never brought it up, and neither did the officer. At the end of the session, my mom raised her hand and asked why we hadn’t heard anything about how to share the road with people who aren’t in cars: these are, after all, probably the most vulnerable road users a sixteen-year-old will encounter.

The officer shrugged. “We can’t cover everything,” he said. “We have to focus on the important stuff.”

“Are people on bikes not important?” she snapped at him, a question she repeated later, as I sat silently beside her in the