Yesterday I spoke with Ujjal Bhattacharjee on the phone. It was heart-wrenching. Four days earlier he ate lunch with his wife, Sudipta Roy, near his lab at Rice University. Afterward, she left him for the short bike ride back to the Med-Center where she worked. She barely made it off the Rice campus before she was crushed by a dump truck. As I write this Ujjal is on a plane, transporting Sudipta’s body back to India. This personal tragedy is a profound failure by the city of Houston — not just the city government and its various departments, but by all of us. We at BikeHouston must push harder for safe streets for vulnerable road users and actively partner with all stakeholders to make that happen. So must Rice University. After all, it was only 14 months ago when another member of the Rice community, Professor Marjorie Corcoran, was killed crossing the same intersection by bike. Rice must speak out loud and clear, using the moral authority of its position to demand that its civic partners do all that can be done to ensure its professors, students and visitors have safe passage while coming and going. What good is an idyllic campus if it’s surrounded by Mean Streets? Hermann Park and Texas Medical Center and the Museum District institutions all have skin in the game, too. They must speak out. Increasingly people say they care deeply about “quality of place.” People want to experience an urban environment which is walkable and bikeable – which is people-centric. Our leading cultural and employment centers must do just that — lead. We have the technical know-how to make it safe for all users to navigate our streets. It will take political will to make it happen, to overcome the inertia of the status quo. How do you spell Amazon? How do you spell economic competitiveness? Petro-metro won’t cut it. After Professor Corcoran was killed, METRO convened a task force to study how to make crossing the streets and rail tracks safe at Sunset and Fannin and Main. Yes, it is a complex and confusing intersection. That’s no excuse. If we can build a complex system, we can make it safe. What improvements have been made in the last 14 months? Crosswalks have been repainted. New warning signs have been posted. The trains have been wrapped in bright colors and they now blow a horn coming into the station. But where is the comprehensive design solution that pays attention to the large number of people who walk or ride bikes between Rice University, Hermann Park, the Med Center and the Museum District? Vision Zero is a national campaign to bring traffic fatalities of all types to zero. Vision Zero says it can never be ethically acceptable that people are killed or seriously injured on our streets. Houston has not endorsed that campaign. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, Boston, Seattle, and Austin are among the 33 American cities that embrace Vision Zero. Not Houston. The deaths of Sudipta Ray and Marjorie Corcoran make it seem like we’re waging a Zero Vision campaign instead. Where there is no vision the people perish. When a person riding a bicycle is crushed by a person driving a dump truck, and the police and media blame the bike rider, we have a failure of vision. Houston Police Department must understand and enforce the vulnerable road user law designed to protect cyclists and pedestrians. The media must express outrage about these senseless deaths and call for change, rather than blaming the victims. The deaths of Ray and Corcoran show our values. As a city we’re committed to road speed and traffic flow but not to safety and security. We’re committed to cars and trucks rather than people. We’re committed to the patterns of the past but not the options of the future. Houston, we have a problem.