Current Work
Pedestrian Safety
A car drives through the intersection where Zachary was killed in Berkeley, CA (Photo by Christopher McDermut/Courtesy the Daily Californian)
Our Work
The Zachary Michael Cruz Foundation works to raise awareness by sharing Zachary's story with others and we work to improve pedestrian safety by partnering with city government and local police to address issues of enforcement and engineering. We promote safer driving practices, and discourage distracted driving through education, community organization, and advocacy to raise public awareness.
Our recent successes in Pedestrian Safety include lobbying for the creation of a Zachary Cruz Pedestrian Safety Month, enacted by Proclamation of the Berkeley City Council in March 2010, and launching a coordinated Pedestrian Safety Awareness and Enforcement Campaign during the same month, in conjunction with the men and women of the Berkeley Police Department. Building on the success of the 2010 Awareness and Enforcement Campaign, the 2011 campaign both emphasized penalties for drivers who violate the law and endanger pedestrians' lives while at the same time raised awareness about safer driving practices and the tragic consequences of distraction. To support these goals, the Foundation organized a benefit concert at the New Parish in Oakland, California in of that same year.
Our Rationale
The facts are sobering. In the United States, a pedestrian dies every 128 minutes in a traffic crash.1 "Driver inattention" (commonly called distracted driving) remains one of the major contributing factors to pedestrian-auto collisions,2 and is compounded by an increase in the number of drivers using cellular phones, text messaging, GPS devices, and smart phones while behind the wheel.
According to the California Office of Traffic Safety, Berkeley is the most dangerous city its size in California, in terms of pedestrian-auto injury collisions. In 2009, 106 pedestrians were injured in traffic accidents in the city. Three people — including Zachary — lost their lives. All three of the Berkeley's fatal collisions in 2009 — again, including Zachary's — involved pedestrians in crosswalks.3
While significant progress has been made — with organizations from all sectors engaging the issue of pedestrian safety and challenging distracted driving practices — there remains much work to be done: human lives continue to be lost every day in preventable pedestrian-auto collisions. We believe that this is unacceptable. If we don't fight distracted driving, and other dangerous driving practices (through increased individual accountability, and more vigorous regulation by government, technology, and auto industry leaders), pedestrian-auto collisions will continue to claim the lives of innocent people like Zachary.
For information on how you can help us raise awareness, fight distracted driving, and improve pedestrian safety, please click here.
To learn more about our work in educational philanthropy, please click here.
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1 National Highway Transportation Safety Administration
