MILWAUKEE — To understand just a piece of the reckless driving problem plaguing Milwaukee’s neighborhoods, all you need to do is take a walk down Sherman Boulevard and try to carry on a conversation.
We did just that with Mabel Lamb, the executive director of the Sherman Park community association. She lives on the boulevard and knows its troubles all too well.
“Thousands of cars come down this street daily. North and south,” Lamb said, straining her voice to be heard over the roar of speeding cars and the blare of police sirens.
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Those sounds punctuate the air along the Sherman Park thoroughfare like exclamation points, serving as constant reminders that few drivers obey the posted 30-mile-per-hour speed limit.
“We don’t have any option but to work hard on it, drill down on it, slow traffic down for the safety of our residents,” Lamb said.
We met Lamb where Center Street crosses Sherman, a nexus where 10 lanes of pavement come together in the middle of schools and homes.
It is an airport worth of concrete through the heart of where people live, work, and play.
Lamb said cars fly through the area so fast that they sometimes land in people’s homes.
“If the traffic weren’t so bad, it would be no problem," Lamb said. "But we’ve had people’s homes damaged, property damaged because cars have come up onto the property. Damaged steps, front porches."
This is nowhere near a new problem on Sherman Boulevard or any other Milwaukee street that’s treated like a drag strip.
A quick search of the TMJ4 news archives turned up news coverage from dozens of reckless driving crashes in just the past two years.
Those who live on those streets watched many other wrecks that never made the news. But each of those reckless drivers destroyed property and lives.
This is where Project: Drive Safer comes in.
TMJ4 news director Tim Vetscher said this problem is so pervasive it will take a concerted effort to turn the tide.
“I think it was staring us right in the face, right? Not only do we cover it every day as journalists," Vetscher said. "Reckless driving crashes, deaths, unfortunately, and we drive these roads too.”
Vetscher’s challenge to the newsroom: commit to a year of daily reporting of what’s happening on our streets while we work with the community to push for solutions.
“They came to us and said we need a partner. We need someone to help amplify. Be our megaphone,” he said.
“It’s gonna have to be a group effort, right? It’s gonna take Milwaukee Police, the City of Milwaukee, our residents to be more accountable and to follow the traffic laws,” said Lamb.
Making Milwaukee streets safer is a big job with lots of moving pieces and no easy answers. So we and our community partners are coming at it from three directions at once:
- Stories about ENGINEERING will look at how our streets are built and how they can be rebuilt to make communities safer.
- Reporting on ENFORCEMENT will examine what police and the courts are doing to hold drivers responsible.
- Coverage of EDUCATION will look at what drivers know about the rules of the road, from basic drivers ed to simple common sense.
In many cases, the answer won’t be A, B or C, but all of the above.
“It’s gonna have to be a number of things,” said Lamb. “What we can’t do is wait for people to change their behavior while we lose lives.”
How TMJ4 measures success is still to be determined. For starters, we have a lot to learn about what’s causing this problem and the best potential solutions.
So that’s where this begins. Educating ourselves and you at home about why Milwaukee is in this position. From there — it’s time to fix things.
“If we can point to laws being changed at the end of this particular campaign, I think we’ll consider that a win,” Vetscher said. “Certainly if there are fewer traffic deaths because of reckless driving, that would be a tremendous thing to have accomplished.”
On the streets, our partners are ready to go. They’ve actually been ready for years. But this time — they have a platform to make a difference.
“I really think we gotta do something differently, and I hope the work we’re doing with Channel 4 will make a difference,” Lamb said.
We do too.
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