Imagine losing someone you love deeply in a traffic crash. Now imagine being seated next to them when it happened. That’s the tragic reality Portland road safety advocate Sarah Risser experienced in January 2019.
I talked to Risser this week to learn more about the work she’s doing to help families deal with grief and to help our community acknowledge the crushing toll of traffic deaths. But before I asked Risser anything else, I asked her to share the story of her son 18-year-old Henry Zietlow, who was driving their car on a snowy road when “a clearly negligent and reckless” driver coming the opposite direction crossed the centerline and slammed into them.
“It was just heartbreaking,” Risser recalled. “He was a beautiful beautiful young man. Just coming into his own.”
That crash radicalized Risser. “It didn’t have to happen. It was preventable,” she shared with me. And in a moving essay she published last fall, Risser wrote, “Once I began to see how much we’ve sacrificed to our auto-centric lifestyle, I couldn’t unsee it.”
In this chat I’ve uploaded to our podcast (listen above or wherever you get your podcasts), Risser and I also talked about her memorial sign project she’s begun in partnership with BikeLoud PDX, The Street Trust, and Oregon Walks. With a design inspired by the national nonprofit Families for Safe Streets, Risser has erected about 13 of the signs around Portland so far. They state, “Our Neighbor Was Killed Here” and include information about how to get involved with advocacy and supportive resources for survivors. She plans to keep posting them.
Risser said she embarked on the project for two reasons: to increase awareness of road deaths and to show how widespread the issue is citywide (note that the signs go up for all deaths, not just bicycle riders or walkers). “These crashes are happening all over Portland. The hope really was that an individual might see a sign on SE Belmont and see another one on Naito Parkway and then begin to realize, ‘Yeah, this is a really big issue,'” she said.
Sometimes just being out on the street, installing the sign itself, is a powerful experience.
On Tuesday, Risser visited SE Belmont where David Bentley was struck and killed this past Sunday. As people noticed what she was doing, Risser recalls they were suspicious and assumed the sign was a “No Camping” notice. But as they looked more closely at the sign, Risser said, “They expressed a lot of gratitude, and a fair amount of emotion. They thanked me repeatedly for putting up the sign and for drawing attention to the issue.”
“Usually when I go to put up a sign, I’m just there by myself,” Risser continued. “But there was another situation recently where a motorcyclist had crashed and I just happened to be there. It was a coincidence when the family members showed up to put out flowers. They expressed a huge amount of gratitude and said to me that they want safer roads and we really need to draw attention to this issue.”
When Risser isn’t telling Henry’s story or volunteering with BikeLoud, she finds happiness in other pursuits. She’s a competitive rower and a member of the Willamette Rowing Club. “I also love photography. I love birds and birding and I really try to balance the hard work of road advocacy, which can be a little bit triggering at times, with other things that just bring me great joy. I’ve also joined a little improv group. We do street theater!”
Risser is in the market for a new e-bike and she hopes it might help her become 100% carfree. And as spring approaches, she’ll use it as her birding-mobile. “When I was living in Minnesota, I had an e-bike and I would put my camera bag in the back and off I’d go. It was so joyful and I’d find beautiful birding spots. And it was all the things that I loved combined. And I’m really hoping to do that again this spring.”
— Follow Sarah Risser on X at @Henryz_mom.