By Walter Pryce
This is an opinion column. It responds to a commentary published Nov. 6 by Strong Towns, a nonprofit that advocates for incremental, financially sustainable city building. The arguments and quotations attributed to Strong Towns and its author are theirs; the conclusions about Buffalo are the writer’s.
When someone is killed on a Buffalo street, who looks at the street? And how soon? A new essay from Strong Towns argues that governments often answer those questions too slowly. Buffalo has a chance to answer them well, and it would not need a new department to do it.
What Strong Towns argues
In “What Happens After Someone Dies on Your Streets?”, Strong Towns’ chief technical advisor, Edward Erfurt, tells the story of a father and son who died in January 2024 when their car left a road in Lincolnshire, England. After the case reached a coroner, an assistant coroner issued a “Prevention of Future Deaths” report in June 2025. Her concern was timing: crash locations were analyzed once a year, so a dangerous condition could wait for the next review before reaching the people who could fix it. Lincolnshire County Council and police have since added a notification step after fatal collisions, according to Erfurt.
Erfurt’s point is that the problem is rarely that nobody cares. “The coroner had identified a simple but profound problem,” he writes: “a process designed to eventually learn from crashes may still be too slow to prevent the next one.” He urges governments to ask a plain question the morning after a death: “What is the smallest thing we can do next?” The answer might be repainted markings, a moved sign, trimmed vegetation or a signal-timing change. It does not have to be a rebuilt intersection.
Erfurt is careful about the limits. Police investigations, he notes, serve a different purpose and can take time. “The investigation and the learning can happen at the same time,” he writes. His closing line is the one that stays: “No one should have to be the second person to die on a dangerous street before we decide to learn from the first.”
What Buffalo already does
Buffalo is not starting from zero. When the city shared early concepts for redesigning Gates Circle this summer, city engineer Alex Bullers said the changes were driven by crash data, pointing to the quadrant at Chapin Parkway where “the severity of the crash … is a little bit higher than a rear-end crash,” WGRZ reported. That is data-driven work, and it is the right kind. It is also slow by design. Mayor Sean Ryan said at the time: “There’s no funding for detailed design. There’s no funding for construction, so we have a long way to go.”
The state is moving on some Buffalo streets, too. The New York State Department of Transportation said in February that it would begin installing leading pedestrian intervals at Elm and Oak Street crosswalks in March, which let people step into the crosswalk before cars get a green light. Region 5 Director Eric Meka called the corridor “a key high-volume artery,” Spectrum News reported.
The city’s longer record is encouraging. Smart Growth America reported that traffic fatalities in Buffalo fell from 20 in 2018 to 10 in 2022, the most recent figures in its review, and credited local advocates and officials.
The gap worth closing
What the public record does not show is how quickly anyone looks at a street after a death. Take one example from this year. The Erie County District Attorney’s Office announced Oct. 8 that a driver was sentenced to five years of probation for leaving the scene of an April 10 crash on Grant Street near West Ferry Street, in which a pedestrian was fatally injured. The release credits the Buffalo Police Accident Investigation Unit and the prosecutors. That is how a criminal case works. It does not tell us whether public works staff also visited the intersection that week.
That is not an accusation. It may well have happened. The point is that residents have no way to know, because none of the public material reviewed for this column describes a written protocol or public log for what happens after a fatal crash on a city street, or who owns the next step when the street belongs to the state or the county.
The strongest objection
The best argument against moving fast is that crashes are complicated. Most have several causes, a roadway is not usually the only one, and city staff are stretched. A hurried site visit could produce a hurried conclusion, or blame the street when the driver was at fault. Strong Towns acknowledges as much. Erfurt writes that the approach does not mean “every fatality requires rebuilding a street.”
That is why the proposal is modest. Looking is not concluding. A quick review separates what staff can see from what remains unknown, leaves fault to the courts, and records only what is within the owner’s control.
What should happen
The City of Buffalo’s Department of Public Works and Police Department should adopt a short written protocol. After a fatal crash on a public street, the agency that owns the road would be notified within a day, and the people who know the street and the people who investigate the crash would compare notes. A site visit would follow within days, and any quick fixes would be logged publicly.
Because Buffalo’s streets are owned by the city, the county and the state, NYSDOT Region 5 and Erie County public works should be invited to sign on. The Common Council can ask for it by resolution and request a yearly summary of what the reviews found and what was fixed.
If you live near a street that scares you, tell your Council member. Ask one question: after a death on our streets, who goes to look, and how soon?
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