In the wake of February’s death of a 16-year-old McKinley High School student killed in a crosswalk, lawmakers, advocates for safer streets and families of victims of traffic fatalities gathered Monday at the state Capitol to advocate for new laws.
Michel Yoshiji Miyashiro was arrested and faces charges in the Feb. 15 death of Sara Yara. Miyashiro had amassed 164 prior traffic violations and was allegedly driving without a license at the time of Yara’s death.
“What did the law do for us? They failed us,” Yara’s mother, Chevy Saniatan, said Monday at a news
conference.
Saniatan and other families of traffic fatality victims urged lawmakers to hold drivers with multiple traffic violations more accountable if their actions result in
fatalities.
Saniatan said she appreciates traffic cameras, raised crosswalks and other efforts to increase traffic safety but questioned, “What about the law?”
“How (many) more traffic violations does a person have to have before they
get thrown into prison?”
Saniatan asked. “How (many) more people have to die because we allow this type of people to be out on the street? We need to make a law that will cause these people to sit in jail and to think about what they’re
doing.”
Ed Werner’s son, Kaulana Werner, 19, died in a 2016 hit-and-run in Nanakuli.
“Our court system fails us,” Werner said. “They suck.”
“We have an empty seat Christmas time, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Easter,” Werner said. “Till today I get one empty seat in my home. … We need our legislators to step up to the plate, and we need them to strengthen the laws.”
Werner and Saniatan were joined by state Senate President Ron Kouchi, other state senators and representatives, and advocates from the Hawaii Bicycling League, Hawaii Public Health Institute, the state’s Safe Routes to School Coalition and other organizations.
They are working this legislative session to create a “suite of legislation to change our vision of safer streets — to start to break that cycle that has been repeating for decades,” said CJ Johnson, lead organizer for the coalition.
Among the bills
introduced:
>> The latest version of Senate Bill 1506 establishes a program and committee to develop strategies that facilitate transportation-related projects and ensure the safety of keiki and kupuna using ground transportation.
>> The latest version of
SB 1535 allows the state transportation director to exempt certain ground transportation facility projects from historic preservation review and the environmental impact statement law.
>> The latest version of House Bill 415 appropriates funds to the state Department of Health to implement the recommendations
of the statewide mobility management task force.
>> The latest version
of HB 600 establishes a
safe-routes-to-school advisory committee within the planning branch of the state Department of Transportation’s highways division.
State Sen. Chris Lee (D, Kailua-Waimanalo-Hawaii Kai) chairs the Senate Committee on Transportation and Culture and the Arts and said, “We can do better.”
“In 2022, Hawaii had 117 traffic-related fatalities, over 500 traffic-related serious injuries, which people are permanently paralyzed or have their lives changed,” Lee said. “And what’s really scary is this year we’re on track to do worse than that. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
Saniatan compared the situation to being “like a smoking gun.”
“It’s like you might as well just give someone a gun to just shoot your family member (because) that’s what he actually did,” Saniatan said in reference to the allegations against Miyashiro. “This man didn’t even stop to even render aid to my daughter. He didn’t even stop. He was like a bowling ball that just ran through my daughter.”
She said she now hopes to “make our people safe in Hawaii.”
“How will we fix the law and people that violate traffic violations?” Saniatan said. “That’s what I want.”
Johnson, of the state’s Safe Routes to School Coalition, said, “The relentless violence on our streets is a man-made catastrophe that’s been tolerated and excused for decades. … Here in Hawaii, one-third of traffic fatalities are people walking, rolling, bicycling at a share that is much higher than the national average.”
