School and municipal leaders are trying to keep children safer on the road after multiple kids in the Kansas City area were recently struck by cars.
Students at Gladstone Elementary received more than 400 bike helmets on Friday after a student was struck by a car earlier this fall while riding his scooter near the school.
Second-grader George recently returned to school after recovering from a traumatic brain injury. He said he was nervous to return, but all of his friends shouted his name and asked for his autograph.
“I just want everybody to be safe,” George said.
Niagara Bottling, BikeWalkKC and the Missouri Department of Transportation helped put on Friday’s event to give out helmets and make sure they fit each student. They also set up a “traffic garden” and taught students how to safely maneuver their bikes and scooters.
Uli Schneider, Gladstone Elementary’s principal, said they had traffic safety training for students last year, but invited the organizations back again to make sure children are safe. She said they try to ensure that most students can walk or bike safely to school.
“Every child and every parent actually needs to know how to safely maneuver neighborhoods,” Schneider said. “It also brings awareness to the neighborhoods, all the car drivers here, and it supports what the city has been doing by trying to slow down traffic.”
Laura Fox, director of education at BikeWalkKC, said some people’s only transportation option is to walk and bike places, but education can be lacking on how to interact with moving vehicles and other road users.
She said schools, like Gladstone Elementary, are a great hub for sharing that information.
“With the variety of cars that are out on the roads and how big they are, distracted driving, things like that, making sure that each person has the foundation to be responsible for themselves,” Fox said. “We think it's really important that the parents hear the same information that the kids are getting, so that they can reiterate it.”
The helmet giveaway is one of the latest efforts to make roads safer after two children were killed by cars in October.
Nine-year-old Hazen Workman-Duffy was on her bike in a marked crosswalk and had a green signal when she was fatally struck by a vehicle on Oct. 14. She was on her way to Ingels Elementary School in south Kansas City.
A 10-year-old boy, Duke Ommert, was hit by a vehicle while on his scooter on Oct. 13 in Leawood. He died later from his injuries. A police investigation found Duke was wearing a helmet, and the driver’s actions were “not a contributing factor in the crash.”
A total of 97 people were killed in traffic crashes last year, according to the Kansas City Police Department's annual report. Approximately 10% of them were ages 0-19. The report also shows that 1% of 2024 traffic fatalities were people riding a bicycle, and 19% were pedestrians.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas introduced an ordinance following Hazen’s death that would prohibit right turns on red during school hours, with signs at all affected intersections. Schools would be able to request exemptions if it disrupts student pickup or drop-off.
Lucas said the city is responsible for protecting anyone who travels on its streets, especially children.
"Every parent should feel confident that their child can safely walk or bike to school,” Lucas said. “The ordinance will keep our children safe by eliminating one of the most dangerous conflict points between vehicles and students during the busiest times of the school day."
A resolution introduced by council member Kevin O’Neill would direct the city manager to issue a traffic control permit for St. Paul’s Episcopal Day School and close Walnut Street between East 40th Street and East 41st Street during school hours.
It would also direct the city manager to approve any permits related to traffic calming projects by St. Paul’s along the same road.
The city council will consider the traffic safety measures next week. The public can give input on the ordinances at the Transportation, Infrastructure and Operations Committee on Nov. 4.
Fox said those measures are a component of keeping roads safer, but the city needs infrastructure that promotes safe driving behavior. That includes bike lanes and wider sidewalks.
“We can design our roads in a way that slows traffic and ensures that people are paying more attention,” Fox said. “Instead, we've designed them in a way just to move the vehicles through, and sometimes that's at really high speeds.”
Community members are also trying to keep streets safer for the children who live in their neighborhoods. KCTV5 reported Jorge Delara, who has a grandson in the same grade as Hazen, served as a crossing guard at the intersection where she died.
Families from Hale Cook Elementary, Foreign Language Academy and Border Star Montessori have started “bike buses” this school year. Students and adults ride a set route to school, picking up more kids on the way there.
