Lubbock has officially hit a new milestone in “efficiency” this week, managing to clock two pedestrian fatalities in just 48 hours. While most cities might look at those numbers and wonder if maybe, just maybe, our six-lane stroads are a bit of a death trap, the Lubbock Police Department is here to remind us that the real problem isn’t the three-ton steel boxes—it’s your failure to dress like a neon highlighter.
According to LPD’s Brady Cross, our local drivers are doing “everything they can” to be safe. Apparently, in Lubbock, “everything they can” includes navigating our suburban drag strips while pedestrians inconsiderately cross the street without a personal police escort. Don’t worry about the stats, though; even though two people were just wiped off the map, LPD points out that we only killed five people last year compared to twelve the year before. See? We’re practically a walking utopia.
The department’s advice for staying alive is truly revolutionary: use your cell phone flashlight. Because nothing stops a speeding Silverado quite like the 20-lumen glow of an iPhone 12. Cross also suggests looking “left, right, and then left again,” which is great advice for anyone who skipped kindergarten or hasn’t realized that a Lubbock driver treats a red light like a polite suggestion.
Essentially, if you want to survive a moonlit stroll in the Hub City, you need to be “setting yourself up for success.” In LPD-speak, “success” means wearing enough reflective gear to be visible from the International Space Station and performing a choreographed light show while you dodge traffic. It’s not about infrastructure or enforcement; it’s about your personal failure to look like a Glow-stick at a 2012 rave.
After all, why demand better street lighting or safer crosswalks when we can just blame the victims for not having a high-enough battery percentage on their phones?
