Roghly every 25 days, a person walking or biking is killed in New Hampshire by someone driving a motor vehicle. That’s the 10‑year average: one death every 25 days. And despite advances in collision‑avoidance technology, it’s getting worse. The five‑year average increased by 54% — from 10 to 15.4 deaths per year — between 2009 and 2025.
These are people, not just statistics. They are our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends and family. And beyond every death are an unknown number of people left with life‑changing injuries.
There are many reasons for the unacceptable death toll: distracted driving, deadly vehicle designs (poor visibility for drivers, tall front ends), unsafe speeds, poorly designed roads and intersections and drivers who are often openly hostile toward people on foot or on bikes.
But instead of leading us toward a safer transportation system, some elected officials are making things worse. During the New Hampshire House of Representatives session on April 23, the chair of the House Transportation Committee said on the House floor, “It is against the law to run over pedestrians. It’s against the law to run bicycles off the road even though it’s sometimes very tempting.”
He was arguing against SB 559, a bill that would have allowed municipalities to set lower speed limits where a traffic or engineering study supported them.
Bike‑Walk Alliance of New Hampshire finds his statement shocking and outrageously inappropriate — from anyone, but especially from an elected official chosen to guide state transportation policy.
The timing makes it even more disturbing. Days earlier, the Transportation Committee heard testimony from two people who described how their lives were upended — and nearly ended — after being hit by drivers while riding their bikes. At that same hearing, online public comments on SB 559 were 83 in favor and just five against. A majority of Committee members voted to recommend killing the bill, and a majority of House members went along.
At least one legislator and several organizations have already called on the committee chair to apologize and clarify his remarks. We join in that demand.
Why is this comment so dangerous? Because people walking, biking, and rolling are already among the most vulnerable road users in New Hampshire.
When a public official jokes that it’s “sometimes very tempting” to run people on bikes off the road, it does three things: It normalizes aggressive and violent attitudes behind the wheel, it sends a message that people who walk and bike are less deserving of safety and it undermines the culture of safety we desperately need to reduce deaths and injuries.
New Hampshire should be moving in the opposite direction — toward better laws, better infrastructure and better education. We are far behind other parts of the country and other countries in doing this. We need sidewalks, crosswalks, bike lanes and trails that make it possible for everyone to get home safely, whether or not they drive.
We also need a different message from our leaders and from each other: we all share the road, and safety must come before shaving a few seconds off a trip. The choice is stark. If we don’t put safety first, more people simply will not arrive at their destinations. They will die, or be injured, often irreparably. This is foreseeable and avoidable.
A core part of our mission at Bike‑Walk Alliance of New Hampshire is to educate everyone who uses our roads — people who walk, bike, roll and drive — about their rights and responsibilities. We welcome invitations from schools, businesses and community organizations, and we are ready to visit classrooms, libraries and workplaces to talk about how to share the road responsibly.
We also invite the members of the House Transportation Committee to experience our roads from a different perspective. Join us for a bike ride and feel firsthand what it is like to share the road without the protection of a ton or more of steel. To make that experience more comfortable, Gear Libraries has generously offered to lend e‑assist bikes to interested participants. Better yet, participate in a Ride of Silence to remember people killed or injured while bicycling. A ride is planned on May 20 in Littleton.
This year, the New Hampshire Department of Transportation is updating its five‑year Strategic Highway Safety Plan. At a stakeholder meeting in Concord in mid‑April, the department’s consultant noted that “business as usual” is not working, citing the familiar saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
We agree. If we want fewer deaths and injuries, we cannot keep doing the same things — and we certainly cannot tolerate jokes about how tempting it is to run people off the road from a person responsible for overseeing their safety.
We call on the chair of the House Transportation Committee to publicly retract and apologize for his statement.
We call on the Legislature and Department of Transportation to reject hostility toward people who walk and bike, to support evidence‑based speed management tools like SB 559 and to make safety — not convenience — the top priority of our transportation system. Safety and convenience do not have to be mutually exclusive.
And we call on everyone who uses New Hampshire’s roads to do their part: slow down, give room, pay attention, don’t drive distracted and remember that every person you pass has someone waiting for them at home.
Paul Susca is the board president of the Bike‑Walk Alliance of New Hampshire. Amanda Gourgue is the executive director of the Alliance.