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The Story

In 2010, the small community of specialists who pay attention to US road safety statistics picked up on a troubling trend: more and more pedestrians and cyclists were being killed on American roads. In fact, pedestrian deaths have increased 51 percent since reaching their low point in 2009. In addition to the loss of human life, it is estimated that road injuries will cost the world economy $1.8 trillion from 2015–2030.

THE STREET PROJECT is the story about humanity’s relationship to the streets and the global citizen-led fight to make communities safer.

Digging deep into the root causes of traffic violence, the filmmakers engage a diverse array of experts including street historian Peter Norton, city planner Jeff Speck, and urban design expert Mikael Colville-Andersen. These expert interviews are interwoven with the stories of real people working to make their communities safer. Meet two of our characters below:

Dulcie

For Dulcie Canton, stopping vehicular violence in New York City has become a life mission. Both Dulcie and her mother were victims of hit-and-run crashes on separate occasions, 10 years apart – Dulcie as a cyclist, her mother as a pedestrian.

Stacey

For Stacey Champion, a Phoenix-based single mom, inaction at the city council level has led to her fight for change. Five pedestrians were hit by cars over the past 6 months at her neighborhood crosswalk. While deaths soar across the city, little has been done to address the pedestrian death toll.

The Artistic Approach

What better way to tell the story of the fight for the streets than through a journey? Our creative vision for THE STREET PROJECT was to capture both the exhilaration of movement and the brutal realism of dangerous streets through the cinematic journey of our team’s quest for answers. 

Our primary interviews were conducted in environments that symbolized the subject matter… In the middle of a roundabout, in the back of a moving car, next to a dangerous crosswalk. Whenever possible, there was movement within the scene. 

In addition, we used a 500mm lens that is normally reserved for filming wildlife. Only we filmed urban wildlife – pedestrians, taxis, cars, cyclists of all types, and even people on push scooters. Using this very long lens, a single shot glides across rush hour traffic capturing cars, scooters, bikes, and pedestrians – like a wilderness in motion, this is the flow of the city streets moving in every direction, an urban murmuration.

We also relied on a team of citizen journalists, GoPros, cellphone video and access to the largest security camera grid system in the United States to give viewers an honest, realtime look at human behavior on our streets.

Videos

Team

News