Families are still waiting for a street-safety task force
Speak out at the Traffic Safety Commission meeting Monday!
Over the last three years, three young people have been killed by cars on Encinitas streets. Families and safety commissioners have asked the City Council for an emergency response, an action that’s been declared by earlier councils. Instead, the council has offered only incremental measures — but found time to fast-track a 14-member skateboard committee.
Seventeen-year-old Fin Fadick was in the crosswalk walking across El Camino Del Norte at about 7:16pm on July 10 when they were struck and killed by a westbound car. They were the eighth pedestrian we could verify as having been killed by a motor vehicle on Encinitas streets since 2022:
- Two in 2022
- Two in 2023
- Three in 2025
- Fin in 2026
That count excludes people killed by trains, bicyclists and drivers killed in vehicle crashes. It is pedestrians alone. And three of the people killed in traffic collisions since 2023 were children or teenagers:
Brodee Champlain-Kingman, 15, killed while riding his e-bike on El Camino Real and Santa Fe Drive in 2023.
Emery Chalekian, 12, killed while walking through a marked crosswalk at Encinitas Boulevard and Village Square Drive in April 2025.
Fin Fadick, 17, killed while crossing El Camino Del Norte last month.
These aren’t abstract statistics. They were students, friends, teammates, sons and daughters – kids with so much life ahead of them.
The traffic commission called it an emergency
Last September, the city’s own Mobility and Traffic Safety Commission said Encinitas was experiencing a traffic-safety emergency.
Commissioner James Gross estimated that a city Encinitas’ size would ordinarily experience about one to 1.5 roadway deaths per year. By September 2025, Encinitas had already recorded four pedestrian and bicycle deaths.
“This is not normal,” Gross said. “The data does not support this being normal at all, and we should not accept this rate of death in our city.”
The commission voted to recommend that city leaders declare a state of emergency.
The council did not.
Safe Streets Encinitas has continued asking the city to:
- Declare a local traffic-safety emergency to enable faster action, funding, enforcement, and temporary safety improvements.
- Hold an emergency town hall where residents, families, city officials and safety professionals can speak directly with one another.
- Create a focused street-safety task force bringing together councilmembers, engineers, firefighters, sheriff’s deputies and community representatives.
The group says it has spent more than a year attempting to work through the normal process, only to encounter delay, dismissal and defensiveness.
The city has taken some steps, but where’s the plan?
The current council points to additional traffic enforcement, lower speed limits in some locations, and new crossing guards as evidence of their actions toward safety. City staff continues pursuing street projects, traffic-calming measures and safety grants.
But those are individual measures — not the urgent, coordinated, council-led response required and continuously requested by residents and the Mobility Commission.
On April 21, 2025, the commission recommended a Comprehensive Safety Action Plan for council review. The council has yet to review and respond to it.
The distinction matters — a collection of programs is not the same as a plan.
A contrast in leadership
Earlier Encinitas councils did not eliminate roadway danger. But when major fatalities occurred, they generally responded with greater urgency and structure.
Following pedestrian deaths in 2018, the council accelerated its discussion of Highway 101 safety and explored Vision Zero, the international approach based on the principle that traffic deaths are preventable — not an inevitable price of mobility.
Encinitas formally adopted a Vision Zero goal in 2021: eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries.
Vision Zero calls for a “safe system” in which streets, speeds, vehicles and policies are designed with the understanding that human beings make mistakes — and those mistakes should not carry a death sentence. The Vision Zero Network materials included with this project provide additional background on that approach.
After Brodee Champlain-Kingman was killed in 2023, the council declared a bicycle, e-bike and motorized-mobility emergency and followed with enforcement, education, signage and outreach.
The present council has spoken positively about safety. But actions speak louder than words, and this council has been slow to act, failed to address the dire situation, and not taken any steps to develop a comprehensive approach to prevent fatalities.
At a joint City Council/Mobility and Traffic Safety Commission meeting on June 25, 2025, then-Councilmember and current Deputy Mayor Jim O’Hara characterized Vision Zero as political and warned against getting “caught up in the spin of politics versus safety.” He failed to detail what he finds “political” about an internationally lauded program to eliminate road fatalities, and he didn’t offer an alternative solution.
Skateboard committee gets priority
Skateboarding is part of our city’s culture, and a thoughtfully located skate facility may be worthwhile. But the council has urgently prioritized investigating an additional skate feature in town.
Councilmember Luke Shaffer initially proposed a skate feature at Glen Park. After substantial neighborhood opposition, the council directed staff to examine possible locations throughout the city.
Then it moved quickly to create a 14-member Skate Feature Committee: ten residents, two councilmembers and two commission representatives as originally proposed. Shaffer and Councilmember Marco San Antonio were appointed as the council representatives.
The council has demonstrated that when it wants a specialized committee, it knows how to create one. It formed the skate committee within weeks.
Yet families asking for a coordinated street-safety task force, after repeated deaths, are still waiting.
A chance for us to be heard this Monday and Wednesday
The Encinitas Mobility and Traffic Safety Commission meets:
Monday, August 10
5:30 p.m.
Encinitas City Hall
505 S. Vulcan Avenue
The commission studies mobility and traffic-safety issues and makes recommendations to the City Council. This meeting is an opportunity for concerned Encinitas residents to ask that the city’s Vision Zero commitment become more than a distant aspiration.
Residents can call for:
- Immediate council consideration of the Comprehensive Safety Action Plan.
- A public accounting of all pedestrian and cyclist deaths and serious injuries.
- A street-safety task force with named members, measurable goals and firm deadlines.
- Targeted action on speeding, dangerous intersections, impaired driving and distracted driving.
- A formal council response to the emergency declaration recommended by its own commission.
If you can’t make Monday’s meeting, there’s another chance to weigh in at the City Council meeting on Wednesday, August 12. You can speak, write in your comments, or just show up to support safer streets.
Safe Streets Encinitas’ message to Mayor Ehlers and councilmembers is simple: No more delay. No more fragmented responses. No more waiting for the next memorial.
Thank you for being part of a community that believes good government begins with informed, engaged citizens!
With compassion,
—Encinitas Action