If New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez is successful in her attempt to reinstate the death penalty, we could simplify matters by just having the condemned walk down Albuquerque’s Coors Boulevard There are evidently plenty of drivers more than happy to run people over there. You don’t even have to pay ’em.

Here is yesterday’s press release from Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office:

Yes, Mr. Hatchett was seen “walking in the center turn lane of southbound Coors,” an act some would find worthy of being struck by two vehicles and killed. Perhaps a few would chide the drivers of those vehicles for leaving the scene, but, as I ran across a few days back in a news story comment concerning yet another person killed for being anywhere near the pavement of an Albuquerque street, there are others who would simply remark: “Another dead bum. Good!”

Yeah, we as a species are just about ready for universal beatification. A few more official and informal death sentences and we’re there.

Taking a moment to visually examine the intersection of Coors Blvd. and Blake Rd. (note: This is about a mile from my house and about 200 feet from a school I’m starting to work at, come January), we note the typical Coors lack of non-motorized user services:

• Dirt for sidewalks, except for the Wendy’s in front of which the developer put in a sidewalk that ends, abruptly, as the edge of the property.
• Nice wide airplane runway of a road to encourage speeding and discourage sane pedestrian crossing.
• Places like the Allsup’s selling beer and wine to provide some not-so-sane courage to those pedestrians unfortunate enough to be out here. There’s another, bigger, gas station/liquor store a hundred or so feet north of the area depicted.

By the way, Albuquerque’s death penalty gallows humor does not extend so far as to officially call the scant space between while “fog” line and dirt a “bike lane.” I have heard tales of others who actually cycle stretches of Coors like this at Blake. I guess they deserve to be struck and killed, too.

As is also true for much of Coors, particularly in the far South Valley, new businesses like the Wendy’s are popping up all over, together with the same inadequate pedestrian infrastructure. You’d almost think it is a walking person’s “killing field” by design, and the stories and statistics of folks being struck and killed would empower such an observation, but even the most jaded, even Mr. Internet Commenter “Another dead bum. Good!”: A. Probably isn’t in charge of creating monstrosities like Coors and Blake; B. Probably, when taken away from the safe haven of hate that is the Internet, would not publicly rub their hands in Dr. Evil glee at the kill zone Coors and Blake has become.

No, there’s nobody at “fault” here. Or at least that seems to be the current conventional wisdom. I wonder. Meanwhile, the deaths continue to pile up in ways no reinstatement of the death penalty will ever achieve.