An 80-year-old woman, remembered by her family for her deep spirituality and love of theater, died after she was struck by a hit-and-run driver in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.
A 40-year-old single mother of four was hit by a Dodge Charger while walking home from her shift at a Sodo recycling company.
An experienced cyclist, at 66, was killed by an SUV on a hillside near the Fauntleroy ferry terminal.
These are three of at least 788 people who were killed last year on the roads we use to get around every day in Washington, according to preliminary numbers.
The numbers are still being crunched, but Erica Stineman, a spokesperson with the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, said the agency can confidently predict that 2023 will surpass 800 fatalities, the most the state has seen since 1990. There are about 50 death certificates left to be reviewed to determine if they were traffic fatalities, she said.
That’s up from about 750 deaths in 2022. Since 1968, Washington has only surpassed 800 traffic fatalities in a year 12 times, and 10 of those instances were before 1980, Stineman said.
It’s part of a troubling trend that has emerged in the past decade: After the number of traffic fatalities in Washington declined over most of the 2000s, they started rising again around 2014, when about 430 people died. In recent years, fatalities have approached levels unseen since the 1990s, before car safety enhancements industrywide brought standard-issue air bags, safer car frames and seat belt education.
The trend isn’t just a Washington problem — it’s a national one. As traffic fatalities rise instead of fall, the U.S. has diverged from comparably developed countries, despite many major cities adopting Vision Zero goals, including Seattle.
Gordon Padelford, executive director of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, blames what he calls the “supersizing effect.” Bigger cars with taller front ends result in pedestrians getting pushed under the vehicle, instead of crumpling over the hood. Traffic safety advocates also point to wide, multilane arterial roads that encourage speeding in neighborhoods where people are present.
Mike McGinn, executive director of America Walks and former Seattle mayor, said elected leaders and agency officials are responsible, noting education is not enough.
“For drivers, certainly we should ask them to be more cautious,” he said. “But we’ve been doing that for decades now. … The signals that are sent by the roadway about how fast to drive and what is safe or unsafe and the poor design of vehicles overwhelms the attempt at driver education.”
Amy Freedheim, the felony traffic unit chair for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, said there’s been an 85% increase in fatality crashes the office prosecutes due to alcohol and drugs between 2013 and 2022 in the county. In that period of time, the office has also seen double the number of fatal and serious injury crashes where seat belts weren’t worn, and a 129% increase in cases involving pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities.
Freedheim said felony traffic crimes disproportionately affect marginalized communities in low-income areas — where there aren’t sidewalks or where a major arterial divides a highway.
“We can’t just do what we’re doing,” Freedheim said. “… We should be ashamed in this state.”
As victims continue to die on roadways, their loved ones are unexpectedly left in a state of limbo, trying to mourn while waiting for closure. Investigations can drag out for months or over a year, while detectives reconstruct the scene, and in cases where alcohol or drugs might be involved, the growing backlog to get toxicology results from the state crime lab can slow prosecution to a yearslong affair.
Meanwhile, the public often knows little about the people who die in crashes, their names buried in medical examiner reports, their lives briefly mentioned in the news.
Here are just a few of the hundreds of people who lost their lives on Washington’s roads in 2023.
Austin Tsai
Austin Tsai, 22, died on Oct. 30 with a friend in his passenger seat after they were hit by a wrong-way driver.
Tsai had been living in Bellevue for four months when he went out with friends that day. Driving back home on Interstate 90 going through Mercer Island, a vehicle going the wrong way hit his car head-on. Tsai and his passenger, 23-year-old Bugeon Kim, died instantly.
The wrong-way driver, 30-year-old Ari Quiroz-Jiminez, also died at the scene. Washington State Patrol is still investigating whether he was impaired, but said the collision was a “stark reminder to make good choices.”
Tsai is remembered as a talented, entrepreneurial young person.
“He was an exceptional boy. Just one in a million,” Vincent Tsai said. He had finished all his classes at University of California, Berkeley, and was awaiting sitting for his final exams.
Austin Tsai grew up in San Jose, Calif., with an older brother and younger sister. He loved video games and played piano for years. His father described him as a wonderful listener and observer. “He wasn’t a man of words, but once you got to know him, he opened up and was quite friendly and warm.”
While still in high school, Tsai began working as a concert ticket broker. By the time he died, the data science and economics major was a millionaire, and his concert ticket brokerage had six employees, Vincent Tsai said. He bought a house in Bellevue last year “without any help from mom and dad,” his father said. He planned to retire before 30 and had a steady girlfriend. “He wanted to live a simple life — get married, have children,” his father said.
“I was very easily the luckiest person to know and have been loved by Austin,” his girlfriend Sophia said at his service, calling her boyfriend by his pet name, Bean. “He was always selfless and kind, funny and serious, intelligent in so many ways and so eager to pursue all his dreams.”
Vincent Tsai has since begun exploring the circumstances of the crash. He pointed out the lack of a barrier between the onramp and offramp to and from I-90. Through talking to witnesses, State Patrol determined Quiroz-Jimenez had most likely entered the eastbound lanes traveling west from the HOV offramp.
Jessica Valdez
Jessica Valdez, 25, a Tukwila mother of three, was killed last February after a man drove a forklift onto Aurora Avenue North near North 96th Street in broad daylight. The forklift caused an SUV and a landscape truck to crash, killing Valdez, a passenger in the SUV. The two drivers survived.
“She was the glue that held our family together,” her niece said after her death.
Valdez’s kids were 8, 6 and 2. She had worked for T-Mobile before she died, a job she loved because it let her help people. “She was an amazing soul,” her niece, Chayan Trujillo said.
They were a close family, with aunts, uncles and cousins all living near each other in Tukwila and Burien. They would go on road trips together, take hikes on Mount Rainier and watch the sunset at Alki Beach. Trujillo and Valdez spoke almost daily, getting together when they could, FaceTiming or texting when they couldn’t.
The average forklift weighs about 4.5 tons, more than twice the weight of an average car. The driver of the forklift was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence. Police said at the time that the suspect’s blood alcohol level was 0.203%, and a probable cause affidavit stated officers smelled alcohol on him. But, a year later, because of a toxicology backup at the Washington State Patrol crime lab, Seattle police said they still have not been able to refer the case to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.
Aurora Avenue North is the city’s least safe street. In the past five years, nearly 20 people have died and about 50 have been seriously hurt on the road. In 2022, state lawmakers budgeted $50 million to begin rebuilding the stretch of Aurora between North 90th and North 105th streets, including the site of Valdez’s crash.
The Tacoma Tideflats crash victims
Six people, all under 26, all from Arizona, died on Tacoma’s Highway 509 in July: 19-year-olds Lisa Esparza and Cerra Corner; Javan Runnels, 22; and 25-year-olds Felix Begay, Erick Tsosie and Calsie Sockyma.
The six victims riding in a Kia Forte hatchback died after the driver of a BMW SUV T-boned the Kia, which was carrying seven people.
Begay, a member of the Navajo nation, was the fourth of six siblings and worked with his father and sister in carpentry. He died with one of his childhood best friends, Tsosie. Begay was born into the Bitter Water clan and born for the Towering House People clan. He enjoyed reading manga, watching anime and playing video games and had a love for travel.
Tsosie, who was Navajo born into the Many Goat clan and born for the Coyote Pass clan, joined the Marine Corps after graduating from high school. He is survived by his 3-year-old son.
“It didn’t matter time, day, night, if they were on opposite sides of the world,” Phillisa Begay, Felix’s older sister, said after they died. “They would always have time for each other and talk and laugh.”
Runnels, 22, was known as his family’s “superstar.” “Javan would help anyone who needed it, his heart was so big,” wrote Jenafer Gray, Runnel’s aunt.
Esparza, 19, had just celebrated her 1-year wedding anniversary. She is survived by her parents, three sisters and eight brothers. “Lisa had the most contagious laugh and smile,” Esparza’s best friend wrote in a fundraising post. “She was loved by many, so full of life, and had the biggest dreams.”
Sockyma’s family also organized a fundraising page, where her brother described her as a kind, generous and caring person.
Corner, 19, was remembered as someone who “made an impression,” her mother Victoria Corner told ABC15 in Arizona. She described her daughter as an ambitious go-getter who loved to sing.
No one will face criminal charges in connection with the crash, which a Washington State Patrol investigation determined was caused by the Arizona residents’ vehicle running a red light. Five of the victims were in the back seat not wearing seat belts.
Gabriel Coury
Gabriel Coury was a happy 12-year-old. He loved playing baseball. He was about to start attending Meridian Middle School. His brother and sister, both about to graduate high school, were his idols.
He was at the age where he was blossoming toward independence. His parents, Michael and Shellie Coury, started letting him off on his own more.
One summer afternoon, he took his scooter to the park. It was probably the first time he rode the scooter instead of walking. And on his way back, on a stretch of road visible from the family’s kitchen window, he was hit and killed by an alleged drunken driver.
Prosecutors allege the 19-year-old man blew a blood alcohol content of 0.15% after he hit Gabriel on the shoulder of 132nd Avenue Southeast.
“He was a very family-oriented kid,” Shellie said at a Starbucks in Kent, where Gabriel met his friends and designed a website with them a few weeks before he died.
Shellie was outside the house watering when she heard “truly the most horrific thing” she had ever heard. It was just minutes after Gabriel texted her he was on his way home. Passersby gave Gabriel CPR until medics arrived. He died less than an hour later, in the ambulance, with his parents outside. “I dropped in the middle of the street,” Shellie recalled.
Carson Quinlin told officers he may have been going up to 60 mph in the 35 mph zone, according to police.
On what would have been his 13th birthday, Gabriel’s friends released balloons at the ball field and made his parents a poster. A few of them created TikTok videos memorializing him. Kent Little League hosted a candlelight vigil. “The community really rallied behind our family, and they shouldn’t have to,” Michael said. Shellie and Michael wear beaded bracelets his friends made with Gabriel’s name on them. “You hear about tragedies like this in the news all the time. But you don’t realize how much it does happen until it hits your family.”
And it’s hard to heal, they said, with ongoing court proceedings. The knowledge that Gabriel’s alleged killer is out on bail, too, is difficult.
“When it comes to DUI laws, they’re awfully lax. When you get a DUI, and you didn’t happen to harm anybody, you still get off pretty easily,” Michael said. “Say [Quinlin] goes to prison this year. He’s in his early 20s, and he does the maximum 10 years. He still has a long life before him. And Gabriel is frozen in time at that 12-year-old age.”
Seattle Times staff reporter David Kroman contributed to this story. Material from The Seattle Times archives was used in this report.