By Michel Shane
As we gather around our Thanksgiving tables this year, the warmth of family, the aroma of turkey, and the comfort of tradition will fill our homes. We will watch football, share stories, and count our blessings. Yet across our city, members of a club no one ever asked to join will face another holiday with an empty chair — silent testimonies to loved ones lost to traffic violence on our streets. This is the Empty Chair Club, a heartbreaking fellowship that grows with each preventable tragedy on our roads, with each family forced to learn how to navigate holidays with an unfillable void at their table.
A few weeks ago, I found myself among members of this heartbreaking fellowship at what I thought would be a simple afternoon gathering on Abbot Kinney. Damian Kevitt, Executive Director of SAFE — Streets For Everyone, had invited me to “Sipping and Sculpture” at MoDA Studios. What unfolded was far more profound — a sanctuary where those who had lost loved ones to traffic violence could share their pain without judgment. As their stories filled the room, I was drawn to recreate “Melancholy,” a haunting sculpture on Lake Geneva’s shores. Its hollow center — a void where a human form should be — speaks the unspeakable truth these unwilling club members live with daily: some absences can never be filled.
(travelswithmyart.wordpress.com/2018/07/15/melancholy-by-albert-gyorgy/)
These weren’t just grieving families sharing tears over tea; they were warriors forged in the crucible of unimaginable loss, each carrying a torch lit by tragedy to illuminate the path to change. “We look whole,” they shared, their voices steady but their eyes carrying the weight of their loss, “but inside, we carry an emptiness that can never be filled. You can move forward, but you can’t move on. You can’t replace a person.” Each person there understood without explanation what it meant to belong to this club that no one wanted to join.
Their words echo in my mind as I confront disturbing news about Pacific Coast Highway, our corridor of concern. For over a month, a comprehensive study by Michelin Mobility Intelligence, funded by the Office of Traffic Safety and the California Highway Patrol, has been sitting on city officials’ desks. Our city manager and staff have had this critical information yet remained silent. I had to share a copy with the mayor. This silence is deafening — and potentially deadly. Each day of inaction risks adding new members to the Empty Chair Club.
The findings should stop us in our tracks. When do most drivers hit speeds over 100 mph on PCH? If you’re imagining midnight drag races, think again. A staggering 24 percent of all 100-plus mph trips occur between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. — in broad daylight, when mothers are driving children to soccer practice, when seniors are heading to medical appointments, when our community is simply living their lives, unaware that bullets of steel and glass are hurtling toward them at devastating speeds.
The study, analyzing 1.24 million trips, reveals that while 45 percent of these dangerous speeds occur during the night and early morning hours, midday statistics should shake us to our core. Last week, in what speaks volumes about the gravity of our situation, the Director of the Office of Traffic Safety chose to spend her final hours before retirement meeting with me. It was her last official meeting — a deliberate choice that underscores the critical nature of safety on PCH. With the COO of Michelin Mobility Intelligence, we confronted uncomfortable truths: road fatalities are climbing, and traditional crash data only tells us what we’ve lost, not what we could save.
Vision Zero’s promise of eliminating traffic fatalities by 2050 isn’t enough for Malibu. Today, I call on our elected officials and safety professionals to commit to an even bolder goal: Zero Deaths on PCH, starting with achieving our first calendar year without a fatality. It’s an uncomfortable target for those in charge, but it’s what our residents and neighbors deserve. While increased law enforcement has helped, it’s a Band-Aid on a hemorrhaging wound. Malibu stands at a crossroads: we can become a national highway safety reform model or continue counting empty chairs.
That the state’s top traffic safety official would dedicate her final moments in office to our highway’s crisis should send a clear message to our city officials. This isn’t just another study gathering dust on a desk — it’s a wake-up call that even state-level officials recognize cannot be ignored. Yet for over a month, this crucial information has remained buried in City Hall until I had to share it with the mayor and the other City Councilmembers. This silence speaks volumes, but so does my determination to ensure these findings see the light of day.
This Thanksgiving, as laughter fills your home and loved ones gather close, pause to see each precious face around your table. Each smile represents a chair that’s filled, a blessing counted, a future still unfolding. But remember, too, those in our community whose holiday traditions now include visits to gravesites, whose family photos will forever be incomplete.
I’m deeply grateful to Damian Kevitt for inviting me to that transformative afternoon of “Sipping and Sculpture.” To the families who opened their hearts and shared their stories of loss and resilience — your courage inspires action. To the artists who inspire us to express what words often cannot — your work gives form to our deepest emotions. Your collective impact has strengthened my resolve to prevent more empty chairs.
The data screams for action. The evidence demands change. And time — as every member of the Empty Chair Club knows too well — waits for no one. Here’s what you can do today:
1. Email our City Council and demand the immediate public release of the Michelin Mobility Intelligence study. Our community deserves to know the full scope of PCH’s dangers.
2. Join the growing movement for Zero Deaths on PCH by supporting community safety initiatives and adding your voice to those demanding immediate action for safer streets.
As you bow your head in gratitude this Thanksgiving, consider the power of your voice to prevent another family from joining the Empty Chair Club. Whether through advocacy, awareness, or active participation in community safety initiatives, you could be the difference between a family counting blessings and an empty chair next Thanksgiving.
The choice — and the power to change — is in our hands. Let’s ensure that future Thanksgivings have fewer empty chairs and no new members in a club that should never have to exist. Let’s create a world where every family can gather in peace, where every chair at the table remains filled, year after year. This is the promise we must keep, the future we must build.
Michel Shane can be reached at 21milesinmalibu@gmail.com.