By John Ruch

I knew that one day I would be writing about Buckhead street safety advocate James Curtis being run down in his wheelchair on Peachtree Road. The relatively good news is that it’s a story of broken teeth and bones, and not an obituary – this time.

Pedestrian safety advocate James Curtis, left, pals around last year with John Rowan, the son of former Atlanta Department of Transportation Commissioner Josh Rowan. (Photo courtesy Josh Rowan.)

For years, I’ve visited Curtis on that stretch of Peachtree to see broken and blocked sidewalks, despite it being home to the Shepherd Center rehab hospital, Piedmont Atlanta Hospital and other medical facilities. So have other journalists, not to mention attorneys who at one point helped to file an Americans With Disabilities Act lawsuit. Yet the fundamentally stupid road infrastructure remains – even the lack of the no-brainer of a lower speed limit and flashing beacons at hospital crosswalks sprawling across five to seven lanes.

Two weeks ago, I dutifully met Curtis there to take a photo of the crosswalk where he was hit on Feb. 13, and he dutifully pointed out the usual street stupidity. Some of the sidewalks are in better shape these days, but the real difference is that Curtis was still feeling too unwell from the collision to take me on the usual tour of shame. He’d had front teeth replaced and was healing from a busted nose and ribs, while trying to get a new wheelchair.

“Shepherd Center is a world-class catastrophic [care] hospital,” said Curtis, as he has many times before. “There are people with mobility issues who use these sidewalks and we don’t need it to be a Formula One race track. We need to be a safe place for everybody to use.”

Curtis volunteers at the Shepherd Center, which for literally decades has advocated for better sidewalk and pedestrian safety conditions. “The speeds and levels of distraction at which people drive in both directions in front of Shepherd…