Two Americans died Friday on Arkansas roads — and no governor will hold a press conference, no cable news panel will mourn them, and no lawmaker will tweet their names.
Stephen Massey, 72, of Alma, lost control of his 2024 Harley-Davidson on U.S. 71 near Boston Mountain Road in Crawford County and struck a guardrail, according to Arkansas State Police. Larry Harris, 59, of Blytheville, was driving his 2014 Buick Enclave south on U.S. 61 near Sandy Ridge Road in Mississippi County when his vehicle crossed the center line, left the roadway, hit a guardrail, went airborne, and overturned. Both men died. Both crashes happened on federal highways the government is responsible for maintaining.
Meanwhile, a 3.8-magnitude earthquake rattled Ventura County, California, Tuesday night, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. The temblor struck roughly 2.5 miles southeast of Piru at a depth of nearly 13 miles. The New York Post covered it. No injuries. No damage. But it got ink.
That's the scandal — not the earthquake, but the editorial judgment that treats a tremor that harmed nobody as more newsworthy than two Americans killed on roads their tax dollars supposedly maintain.
The math is brutal and the silence is bipartisan. According to federal data, roughly 40,000 Americans die on U.S. roads every year — more than firearms, more than most causes the political class stages town halls over. Where's the march? Where's the bill? Where's the committee hearing with the secretary of transportation?
It doesn't come, because road deaths don't fit a narrative. They don't advance a gun control agenda or a culture war position. They're just working Americans — a 72-year-old on a motorcycle, a 59-year-old in a Buick — dying on stretches of highway that both parties have let decay for decades while they spend trillions overseas and posture on topics that generate better fundraising emails.
The infrastructure bill passed in 2021 was supposed to fix this. Over a trillion dollars promised. Yet here we are, years later, and Americans are still dying on guardrails and crumbling shoulders on U.S. highways. Follow the money: how much of that trillion actually reached U.S. 71 in Crawford County? How much reached U.S. 61 in Mississippi County? How much got rerouted to consultants, equity audits, and pet projects in districts with better lobbying?
Both parties agreed on that infrastructure bill. When both parties agree, that's usually where the public gets sold out. The bill became law. The roads still kill.
Massey and Harris deserved better than the silence they got. Every American who gets behind the wheel or swings a leg over a motorcycle deserves to know that the road ahead won't betray them — and that if it does, someone in power will at least bother to notice.
