A man was killed on his bicycle Friday night, August 14, in New Haven, at Howard Avenue and Second Street. He was 53. The driver hit him and kept going.

I keep looking at the photo of that intersection. Wide, freshly striped crosswalks. Clear lane markings. A 25 mph sign right on the pole. New Haven has done more of the walkability work than almost any city in Connecticut, and a man still died there, because someone hit him at 11 at night and drove away.

I’m asking this honestly, not rhetorically: what municipal planning would have prevented this one? Not paint. Not a sign. Probably not a camera that mails a ticket weeks later.

To be clear, I’m not claiming a camera failed here. There was no camera at this corner, and nobody should pretend one would have mattered. A hit-and-run at 11 at night by a driver who kept going is not the crash any of these tools is built to stop. That’s exactly the point.

Every tool prevents the crashes it’s built for. Enforcement against impaired and distracted driving targets impaired and distracted drivers. Road design that slows traffic targets speed. Cameras target one thing: sober drivers speeding past a known camera location. All of these can be worth doing. But here in Fairfield, when we invoke a specific tragedy to justify a specific tool, it’s fair to ask whether that tool would have touched that tragedy’s cause. If it wouldn’t, the tragedy deserves better than to be used as the sales pitch.

That’s not an argument against safety. It’s an argument for honesty about which tool does what. The people we’ve lost deserve remedies aimed at what actually killed them.

Emily Hau is a Fairfield resident and a candidate for State Representative in the 132nd District. emilyforfairfield.com