Our recent Centennial Pulse article examining traffic and pedestrian safety along Smoky Hill Road clearly struck a nerve.

One of the people who reached out was Beverly Bennett, an Aurora resident who has lived near Centennial and Smoky Hill Road for nearly 30 years. Bennett is also the organizer of a Change.org petition calling for safety improvements along Smoky Hill Road.

Her message was both appreciative and frustrated.

She was glad to see attention given to the four fatalities that have occurred near Smoky Hill Road at Waco Street and Telluride Street in roughly two years. But she also raised the question that increasingly sits at the center of this issue:

What will move Centennial from acknowledging the problem to visibly addressing it?

According to Bennett, residents have already tried many of the traditional routes for civic engagement. They have spoken before City Council. They have organized online. Local television stations have covered the deaths and safety concerns. Residents have discussed the issue on Nextdoor. Bennett's petition is now approaching 900 signatures.

And still, she says, momentum toward change repeatedly seems to stall.

That deserves a closer look.

The Concern Is No Longer Hypothetical

This is not simply a disagreement over whether one intersection feels uncomfortable.

Four people have lost their lives near this portion of Smoky Hill Road since 2024.

In July 2024, a motorcyclist was killed near Smoky Hill Road and Waco Street. In October 2025, two women walking in a crosswalk at Waco were struck and killed. Then, in April 2026, another woman was killed in a collision at nearby Smoky Hill Road and Telluride Street.

Those deaths sit against a broader crash history. Previous reporting from 9NEWS cited the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office as recording 31 crashes in the area over a five-year period.

That is why residents are asking for more than reassurance.

They want to understand what happens after a dangerous pattern becomes impossible to ignore.

Centennial Already Has a Safety Commitment

Centennial adopted its Safety Action Plan in 2025 as part of a Vision Zero approach.

The philosophy behind Vision Zero is important. It rejects the idea that traffic deaths are simply an unavoidable consequence of transportation. It also recognizes that people make mistakes and that roads should be designed so an ordinary human mistake is less likely to become fatal.

Centennial has established goals of eliminating traffic fatalities by 2040 and serious injuries by 2045.

The City's plan also emphasizes proactive safety measures.

That makes Smoky Hill Road more than an individual neighborhood concern. It becomes a real-world test of how Centennial's Vision Zero commitment works when fatalities have already occurred.

The roadway itself is not new to the City's attention. Centennial completed a Smoky Hill Road Transportation Corridor Study in 2022.

Residents are therefore not asking the City to discover Smoky Hill Road's transportation challenges for the first time.

They are asking what the recent fatalities change about the urgency.

A Petition Approaching 900 Signatures

Bennett created the Change.org petition, “Prevent More Deaths at Centennial's Intersections with Smoky Hill Road,” to build public support for additional safety action.

The petition calls attention to the deaths along the corridor and raises potential improvements including better lighting, speed-management measures, pedestrian crossing changes, turn restrictions, refuge infrastructure and consideration of additional traffic-control measures.

It is important to distinguish advocacy from engineering.

Residents do not have to determine which particular treatment is technically appropriate. A traffic signal that sounds sensible to the public, for example, still requires engineering analysis. The same is true for changes in speed limits, medians, crossings and turn restrictions.

But residents can reasonably insist that those options be evaluated and that the results be communicated publicly.

For anyone who wants to read the petition, understand the concerns being raised or add their name to the effort, Bennett's petition is available here:

Learn more and sign the Smoky Hill Road safety petition on Change.org

Signing a petition is not the only way to participate, but it is one measurable way residents can demonstrate that the issue extends beyond a handful of individual complaints.

Perhaps the Next Question Needs to Change

Residents have already asked Centennial to make Smoky Hill safer.

Perhaps the next phase of advocacy needs to move from “Please do something” to a series of questions that require specific answers.

For example:

Has Centennial conducted an updated safety analysis of the Waco-to-Telluride portion of Smoky Hill using the crashes and fatalities from 2024 through 2026?

What short-term safety measures have been evaluated?

Which measures were recommended, and which were rejected? Why?

Is a project at Smoky Hill and Waco currently included in a City transportation work plan, capital program or funded project list?

If not, what needs to happen for it to be included?

What improvements could be implemented relatively quickly while larger corridor projects are being studied or funded?

Those questions matter because there can be a significant distance between a long-range transportation plan and something residents can actually see on the pavement.

Residents Can Keep the Issue Moving

One important lesson from Bennett's experience is that civic participation often requires persistence across more than one channel.

Residents concerned about Smoky Hill Road can sign and share the Change.org petition, contact their representatives on Centennial City Council, participate in Council meetings, submit documented safety concerns and continue reporting dangerous conditions and near misses.

Near misses deserve particular attention. They rarely make television news, but repeated close calls can provide an important picture of risk before another crash results in serious injury or death.

Residents can also ask the City to make updated crash information readily accessible.

Centennial's public-facing Vision Zero baseline primarily reflects crash information from 2019 through 2023. That means the recent fatalities driving today's community concern are not part of that baseline.

A data-driven safety strategy is far more useful to the public when the data reflects what is happening now.

Being Heard Is Not the Same as Knowing What Happens Next

There is an important distinction here.

A city can provide residents opportunities to speak and still leave them uncertain about what their participation accomplished.

Bennett's frustration seems to live in that gap.

Residents have spoken.

A petition is approaching 900 signatures.

News outlets have covered the deaths.

Neighbors have organized.

The question now is not simply whether Centennial has heard them.

It is whether residents can see where the issue sits in the decision-making process, who is responsible for the next step and when that next step will happen.

That is where transparency becomes just as important as advocacy.

From Vision Zero to Visible Progress

Centennial's adoption of Vision Zero is meaningful. Setting a goal of eliminating traffic deaths says something important about the kind of community the City intends to become.

But Vision Zero ultimately has to be visible somewhere beyond a planning document.

It should be visible in updated crash data.

In engineering decisions.

In project priorities.

In interim safety measures.

And in a public understanding of what happens when a dangerous roadway repeatedly produces devastating consequences.

Bennett asked a straightforward question:

What would move Centennial to act?

Perhaps Centennial should now answer that question directly.

What threshold must a roadway reach before additional intervention becomes a priority?

What specific action is being considered for this portion of Smoky Hill Road?

And after four lives have already been lost, has that threshold already been crossed?

Get Involved

Residents who want to learn more or support the effort can read and sign Beverly Bennett's Smoky Hill Road safety petition here.

Residents can also review Centennial's Safety Action Plan and find information about Centennial City Council and public meetings.

Because safer streets are not simply a City Hall issue or a neighborhood issue.

They are a community issue, and the ultimate measure of Vision Zero will not be the promise. It will be the progress.