Haochen Xu was just 4 years old.

He loved to read, had no trouble making friends and possessed a penchant for learning.

Haochen died June 27 at Harborview Medical Center, the day after a driver struck him as he and his mother tried to cross Newport Way Northwest in Issaquah.

Investigators say the driver was not speeding, but that is little consolation for a community that says the posted 40 mph speed limit along the road is way too high.

Changes are likely coming to the road, with Issaquah Mayor Fred Butler recommending a speed limit decrease. But this is after the worst case scenario became reality.

It took the death of a 4-year-old boy for real change to happen.

For years, neighbors on Newcastle’s Southeast 75th Street corridor worried a similar scenario would play out on their roads.

They’ve witnessed too many close calls, too many near accidents and too many speeding vehicles to feel safe living outside their homes.

The neighborhood can breathe a sigh of relief now, after the Newcastle City Council moved staff to initiate the long-awaited installation of speed humps on the corridor.

The vote took some courage, especially after a staff presentation that outlined the reasons the corridor did not require speed humps.

Studies showed speeds on the street are not out of control. As a result, staff suggested other measures, such as wide-edge striping and initiation of a neighborhood speed watch program.

But those studies, which only measure speed over a specific time period, can’t replace the experience of living on the street daily and witnessing something completely different.

It would have been easy for the council to take the numbers outlined in the study and send the neighbors packing without their desired speed humps. However, five of the six voting council members that night rightly looked past the data and into the worried faces of their constituents.

What happened in Issaquah must not happen in Newcastle, and neighbors believe the speed humps will save lives.

The council should be applauded for listening to their residents’ concerns, even when the data showed something different.

At the same time, the neighbors of the Southeast 75th Street corridor deserve an equal amount of praise for their unceasing fight in this battle. Their street will be safer, because they demanded it of their elected officials.

It was a true case of the numbers saying one thing, and the heart saying another.

In the end, as Councilman John Dulcich said, voting for the speed humps was “the right thing to do.”

I work on community features and Liberty High School sports for The Press, but I usually stay away from the more newsy Issaquah items, saving those for the main Issaquah Press reporter.

Well, we bid a sad farewell last month to Peter Clark, our Issaquah city reporter who moved on to greener pastures. In his absence, and while we searched for his replacement, I picked up the slack a bit.

That meant, for much of October, I shuttled back and forth between Issaquah and Newcastle city council meetings. It’s the first time I’ve ever really attended a council meeting other than Newcastle’s, so it was interesting to compare and contrast the two.

First, Issaquah is much bigger than Newcastle, with a population about three times as large and a land reach that requires a larger number of staff members. The city’s structure is also a bit different, operating under a specialized mayor-council form of government.

In that capacity, Issaquah Mayor Fred Butler serves as the city’s chief administrative officer, while the elected seven-member council serves as Issaquah’s legislative body.

For Newcastle, it’s City Manager Rob Wyman who supervises the city’s administrative affairs, acting as the “chief executive officer of the municipal corporation,” according to the city’s website.

Butler, like the council, is elected by the voters, but unlike in Newcastle, he is elected into the specific mayoral seat. Newcastle residents simply vote for council members, and then the council decides among themselves who will serve as mayor for a two-year term.

It all leads to an interesting dynamic in the public council meetings. Issaquah City Administrator Bob Harrison’s role is not nearly as pronounced as Wyman’s, but on the other hand, Butler’s scope of mayoral duties is more significant than Newcastle Mayor Steve Buri’s.

As for more insignificant differences, the audience chairs in Issaquah are more comfortable (to the delight of this reporter), but Newcastle’s council chambers feel, on the whole, roomier and better equipped to handle more attendees.

One marked difference in Issaquah’s council chambers is the presence of cameras. While sitting down in a meeting for the first time, it can be a bit jarring to see — what I’m assuming are — remote-controlled cameras panning left or right to capture a particular speaker.

It turns out though, that those cameras, and the resulting council video made available to residents and reporters alike, are amazing.

When I wanted to review a particular part of the meeting, I had only to visit YouTube, where there on the city of Issaquah’s page is full video of the proceedings. It was easy to skip ahead and identify particular speakers I wanted to hear from.

Newcastle posts audio recordings of their meetings, which I use often to review certain parts, but it’s a lot more difficult to find exactly which part I need.

In this digital age, I imagine residents would more readily watch council meetings on video, where they can see the faces of the men and women they elected, than listen to a two- to three-hour audio recording.

I would love it if, one day, Newcastle administrators find room in the budget for a video recording system to post council meetings, because, as The Buggles taught us, “Video Killed the Radio Star.”