Nevada tops in rate of pedestrian fatalities

Saturday, Oct. 21, 2000 | 3:01 a.m.

Confronted with the choice of dodging multiple lanes of high-speed traffic or trekking several hundred yards to the nearest safe passage at a stoplight, a Las Vegas pedestrian stops, then starts and stops again before finally bolting across bustling Tropicana Avenue.

In Nevada, a land of wide-open highways and high-speed city thoroughfares, that's just the sort of situation that has made the state the most dangerous in the country for pedestrians.

"It's the six-lane dash-of-death," said Erin Breen, director of the Safe Community Partnership, a program of the UNLV Transportation Research Center.

The numbers suggest that the problem is only getting worse. According to the Nevada Division of Motor Vehicles and Public Safety, 70 pedestrians lost their lives on state roads in 1999, up from 46 in 1998.

The second-highest fatality toll was recorded in 1996, when 67 pedestrians were killed on Nevada roads.

Federal Highway Administration figures from 1999 show Nevada was first in the rate of pedestrian fatalities across the nation, with 3.7 pedestrians killed per 100,000 population.

The figure is more than twice the national rate of 1.8 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 -- the rate neighboring Utah recorded.

Florida was No. 2 with 3.2 deaths per 100,000 population, Washington, D.C. third with 3.1; and Arizona and New Mexico tied for fourth at 3.0.

A popular myth is those who are dying on Nevada roads -- and killing with their cars -- are out-of-state tourists. That isn't the case, said Bruce Mackey, bicycle/pedestrian safety educator for the DMV.

Nearly 90 percent of the pedestrians killed last year in Nevada were state residents, he said. And Nevada drivers were behind the wheel in 85 percent of those fatal collisions.

Further, more than 70 percent of the deaths were recorded in Clark County, he said.

"It's not the drunken tourists on the Strip that are getting killed," Mackey said. "We're killing each other."

The most recent death was Oct. 9, when 57-year-old George M. Miller was killed while crossing Las Vegas Boulevard North near Walnut Road. No charges were filed against the driver.

Observers blame a culture that celebrates speed and the automobile, road designs that pander to that mind-set and pedestrians who fail to account for the dangerous character of the traffic.

"We live in the West, where car is king," Breen said. "We tend to construct roads that are very wide, with lots of lanes, that are very long and encourage very fast speeds."

Wide roads

It is easy to find those roads in the urban area of Las Vegas and environs. Many roads, major arterials or not, have few designated crosswalks. An example is a one-mile stretch of Tropicana between Decatur and Jones boulevards. There are no crosswalks on that length of the seven-lane roadway.

Thousands of apartment and town house dwellers on the south side of Tropicana have bus stops on the north side of the road. To get there, they must either make a long trek to one intersection or the other, or more likely, will try to dodge the traffic racing at speeds of at least the limit, 45 mph.

Although public officials universally say they are concerned about the issue, making Nevada roads a kinder, gentler environment for pedestrians is not a popular option.

Earlier this month, the Executive Advisory Committee of the Clark County Regional Transportation Commission debated adding a raised median on Tropicana to be a narrow island of safety for people who are darting from the apartments on the south side to the bus stops on the north.

Without dissent, the committee rejected the proposal, sending it back to a technical committee for more study.

"Pedestrians are not the priority," said Sam Wright, an RTC planner. "That's reflected in our laws, in the designs of our streets, in the attitudes of our drivers."

The RTC is working to cut the number of fatalities, he said, but the job is complicated by the fact that many different agencies on the federal, state and local levels have a hand in road design and construction.

Breen said part of the problem is that the situation doesn't register on the radar of policymakers, many of whom are much more concerned about complaints coming from motorists.

"Pedestrians seem to be those without a voice," she said. "Politicians see them as people who do not make a difference. They are people that are easy to brush away."

And the problem is even greater because the designers and engineers are dealing with a frustrating aspect of human behavior. Wright cited examples when people refuse to use marked crosswalks that are perhaps 100 feet away; instead, they will dart across heavy traffic.

Agencies usually respond to a problem area by fixing a road or adding crosswalks after someone is killed, he said.

"That's generally when people pay attention," he said.

Wright said his agency is embarking on a concerted educational effort to turn the tide.

"The community itself has to accept the fact that the pedestrian has the right-of-way," he said.

Bobby Shelton, spokesman for the Clark County Public Works Department, said designers and engineers have to balance the needs of motorists and pedestrians.

"It's a serious issue when it comes to traffic management," Shelton said. "We're doing a better job of planning. We're doing a better job of designing."

In past decades, utility boxes and poles would often block sidewalks, forcing pedestrians into the street. That still is a problem in some areas, Shelton said.

When the department goes in to work on a stretch of road, employees often will retrofit the sidewalks to eliminate the problem, he said.

A tougher job is putting in new crosswalks. As high-volume pedestrian areas are identified and as funding becomes available, Public Works will install crosswalks, he said.

But many people won't use crosswalks even when they are close by, Shelton said.

Breen said that is because crossing at a marked intersection isn't necessarily safer than crossing at the middle of a street.

"People who walk all the time realize that cars will not stop," she said. "If a pedestrian steps off a crosswalk without looking left, a lot of times they are going to be hit.

"There's not a lot of reward to being what an average driver would call a good pedestrian," Breen said.

An example of the problem is at Del Mar Street and Maryland Parkway, a busy crossing area for pedestrians hoofing it from UNLV. After accidents and community appeals, a crosswalk was installed at the location.

The crosswalk includes a sign and a large, flashing warning light for drivers. But on a recent weekday afternoon, drivers speeding down Maryland Parkway failed to stop for pedestrians. Groups of pedestrians gathered until one or two drivers stopped to let them pass.

One of those pedestrians was Aliki Barnstone, a UNLV creative writing instructor. She and her visiting father threaded through the traffic on Maryland to get to campus.

"They usually won't stop," she said. "What's going to happen is that some student or professor is going to get killed."

Barnstone said she has been yelled at by drivers as she attempted to use the crosswalk. She would like engineers to add a stoplight on Maryland, to give the pedestrians a dedicated safe period to cross.

The problem isn't the pedestrians, Barnstone said.

"I basically blame the drivers," she said. "You have to expect that there's going to be a lot of people at a university."

Problem streets

Breen said Maryland Parkway is one of the problem roads in Southern Nevada. The road is wide and traffic signals are sparse, which encourages speeding. But besides the university, the road is an amalgam of residential and commercial development that makes it a high-traffic area for people on foot.

But there are many roads throughout the Las Vegas Valley that have similar characteristics, and that will only become a bigger problem as the population continues to swell by about 60,000 people a year.

"We have a problem of extremely serious proportions," Mackey agreed.

He said all the design improvements in the world won't end the problem. The only way for the slaughter to end is for motorists to understand that "might does not equal right," Mackey said.

"We have a culture of the car down there," Mackey said. "We have this mind-set that streets are for cars."

But "streets are for people," he said. "We need to take the rights of all street users seriously."

Mackey sees some grounds for optimism in the statistics so far this year. Statewide, pedestrian fatalities are down -- 36 pedestrians killed on the roads by Oct. 12, compared to 48 killed by that date last year.

The number of fatalities is down in Clark County as well, he said -- 28 killed on the roads so far compared to 32 last year.

But even one is too many, Mackey said.

Motorists need to learn that obeying the law -- giving ground to a pedestrian and staying within the speed limits -- can avoid tragedies, Mackey said.

"We have great statutes in this state, if people would just follow them and play by the damn rules," he said. "I bet we can cut out 50 percent of the pedestrian fatalities in this state just by obeying the law."

The penalty for breaking the rules can be much more than a traffic ticket.

"I've known a lot of motorists who have hit pedestrians, some of them have hit children, and they would do anything to take it back," Mackey said.

He said is possible to stop the deaths.

"There are many places where they have said that they are not going to put up with this sort of thing, and they have turned it around," Mackey said. "If you want to see fatalities go through the floor in Las Vegas, support the efforts of the police department. When you get a speeding ticket, suck it up and slow down.

"You could have killed somebody."

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