Monday, Aug. 19, 2002 | 9:23 a.m.
Visitors to Las Vegas include thousands of people from smaller towns where there's no such thing as a street wide enough to have two or three left-turn lanes. As pedestrians, they sometimes misjudge how long it will take them to cross and how quickly cars can be roaring toward them. Even people who live here can be surprised to discover just how wide some of the busier streets are when they dash across, often without benefit of crosswalks. And everyone soon learns the reality of a 24-hour town -- there is no time of the day or night when the major streets aren't full of drivers rushing to work or rushing home or rushing somewhere, with some of them having just left a bar or nightclub. And drivers soon learn that tipsy pedestrians are not rare phenomena, either.
Add all of Las Vegas' peculiarities to the natural tendency of pedestrians to be preoccupied or careless, and you have a dangerous combination. Statistics bear that out -- in the last survey of all the states, in 1999, Clark County's numbers for pedestrian injuries and deaths topped the nation. Things are not improving. So far this year, 28 people in Las Vegas have been killed while trying to cross streets.
The tragic statistics have resulted in a $1.5 million federal grant to Safe Community Partnership, a program based at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Transportation Research Center. Metro Police has teamed with Safe Community Partnership to reduce the deaths and injuries among pedestrians. Last week, in a three-day crackdown at some of the most dangerous intersections, police issued about 450 tickets. Also, Safe Community Partnership has launched an awareness campaign, hoping that radio and television ads will make drivers and pedestrians more aware of the dangers.
The ads and the partnership with Metro, however, will not alone bring the statistics down. Another plan for the grant money, which we see as the most effective, is to install safety features at the most dangerous intersections -- better lighting and countdown clocks for pedestrians to time their crossings, for example. Ads and ticketing blitzes are effective for the moment, but infrastructure changes would be permanent.
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