Columnist Susan Snyder: Fatal flaws in Vegas traffic

Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2002 | 8:31 a.m.

Tourists.

We have given them nearly everything:

Traffic lights with sound and countdown screens that show how many seconds they have to finish crossing the street. Walkway bridges over the Strip complete with escalators and clear plastic shields. Moving sidewalks so they don't have to blister their little feets strolling from fountain to buffet.

And yet, they gamble.

We had some visitors staying at our house over the weekend, so of course we took them down to the Strip to see the Las Vegas we all try to ignore.

Of course this involves walking a distance equivalent to the Boston Marathon in an environment reminiscent of the Indianapolis 500 -- only the Strip has more drunks than does the infield at the race.

Maybe.

I noticed that we do everything except assign a mommy to hold each gambling revenue unit by the hand and escort him or her safely across the street. And yet, they walk -- against the light, in the middle of the block, in front of taxicabs and limousines.

Maybe we need better signs at intersections that better explain the situation:

"Caution: We'd just as soon hit you as look at you because we'll get another 200,000 of you here next weekend."

Or:

"Locals gamble too: We bet on pedestrians."

And maybe:

"We had the highest pedestrian fatality rate in the nation last year, and we're goin' for two!"

Honestly, if tourists knew about us what the numbers show about us, they'd never step off the curb.

For starters, Associated Press reported this week that Nevada's traffic fatalities already have surpassed last year's number -- 318 people have died on our roads, compared to 314 for all of last year.

We're only 43 away from the record 361 people killed in 1998, and we have a whole seven weeks left.

Clark County has the most people, so naturally we kill more of them. What the AP didn't say was all six bicyclists killed statewide died here. Last year it was two.

And of 52 pedestrians killed statewide so far, 41 have died on Clark County's roads, according to figures from the state Office of Traffic Safety's Fatal Analysis Reporting System.

Makes it look like we almost quit driving all together last year. We had killed only 26 pedestrians by this time.

Slackers.

The easy thing to do is pin this on tourists. But an Office of Traffic Safety study conducted a couple of years ago shows nearly 90 percent of the pedestrians killed are residents, as are nearly 90 percent of drivers doing the hitting.

Kind of makes you wonder why tourists get all the high-tech traffic bells and whistles. Maybe we don't kill tourists because that stuff works for all but the stupidest ones. Maybe not. But no sense wasting that money on us locals to find out.

Streets are for people. Some of them drive cars. Some of them don't. Rights of way aren't determined by wheels or weight.

Rather than counting seconds, we should have lights that tally the number of people killed. Or maybe we should just not worry about it.

Numbers show we get 4,000 to 6,000 new ones a month anyhow.