Editorial: Make life safer for pedestrians

Friday, March 26, 2004 | 8:54 a.m.

A 13-year-old boy is fighting for his life at University Medical Center after being hit and critically injured Monday by an inattentive driver. On his way to school, he was riding his bike across East Tropicana Avenue at Morris Street -- within a crosswalk -- when he was struck. The driver, a 24-year-old woman, pulled her Toyota 4-Runner into the far left lane after drivers in the right and middle lanes had stopped because they had seen the boy. She missed her first chance to avoid tragedy when she failed to understand that traffic stopping before a crosswalk indicates the presence of a person. She missed her second chance when her cell phone rang, and she took her eyes off the road. The boy was struck with such force that his bicycle was broken in two and he was thrown 114 feet.

The driver was not charged with any offense, pending review of the police report by the district attorney's office. If her case is treated as other auto-pedestrian tragedies have been, she will face only a light penalty if any at all. Last October, for example, another 24-year-old woman struck and killed two 13-year old girls who were crossing a street near Robindale Road and Torrey Pines Drive. At the time of the accident, she, too, was passing a driver who had seen the girls and slowed. More than a month after the accident, she received two misdemeanor tickets -- for failure to yield to pedestrians and for an expired license. The top penalty for each was an $800 fine. On Feb. 12, a 45-year-old woman speeding along Buffalo Drive swerved to pass a car and lost control, killing a landscaper and injuring another. Her ultimate penalty: a speeding ticket.

We are not alone in believing that Nevada needs to toughen its traffic laws to deal with cases such as these, which are altogether too common. Safe Community Partnership, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas program, will ask the 2005 Legislature to increase penalties for drivers who injure or kill pedestrians. Bruce Nelson, a deputy district attorney, put his finger on the problem in a recent interview with the Sun. "Right now if I go through a red light and kill three people, I'm still only facing the same penalty I would get if I don't hit anyone," he said.

Other states have vehicular manslaughter laws that can be used to charge drivers who, through negligence, hit pedestrians. With about 850 pedestrians being hit every year in Southern Nevada alone, we need laws on the same order.