Pedestrian Safety News Roundup Continues ... Look before you exit the car

Steve Lombardi

Attorney
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Today we continue with several more pedestrian-car-truck-bus-train collision news items. There are too many pedestrian collisions just since the first of the year. After reading too many pedestrian-accident reports I suggest that both drivers and pedestrians pay more attention to what’s ahead or what’s coming. Today we’ll look at one additional news item that adds to our investigation into what themes or reasons (causes) as to why pedestrians get struck so much.

Miami, Florida – January 2009 – Highway workers are at great risk when working along the highways of American. In this story someone dropped thousands of shoes, with shoe laces tied together, on a highway. The picture is well worth the effort to see what thousands of shoes look like all strewn about on a highway. In this video while a highway worker sweeps the shoes from one lane of travel traffic just keeps on going by heading to work.

San Diego, California – December 2008 – The lawyers at Estey and Bomberger again bring us news of a pedestrian accident in the Core-Columbia district of San Francisco. The woman was struck while crossing the street by a vehicle turning left; which brings up another point about safety. Even when drivers stop you can’t trust they will remain stopped. Before walking out into the roadway look the driver right in the eyes, make eye contact and if you can’t do move one inch. Establishing eye contact is an important pedestrian safety measure. If you have eye contact then unless the driver is brain dead they shouldn’t move and should be more aware of your presence.

Beech Grove, Indiana – January 2009 – A mother of two young children was run down and killed as she stepped out into the roadway. The car was a patrol car being driven by police. The police officer did not have the siren or lights on and was responding to a call for assistance related to a burglary shortly after 9:00 p.m. This brings us to make a new point to the police, if you’re going to respond to a call for assistance and can’t activate your siren then be more careful while driving towards the location. Without lights and sirens pedestrians may not have the right amount of attention focused on your patrol car. Pedestrian accidents with patrol cars and police cruisers aren’t all that unusual.

So today we have the lessons of controlling or covering the loads you carry and watching before stepping out of a car into traffic.