Nevada ranks 1st for highest percentage of pedestrian crosswalk deaths: study
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Mary Lilly was the daughter who made April Stewart a mother. The 16-year-old was known to keep her younger siblings in check but with an eccentric sense of humor. Then, in November 2015, officers knocked on the family’s door.
“Somehow, I don’t remember, I ended up with my purse and keys in my hand, and all I gave them the opportunity to say was, ‘There was an accident,’” Stewart said Tuesday, holding a paper collage of photos depicting her daughter in 2015.
Mary Lilly was crossing six lanes of traffic at Craig Road and Pioneer Way within the designated crosswalk. Her mother says she was hit and killed within a yard of the curb. The driver allegedly didn’t see her crossing.
“I was 21 years old when I had Mary. We were growing up together in a sense,” Stewart said. “They will never ever fill the void that I will have in my life, forever,”
She was one of hundreds who have died within crosswalks across the Las Vegas valley just within the past decade. On a national level, Nevada has seen the highest ratio of pedestrians dying within these marked zones than any other state in the country.
That’s according to an analysis by Florida-based Personal Injury Lawyers Anidjar and Levine, who compared collision data of every state from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. They found 424 pedestrians were involved in fatal crashes between 2017 and 2021 in Nevada.
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Out of those, 190 of them, or 44.8% of the total amount, occurred at a marked crosswalk. That means almost every other one of these crashes happened when someone was crossing appropriately.
Improvements have been made to designated crossing areas since this stretch of time, seen through flashing crossing lights and even raised paths above a road in some areas. Despite this, nine pedestrians died in crosswalks last year and one has already died this year within the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) jurisdiction. Those numbers are still significantly lower than 2017 to 2021.
LVMPD Traffic Lieutenant Daryl Rhoads acknowledged the increasing pedestrian deaths. Those pedestrians are consistently found at fault most often for jaywalking year after year, an act he says has warranted increased enforcement at the self-identified most dangerous intersections as of Presidents Day. He added that Metro’s Racing Apprehension and Intervention Detail (RAID) continues to focus enforcement efforts on reckless driving.
But when asked about those deaths within the area told to be the safest for crossing a street, the lieutenant assured the dilemma is at the top of conversations between them, Clark County commissioners, city officials, and the Office of Traffic Safety.
“Everybody’s on board. Everybody sees this,” Rhoads said outside LVMPD Headquarters on Friday. “Whether it be the signage on the road, whether it be better places to cross on the crosswalk, we are all taking a part and making sure that we improve our safety out on the roads.”
To pedestrian safety advocates like Stewart, those changes are not happening quickly enough.
“Our crosswalks are terrible. They’re in shambles,” Stewart said, speaking about a multitude of residents more now living in Clark County than when several roads were designed. “We have more than two million people and we need to make changes and we need to allocate the funds to make those changes.”
UNLV’s Road Equity Alliance Project said crosswalks are not required to be painted where two streets intersect, though are required at mid-block crosswalks. Ongoing projects in the valley are expected to improve these marked zones and additionally create barriers along the sidewalk so pedestrians do not cross anywhere else but at the crosswalk.
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