(This is a column written by editors at the Tampa Bay Times, not by me.)

Jaime Ferguson should be dead. She was jogging across Tampa’s Bayshore Boulevard in a crosswalk when a truck ran a red light at 45 mph and hit her. The impact tossed her crumpled body 35 feet. She sustained a fractured skull, broken leg, torn rotator cuff, injured spine and $200,000 in medical bills. She’s not sure how she survived, and even years later has not fully recovered.

“I never thought I would be hit by a car,” she said.

Who does? Yet, for far too long, the Tampa Bay metro area has been one of the most dangerous places to walk in the United States. A pedestrian is far likelier to die in Tampa Bay than in much busier and much larger New York City — three times as likely when accounting for the Big Apple’s larger population. Three times.

In a typical year in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties, drivers hit more than 1,000 pedestrians. About 100 of them die. Those numbers include walkers and runners, not cyclists.

Pedestrians are involved in fewer than 3% of traffic crashes on local roads, but they account for nearly a third of all fatalities. It’s a stark reminder that pedestrians stand little chance when things go wrong.

The victims can be anyone — young and old, tourist and local, well off and less so. They can be someone you love.

Nineteen-year-old Isaiah Edward Baker Castellano enjoyed skateboarding; he died after a crane truck ran a red light and struck him on Pinellas’ Gulf to Bay Boulevard.

Nazire Blloshmi, 79, was killed while walking with a friend in Dunedin at what the mayor later described as a “funky intersection.”

A small SUV driver struck and killed Jeffrey Wilson, a 54-year-old physical educationteacher, as he strolled with his wife in downtown St. Petersburg.

All three of those victims were using crosswalks or the sidewalk.

Jeffrey Wilson, shown in this photo posted on the Freedom Elementary School Facebook page, was critically injured when he was hit by a car in downtown St. Petersburg, police said. [ Freedom Elementary School ]

Whether legally at fault or not, the drivers have to live with the fatal crash for the rest of their lives. Think about that the next time you’re tempted to send a text from behind the wheel or speed up to make a waning yellow light.

Yes, it can be hard as a driver to relate to some of the crashes. In Tampa a few years ago, a teenager sped at 100 mph on Bayshore Boulevard and slammed into a mother and her baby daughter, killing both. But most pedestrians are killed in more mundane ways. A moment of inattention. Driving too fast. Easy mistakes to make.

Many drivers either don’t know the laws about yielding to pedestrians or don’t care. People who would never run a red light routinely fail to give way to a pedestrian in a crosswalk. Others aren’t paying attention. Instead, they fiddle with their phones or take a bite of a sandwich, distracted just enough at just the wrong time to leave a pedestrian battered and broken on the asphalt.

Imagine the outcry if the Tampa Bay area were the murder capital of the country instead of one of the deadliest for pedestrians. The response would be immense, from more policing to new policies. The community would insist on swift and effective action. But in some years, Tampa Bay area murders barely outnumber pedestrian deaths. Whether killed by a bullet or a bumper, the person is still dead — due to a violent act.

Cars crashing into cars is bad enough, but it’s so much worse when a car hits a person. Just ask Ferguson. Ten years later, her near-death experience still prowls her memories. “I would close my eyes and see the car coming at me.”

What’s the problem?

To understand the depth of this problem and to probe for solutions, weanalyzed pedestrian deaths, talked to victims and their loved ones, consulted with experts and sought out officials who have found answers, including a city that ranked even worse than the Tampa Bay area for pedestrian deaths but did something about it. The carnage is not inevitable.

Making pedestrians safer will take changes in driver behavior, in road and vehicle design, and in how Tampa Bay law enforcement agencies educate the public and enforce the rules about crosswalks, yielding the right of way, distracted driving and speeding. Experts call them the four E’s: education, engineering, enforcement and evaluation. To work, they should be done together.

Signs mark a defunct pedestrian crossing on E Fletcher Ave. near N 15th St. in Tampa. [ DOUGLAS R. CLIFFORD | Times ]

Some of this is already happening, but it’s not enough. The number of maimed and dead pedestrians makes that clear. Drivers need to know the rules of the road, and governments must ensure they’re followed. The most basic one: Drivers yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk, whether it’s marked or not. That’s the law.

Roads should be designed for safety, not speed. Whatever the speed limit says, a straight, wide road like Dale Mabry in Tampa encourages drivers to speed.

Surprisingly, well-designed streets with lower speed limits don’t have to lengthen a driver’s commute. Driving faster doesn’t always get you there faster. More on that later.

Tampa Bay’s worst roads for walkers

Here’s where drivers have killed the most pedestrians since 2008.

Each dot shows the site of at least one crash that killed a pedestrian from 2008 through 2022. Highlighted areas are those with the most crash locations within a 1-kilometer circle. Includes crashes in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando counties. Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Fatality Analysis Reporting System

LANGSTON TAYLOR | Times

If police crack down on traffic violators, the number of crashes, injuries and fatalities will drop. And, as we’ll explain below, that doesn’t always mean police officers pulling over speeders.

The challenge in making streets safer isn’t just technical; it’s cultural and psychological. Driving can make even calm people angry. That problem is amplified here because Tampa Bay is so car-centric. That won’t change, not anytime soon. But attitudes toward pedestrians can — and should.

A recent run-in at a local intersection illustrates Tampa Bay’s challenge. At a four-way stop at the Snell Isle Bridge in St. Petersburg, one car zoomed through to turn right without stopping. Then two other drivers, both trying to turn left, entered the intersection at the same time, blocking one another in the middle. One honked at the other, and the other flipped him off. Neither moved.

Both claimed the right of way, yelling at each other but literally getting nowhere. One of us watched this unfold and noted the irony; none of the three cars had even considered stopping for a pedestrian in the crosswalk, which is the law.

Amy Cohen became a pedestrian safety advocate after her son Sammy was hit and killed. [ Families for Safe Streets ]

It isn’t like that elsewhere. We’ve seen it with our own eyes. In Hawaii, drivers more often yielded to pedestrians in a crosswalk, sometimes nowhere near a traffic light — even on a coastal highway. In Vancouver, Canada, drivers routinely stopped for pedestrians — on wide straight roads, on residential streets, in busy parks, in an alley behind an office tower, even for a visitor from Florida who once turned around mid-intersection after realizing he was headed in the wrong direction.

Sure, it’s the law, but it’s the law here, too. The difference is that places like Hawaii and Vancouver have more of a culture of watching out for pedestrians — and significantly lower pedestrian fatality rates. Tampa Bay does not, but it could.

When an official with the safety organization Vision Zero Hillsborough rented a car in Portland, Oregon, her nephew reminded her to yield to pedestrians — because that’s the law. It’s so top of mind there, she told us, that people tell visitors about it. Even though the law is the same in Florida, it’s hard to imagine that a Floridian would volunteer that safety tidbit to a visitor.

We can work toward that day, starting now. We need to know and follow the law, and police need to enforce it. When drivers start seeing other drivers following the law, slowing down and yielding to pedestrians, more of them will, too. The culture will improve.

Distracted driving, texting behind the wheel, speeding and ignoring rules of the road are often viewed as inevitable, something that can’t change. But we can make driving and walking safer in Tampa Bay. There was a time when few people wore seatbelts and drunken driving was no big deal. That changed. So can this.

Speed kills

We all know speeding is a problem in Tampa Bay, but here’s how bad: Two years ago, researchers found that nearly every driver sped through a school zone near Hillsborough’s Bloomingdale High School. Of the 7,310 vehicles tracked, 7,171 went at least 10 miles over the limit, according to the data collected by Blue Line Solutions, a traffic safety company founded by veteran law enforcement officers.

It’s ridiculous that nearly all drivers were going so much over the 20 mph speed limit — and in a well-marked school zone.

Higher speeds increase odds that a crash will maim or kill. A pedestrian hit at 32 mph has a 1 in 4 chance of dying, according to a report from AAA. At 42 mph, half the pedestrians can expect to die. Those are routine speeds on many of our roads. Forty-two mph may not even feel fast to a driver cocooned in a car, but that extra 10 mph is all that separates life and death.

Think of Jaime Ferguson out on her Bayshore run. She was young and fit and — by the raw realities of physics — lucky to live. Still, when she landed after being launched into the air, she saw people standing over her. “Holy shit, did I just get hit by a car?” she remembers thinking.

Paramedics had to cut her out of her clothes. She was unable to work for almost three months. It was a year before she could run without pain. “I will always have back injuries,” she said. For years after she was hit, she wouldn’t run through that intersection. When she finally did, she cried.

Jaime Ferguson, 44, stands at the fateful crosswalk on Tampa’s Bayshore Boulevard with her golden retriever, Blitz. This is where she sustained serious injuries —a broken leg, skull fracture, and concussion— after being struck by a vehicle that ran a red light at the crossing in 2014. [ DOUGLAS R. CLIFFORD | Times ]

It doesn’t help that 6 in 10 vehicles on Florida’s roads are trucks or SUVs. Their higher hoods create blind spots where drivers don’t see pedestrians. When they hit them, they tend to run them over rather than snowplow them onto the hood, lowering the pedestrians’ chances of surviving.

Even as drivers go faster and drive heavier vehicles, they’re paying less attention, distracted by their smartphones. It’s illegal to text and drive in Florida, but officers issue only about 17 texting-while-driving tickets a day across the state, according to data from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. The law is riddled with exceptions and hard to enforce. A driver can simply claim he was doing something other than texting while holding his phone.

Last year, the Florida Legislature considered a bill to allow only hands-free phone use while driving, with a few exceptions. Studies show that any use of smartphones while driving is a distraction, but a hands-free law would have made law enforcement simpler and our roads safer. But the bill failed.

Our state leaders should try again this year, and this time, they should pass the bill. The state has to muster the political will to curtail the violence. And that’s what it is: violence. People are dying. The lucky ones are left with permanent injuries. Cracking down on distracted driving must be a priority. It’s well beyond time for state leaders to start leading on this issue.

Leverage technology

To save lives, law enforcement and our elected officials should embrace a proven tool: speed cameras. They make the roads safer for everyone: drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists.

Speed cameras are neither new nor rare. First deployed more than 30 years ago, at least 200 U.S. communities use them today, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. They work by combining a sensor and a camera to record speeding cars. Law enforcement can calibrate the cameras to measure a particular speed. The camera records violators, which triggers fines for the registered owners

Speed kills, and recent studies show speed cameras have a long, successful record of slowing speeders down. Speed cameras reduced crashes by as much as 39% and fatalities by up to 68%, according to a study of data from thousands ofspeed camera sites in England, Scotland and Wales. In New York City, zones with speed cameras saw fatalities fall by 55%, according to a report from the National Association of City Transportation Officials.

A speed camera monitors traffic at a school zone on W. Lutz Lake Fern Road near McKitrick Elementary School, Martinez Middle School and Steinbrenner High School in Lutz. The cameras are on during arrival and dismissal times to curb speeding in school zones. [ DOUGLAS R. CLIFFORD | Times ]

In Montgomery County, Maryland, speed cameras reduced the number of drivers going more than 10 mph over the limit on residential streets by 70% compared with a similar community that didn’t have them, a study in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention showed. Even better, the percentage of drivers exceeding the limit by at least 10 mph declined by more than one-thirdon streets that didn’t even have cameras — just warning signs that they might be in use. Awareness works.

Speed cameras changed conditions in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which consistently ranks worse than Tampa Bay for pedestrian safety, according to the advocacy group Smart Growth America.

Police officers there saw a clear correlation between fewer traffic citations and more deaths, so they reversed course. Albuquerque set up speed cameras two years ago, leading to nearly a quarter-million citations.

“We simply had to do more about speeding,” said Mayor Tim Keller. “We said, fundamentally, we’ve got to change our behavior.”

While Albuquerque still struggles with too many pedestrian deaths, speed cameras have been “a huge tool to help slow down our drivers,” said Police Lt. Chris Patterson. Albuquerque officials note that a 10% reduction in speed can reduce the number of significant crashes by 19% and can reduce the number of fatal car crashes by a third.

The cameras also have been a force multiplier. While the cameras catch speeders, police can focus on other ways of keeping neighborhoods safe, including responding to 911 calls and dealing with violent crime.

“It would take more than 100 officers to staff the 17 intersections (that have speed cameras) 24/7,” Patterson said. “And officers would only be able to stop one driver at a time.”

No one enjoys a speeding ticket. But you know what’s worse? Visiting a loved one at the hospital. Or the morgue.

Law and order

Speed cameras are quick to deploy, can pay for themselves and, most importantly, can buy time and save lives, while other solutions that take far longer — designing safer roads, for instance — are engineered and built.

By setting the cameras at a reasonable speed, they avoid the “gotcha” of fining drivers for slipping a bit above the speed limit. In slower speed zones, a buffer of 5 mph would be fair. On faster roads, 8 mph or 10 mph could be more appropriate. Some cities go so far as to post signs warning drivers of the presence of a speed camera — alerting them to follow the law. For believers in law and order, it’s hard to argue against the logic; the cameras reinforce rules in a reasonable way to make streets safer.

The Republican-dominated Florida Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis appear to agree — at least a little. In 2023, lawmakers passed a bill to allow speed cameras in school zones. In discussing it, they underscored that speed cameras are a great tool to protect children. While the law helps, far more Tampa Bay pedestrians are killed outside of school zones. They deserve protection, too.

Those who argue that speed cameras are too much like Big Brother should remember how many cameras are already out there. Ring doorbells. ATMs. Cameras on bridges and roads that record traffic information. It’s a small step to allow them to make our roads safer and to force drivers to pay attention.

Another advantage: Speed cameras don’t discriminate by race or ethnicity. By taking a photo of only the license plate, the camera doesn’t know who the driver is, which eases fears of discrimination and “driving while Black.”

A group of Martinez Middle School students walk past a speed camera on W. Lutz Lake Fern Road while walking to school in Lutz. [ DOUGLAS R. CLIFFORD | Times ]

Cities can address concerns about targeting poorer or minority neighborhoods by continually analyzing crash and speed data to ensure a camera is needed at a location. The camera can be removed once drivers adhere to speed limits and crashes have significantly decreased.

The incentive should be to reduce speeds and make roads safer. To that end, contractors hired to install and operate speed camera systems should not earn more money based on handing out a higher number of citations. Success should be measured by the system making less money over time as drivers obey the speed limit.

What to do with the profits from issuing the tickets? Three ideas:

1. Spend it all on improving street safety, including funding effective traffic education programs.
2. Give it all to predetermined local charities.
3. Return it to residents by lowering property or other taxes. Any of those solutions eases the temptation for politicians to use the money for pet projects.

The point is to protect people, not to impoverish them. And remember, the cameras only catch drivers who speed excessively.

Better by design

Zero pedestrian deaths should be our goal. Speed cameras will move us in the right direction, but they are only one tool. Another vital component is better roads. The deaths will continue without roads designed with everyone’s safety in mind — not just for getting cars somewhere as fast as possible. Engineers and city planners know this already, and they are making progress. But they need help.

The basics are well known. Except for interstates and highways, we shouldn’t design roads like speedways built just for cars — with wide, open lanes encouraging drivers to floor it no matter what the speed limit says. It’s safer to build roads that cue drivers to slow down, including narrower lanes, crosswalk curbs that jut into the roadway, speed humps, landscaping in the median and crosswalks with red lights instead of flashing yellow ones.

In some cases, removing the parking space closest to an intersection can give drivers a better view of someone in the crosswalk. When a road looks too much like an interstate, people drive like they’re on one. It’s a choice between speed and safety, and too often, we choose speed.

A pair of cars speed through the intersection of Gulf to Bay Boulevard at Belcher Road S. in Clearwater. [ DOUGLAS R. CLIFFORD | Times ]

Even when prioritizing safety, drivers don’t have to sacrifice as much as they might think.

Tampa’s Fletcher Avenue, west of the University of South Florida, was redesigned with safety in mind. Engineers added six mid-block crosswalks with signals and islands for pedestrians to take refuge halfway across. They alsoplanted shrubs, poured concrete medians and eliminated two-way left turn lanes. They put in bicycle lanes and cut the speed limit from 45 mph to 35 mph. The old Fletcher seemed like a wide-open road. The new one felt narrower, so drivers would naturally slow down regardless of the speed limit.

The number of car crashes decreased, as did their severity. The rate and severity of pedestrian and bike crashes decreased, too. The average travel time was 21 seconds faster in the direction of the morning peak. Traffic was only 31 seconds slower in the direction of the afternoon peak. Those are mere seconds lost while Fletcher became safer for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.

Revamping an entire city’s street system will take work. But it’s doable. Carmel, Indiana, population 103,000, has built more than 140 modern roundabouts since 1996, tearing out traffic lights and stop signs. The city north of Indianapolis plans to keep only one traffic light, which happens to be the first one ever installed in the United States.

Roundabouts don’t use stoplights or stop signs, just a raised traffic circle and splinter islands that force traffic to slow. When engineered well, they can be safer and faster. No one can speed up to catch the yellow light — or run a red — when neither exists. When crashes occur, they are glancing blows rather than one car T-boning another, as too often happens at traditional intersections. Injury crashes dropped by nearly half at Carmel’s roundabout intersections, according to a two-year-old study from the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety.

Research shows that well-designed roundabouts are less expensive to operate than traffic signals. They lower emissions from idling cars and eliminate left turns, the most dangerous traffic move at a traditional signaled intersection. They don’t use electricity, so they still function after bad storms like Hurricane Milton. They are also safer for pedestrians because the roundabouts force vehicles to slow.

Research shows that roundabouts, like this one at the intersection of West Palm Avenue and North Boulevard in Tampa, eliminate left turns, the most dangerous traffic move at a traditional signaled intersection. [ LUIS SANTANA | Times ]

Sarasota has embraced roundabouts, installing more than a dozen and even winning the Innovative Roundabout of the Year award from the Institute of Transportation Engineers in 2021. The Tampa Bay area has many already, too. They take getting used to, but the one at the south side of the relatively new bridge that connects Tierra Verde shows the potential. It can be a busy stretch of road when Fort DeSoto Park empties at the end of a busy beach day. In the past, cars trying to turn left from Madonna Boulevard could wait several cycles of the old traffic lights before merging onto the Pinellas Bayway. Now, no one waits for the light because there isn’t one. Traffic, for the most part, flows much more smoothly.

The key to keeping more people alive is to cut down on crashes and ensure that when they occur, speeds are lower. Think of it this way: When you get in a crash, would you prefer to need an ambulance or a tow truck? This isn’t an argument for turning every intersection into a roundabout. It’s an appeal to be open to ways of making our streets safer. Engineers and safety experts know how to do that. The rest of us need to get on board.

What we do behind the wheel

All it takes is a momentary lapseto hit a pedestrian. But too often drivers are doing things behind the wheel that make it more likely. Would you jeopardize your own safety by climbing a ladder with a cup of coffee in one hand and your phone in the other? Then why put pedestrians (and other drivers) at risk by doing something similar while driving?

Roger Robbins has asked that kind of question ever since he was hit in 2009. A driver didn’t see him in a crosswalk. The force blew him out of his shoes. He doesn’t know how he survived, and his injuries linger.

“You don’t jump up like in the movies,” said the now 79-year-old Sebring resident. “You never get over it.”

He’d like harsher penalties for law-breaking drivers, including higher auto insurance costs. He doesn’t think people should be allowed to use cellphones behind the wheel. It’s too much of a distraction, something much of the research supports. The human brain isn’t good at dealing with the complexities of driving while talking to a disembodied voice on the other end of a phone call, let alone texting at 50 mph.

“A car is a 2,000-pound weapon,” he said. “And it’s just as dangerous as a gun.”

More of us need to accept that fact and make the appropriate changes. Everyone needs to take this plague of pedestrian violence as seriously as any other problem that kills and maims people in Tampa Bay. That goes for elected officials, drivers and pedestrians. It’s hard for a regular citizen to prevent murders, but everyone can help prevent pedestrian deaths.

Solomon Muentes, 10, and his mother, Brandy Muentes, 43, visit a memorial for Sam Muentes, Solomon’s father and Brandy’s husband, along Tampa Road in Palm Harbor. The memorial marks the site where Sam was fatally struck on Jan. 8. According to the Florida Highway Patrol, he was crossing Tampa Road near U.S. 19 around 6:30 a.m. when a Palm Harbor woman driving eastbound hit him. [ DOUGLAS R. CLIFFORD | Times ]

Politicians must work harder to implement changes that everyone knows work but aren’t always popular, at least initially. Create coalitions within communities hardest hit by pedestrian crashes. Take potential adversaries on field trips to see how some of these improvements make people safer. It will take effort to turn skeptics into believers, but it can be done. Our elected officials cannot forget that the status quo isn’t working. In fact, it’s killing people.

Drivers should better understand the risks of distracted driving, speeding or driving at night, when 75% of pedestrian deaths occur. Drinking and driving also remains a problem. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 16% of drivers in fatal pedestrian crashes had a blood-alcohol level of 0.08% or higher, the level at which Florida law presumes a driver is impaired.

Everyone plays a role in keeping pedestrians safe, including pedestrians. They sometimes cross in the wrong part of the road or wear clothing that makes them hard to see or focus on their phone instead of traffic.But even in cases where a pedestrian is at fault, do they deserve to be maimed or killed? We should acknowledge how vulnerable they are and then drive defensively in accordance with that reality.

Time for action

Tampa Bay can make life safer for pedestrians. It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible. How can we say that so confidently? Dozens of comparable cities are already doing a better job than us.

Minneapolis-St. Paul had about a quarter of the pedestrian deaths over a recent five-year span, even though the two areas have a similar number of residents.

Denver, San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Knoxville, Tennessee, all kill pedestrians half as often as in Tampa Bay.

The pedestrian fatality rates in Des Moines, Iowa; Madison, Wisconsin; and Provo, Utah, were less than a quarter of Tampa Bay’s. We kill four pedestrians per capita for every one killed in those cities.

4 to 1.

Why do we put up with this, knowing it doesn’t happen elsewhere?

Sure, no two cities are the same. Some have more pedestrians or different traffic laws or worse drivers. But those are thin excuseswhen someone is lying dead on the street. We can do better.

Jersey City found answers. The city, across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan, has more residents than St. Petersburg but fewer than Tampa. Officials there committed to achieving no deaths at all — pedestrians or drivers — on their city-controlled streets. They reached that goal in 2023.

Even on non-city streets within the city limits, the total was five: one pedestrian death and four vehicle fatalities. For comparison, St. Petersburg had 35 fatal crashes on its roads last year. Nine were pedestrians.

One Jersey City strategy was “tactical urbanism” — literally road-testing quick do-it-yourself fixes with whatever materials are at hand: orange traffic cones, paint to mark roads, plastic barrels and planters. If the “fix” fails, it can be quickly removed. If it works, drivers and pedestrians have seen the results firsthand, so there is buy-in to make it permanent. This produced faster results than interminable public hearings where people bicker about what might happen based on drawings on an easel.

In one example, Jersey City put in two makeshift traffic roundabouts for a week. After people saw how they worked as opposed to what they feared might happen, 72% of respondents supported making the traffic circles permanent. That improvised thinking and quick response have helped cut pedestrian deaths to zero.

A sidewalk sign marks a defunct island crosswalk on E. Fletcher Avenue near N. 15th Street in Tampa. [ DOUGLAS R. CLIFFORD | Times ]

We need that sense of urgency in Florida, the second-most dangerous state for pedestrians. The Legislature should give local officials leeway to tinker more freely on traffic safety to see what works. For example, the state should allow pilot programs with camera-enforced crosswalks. The technology exists. Florida-based NovoaGlobal makes crosswalk cameras that deploy multi-tracking radar to monitor the vehicles, thermal cameras to monitor the pedestrians in the crosswalk and high-definition cameras and video to capture any violations.

We should embrace technology that nudges us toward safer and law-abiding driving. We should say yes to new road designs that protect pedestrians while keeping traffic flowing. We should reward good driving and rigorously enforce the laws against those who refuse to comply. We will be much likelier to do the right thing, if only because it will be expensive to keep breaking the law. Change the culture and eventually driving more safely will become second nature. That’s a win for everyone.

If, instead, we do nothing?

“Our kids pay the price for doing business as usual,” said Amy Cohen, who became a pedestrian safety advocate after her 12-year-old son Sammy was hit and killed. “You’re not supposed to bury your child. There’s not even a word for it.”

In the decade since Jaime Ferguson nearly died jogging across Bayshore Boulevard, drivers have run over and killed more than 930 pedestrians on Pinellas and Hillsborough roads. They were mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. They were teachers and businessmen, social workers and first responders. Someone loved all of them.

At what point will we all say, “Enough!”? Together, we can end this bloodshed.

• • •

We want to hear from you

Was someone in your family badly injured while walking in Florida or the Tampa Bay area? Have you yourself been hit and injured? We’d like to hear about it. Write to gbrink@tampabay.com and use the subject line “pedestrian.” Or call 727-893-8406 and leave a message with your name, phone number and a brief description of what happened to you.

If you have ideas for making our streets safer for pedestrians, send us a letter to the editor by going to our letters portal at 

tampabay.com/opinion/submit-letter/

is it working?

For the most part, families are wonderful. They give us support, encouragement and love.

But they also give us their blood and guts.

I’ve spent a lifetime trying to ward off the inevitable, my ancestors’ legacies.

Last month, 50 years of bike riding, running and pretending I’m Arnold Schwarzenegger in the gym failed me. That three grandparents died of heart disease, I was doomed. No outrunning, out-biking or out-lifting that.

Late last year I noticed my blood pressure rising. My cardiologist said when I got back from Colorado, where we spent the holidays with our family, he’d run some tests. But on New Year’s Day, my blood pressure spiked to 201/106.  That’s stroke territory. The ER doc in Colorado said I wasn’t having a heart attack, but he couldn’t reduce my BP much below 175. “See your cardiologist,” he said. All that medical training and this is the best advice he can offer?

I did when we returned to Florida. He ordered some tests, the penultimate of which was a cardiac CT scan that takes pictures of the heart arteries. By the time I had it done, we were only six days from leaving for a 3-week vacation in Chile. Two days later, I had a follow-up visit with him, but he had yet to see the test results. “I’ll call you when I get them. Maybe I can text the doc and get a preliminary reading” he said. I walked to the front area and began to check out when he comes down the hall and tells me to come back to the exam room. He shows me the terse response to his text: “Very bad.”

My cardiologist said he could perform a catheterization the next morning. It’s the final arbiter, as they run a camera up through your veins to the heart and get the definitive look. “If I can put some stents in, you can go on your trip,” he said.

But it wasn’t to be. The blockage, which included the LAD artery, nicknamed “the widow maker,” was in areas of the arteries that precluded stents.

He still was willing to entertain the idea of me going to Chile. But when I told him that the first stop was the Atacama High Desert, one of the driest spots on earth at 8,000 feet, he raised his eyebrows. When I told him on the third day we were to start a hike at 15,000 feet, his eyes popped out of his head. Karla and I looked at one another. Just maybe being in a foreign country in the middle of nowhere having a self-induced heart attack was not the best way to spend a vacation.

Two weeks later I met with the surgeon. Folks who knew him said he was good. The nurse in the catheterization lab said he was excellent but “a little gruff.” But then again, he was a surgeon, many of whom have a reputation for bad bedside manners, in part because when they enter a room, they hear trumpets. Which seems to prevent them from hearing their patients’ concerns.

This guy was different. First, he had, in his youth, done the Ironman. He said he used to work out two hours a day. So at least he understood the disorder that some of us have about loving to suffer. He spent an hour with me and assured me that I was a low-risk patient. The only concerning factor was that I was immune compromised, my psoriatic arthritis. Factoring that in, they have a matrix that shows your risk factor. The one that caught my eye was that I had an 8% chance of dying during the surgery.

Eight percent? If I was told I’d get $50 million dollars and I can watch Marjorie Taylor Greene get the Salem witch treatment but had an 8 percent chance of dying immediately afterwards, I think I’d pass. But I decided to roll the dice, in part because doing nothing didn’t seem an attractive alternative.

He said it was to be a triple bypass. The irony here is that as part of my quest to outfox my grandparents (and mother who had bypass surgery at my age) I twice suffered through a ride from Evergreen to Avon, Colorado, a distance of 117 miles while climbing 10,500 feet over three mountain passes. It was called the Triple Bypass. Oh, aren’t they so clever—and in my case, prophetic!

March 20 arrived, and I was greeted by a nurse whose job was to shave me. She did—everywhere. How many places were they going to cut, I thought? The only thing she left me was my close-up for a porno movie.

Eventually, I was rolled into the operating room, as I tried to keep the number 8% out of my head. Six and half hours later, I received the greatest gift ever—I awoke, dazed with tubes coming out of my chest, but I survived.

The first three days were encouraging. My chest didn’t hurt that much. Guys I had talked to said that was the worst part. But they never broke their femur or cracked their pelvis in eight places. I’m practiced at pain.

The only wrinkle was a visit from my surgeon on the third post-op day. While he had an expansive look inside my chest, he noticed an irregular lymph node, so he biopsied it. “You’ve got cancer,” he said. “You’ll probably need chemotherapy.” But it looks like I’ll need nothing—literally. “You’ve probably had this small cell lymphoma for years,” the hematologist said, “And it’s so slow growing that you’ll probably never need treatment.”

By the fourth day, my stomach began talking to me. The next day I was doubled over. Of course, the hospital ordered a scan: Voila! I had gallstones and the whole organ was failing, a not uncommon occurrence after heart surgery. Seems the gallbladder, when teetering on the edge before heart surgery goes over it when you mess with the heart. Kate, the first of our three kids to spend a week with me and Karla, walked me through the darkest period of this whole sordid affair. My Romanian general surgeon said she could take it out that night. So about 7 pm, I’m rolled into the pre-op room. By 10 pm I’m the only one there, except for the nurses waiting for gunshot victims.

I’m wheeled into the operating room and put under general anesthesia for the second time in seven days. When I awoke, I asked how it went. “It didn’t,” she said. “You went into a-fib.” She said she consulted with my heart surgeon. “He said it would probably be OK.”

Probably? He’s sitting at home, probably watching The Housewives of New Jersey, while I was probably going to be OK. I was glad she demurred. “I thought it wise to wait until tomorrow when the hospital is filled with plenty of experts I can call on,” she said. She was being cautious and advised, “There’s a reason patients have better outcomes with female surgeons.”

Why the hell are women so much smarter than us?

So the next day, as she put it, she “stabbed me four times,” inserted the robotics, clipped the gallbladder from the liver, crushed it and sucked it out one of my stab wounds. I was home the next day.

But not for long. Hunter, who had taken over from Kate, and I went for a walk, after which I had a pain in my chest. Consulting the impeccable health source, Google, I learned that fleeting chest pains are common after a bypass. But this one didn’t fleet. Six hours later I was in the ER.

They thought the pains were simply the sternum rearranging itself and complaining after it was assaulted, but of course they ran some tests. They still couldn’t tell me the source of the pain but discovered two blood clots in my lungs, again a typical byproduct of a bypass. I was back in the hospital for couple of days until they decided that the embolisms were safely parked in my lungs and weren’t going anywhere. A six-month course of blood thinners should allow them to dissolve.

This marked the second time in recent years I spent my birthday in the hospital. That could be depressing, but I prefer to consider these trips “destination birthdays.”

The last doc doing rounds that morning was a colleague of my surgeon who had come in almost daily to offer a few words of wisdom and encouragement and then disappear. He looked like Dr. Marcus Welby but older. I had earlier asked him if he was a sort of surgeon emeritus. “No,” he said. “if you don’t operate, you’re out of here.” I later learned that this guy who looked to be well into his 70s, had twin 15-year-old daughters at home. So, even if could, he couldn’t afford to be emeritus.

But on this morning, he tried to lift my spirits. “You know,” he said. “You’ve been through a lot, what with three major things happening to you—the bypass, gallbladder and cancer.”

“Four things,” I said, “You forget why I’m here now—the embolisms.”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Any one of those could have killed you!”

I’m not sure if he was trying to bolster me, but all I could think of was “Yeah but there’s still time.”

Later that day, I was home again, this time with my son Zack, his wife Chelsie, and my 7-month-old grandson Orion, who so far seems pretty enamored with life. He smiles a lot. Which was good for me.

Daily walks and naps, along with anything I want to eat (because I lost 14 pounds during my ordeals) have been my routine. I feel like I’m making daily progress. I’m a little less tired each day. My walking pace has picked up. And the fatigue I had for the past couple of years has lessened, replaced by a tiredness that I think relates to my physical trauma, understandably so.

I’ve tried to make peace with my ancestors for treating me this way, though years of ice cream piled in what is known in our house as a “Griendling bowl” may not have helped. Grandpop Andrew Griendling had what I’ve essentially got—arteriosclerosis. He died of it at my age. His wife Anna, nee Corvin, was rolled into the operating room for heart surgery, said, “It’s chilly in here” and promptly died. Grandpop Pasquale Petta died at 66 after two heart attacks a week apart. But his legacy included a full head of black hair, for which I’m vain enough to consider it a fair trade.

Ah but, Grandmom Maria, who lived until I was in my 40s, was the exception. I don’t know what she died from officially, but she lived until 90, all the while resigned to life’s imperfections. The glass was always half full.

Some people think because I’ve had this string of broken bones and brains these last four years and am now recovering from surgery that I’m tough or dogged—or too stupid to know the difference. No, I get strength from those around me, and they all were here this past month. What a gift! And after all, whatever I’ve gone through Karla and the kids have had to, also. But they didn’t have the advantage I did—drugs.

The glass is more than half full and then some.

The story is heart wrenching. A Madeira Beach garbage truck driver hit a bicyclist riding lawfully within the speed limit in a bike lane. Julie Henning was left with “multiple compound fractures, a crushed pelvis, eight broken ribs, a punctured lung and a traumatic brain injury.”

The follow-up Tampa Bay Times story this week is welcomed—and rare. Too often, we hear only the original report of the crash. In this case, that May 23, 2020, story had all the hallmarks of bike meets car collisions. The story said Henning “couldn’t stop before hitting the garbage truck because she was riding downhill,” suggesting it was her fault. It made no mention of the truck driver’s culpability. Perhaps that wasn’t known at the time, but within a few weeks, the official report was available: The driver was cited for failure to yield. Henning had done everything right and yet was left shattered. But there was no follow-up story until Henning sued the city. It was then we learned of the driver’s culpability and that the city was aware of his poor driving habits.

One line in the story illustrates a key problem cyclists face: “The driver, John Leppert, said he never saw her.” How often do we hear that in reports about bike crashes? That simple statement is enough to allow careless, thoughtless motorists a “get out of jail free card.” As long as a motorist is not intoxicated, you can be sure that the police will not arrest and district attorneys will not prosecute. All the driver needs to say is, “I didn’t see her.”

Until we hold accountable drivers who do not pay attention and respect vulnerable road users, including cyclists, pedestrians and scooter riders, etc., there will be many Julie Hennings whose lives are upended, if not ended, by motorists.

Cyclists can help themselves by trying to increase their visibility. It is lawful for bicyclists to take the full lane, even if there is a bike lane available, if staying in the bike lane is dangerous. In the middle of a travel lane cyclists are more visible to motorists behind and in front of them, as well as to those entering the lanes from parking lots and side streets. After all, that’s where motorists look for vehicles. Crouched along the far-right hand side of the lane, especially adjacent to parked cars, hides cyclists from view.

But we need the media to do more follow-up stories because the initial ones are no more than re-writes of law enforcement’s press releases, which usually don’t include any mention of tickets issued. Such stories also often highlight irrelevant issues that suggest the cyclist is at fault. For example, wearing a helmet when hit by a car travelling at 40 mph is not going to save a cyclist, but many stories mention that fact as if to suggest it would have made a difference.

The same day that Julie Henning was hit, an unidentified St. Pete cyclist was killed by a drunk driver. The brief Times story contained this line: “The bicyclist traveled into the path of the car, which hit him,” suggesting the cyclist was at fault for riding into the path of a drunk driver.

We need a true telling of bicycle/motor vehicle crashes. With only the initial reports based on incomplete information, a narrative is created that cyclists are reckless or foolish, when indeed, it’s often the motorist who was, or at least inattentive. Clearly assigning responsibility may change public perception and increase public safety.

Robert Griendling is a past president of the St. Petersburg Bicycle Club and a member of the St. Petersburg Mayor’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee. The views are his own.

This article was published on the NY Times website by a former acting assistant attorney general for national security at the U.S. Department of Justice

In the swirls of disinformation that now pollute our political discourse, one is particularly dangerous: that private militias are constitutionally protected.

Although these vigilante groups often cite the Second Amendment’s “well regulated militia” for their authority, history and Supreme Court precedent make clear that the phrase was not intended to — and does not — authorize private militias outside of government control.

Indeed, these armed groups have no authority to call themselves forth into militia service; the Second Amendment does not protect such activity; and all 50 states prohibit it.

The danger of these groups was brought home on Thursday with the announcement that the F.B.I. had thwarted a plot by people associated with an extremist group in Michigan to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and overthrow the government.

Court documents say that the group discussed trying the governor for treason and murdering “tyrants.” Six men now face federal kidnapping conspiracy charges, but unauthorized militia activity continues in Michigan and elsewhere.

The unnamed militia involved in the kidnapping plot is part of a growing number of private paramilitary groups mobilizing across the country, wholly outside of lawful authority or governmental accountability. These organizations — some of which openly refer to themselves as “militias,” while others reject the term — often train together in the use of firearms and other paramilitary techniques and “deploy,” heavily armed and sometimes in full military gear, when

Sometimes they want to fight against the perceived tyranny of the states, as when they stormed the Capitol in Lansing, Mich., this spring to demand the end of the governor’s pandemic shutdown order, egged on by President Trump’s tweets to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”

Sometimes they want to usurp the functions of law enforcement, as they’ve done in Kenosha, Wis., and elsewhere, purporting to “protect” property during racial justice protests, often in response to false rumors about leftist violence, rumors stoked by the president’s calls to designate “antifa” as a terrorist organization.

Most alarmingly, some of them are planning their own poll-watching and openly training in preparation for the post-election period.

Whatever their stated purpose, their conduct is unlawful and not constitutionally protected. Even before the adoption of the Constitution, the colonies recognized the importance of a “well regulated” militia to defend the state, in preference over standing armies, which they perceived as a threat to liberty. The militia consisted of able-bodied residents between certain ages who had a duty to respond when called forth by the government.

But “well regulated” meant that the militias were trained, armed and controlled by the state. Indeed, 48 states have provisions in their constitutions that explicitly require the militia to be strictly subordinate to the civil authority.

Likewise, state constitutions and laws then and now generally name the governor as the commander in chief of its armed forces — and only the governor or a designee has the power to call forth the able-bodied residents for militia service.

Emerging from the American Revolution, the founders reasonably were wary of insurgencies that could threaten the stability of the new Union. Shays’ Rebellion and other early armed uprisings against the states only solidified those fears. Thus, the “well regulated militia” in the Constitution’s Second Amendment refers to the militia once called forth by the government, not by private vigilante organizations deciding when and under what circumstances to organize and self-deploy.

The federal and state government control of the militia has also been confirmed by the Supreme Court. In 1886, the court upheld the constitutionality of a state criminal law that made it unlawful for “any body of men” outside state or federal governmental authority to “associate themselves together as a military company or organization, or to drill or parade with arms in any city or town of the state.”

This criminal statute and others were enacted after the Civil War and are on the books of 29 states. The Supreme Court said without question that states had authority to control and regulate military bodies and associations as “necessary to the public peace, safety and good order.”

The court’s 1886 decision was reaffirmed in 2008 in Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller.That case established that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms for self-defense, but “does not prevent the prohibition of private paramilitary organizations.” Although there are many gray areas about Second Amendment rights, this is not one of them.

Which brings us back to the authority of the states. In addition to state constitutional and statutory schemes by which only the governor may activate “able-bodied” residents for militia service, other laws also forbid paramilitary activity and the usurpation of law enforcement and peacekeeping authority.

Twenty-five states prohibit teaching, demonstrating or practicing in the use of firearms or “techniques” capable of causing injury or death for use during a civil disorder. Eighteen states prohibit either the false assumption of the duties of public officials, including law-enforcement officials, or the wearing of uniforms similar to military uniforms.

All these laws point to a single conclusion: There is no right in any state for groups of individuals to arm themselves and organize either to oppose or augment the government.

Now, more than ever, state and local officials must enforce these statutes. In battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as other hotbeds of militia activity like Oregon, Idaho, Virginia and Texas, they must ready themselves for unlawful private militias showing up at the polls and on the streets during ballot counting and beyond.

Those groups, like the Three Percenters, Oath Keepers and others that claim to be “patriots” but answer to their own interpretation of the Constitution, are likely to hear the president’s unsupported claims about election fraud as their license to deploy to the polls to “protect” or “patrol” the vote.

Their armed presence not only would violate state anti-paramilitary laws, it would likely violate laws against voter intimidation as well. State attorneys general, secretaries of state, local prosecutors, law enforcement officers and election workers must know about these laws and be prepared to enforce them. They should announce this in advance and consider taking pre-emptive action through attorney general legal opinions, cease and desist orders, and prosecutions or civil litigation.

These efforts must continue after the election, when the threat of civil unrest could be at its greatest. State and local leaders, in both parties, must denounce armed militia activity, whether from the right or the left.

These leaders may also have to take swift action to protect public safety and preserve constitutional rights. But the law is on their side — private armed militias find no support in the U.S. or state constitutions or in American history. They must not be tolerated in our society.

Mary B. McCord, legal director for Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection and a visiting professor, was the acting assistant attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice from 2016 to 2017.

Reviewing Tampa Bay Times stories about crashes involving bicycles from approximately June 2019-2020 reveals a common litany of problems:

1. The use of phrases and language that implies cyclists’ culpability in most crashes, even though nationwide, studies have shown that most car/bike crashes are the fault of motorists
2. Relying solely on police reports and press releases and law enforcement statements that cannot be verified or are themselves often biased or unknowable at the time of the initial investigation.
3. De-personalizing crashes by indicating that a vehicle hit the vulnerable road user instead of the driver of that vehicle
4. And often, there is no follow-up, so your readers are left with the initial impressions—and biases—of the investigating officer, even if the final investigative reports contradict initial reports.

Example of reporting “facts” with no source:

1.https://www.tampabay.com/news/pinellas/2020/05/23/bicyclist-dies-after-being-struck-by-drunken-driver-in-pinellas-county-troopers-say/?fbclid=IwAR0XxXSh2V16UWC-dWNQ4Ft64oQhwFqNwJE1xPoXVIfg4hrQE2OcpjFonO8

In a recent report, a drunk driver allegedly hit and killed a cyclist. Romy Ellenbogen reports, “The bicyclist traveled into the path of the car, which hit him.” No source is cited. Even if the investigating officer made the statement, he has no way of knowing this. And the motorist was drunk. Saying the cyclist “traveled into the path” suggests culpability, as if he left his line of travel and swerved in front of the drunk driver. This phrase reoccurs in your bike crash stories. But in this case, there is no attribution of that statement of fact.

Examples of reporting with charged language from law enforcement without questioning how they would know what they said or questioning why it is relevant:

2.https://www.tampabay.com/news/pinellas/2020/05/23/bicyclist-in-madeira-beach-critically-injured-after-collision-with-garbage-truck/

In May 2020, Josh Fiallo reported on a collision between a garbage truck and a cyclist on Gulf Blvd., with this language that reflected a press release from the Pinellas Co. Sheriff’s Dept. PIO: “Julie Henning, of Alexandria, Virginia, couldn’t stop her bike in time from hitting the City of Madeira Beach garbage truck because she was riding downhill, witnesses told deputies.” The fact that the cyclist “couldn’t stop her bike in time” implies she was at least partially culpable, perhaps going too fast downhill. (Speed limit is 35 mph, which I can almost guarantee that the cyclist could not have reached that speed descending that bridge.) The PIO release is unclear in what direction the truck was traveling. But in whatever direction the truck was traveling, the cyclist had the right of way. If the victim had been a motorist, I doubt that TBT would have reported the car “couldn’t stop in time.”

And the lede? “A 44-year-old bicyclist is in critical condition after a garbage truck entered a bike lane on Saturday morning and she struck its passenger side, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office said in a release.” That the cyclist struck the vehicle again implies she did something she could have avoided. Maybe the truck cut her off.

3.https://www.tampabay.com/news/breaking-news/2020/02/12/cyclist-killed-after-being-hit-by-truck-on-state-road-60/

Gabrielle Calise reported, “Brian M. Bentz, 57, was heading south on a bicycle in the intersection and entered the path of the truck, troopers said.” The phrase “entered the path of the truck,” language similar to #1, is not knowable, even if the trooper said it. Moreover, it implies the cyclist did something wrong. This happened at an intersection, if the cyclist had the right of way, he may have entered the “path of the truck,” but the motorist may have been at fault for running the red light. Could this have been written, “Vincent A. Givens, 36, driving a 2018 Ford truck east on State Road 60 at St. Cloud Avenue, collided with Brian M. Bentz, 57, who was heading south on a bicycle in the intersection. A state trooper investigating the crash did not indicate who had the right of way”?

I found no follow-up story.

4. https://www.tampabay.com/news/hillsborough/2020/01/06/teen-bicyclist-killed-after-being-struck-by-suv-in-brandon/

Frank Pastor reported that, “A red 2000 Ford Explorer was headed north on N Parsons Avenue when deputies said the teen rode into the SUV’s path. The driver saw the bicyclist right before impact but did not have enough time to avoid a collision, according to the Sheriff’s Office.” Again, we have no information on who had the right of way or whether the cyclist was in a lane and was hit from behind by the motorist. Obviously, the motorist did not have time to stop, but why? Was the motorist speeding? And the fact that it was a 2000 Ford Explorer adds nothing to the story. Couldn’t it have been written that “A motorist struck and killed Terry Martin, 16, who was riding his bicycle on N Parsons Avenue, just south of Clemons Road. No determination of fault was made by the investigating officer”?

I found no follow-up story.

5. https://www.tampabay.com/news/pinellas/2019/12/05/pinellas-bicyclist-82-dies-after-being-hit-by-dump-truck/

Chris Tisch reports, “[The cyclist] got to Seminole Boulevard, where he rode into the path of a dump truck driven by Iran D. Manrique-Herna, 54, of Tampa.” Did the cyclist have plenty of time to enter Seminole Blvd. but the truck driver did not see him?

I found no follow-up story.

6. https://www.tampabay.com/news/pasco/2020/03/10/14-year-old-bicyclist-killed-in-crash-in-pasco-county/

Chris Tisch reports, “Jayden Relyea of New Port Richey was pedaling a bicycle east on Slidell Road about 7:25 a.m. when the crash occurred. The teen went through the intersection with Moon Lake Road and was hit by a northbound Jeep Wrangler driven by Ann M. Feeney, 61, of New Port Richey, troopers said.” Again, saying the cyclist “went through the intersection” implies he was at fault. Who had the right of way? A statement that it was not reported who had the right of way and that no fault was assigned would be helpful.

I found no follow-up story.

7. https://www.tampabay.com/news/pasco/2019/12/27/woman-biking-with-dog-is-struck-and-killed-on-us-19-in-hudson/

Brandon Meyer reports, “A Homosassa woman riding a bicycle died early Friday after she was hit while crossing the path of a pickup truck on U.S. 19 at New York Avenue, the Florida Highway Patrol said…. Clendennen had a green light and Casson failed to obey a pedestrian control signal or use the marked crosswalk, the Highway Patrol said.”

Given that the victim is dead, how does the officer know the motorist had a green light?

And then there is the infamous phrase used in too many bike crash stories, “Casson was not wearing a helmet.”

I found no follow-up story.

8.https://www.tampabay.com/news/st-petersburg/2019/09/20/driver-strikes-kills-woman-as-shes-riding-her-bike-in-st-pete-crosswalk/

Reporting a crash where a driver hit and killed a cyclist in a marked crosswalk, Caitlin Johnston writes, “Only one of the 10 bicyclists who died was using a bike lane. That collision involved a drunk driver, [Transportation Director Evan] Mory said.”

What is the purpose and relevance of that statement? Without context, it suggests that bicyclists were in the wrong in nine of those crashes because they were not in the bike lanes. Bicyclists have all rights to ride in the travel lane, if there is no bike lane. And even if there is, they needn’t use it if it unsafe to do so.

Yet, here are a couple of examples where TBT reporters duly repeat unverified exculpatory information about motorists:

9.https://www.tampabay.com/news/pinellas/2019/12/17/teen-on-bicycle-seriously-injured-in-dunedin-crash/

Brandon Meyer reports, “The driver of the Jeep didn’t stop, though Pinellas sheriff’s investigators said witnesses told them that the driver may not have realized they had hit someone.” How would witnesses come to that conclusion? What facts could that observation be based on? And it is then repeated a couple of paragraphs later: “Witnesses told police that a black Jeep Wrangler with a dark-colored soft-top did not maneuver out of the teen’s path, and added that the driver may not have realized they were involved in a crash.”

It’s also puzzling why this was reported: “The teen was not in a crosswalk at the time of the crash, police said.” Why is this relevant? A cyclist isn’t required to be in a crosswalk.

And again, the victim is to be blamed because, “The teen, who wasn’t wearing a helmet, was taken by helicopter…”

10.https://www.tampabay.com/news/hillsborough/2019/11/13/driver-arrested-in-hit-and-run-crash-that-killed-bicyclist-in-tampa/

In an otherwise excellent story, Tony Marrero writes, “’It’s likely that Baker didn’t see Weinert,’ [Highway Patrol Sgt.] Gaskins said. “But if Baker had stopped, checked and called for help, he wouldn’t be facing a felony charge that could land him in prison for up to 30 years,’ Gaskins said.” Why do we allow Gaskins to speculate with exculpatory information? How would he know that the driver didn’t see the victim? Again, it’s blaming the victim for putting himself in a position of not being seen.

Not to mention that Gaskins highlights that merely hitting and killing a cyclist is not a big deal as he wouldn’t be in much trouble. That is an issue TBT should explore. Under Florida law, a driver can hit and kill a cyclist and pretty much walk free, unless he was drunk, left the scene, or it can be proven he was driving recklessly. Not carelessly, however. Even if distracted by her cell phone, a driver will only get a ticket and fine. In fact, a driver can simply say, “I didn’t see the cyclist,” and be relieved of any criminal responsibility.

Example of gratuitous victim blaming:

11.https://www.tampabay.com/news/transportation/2019/09/28/bicyclists-stage-rolling-memorial-past-scene-of-recent-st-pete-fatality/

In a story about a memorial ride for a cyclist killed on MLK by a driver who was distracted by his cell phone, Dennis Joyce writes, “Participants were encouraged to wear helmets and white clothing, use bike lanes, stop at lights, and keep a slow pace.” Which all seems to be intended to remind readers that cyclists don’t wear helmets, or use bike lanes, or stop at stop lights and speed. If this were a procession of motorists honoring a victim of a car crash, would you write that? And it’s in the passive voice. Who “encouraged” them?

TBT can do better—and have. Here are well-reported examples of TBT putting bike crashes into context:

12.https://www.tampabay.com/news/breaking-news/2020/04/04/traffic-death-on-bayshore-boulevard/

Obviously, reporter Marlene Sokol interviewed witnesses and avoided any charged language that implied the pedestrian was at fault.

13.https://www.tampabay.com/news/breaking-news/2020/01/09/pedestrian-seriously-injured-in-bayshore-boulevard-crash-in-tampa/

Christopher O’Donnell obviously did not rely on a law enforcement press release and filed a good report that did not try to assign blame to the victim.

14.https://www.tampabay.com/news/tampa/2020/01/10/driver-in-deadly-bayshore-crash-had-just-drank-whiskey-tampa-police-say/

O’Donnell and three other reporters followed up with additional information the next day.

15.https://www.tampabay.com/news/tampa/2020/01/21/is-tampas-bayshore-boulevard-really-that-dangerous/

This follow-up by Charlie Frago is welcomed, as it is one of the few stories of such crashes that follow up on the original reporting and provide a larger perspective.

16.https://www.tampabay.com/news/tampa/2020/05/05/widow-sues-pinch-a-penny-over-death-of-bayshore-jogger-hit-by-pickup-truck/

More follow-up by Anastasia Dawson.

I will note that the crash on Bayshore Blvd. in Tampa (all covered in stories #13-16) was of a victim with what researchers call “high social capital,” i.e., a white, upper middle-class man. Research shows such victims are often covered more sympathetically than, for example, lower socio-economic black men.

I would encourage TBT editors to take a few steps:

1. Always ask law enforcement agencies if fault was assigned, and if not, to prominently report that.
2. To take a more holistic approach to reporting such crashes by not focusing solely on what the cyclist or pedestrian may have done, as it perpetuates the notion that motorists have priority on our streets and that walkers and bike riders are interlopers.
3. Personalize stories to include names of victims and motorists and have them take action, instead of referring to the vehicles as taking actions.
4. Follow-up fatal and serious injury crashes when the final traffic report is issued.
5. Question law enforcement when they seem to make judgement calls or speculate on what might have happened, especially when they use the phrase that the vulnerable road user “entered the path” of a motorist.

You can download a research paper by Bike/Walk Tampa Bay regarding the reporting of bike crashes in the area over the past 10 years.

There is evidence that lately bicycling is increasing greatly, and I fear more lives will be ended or forever altered. We should report their stories in a way that respects their right to be on the road and does not assume that they must be at fault when crashes occur.

I’ve not written in this blog, which was started in 2003, since late 2018. When I next tried to post I got a message:
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 2348617 bytes) in /home4/xxx/public_html/wp-includes/plugin.php on line xxx

Got it? I didn’t. Googled it and found that I needed to increase memory size using FTP. FT what? Played around but was intimidated and never could find a fix. Well, I found a fix but lack the courage to try it. Basically, I was paralyzed by techno gobbly-gook.

Then my brother comes to visit this week. He walked me through it and within minutes I was back online.

A lost year…to fear. But I’m back.

As this research attests, bicyclists make better motorists than non-cyclists. That doesn’t surprise me. A lack of attention going at 15 mph can result in serious injury or death, so cyclists are at least more observant.

Attention is mandatory in Italy, from which I just returned, and there was a difference between drivers in the north and those in the south.

In Milan there seems to be a widely understood pecking order. Pedestrians are at the top. If motorists see you on the curb waiting to cross, they will stop. That differs from American drivers who seem to claim the right of way if you are not in the crosswalk; if they think they have a good chance of beating you to the open space, they will not yield. But what’s more astounding is that Italian motorists don’t seem upset about it. I saw no road rage in Milan.

Cyclists are next. Again, motorists yield to them patiently, though I could appreciate it if they were perturbed. While only one of all the cyclists I saw on the street ran a stop light, they read their cell phones while riding in the middle of downtown traffic. This was true of all manner and ages of bike riders. Rather than take the middle of the lane, they tend to ride closer to the curb than I’d feel comfortable doing. But again, motorists seem tolerant and don’t pass unless it’s safe to do so.

Next in the pecking order are motor scooter drivers. They are insane, weaving in and out of traffic, often commandeering the lane going in the opposite direction. But again, I never saw a motorist get upset.

But I learned from a tour guide in Naples that scooter drivers pay dearly for the privilege. Insurance rates are high and about the same as they are for cars, according to the guide. And she confirmed what we witnessed: The rules are different in the southern part of Italy.

In Naples, pedestrians cross a street at their peril. Scooters are even more aggressive than in Milan. But again, motorists seem unfazed by them. I asked a taxi driver about it and he shrugged it off, saying they’re crazy but he seemed to carry no ill will.

This is just one guy’s reading of the traffic culture there. I couldn’t readily find statistics on accidents involving cyclists or pedestrians in those two cities.

Why are so many American motorists intolerant of cyclists and walkers? I don’t know the answer, but I have one theory. Americans take “individual liberty” to mean they are always first in the pecking order. Others be damned. We have lost the idea that we’re all in this together. And the idea that we should yield to anyone for any reason has been pretty much tossed in the trash bin.

I had plenty of time to anticipate this day. The Italy trip with my brother Paul and wife Karla included first a few days in Milan, a week in the Lake Como region, and then a few days in Le Cinque Terra.

And then there was the seven-hour drive on October 2, 2018. We followed along the Adriatic coast and then turned inland toward the Molise region. Our destination was the village of Castelmauro. We began to climb, more than I expected. And the roads in the final 10 kilometers were rough, including a couple of washed out sections. They were barely wide enough for two cars, but it didn’t matter as we had them to ourselves.

At 6 p.m. we entered the 2300 ft. high town and immediately were taken with its medieval charm. I still have not found much history of Castelmauro, but I know it dates to the 11^th century. As recently as the 1970s, its population was more than 6,000. Today, barely 1,000 people live there. But I wasn’t looking for its attractions or its history. I was searching for my own history.

A minute or two into the town, I saw a young woman walking who looked like Federica Mancini, the woman we had hired as our interpreter. “Federica? I asked. She was a bit startled, then said, “No. But I call her. She is my cousin.”

I had done as much online homework as I could. I had also sent about 30 letters to various Italians named Petta or Petti in the region, as there was always a mystery as to my grandparents’ surnames. They were similar but changed according to the census taker or forms they filed throughout their lives. Petta, Petti, Pitto, Pitti. (My grandparents Anglicized the name to Patti in the 1930s.)

I didn’t receive any response to my letters to the six Castelmauro Pettas, so with the help of an Italian speaking wine distributor in St. Pete named Andy Mezzari, I began calling them. At the home of Leonardo Petta, his daughter Rosaria answered. She had read the letter and was pretty sure we weren’t related. But she offered to help me find my family. Shortly before our trip, she sent me the birth records from the village archives for my grandparents Pasquale and Maria. They were both named Petta, answering the mystery.  (They were cousins, according to family rumors.) Rosaria also led us to Federica.

That evening we checked into our hotel, the Parc delle Stelle, a modern place a kilometer outside of town on a hill. It seemed out of place in this ancient town, but I learned the owners, with the land already in the family and experience running a trattoria, decided to open the hotel more as a wedding center than a hotel for the few Castelmauro tourists. We were the only guests, and the owner spoke English. I had also sent her an email asking if anyone on her staff might be a Petta. It turned out that, unless there is an event, they are the innkeepers, cooks, maids, etc. But she said I might be related to the Petta who runs the local gas station.

The next morning we met Federica and went to the municipio and met Giuseppi Petroniro (We may be related–my great grandmother was a Petroniro) who the mayor had assigned to help us find our relatives. He showed us not only our grandparents’ records, but the birth record for my grandmother’s father, Luigi Petta. He also identified another of Pasquale’s siblings I did not know about, Vincenzo. That would turn out to be a key piece of information.

Federica was a godsend. Not only was her English good, but she seemed to know everyone in town and had their contact info. on her phone. After a walking tour that included the streets where my grandparents were born, we visited Antonietta Petta who was in her 80s but not related to us. Still, as Federica told her of our quest for our roots, she began to cry. Family is important to her. I wish she were part of mine.

(I learned on this trip that Italian women do not take the name of their husbands, though the children of the marriage, of course, do.)

We then went to the nearby village of Acquaviva Collecroce where my grandmother’s mother was born. Both Italian and an old Croat language are spoken there. When the Turks invaded Croatia, many fled across the Adriatic Sea and settled in Acquaviva. My grandmother once told me she spoke a little “Slavic,” obviously learning it from her mother, Aurora Mattiaccio. Federica knew someone in the town who had lived as a boy in Australia, a country with its own history of Italian immigrants. Rino spoke all three languages, was a history buff and loved researching families. He took us to the town office where a man working on what seemed to be a computer as old as the town found records for Aurora. Those records provided leads that Rino followed to trace that side of the family back another three generations!

It was now time to visit Maria Felicia at her gas station. We arrived at about 2:00 and still hadn’t had lunch. At the station café we had some pizza and beers, over which we explored the connection. She said her grandfather was Vincent, the brother I never knew my grandfather had until that morning. But she wasn’t sure we were related because she didn’t know any of Vincent’s siblings. Her daughter then said, “Let’s call Raffaele,” Maria Felicia’s 89-year old uncle living in Germany.

He said Maria Felicia and I couldn’t be related because Vincenzo only had three siblings, none of whom were Pasquale. But I pushed back, confident in the records I found and explained why Raffaele, born in 1929, might not know Pasquale and all eight of his brothers and sisters. The first two girls, born in the 1880s, died as infants, and Antonio and my grandfather left for America long before Raffaele was born. And not only did I find online records for my grandfather’s family, Rino pointed me to a website where I could find images of the actual handwritten birth records.

Federica translated the histories we told one another, I with my English and Mary Felicia and her daughters Serena and Monica with their Italian, wonderfully accented with all manner of hand waving. I think if Monica accidentally hit someone while talking, she’d exact serious damage. Serena then left to get Maria, one of Maria Felicia’s cousins. She joined the animated conversation and charades. They were still unsure, given Raffaele’s recollection, but I would have none it. “We’re related,” I said. “I want us to be.” So did they.

We took pictures and I promised to send more information and pictures of the Pettas in America, though none of my relatives use the name. For some reason, some changed the name to Petti and, as I said, my mother’s family became Patti. I’ll also send digital images of the records that have been on a shelf for a century and a half just off the town square.

We had a little time left to visit Rosaria and her parents. They graciously offered us food before our drive to Naples, and we told them of what we learned. Again, more pictures. More cheek kisses. More smiles.

But not enough. I’m ready to go home again.