South Salt Lake City Police Warn of Pedestrian Versus Automobile Accidents
On Wednesday afternoon South Salt Lake Police conducted a sting to catch car drivers who don’t stop for pedestrians. An undercover police officer would walk in a crosswalk while other police officers watched nearby. KSL News reported that most of the motorists stopped but not all of them. A total of 16 drivers failed to stop, 15 of them receiving tickets.
Police said the reason for the sting was to raise awareness about crosswalk safety, and for good reason. On average, automobiles kill 40 pedestrians a year in Utah and injure another 1,080. We recently reported that a 65-year-old woman, Patricia Dawn Jordan, of Oxford, Maryland, died after she was hit by a vehicle while walking in a crosswalk at Salt Lake City International Airport. KSL News reported that Jordan was walking in a 10 mph zone, but it appears the driver was going much faster than the posted speed limit and clearly wasn’t paying attention.
According to the Department of Health, studies have shown that if a car strikes a person at 40 mph, there is an 80 percent chance that individual will die. At 30 mph the individual has a 50 percent chance of survival, and if the car is traveling 20 mph the chance of survival increases to 95 percent. For more information on pedestrian awareness in Utah visit the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
