Cycling, traffic safety, traffic justice, and legal topics; energy, transit and transportion economics
Law enforcement officers face significant risk of injury and death from traffic incidents; it’s a serious occupational hazard; The leading cause of death for police are … traffic collisions — not shootings or other attacks, and very few of the collisions involve high-speed chases. Just run-of-the-mill crashes where inattentive or otherwise impaired drivers crash into them. Continue reading “DPS: Driver who killed officer was texting and driving”
9/23/2018 9:30am pedestrian 48 y.o. male Dana Machado was killed when a driver drove onto the sidewalk where the victim was walking his dog. Police arrested driver Richard Cruz on susp of DUI and are awaiting tox results.
Continue reading “Driver jumps curb, kills Mesa man on sidewalk”
[update: confirming 2018-06-25 was not listed in FARS. What’s odd is it’s not listed in ASDM either?]
ped fatality in apt complex; victim 3 yo girl. Occurred in the parking lot of apartment complex near University Drive and Rural Road around 2 p.m. June 25, 2018
It’s been widely noted that AZ has a growing and worsening ped traffic fatality “problem”; fortunately this one doesn’t count (yes, this is sarcasm, but nevertheless true)… because it happened in a private lot, it’s non-traffic and as such doesn’t count as a traffic fatality; DUI or otherwise. (similar to e.g. little Daylin Garcia Enos who was killed in a Tucson apt complex parking lot by a backing UPS truck)
6/24/2018 around 4pm Baseline near 7th st, Phoenix.
From the probable cause statement:
The defendant was operating a motor vehicle in the area of 700 E Baseline road where he was traveling eastbound in the westbound lanes of Baseline Road. The def proceeded eastbound through the intersection of 7th street in the westbound curb lane of Baseline Road where he drove up onto the sidewalk along the north side of baseline road and struck the victim WHO WAS WALKING ON THE SIDEWALK…
[below is for historical purposes; please visit the main consolidated page at uber-involved-pedestrian-fatality. The driver was finally charged in Sept 2020]
Tempe Police’s report on the March 2018 Uber-involved pedestrian fatality has been released, 318 pages(!) it was reported on 6/22/2018 from various news organizations. It would be good if all serious and fatal traffic crashes were investigated so thoroughly. Continue reading “Report: Uber driver streaming Hulu prior to deadly self-driving crash in Tempe”
Sun April 29, 2018 ~ 10:30pm. Van Buren, near 27th Avenue, Phoenix. Fatal hit-and-run victim Isela Ortega.
Horrific witness video shows a hit-and-run driver carrying the body of victim on top of car for several blocks. and then driving away after it fell off. The victim’s family is hoping someone can identify the driver, and/or encourages the driver to come forward. 12news.com Continue reading “Driver carries body several blocks before fleeing”
Preface: This crash has nothing to do with bicycling other than the pedestrian was pushing a bicycle at the time. Because of the notoriety, the incident has its own wiki article.
3/18/2018 night-time (10pm?) mid-block pedestrian fatality might not even be reported in the news; but this being the first reported AV (Autonomous Vehicle) traffic fatality (in the world?!), it’s huge news. Continue reading “Uber involved pedestrian fatality”
3/12/2018 ~11:30am near Baseline and Priest, Tempe; 52 yo Penny L. Brown was killed by a driver who for unstated reasons lost control in a Circle K parking lot and wiped her out on the sidewalk near a bus stop…
According to police, as officers arrived at the scene, they learned that a male driver had lost control of his vehicle and struck Brown, who was standing near the bus stop on the south side of Baseline. abc15
Continue reading “woman killed at Tempe bus stop by out-of-control driver”
2/28/2018 ~3PM
Man dies after being hit by SUV outside Scottsdale Safeway
“The victim has been identified as 81-year-old Michael Ebertin… Police said a 70-year-old woman was behind the wheel of an SUV with another woman when she, for some reason, drove up on the sidewalk to the front of the store and hit the two men.
She stopped just short of the store.”
Holy sh!t, another one, I mean another jogger in Ahwatukee killed by a dangerous out-of-control driver… this is a small place. Freak “accident”? Two freak “accidents”?;
11/2/2017 ~ 4AM . Pedestrian / jogger killed on sidewalk near Lakewood Parkway and Amberwood Drive this is a collector road in a residential neighborhood. Police suspect driver was impaired, she was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter. Witnesses reported that the driver of the vehicle, 25-year-old Shannon Scott, was driving on the sidewalk when Hilts was struck”
Continue reading “Another Ahwatukee jogger killed on sidewalk: driver arrested”
Tim Steller’s excellent (dare I say, stellar?) piece in the Daily Star: Enforcement drops, crashes proliferate, pedestrians die exposes the inexplicable sharp decline in traffic enforcement in the City of Tuscon by the Tuscon PD. Continue reading “Enforcement drops, crashes proliferate, people die”
Driver charged with endangerment and 2nd degree murder and in last week’s killing of Peter Rankin who was on the sidewalk. Medical reports say the driver had a BAC of 0.235, almost triple the legal limit (anything over .20 would be “super-extreme” DUI).
more here: pd-driver-hit-suv-killed-bicyclist-in-glendale-before-hitting-police-car
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Continue reading “Navajo Nation police officer charged with murder in deadly Glendale crash”
Note to self to follow up to see how this gets coded in asdm and fars. Conceptually, a pedestrian was killed in a rear-end collision, a collision a driver should have been easily able to avoid if the struck vehicle had lights/flashers (it was at night). Was the disabled vehicle displaying emergency lights, or otherwise lit?
Phoenix file number?
Who is most at fault? For comparison, who is most at fault in the rear-end collision pictured here, the pickup driver or the school bus driver — the Pickup driver rammed a stopped school bus?
Continue reading “Woman, 19, pushing disabled car struck, killed in Phoenix”
[Update Nov 2017: moving ahead in Chandler Muni on misdy charges, see below]
[Update as of Oct 21, 2017; no charges, no nothing; nothing on caselookup??]
[Update May 2018; penalties for 28-672/5/6 were strengthened in response to this incident]
[FINAL Update May 2019; driver sentenced, see below]
Nov 2016: A driver was arrested after a collision at crosswalk left one woman dead and two small children seriously injured. The intersection has a signal; police, based on some witnesses, believe the driver ran a red light when he struck the people in the crosswalk crossing Ray Road at College Dr (also known as Ponderosa Dr) in Chandler, AZ. (it may be very near the boundary of Tempe). Continue reading “Chandler police: Woman killed, children hurt in crosswalk”
Chandler residents Cruz and Annamarie Contreras were among the 4 pedestrians killed (plus more injured) in a park when a pickup driver lost control and crashed in San Diego / Coronado.
The driver was also injured and arrested for DUI causing death/injury. Continue reading “Driver kills 4, injures 9 in horrific crash”