The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
‘A spike this year’
New Haven, state see spike in pedestrian deaths
BRANFORD >> Jamie Dural has been overly cautious on the road since Dec. 3, especially at night. She said she acts with extreme caution when she’s crossing the street with her two kids, terrified that a car will come out of nowhere and hit her or her children.
That is what happened to Dural’s mother, Lynn Travisano, 59, who was killed in a hit-and-run crash on Dec. 3, as Travisano was walking home from a convenience store on Foxon Road in East Haven.
“There’s got to be some way to make it safer for these people to walk across the street,” said Dural, a Branford resident. “I don’t know if people are going too fast or just not paying attention.”
Travisano was one of the more than 50 people who were reportedly killed last year as a result of a pedestrian-involved motor vehicle crash, according to the University of Connecticut’s Crash Data Repository. There were 1,402 pedestrian-involved motor vehicle crashes reported to the research center from local police departments last year.
“I rarely heard about pedestrians being killed before my mom died,” Dural said. “Now, I hear about it all the time.”
With the number of deaths totalling more than 50 in 2016, the state reached the highest number of pedestrian fatalities related to motor vehicle accidents since 1995, said Eric Jackson, director of the Connecticut Transportation Safety Research Center, which runs the crash data repository at UConn. Data is still being compiled and updated, Jackson said, but a search on the repository this week revealed that there were 54 pedestrian fatalities from motor vehicle crashes already reported for last year.
The number of fatalities, however, may be greater than reflected in the repository data because when a pedestrian is taken from the scene of an accident and later succumbs to their injuries, police departments may not always be made aware, said Lt. Stacey Sacharko of the Wallingford Police Department. While follow-ups are always completed by officers, there is room for error in statistical analysis, Sacharko said
The state crash data repository collects data from local and state departments with the goal of providing a summary of statistics to be viewed by police departments and interested parties, Jack
son said.
When the Register requested numbers from individual police departments, the number of pedestrian-involved crashes sometimes varied from the repository’s data, due to a difference in classification of what constitutes a pedestrian being involved in a crash — such as when bus passengers are included — and ways of record keeping, according to Jackson. In addition, crashes that occur on private property are not always reported and all records from 2016 may not yet be submitted, Jackson said.
But, while the data may not all be uniform, Jackson said there is no denying that 2016 was a very staggering year for pedestrian fatalities as a result of motor vehicle crashes.
Nationally, the numbers are high as well, based on information from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. While 2016 data is not yet available, the agency reported that in 2015 there were 5,376 pedestrian deaths nationwide as a result of motor vehicle crashes — the highest number of deaths since 1996.
‘Tragedies any way you look at it’
Moments before Travisano was struck and killed by the Chevrolet Silverado, she was shopping at the Citgo Gas Station on Foxon Road, where she frequently purchased lotto tickets and snacks, Dural said. She lived just around the corner on Michael Street.
Travisano was found in the eastbound lane of Foxon Road, close to the double yellow traffic line. She died less than 30 minutes later after being taken to Yale New Haven Hospital, according to the police reports.
Edward Santomassimo III, 33, of East Haven, was arrested days later and charged with evading responsibility resulting in death and interfering with a police officer, in relation to Travisano’s death. Jeanna Suraci, 34, of East Haven, a passenger in the 2013 Chevrolet Silverado that allegedly hit and killed Travisano, is charged with interfering with a police officer and hindering prosecution. They are both set to appear in court again Feb. 8.
A third passenger who was in the car at the time of the accident has not been charged.
According to the ninepage affidavit, as Santomassimo, Suraci and the third passenger were traveling on Route 80, they allegedly heard a loud “thud” when Travisano was struck. But Santomassimo refused to stop.
Now, more than a month after her mother’s death, Dural said she wishes the driver had stopped after the collision.
“The way he went about it made it tougher to process everything,” she said. “My heart would’ve gone out to the person for having to live with such an awful thing. … (Now) I definitely want justice.”
While there are circumstances such as Travisano’s case where individuals face criminal charges for motor vehicle accidents involving pedestrians, Officer David Hartman, spokesman for the New Haven Police Department, said charges are not usually filed after these crashes.
Rather, the vast majority of pedestrian-involved crashes are not intentional and are the result of accidental circumstances, Hartman said. A motorist can be charged if it is proven the driver was being negligent in addition to violating a traffic law, but, Hartman said that is difficult to prove and not always the case.
“These are difficult issues to deal with for policing,” Hartman said. “These are much more involved than the public realizes.”
It is due to a lack of intent that Hartman said makes him wary of calling a high number of pedestrian-related incidents a result of a trend. Instead, he said, annual crash data may point to more dangerous roads or intersections, but that often correlates to streets that are more heavily-traveled.
For example, Whalley Avenue and Goffe Street in New Haven run parallel, but because there are more cars regularly traveling on Whalley, the department expects to see more crashes occurring on that road, he said.
“There’s no such thing as a trend in pedestrian crashes,” he said.
Of the reported 215 crashes involving pedestrians in New Haven in 2016, there were two fatalities, according to Donna Rockhill, records supervisor for the New Haven Police Department. Based on the records Rockhill provided, motor vehicle crashes involving pedestrians occurred most often on Whalley Avenue and Foxon Boulevard in 2016.
“These are tragedies any way you look at it,” Hartman said.
To help increase safety, state legislators passed a law in May 2014 that allows drivers to be fined up to $1,000 if they “fail to exercise reasonable care and causes the serious physical injury or death” of a pedestrian, cyclist or other vulnerable user.
Earlier this month, a Waterbury woman died at the intersection of South Frontage Road and York Street after being struck by a vehicle while she was on the sidewalk. Police are still investigating the crash. January’s accident was more than eight years after a medical student died after being struck by a car while crossing the same intersection, which Hartman said is the last time there was a fatality at that intersection in the city.
To prevent future tragedies at the South Frontage Road and York Street intersection, the New Haven Board of Alders has discussed the need to implement new safety measures. City leaders have suggested adding barriers at the crossing to help protect pedestrians, and are considering restructuring the intersection — but that is unlikely due to its cost.
“It is with statistics like this in mind — and the potential for tragedy — that pedestrian-friendly efforts in New Haven are routinely accompanied by robust traffic-calming measures,” said Laurence Grotheer, spokesman for City Hall.
‘Clearly a spike’
New Haven is not the only state municipality that has seen a number of pedestrian-involved motor vehicle crashes in 2016. UConn’s crash data repository shows there were 11 pedestrian-involved motor vehicle crashes in Middletown last year.
On March 31, Barbara “Bobbi” Eddinger, owner of Buds & Blossoms greenhouses and co-owner of Stone Post Gardens was killed in an accident while placing a letter in her mailbox at her Middletown home. Police say the suspect’s vehicle crossed the center line, struck her and fled the scene.
Eddinger left behind her husband, Richard Eddinger, five sons and 15 grandchildren.
To prevent becoming a part of the growing number of pedestrian-involved motor vehicle crashes, Middletown Police Department spokeswoman Lt. Heather Desmond said pedestrians should always be aware of their surroundings and limit any sources of distraction.
While not much analysis has been done on the data collected at the state repository so far, Jackson offers another theory as to why pedestrian-related accidents increased last year: Warm weather.
“We didn’t have a lot of snow, so you have a lot of more people out there walking,” Jackson said. “There’s a lot of people during the winter time that are out, walking around while cars are driving faster.”
“It is kind of counter-intuitive that the less snow you have the more fatalities you have,” he added. “With snow comes people traveling less and people traveling at slower speeds.”
Nearly 20 percent of the pedestrian-involved accidents in 2016 occurred during the months of January and February, based on the UConn data. Data shows that 83 percent of last year’s pedestrian-involved accidents occurred during clear weather, and 62 percent happened throughout the daytime hours.
The numbers from 2016 have alarmed officials at the state Department of Transportation. Tom Maziarz, chief of planning, said the department will continue with its work to make roadways safer for pedestrians.
“There clearly is a spike this year,” Maziarz said. “It’s too early to determine what the cause is or even it it’s going to become a trend.”
But, the state DOT has already begun taking measures to improve safety conditions at intersections around the state, including painting cross walks, updating traffic signals and allocating money to do safety audits on busy and dangerous roads.
“We’ve made analysis of pedestrian accidents a focus as well,” Maziarz said. “Safety has become much more of a focus.”
Maziarz said that the department will continue to work on this problem, and continue with campaigns that educate drivers on safe driving and pedestrians on safe walking. “Part of the problem is distracted driving and part of the problem is distracted walking,” he said.