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The Largo Police Department, with its emphasis on customer service and working with people, may find it tough to slap residents with fines for jaywalking, of all things.
But it may be the best way to get the message across that there is a right way and a wrong way to cross a street, and in Largo, you had better choose the right way.
Largo has suffered a string of deaths and injuries to pedestrians and bicyclists in the past year. Police officials have been appalled at the carnage. The primary cause of the accidents appears to be carelessness by the walkers and cyclists.
One recent Saturday provided two tragic examples. A pedestrian attempted to cross East Bay Drive at 1:15 a.m. He decided to cross in the middle of a block rather than walking to a crosswalk just 300 feet away. He was hit by a car and killed. That evening, a bicyclist on Clearwater-Largo Road died after turning into the path of a van.
East Bay Drive is wide, busy and has dark stretches. Clearwater-Largo Road is narrow, busy and dark. These conditions are unforgiving of errors in judgment by pedestrians and bicyclists. And certainly it is an error in judgment to assume, given Largo's growing list of deaths and injuries, that nothing bad will happen to you if you are careless when walking or bicycling along Largo roads.
Police are frustrated that lots of publicity about the accidents has done nothing to stop people from taking chances. So, police officials have instructed officers on patrol to begin enforcing more vigorously the law requiring pedestrians to cross the street at crosswalks. Violate it, and you could get an $80 fine. They also will enforce the law requiring a headlight on a bicycle ridden after dusk. Ride without a headlight and you will have to pay a $46 fine if caught.
Police are so frustrated that they are even considering conducting a bike safety rodeo for adults.
In addition to those ideas, there are others that city officials might want to consider.
Police could map the locations of the accidents and then visit those spots at approximately the same time and under the same lighting conditions. They may observe conditions that need to be addressed. Are speed limits too fast? Does street lighting need to be improved? Are sight distances a problem? Are more pedestrian crossing signals needed?
They should also be aware of any changing demographics in communities near the accident scenes. Are more people biking and walking because they don't have cars? Could the situation be improved if the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority ran later or more frequent buses?
A brief review of the last six months' fatalities shows that all occurred on one of four major Largo area thoroughfares: East Bay Drive, Seminole Boulevard, Ulmerton Road and Clearwater-Largo Road. All are busy, multilane roads with long distances between traffic signals. They present tough challenges for pedestrians and bicyclists. Add to those factors darkness, and the difficulty of identifying how far away an oncoming car is at night, and you have conditions ripe for tragedy.
A studied approach, like that used to address the problems of Palm Harbor's notorious "Death Valley" a few years ago, may uncover solutions in addition to the Police Department's good plan to write more tickets.