After a Tuesday night traffic accident in southwest Gainesville sent two UF students to the hospital, city officials and local police are looking for a solution to reduce car-pedestrian incidents in the area.
Deidre Messner and Zachary Lash were walking on a crosswalk near The District on 62nd apartment complex, 1000 SW 62nd Blvd., when they were hit by a van, Gainesville Police spokesman Officer Ben Tobias said.
Messner, an 18-year-old UF art freshman, said she and Lash, a 21-year-old UF history senior and a Student Senator, got off a bus and were crossing the road to Lash’s apartment.
As they walked across, Andrew Virgil, 28, who was driving toward Southwest 20th Avenue, hit the couple with his van.
Messner said Lash tried to pull her out of the way, but she ended up taking most of the impact.
She remembers waking up in the middle of the road.
“I had no idea what was happening,” she said. “The whole day felt like a dream.”
After police and paramedics arrived at the scene, an ambulance rushed the students to Shands at UF.
Messner and Lash are the fourth and fifth pedestrians struck by cars in that area since Jan. 1, 2012, Tobias said.
In an area notorious for vehicle-pedestrian accidents, Tuesday night’s incident has some city officials calling for action.
Commissioner Todd Chase said he believes the issue needs to be addressed as soon as possible.
“When we start talking about lives at stake, you don’t sit around,” he said. “You do something now.”
On Wednesday, Chase wrote an email to City Manager Russ Blackburn outlining possible solutions to the problem, which include adding a stationary police car to the intersection and lowering the speed limit.
Blackburn responded with a list of actions the city’s Public Works Department and Gainesville Police have already taken to alleviate pedestrian accidents in the area.
One of the items included Gainesville Police’s Pedestrian High Visibility Enforcement Program, which resulted in the department issuing 130 citations to motorists Jan. 25 and Jan. 28.
Blackburn also wrote that Public Works has installed signs on opposite sides of the crosswalk to warn drivers of pedestrians.
The intersection lies within City Commissioner Susan Bottcher’s district.Bottcher said she plans to work with the city to reduce the number of accidents on the crosswalk.
However, she said, she thinks the root of the problem should be determined before any action is taken.
“We should really understand what’s causing accidents and decide from there what our best step forward is,” she said. “We need to make sure we go about it in a manner where it will actually remedy the problem.”
Contact Kathryn Varn at kvarn@alligator.org.
