Scott Cooper January 22nd, 2010
CUMBERLAND COUNTY TRAFFIC
Fatal crashes raise flares for safety
Pedestrians’ deaths and Cumberland County’s high yearly rate of accidents bring calls for officials to make its roads safer for walkers.
Friday, January 22, 2010
ANN FOSTER
Michael A. Clifford Jr. held his cell phone to his ear, talking to his girlfriend as he walked along Trindle Road early Tuesday.
It was after midnight and unseasonably warm.
As he trudged for more than half a mile on a dark stretch outside of Mechanicsburg, where homes sit back from the road and most businesses close after 5 p.m., his girlfriend’s voice likely was the only sound that broke the silence.
Until the car came, seemingly out of nowhere.
“He was on his cell phone with his girlfriend and his girlfriend heard the screeching of tires,” Clifford’s father, Michael Clifford Sr., said Wednesday.
The connection cut off. She tried to call back. No one picked up, the elder Clifford said.
Police told him and his wife, Misty, that their 21-year-old son probably never saw the car coming and that the driver probably never saw their son.
The crash that killed Michael Clifford Jr. occurred in Hampden Twp., Cumberland County’s most crash-prone municipality. He became the second pedestrian killed in the county in an eight-day stretch.
A Patriot-News review of crash statistics found that the deaths, both just weeks into 2010, are bringing the county close to its average 2.4 pedestrian fatalities a year between 2004 and 2008.
Clifford died of head trauma at the scene. Police said he wore dark clothes and was hit in the center of the road. They said the driver, who wasn’t speeding, stopped and tried to revive him after the crash.
“Out of all the crazy things my son has done, this is not what would have occurred to me that would have happened,” Clifford’s father said.
‘The speed limit is too fast’
Stanley Barnhart’s family didn’t think they’d lose him in a crash, either.
He was 83, but he was not feeble, his daughter, Amy Scott, said Wednesday.
So when Barnhart and his wife, Regina, 68, traveled through Pennsylvania this month and stopped in Middlesex Twp., the couple opted to walk from their hotel to the only nearby restaurant.
It was just minutes after the sun set when the Barnharts stepped onto U.S. Route 11, their path lit by the glow from lights in the Middlesex Diner parking lot.
They didn’t make it to the other side. The driver of the car that hit them didn’t see them until it was too late. Stanley Barnhart died at the hospital. Regina was hospitalized and is trying to heal.
Scott, speaking from the family’s home in Owego, N.Y., said the crash should not have happened.
“The speed limit is too fast there, and they need a crosswalk there because that’s where people from the hotel walk across to go to the restaurant,” she said.
There are signs prohibiting crossing, but they aren’t posted where walkers between the hotel and restaurant can see them, Scott said.
The deaths speak for themselves.
Breakdowns for 2009 crash statistics aren’t ready, but the totals are in.
Hampden, with its crowded network of roads, had 293 crashes last year, more than any other Cumberland County municipality, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation officials said.
Silver Spring Twp., which is between Hampden and Middlesex, had the second-highest number of crashes at 213. Middlesex, where Barnhart was hit, ranked seventh in 2009.
Walkers apply pressure
Crash statistics change little from year to year, said Steve Chizmar, a PennDOT spokesman.
Yet there appears to be new pressure on officials to make roads safer for walkers.
Advocates for walker equity on roads blasted a Silver Spring developer’s request to omit crosswalks from plans to improve two busy intersections on state Route 114. The developer’s argument — backed by Silver Spring officials — was that crosswalks could lull walkers into a false sense of security, since there are no sidewalks on either side of that road.
Yet state crash data show walkers are killed more often in areas without traffic-control devices.
Many municipalities have begun requiring sidewalks with every new development — even if they aren’t connected to other sidewalks.
Coincidentally, Silver Spring has recently agreed to meet with experts who will suggest ways to make roads safer.
The meeting was suggested by PennDOT in 2007, after Silver Spring made the list of the top 100 crash-prone municipalities in 2006. Each year since, PennDOT has offered 12 of those towns help through a federally funded program.
“We go in and look at [potential] low-cost safety improvements. This is strictly voluntary,” said Louis Ferretti, a PennDOT transportation planning specialist.
Engineers study crash patterns then suggest simple fixes such as moving stop signs and repainting road lines. PennDOT checks in after six months to see if improvements were made.
There were several significant risk factors in the crashes that killed two people on Cumberland County roads this year.
Clifford and Barnhart crossed state highways, after dark, at stretches between intersections and in areas without traffic controls.
More than two-thirds of pedestrian deaths in Pennsylvania in 2008 occurred when a male walker tried to cross a state highway between intersections. More than half occurred after dark, and most victims were 75 or older.
Alcohol is involved in many crashes but it’s unknown if it played a part in the deaths of Clifford and Barnhart. Results from toxicology screening, routinely conducted in sudden deaths, aren’t available yet. Neither driver has been charged.
Yet while investigations might close some gaps about the nights Clifford and Barnhart died, their families said they will be left wondering how they could have been prevented.
“But what is the answer? We’ve got to share the roads with pedestrians. It has to be safe,” Michael Clifford Sr. said.
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