Showing Some Love to Those
Sharing the Road With You!
Annual Pedestrian Campaign on Deadly Boulder Highway
While 2023 has started off better than 2022, don’t let the numbers hearten you. Our fatalities are down because we didn’t have horrific crashes with families wiped out this year. Fatalities in Clark County are down 28 percent, but the number of fatal crashes is up 28 percent. Nothing has gotten better, just a more average year of single and occasionally double fatalities in a fatal crash.
Vulnerable road users, those traveling without the benefit of a vehicle around them, motorcyclists, bicyclists and pedestrians make up 61 percent of our fatalities for the year, well above our average percentage, which is far higher than national numbers.
This Valentine’s Day, officers from LVMPD, NSP, CCSD Police, Henderson and North Las Vegas were all be working together on Boulder Highway, which was the deadliest road in Clark County for pedestrians in 2022 with six fatalities.
If you spend time on Boulder Highway you will see that it is striking how many pedestrians using the street do exactly what they are supposed to. There are many pedestrians on this street, which is built for cars. It is testament to the pedestrians that dozens of people don’t die using that street every year.
The good news is that true infrastructure assistance is on the way, it will still take years, but there is reason to be optimistic; and in the meantime, efforts like the annual Valentine in the Crosswalk are critical to helping those on the road use streets the way they are supposed to.
It’s a fact that a lot of tickets were written at our event, but the reality is the number that’s most important is the number of people who see this or read about this and get a reminder of the role they play in everyone getting safely home. We ended 2022 with two separate fatal pedestrian crashes not far from this location, neither of them were in a crosswalk. Pedestrians crossing the street where they don’t belong were also cited.