Man killed in Anchorage crosswalk
A dog strayed into Anchorage Midtown traffic early Tuesday and paid the price with its life. Fifty-three-year-old Evan Larson Jr. went to the dog and was hit and killed by two trucks.
“The preliminary investigation revealed that the adult male pedestrian was standing in the crosswalk, looking at a dog that had been hit, when he was struck by two vehicles traveling southbound with a green light. A Ford F150 and a Chevrolet Silverado, both driven by adult males, struck the pedestrian,” it said.
Was the dog in the crosswalk, too, or outside of it? How long had the dog been there before the pedestrian entered the crosswalk?
APD didn’t say.
How far into the crosswalk was the man? Inches from the curb, feet from the curb, in the middle?
APD didn’t say.
What color was the traffic light when the pedestrian first entered the crosswalk?
APD didn’t say.
Did any vehicles pass through the intersection on the green light before the pedestrian entered the crosswalk?
APD didn’t say.
A witness to the accident scene who posted on APD’s Facebook page did add more.
“I passed by 2 hours after with both the guy and the dog laying out in the road still,” a Facebook user identifying as Destiny Palfy wrote. “The dog was not far from the crosswalk.
“I’m still trying to understand how he was hit with where the dog was positioned and the flow of traffic. Things obviously change but this whole accident and the report have holes in it.
“With southbound traffic having the green, it is very possible they didn’t see him. I don’t believe he was a jaywalker with where he was left. And that poor husky. I’m assuming the dog had just gotten hit not too long before the gentleman.
“Passing eyes only see what there is in a split second. Getting stuck next to the scene hours later with everything still laid out was eye-opening. So many questions with little answers. Compassion is definitely needed.”
Cue the chaos
Compassion was voiced in some comments on the APD Facebook page, but there was also a lot of victim blaming and drivers nicely illustrating why it is so unsafe to be in or near a road in Anchorage’s largest city without being inside a shield of steel where, despite that armor, the majority of those killed on Anchorage streets die.
This is the price paid for living in a city designed to help motorists get around as fast as possible, often with their eyes on their phones because their messaging with others is more important than watching the road.
To explain Larson’s death, someone posting as Valesa Linnean on the APD Facebook wrote, “It’s the highway. The speed limit there is 55, I believe. And it was dark. And if the pedestrian was kneeling down tending to the dog, it would have been hard to see him. It’s a horrible tragedy, but it was an accident.”
The road on which the collision happened still carries the name “Seward Highway,” but it long ago ceased to be a highway. It is now an urban road running between a department store on one side and a shopping mall on the other with one of the city’s biggest office buildings occupying an adjoining corner.
The speed limit there is legally 45 mph, although this might be easy to miss for a driver paying more attention to going with the flow of traffic than worrying about limits. In a city with almost no speed enforcement on urban roads, many drive at speeds well over the limit everywhere, and 55 on this stretch of road might be considered almost “normal” at times.
In many American cities, if not most, the speed limit in a similarly congested area would be 35 mph or possibly even 30 mph given the number of people seen in or near the intersection in question, and the history of other pedestrian deaths in or near the location of the latest.
But Anchorage is the largest city in Alaska, and in Alaska, it has long been observed “we don’t give a damn how they do it Outside” in reference to the world beyond Alaska.
“What else is there to say other than DON’T STAND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD IN THE DARK!?” was the take of someone posting as Johnny Mabry on APD’s Facebook page.
Did this collision happen in the middle of the road? One would hope APD has by now figured out at least that much, but the agency hasn’t bothered to tell anyone where Larson was standing other than in a crosswalk.
Despite this, someone posting as Karen Prestegard wrote that “they need to reinstate the no-jaywalking laws. It appears that since they stopped the No-j walking law and allowed people to cross wherever that more and more pedestrians are being hit.”
She apparenlty hadn’t bothered to read the second paragraph of APD’s two-paragraph description of the collision. But then again, jaywalking has been a hot topic in Anchorage since the municipality ditched its rarely enforced and little understood jaywalking law, which many motorists took to make it illegal for anyone to cross an Anchorage street except in a marked crosswalk of which there are few.
Many, maybe most, drivers appear unaware that both local and state law designates every road intersection as the site of an “unmarked crosswalk” where pedestrians are, by law, supposed to have the right-of-way. Good luck to any pedestrian who tries to exert the right to that right-of-way.
This would be just asking to get killed because, well, let another APD Facebook poster explain:
“Drivers should face no charges as pedestrian was in the street,” someone identifying as Tanner Fetters wrote.
This is what could be considered the “fair game” standard in Alaska and parts of the rest of the country. It dictates that roads are for motor vehicles and thus it is the responsibility of people, including children, to stay out of the way of the motor vehicles and if they fail to do so – even if they legally have the right-of-way – too bad.
Some, it should be noted, did correct Prestegard as to Larson being in the crosswalk. It didn’t matter.
Don’t dilly-dally
“Crossing or loitering against the light is J-walking,” someone posting as Christopher Floyd responded to that correction. “But (Mayor) LaFrance made the streets into real life Frogger!”
Being in a crosswalk after the light changes is an interesting point of law in that the Alaska Administrative Code says that “vehicular traffic facing a circular green signal may proceed through or turn right or left…(but) must yield the right-of-way to other vehicles and to pedestrians lawfully within the intersection or an adjacent crosswalk at the time the signal is exhibited.”
Or, in other words, you cannot legally run over a pedestrian who legally entered a crosswalk but was still in when the light changed color. But who cares about such fine points if the light has changed color for the motorist?
“The drivers had right of way,” as someone identifying as Tyhesia King posted, and so be it.
Or, in the words of someone posting as Kaylene D Elliott, “another…..dumb pedestrians, or is making jaywalking legal working too well??”
Anchorage set a record for pedestrian deaths last year, and some have tried to tie that to the change in the municpal law on street crossings, though most didn’t understand what the law said before it was changed and choose to believe that it was illegal to cross a street anywhere other that at an intersection.
This was not the case. Before the law was changed, it was legal to walk across any street outside of the downtown area, where there are pretty much stoplights on every corner, unless there was a marked crosswalk, a tunnel under the road, or an overhead pedestrian crossing within 150 feet.
This was a more specific and arguably more stringent requirement than that in state law which still dictates that pedestrians must use a marked crosswalk, a tunnel or an overhead pedestrian crossing if such is “accessible at road level at or near the point of crossing.”
Near, according to the Law Dictionary, is a pretty much meaningless description in this case given that the “word, as applied to space, can have no positive or precise meaning.” Some might consider “near” to be well less than 150 feet.
If, for instance, you’re sitting on the sofa watching football or basketball, 150 feet is a long way to go to grab another beer. This is why some sort of refrigerator is considered an essential for today’s “man cave.”
Pedestrians are still required to use a tunnel or overhead crossing if it is within 150 feet, but are otherwise free to cross the road where they think safe. It can, however, be hard to judge where a safe crossing is in Anchorage.
A motorist blows through a red light on Anchorage’s Northern Lights Boulevard/Craig Medred photo
If a pedestrian had judged the walk sign above to be protective, the truck going through the intersection at 30 mph or more would have probably caused said pedestrian a serious injury or death.
Some have noticed this. The latest death led one Debi Clark to post to APD’s Facebook that “this is happening too much and all people do is talk about doing nothing,” which brought this response from someone identifying as Joanie Thor-Libbey:
“Debi Clark, no disrespect, but what can be done? If you have a good way I’d be open to hearing it.”
What could be done is simple. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has outlined the easy solution:
Anchorage has a variety of roads running through Midtown where drivers commonly drive at 50 mph or more. At this very moment, it is probable that here isn’t a legally 45 mph road in the city that doesn’t have someone driving down it at 50 mph.
Already high speed limits boosted by speeding drivers get pedestrians killed, but the city’s political leaders are afraid to lower speed limits and enforce the same because of the fear of angry drivers voting them out of office. Many of these drivers are now blaming Larson for worrying about a dog and causing his own death because of that.
He is easy enough to blame. Larson grew up in rural, Western Alaska. He got into trouble in the Bethel area, a regional hub, and migrated to Anchorage as many troubled rural Alaskans do. Court records would indicate he spent a lot of his time here living on the street.
That makes him one of those “street people” easy to accuse of inattentiveness around traffic, and there is no doubt this plays a role in some Anchorage pedestrian deaths because the city is a place where anyone on foot, riding a bicycle or getting around with any sort of mobility device had best be damn alert to motor vehicles to avoid injury or death.
Why? Because a fair number of drivers aren’t alert to much of anything going on around them. As cars and trucks have gotten safer thanks to better design, seatbelts and airbags, and personal communication devices have become as common as socks, the idea of always driving defensively to be ready to avoid running into anything has faded.
One way or another, Larson paid the price. Part of this might well have been due to his own behavior, but there is no ignoring the element of speed. With a speed limit set at 30 mph, he would have had a better than 75 percent chance of surviving being hit, according to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
The existing, 45 mph speed limit on the Seward doubled the chances he’d die, according to AAA. And if the trucks were going even five mph faster, their 50 mph speed would have tripled his chances of death, according to AAA.
But who cares? It’s easier and far more convenient to dismiss all Anchorage pedestrian deaths as the fault of the ignorant, inattentive, sometimes intoxicated underclass not paying attention to traffic.
As someone posting as Todd Kelley put it on the APD Facebook page, “he didn’t have enough sense to watch out for his own safety???”
Kelley needs to get out of his truck more. It is becoming harder by the year for vulnerable road users to watch out for their safety in a country where increasingly fewer drivers watch out for anything. And why would they?
The consequences for not paying attention are small. If a driver kills a pedestrian who has the right-of-way in a crosswalk in Anchorage, the penalty is a $100 ticket. You don’t even have to got to court.
The only real reason for motorists to try to avoid hitting a vulnerable road user these days would seem to be to prevent damaging their motor vehicles, but if you’re in a truck with a first-class grill guard, you probably don’t even have to worry about that.
Categories: News
One should always be careful of what one wishes for.
It may just be granted, and you will have to live with it. Choose wisely.
Anchorage is child play compared to Phoenix. Don’t use the fast lane unless you’re doing at least 80 mph and you’ll probably have someone tailgating at that speed. Don’t go on green without looking for cross traffic as up to 6 vehicles will cross after the lights have changed. You have to adjust your driving habits for Phoenix.