Anchorages’s most dangerous intersection this year/Google Maps

Another pedestrian hit in a crosswalk

The Anchorage Police Department has finally confirmed a pedestrian death in South Anchorage reported on social media two days ago.

A friend of the dead woman first turned to NextDoor to reveal that “our nice neighbor was hit and killed by a vehicle when she was crossing the street at lower Dearmoun Road. Lower Dearmoun Road is being used by some as a drag strip and the walkway is not much safer either. It would be nice to have police presence in this area. We are law-abiding citizens paying taxes and are being put at the mercy of these careless drivers.”

APD has since identified the dead neighbor as 85-year-old Clara Mattice, who the APD News now says was hit on June 19. Mattice was reported to have been seriously injured collision and was destined to die in hospital nine days later.

Neighbors say she was trying to cross DeArmoun Road to check her mail around midday when a car turning right off Elmore Road ran her over.

On the same day APD reported her death, it also revealed that another pedestrian – this one unidentified – had been run down in a crosswalk at Benson Boulevard and C Street in Anchorage’s Midtown on June 8 at 5:55 p.m. The man was reported to have been “seriously injured,” but appears to be still alive.

The collision was revealed only because APD wanted public help in locating “the black Toyota Tundra Extended cab truck, manufactured between the years of 2014 – 2021” that hit the man and fled the scene. 

The agency did not reveal why it waited weeks to reveal the collision and ask for help rather than doing so early last month when the memories of people in the Benson-C Street area at the time of the collision might have been fresher.

The unidentified man was seriously injured only a week after 79-year-old Gladys Graf was struck and killed at the same intersection, despite doing everything a pedestrian can do to stay safe from such collisions.

Before crossing the busy road, she waited for the “walk” sign on the traffic light and then stayed in the marked crosswalk only to be hit by what police described only as a “vehicle.” Like Mattice, she was still hanging on when taken to the hospital but died there shortly after the collision.

AARP, the association for retired people, has warned that older adults, who come from a generation when walking was still common, are at increasing risk of being killed by motor vehicles in a country where pedestrian deaths grew by 72 percent between 2010 and 2021.

There is no good tally of how many pedestrians are hit and survive motor-vehicle collisions only to be saddled with injuries that plague them for the rest of their lives, but the U.S. Federal Highway Administration has estimated the number significantly injured at more than 100,000 per year.

“These numbers have been rising recently, and this is unacceptable,” the agency adds, but few communities are doing much about it.

Lowering speed limits in urban areas is a proven way to reduce the number of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities and lessen the seriousness of injuries, but state and municipal officials in Anchorage are arguing this isn’t possible in the state’s largest city because of “construction funding mechanisms.”

There might be a bigger, political reason.

“Selecting an appropriate speed limit for a facility can be a polarizing issue for a
community,” according to the city, which contends “the overall goal of setting a speed limit almost always (is) to increase safety within the context of retaining reasonable mobility.”

Reasonable mobility has proven the city’s chief goal to date, and Anchorage drivers – be they politically right or politically left – like to speed. Many neighborhoods have complained about this and asked for lower speed limits to no avail.

The city’s response has been that the issue should be left to the discretion of drivers.

“The presence of children in a residential neighborhood will not necessarily be considered a ‘special hazard’ for establishing a speed limit below that otherwise appropriate for a residential roadway,” according to a memo on “Speed Limits” from Municipal Traffic Engineer Stephanie Mormilo. “The extent of overall pedestrian activity, at a particular time of day or street, is a factor that a motorist must use in selecting an appropriate speed below the posted maximum at that moment.”

That’s a nice idea, but the Anchorage idea of “selecting an appropriate speed” might best be illustrated on streets where “speed bumps” have been installed to try to slow drivers. The result is a race between them as drivers slam on the brakes, bump over one, and then stomp the accelerator to speed to the next, to again repeat the process.

The consequences of the quest for speed on Anchorage roads was written in a record 15 pedestrians killed last year. Ten have been killed this year, putting Anchorage well ahead of last year’s pace which had only seven dead by this date.

All of that changed in September when six pedestrians were killed in the space of a month. But these deaths are just the tip of a much bigger iceberg of carnage that goes unmentioned and largely unknown.

How many more vulnerable road users were hit last year but survived is at this time an unknown, but the data gathered in past years would suggest dozens and dozens more who were hit and survive.

The city’s 2023 Annual Traffic Report, the latest available edition, reveals almost 200 pedestrians and cyclists hit by motor vehicles in what was a relatively safe year for the municipality.  Only seven people were killed in 2023 – less than half the record of last year.

Smash and bash

Credit luck in part because the number could have gone much higher.

As the preface to the traffic report says, “The municipality, a community. It’s where we live, work, play, laugh and cry. It’s where we share our lives. It’s where we travel.

“It’s also where a pedestrian or a cyclist is injured or killed every three days in a traffic collision.”

The 2023 report reveals that almost 30 pedestrians and cyclists suffered serious injuries that year. Those people went unmentioned when they were struck.

Most remain unmentioned and unnoticed by anyone other than friends and family forever.  US Nordic Ski Team member Hannah Halvorsen, 21, was among the rare exceptions after being run down in 2019.

Her skull and tibia were fractured, her brain was left bleeding and ligaments in her knee were torn from the bone after she was hit at a downtown intersection. APD at the time refused to provide any details as to what happened, and the driver of the vehicle who hit Halvorsen has never been publicly identified.

APD has a long history of shielding drivers who run down vulnerable road users. In the case of Mattice, it has reported only its boilerplate norm:

“The driver of the vehicle remained on scene and has been cooperative with the investigation. No charges have been filed at this time.”

It was almost exactly the same when Graf was killed while crossing the street in a crosswalk with a green light and a walk sign: “The driver involved remained on scene and is cooperating with the investigation. This is an ongoing investigation.”

The Alaskan Landmine, an online publication in the state’s largest city, revealed that one of those who remained on the scene and cooperated in 2023 was driver Russell Webb. Webb ran into and killed retired dentist Carlton Higgins, who was in crosswalk on Piper Street near the Providence Alaska Medical Center when hit by the Ford F250 truck Webb was driving.

“The driver remained at the scene,” the Anchorage Daily News reported at the time. “‘No charges or citations had been filed by Tuesday,’ said police spokeswoman Renee Oistad. The investigation was ongoing and Oistad said the department had ‘no additional information to release.'”

As it turned out, there was a citation issued. It took the Landmine to months later reveal that Webb was ticketed for a “Failure to Yield to Pedestrian in Crosswalk” and paid a $100 fine, with APD offering this explanation of the penalty:

“Twenty-five drivers have been cited (for the same offense) since January 1. These cases all had similar fact patterns; the only difference is that nobody died. There is no law in Alaska that says if you commit a traffic infraction and cause injury or death, then that is per se criminal negligence. The driver in this case was treated the same as all these other cases.”

That Webb’s name was revealed to the Landmine was itself a breakthrough. APD usually goes out of its way to protect drivers from public scrutiny by declaring collisions are “under investigation” for months and months, or arguing that the agency does not need to reveal the names of people ticketed in deadly motor vehicle collisions because these are “incidents” (or what used to be called accidents) and not crimes.

The APD statement reporting the latest death, that of Mattice, also made no mention of what everyone was talking about on NextDoor, with some folks there chiming in from well beyond the DeArmoun Road area. A sampling:

• “DeArmoun traffic is always going very fast! The intersection at DeArmoun and Westwind is dangerous. Coming down the hill too fast, and speeding up from the light, constant bad driving behaviour. No enforcement ever!!”
• “A friend, many years ago, she got hit and died at the entrance to Buffalo. And a kid I knew got hit down by the school. He survived.”
• “We are couple of blocks from where this happened and yes, it is surprising how fast this road is….The noise from people speeding was my number 1 complaint. Now it’s fear of using the bike trail (next to the road).”
• “Turning into LA🤣 so so sad praying for family and friends 🙏”
• “…The racing happens any day that’s not raining in the spring and summer on Dimond and C St. near Costco. I’ve called the police many times due to the noise and excessive speed and they do nothing. Their excuse is always they are understaffed. I do understand there are violent crimes going on increasingly, as well as theft and robbery, which they cannot get to either. Unfortunately, I think our city has other priorities of which us taxpayers are not one of.
• “I’m so sick of the drag racing happening on Northwood every night. I didn’t know it happened over there too. I knew someone would get hurt or worse. I’ve reported it but it seems nothing gets done. I even had an officer email me once to say he’s never seen speeding in the area!”
• “It’s like the Wild West on Anchorage roads. I’m not sure why it’s being tolerated.”
• “…Look at the rubber tire tracks that pile up on that straight stretch of DeArmoun between Elmore and 140th. It’s obviously used as a racetrack for some.”
• “Wow, you mean South Anchorage has the same issues East Anchorage is having? Imagine that..hmmmm.🤔”

There were plenty more, but the political will to do anything about this in Anchorage appears lacking. The large number of motorists speeding almost everywhere in the city can pretty much be read as a majority vote that dead pedestrians are necessary collateral damage if motorists are to get from Point A to Point B as fast as possible.

And if this fast and aggressive driving that has become the norm in the city results in even more deaths of motorists than it does of pedestrians and cyclists – as it does – so be it.