JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Family of a 13-year-old boy hit by a car while walking to school Wednesday in Northwest Jacksonville says he is not expected to survive.
Kameron Turner was hit by a car while crossing Kings Road with his brother. He was the second boy to get hit by a car in five days in Jacksonville. The mother of the boy hit Friday on Jacksonville’s westside says he will be in a wheelchair for weeks.
Florida ties with Texas for the second highest number of pedestrian deaths in the country, according to the latest data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from 2021. This year, First Coast News has reported on at least 13 incidents of pedestrians getting hit by cars on the First Coast and at least of eight of them have been deadly.
First Coast News met with Florida Department of Transportation Spokesperson Hampton Ray on Lenox Avenue, the site of some of the newest pedestrian safety efforts in the city. Ray explained there are new crosswalks with flashing lights here because FDOT studies showed they were needed and it was unlikely people would walk all the way down to the nearest stoplight to use a crosswalk.
“Essentially what it is is a mid-block crossing, which is in between two intersections,” Ray said. “And pedestrians can just go press the button, lights come on, alerts drivers to stop.”
Similar devices are now installed at the beaches. Ray says they are called hawks. There are two red lights on top and a yellow or amber light at the bottom.
He explains the red lights will blink when it's safe to cross. Ray says there is an infrared sensor that was installed at San Jose Boulevard and Haley Road after a crash that killed a woman in 2013. He says the sensor was put there in part due to the Orthodox Jewish community there, which prohibits the use of technology on Shabbat and other religious holidays.
“Whenever a crash occurs on the roadway, FDOT has a team of safety professionals that look and evaluate the roadway itself to see if anything could have been done to prevent the crash or make the area safer,” Ray said.
The chairman of Jacksonville’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee says there is no “silver bullet” to keep everyone safe, but he says it is possible. He points to the city of Hoboken, New Jersey, a city of close to 60,000 people, which the Associated Press reports has not had a traffic death in seven years.
This committee met Thursday and meets the first Thursday of every month virtually and in Jacksonville's Ed Ball Building on the third floor in conference room 3112.
Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office currently has a High Visibility Enforcement contract from the Institute of Police Technology and Management and FDOT to use to pay for overtime traffic deployments focused on pedestrian and bicyclist safety. A JSO spokesperson says the average officer has overtime deployments several times a week. They say the contract “has been instrumental in engaging the community to prevent traffic fatalities.
The contract ends in May and although the spokesperson says JSO has participated in the program the last two years, they say it’s too soon to determine if JSO will apply for a 2025 contract.