Neither bright street lights nor daylight were able to save three pedestrians killed on Tulsa expressways in the past two days.
Two people died Sunday night while attempting to flag down motorists on the Broken Arrow expressway near Garnett Avenue, while a third died Monday evening crossing I-44 near the Lewis overpass.
The driver of one of the two vehicles involved in Sunday's accident told police that the victims stepped into her lane out of nowhere. The second driver also had no warning.
"Don't flag down help at night," said Tulsa Police Sergeant Rick Bondy. "Don't flag down help during the day. If you really need help, if your wife is about to have a baby, I understand, but if you run out of gas, get off the roadway, walk, but be off the roadway or wait for help to come by."
Sergeant Bondy says if you have a flat, drive to the closest parking lot to change it, even if it means buying a new rim.
If you have no choice but to pull over you have two basic options. If there's a grassy area far from the highway go there and wait for help. If there's not, stay in your car for protection and wait for help to arrive. If you stay in your vehicle turn on your hazard lights and the interior lights to make yourself as visible as possible to other motorists. Drivers' reaction time is less than seconds and many of them are distracted.
Sunday's victim was carrying a bag of chips when he was struck and killed in broad daylight. Troopers believe he was walking back from a nearby food mart.
Lighting expressways as if they were walkable city streets may also have the tragic effect of luring people into a false sense of security. With few exceptions, almost all of the fatalities resulting from pedestrians trying to cross Tulsa expressways occur within yards of working, continuous expressway lighting.
"We've seen lots of wrecks and I work right over here at the Blue Monday Laundry and we see them all the time...this has happened a couple of times," neighbor Mccarthy Mary says.
In 2003 the Tulsa City Council voted to curtail expressway lighting after a Public Works department budget indicated $70,000 would be saved by turning off expressway lighting at 10 p.m. except at interchanges.
Because of a franchise agreement with PSO, the city found that they couldn't turn off dusk-to-dawn lights early without first going to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. Instead, the administration opted to turn off the lights throughout the night on several city expressways over a period of time.
A few months after the shutdown, a 19-year old was struck by two vehicles on I-244 while circumventing the Lewis Avenue overpass. While investigators found no link between the death and the darkened lights, politicians and media personalities began a crusade to find funding for expressway lighting, which eventually came from fees collected from the city's burglar alarm ordinance.
More:
http://www.kotv.com/news/local/story/?id=137540http://www.fox23.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=a1be0a92-0a4b-4686-8ce8-ff5a1f85bd0c
