TUCSON (KVOA) – On Thursday, two people were hit by cars at separate locations – one was near the intersection of Speedway Boulevard and Euclid Avenue, the other near Ajo Highway and Kinney Road.
With those two, four pedestrian-related accidents have happened in the last 24 hours.
On Speedway off of Euclid, bystanders could see where Tucson Police Department marked the road early Thursday morning. A man crossed at Speedway; he wasn’t in an intersection and he wasn’t in a crosswalk.
He now faces life threatening injuries and police say the driver took off.
Four crashes involving drivers and pedestrians in less than 24 hours – there was a fatal crash Thursday morning on Ajo Highway off of Kinney road, a deadly pedestrian accident that occurred Wednesday night off Alvernon Way and East Concord Stravenue, Thursday morning’s serious hit-and-run on Speedway and Euclid and a crash around 3 p.m. Wednesday involving a teenage boy who police say has life-threatening injuries.
A City of Tucson traffic engineer says these accidents are random and happen wherever, whenever.
“It’s troubling, but it’s not something where you hit the panic button,” Blake Olofson, the city traffic engineer said. “It’s just kind of a coincidence these crashes happened in a series.”
The person hit in the crash at Speedway and Euclid was walking in the middle of the street.
“You’re really kind of taking your life into your own hands when you do that,” Olofson said. “The thing is that drivers are expecting to see someone at that location.”
After the City of Tucson teamed up with engineers at the University of Arizona, they learned that drivers are going faster during the pandemic.
According to numbers from TPD, there have been 82 traffic-related deaths on Tucson streets this year.
TPD says there were 89 last year.
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