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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer
LAS VEGAS, Nevada — It’s tragically heartbreaking and intensely disturbing.
Here in the Las Vegas area in the past two weeks, we have seen two recent cases of operators of motorized vehicles driving their vehicles into 12-year-old kids, crashes that ended up killing them. They are the two latest victims of road behavior that is commonplace in Las Vegas.
On Oct. 6, a girl named Haylee Ryan riding her bicycle home from Lied STEM Academy was struck and killed when a Clark County School District bus driver hit her. Police found the 75-year-old bus driver at fault, but no charges have been filed as of today.
On Oct. 3, a boy named Cristofer Suarez was walking to school when he was struck by a vehicle operated by a driver suspected of DUI in the hit-and-run crash near Owens Avenue and 21st Street. The boy died Oct. 6 — the exact day Haylee Ryan died.
Full disclosure: When I hear about motorists crashing into anyone it’s personally upsetting after I survived a crash on March 7, 2017 just north of Fort Pierce in St. Lucie County, Fla. where a car driver drove his car into me while I was riding my bicycle on the Atlantic Ocean intracoastal. The St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office did not give a ticket to the driver who struck me.
The deaths of these two kids are extremely disturbing.
But this being Las Vegas, it’s regrettably not surprising.
The deaths are the predictable outcomes of driving behavior that threatens the health and safety of thousands of people in Las Vegas on a daily basis. I don’t see harsher penalties like more jail time and losing your privilege to operate a motorized vehicle. I don’t see required driver education. I don’t see slower speed limits or better road design. In fact, I see just the opposite — roads engineers designing roads so that you can driver faster, which leads to more deaths.
Here’s the brutal truth — more people will die on our Las Vegas roads because our political leaders and officials don’t want to take the necessary steps to reduce crashes. Slower speed limits. Beefed up enforcement. Steeper punishments. Roads engineered for safe movement spaces for walkers and bicyclists. It takes money and new political priorities — things our elected representatives will not spend or do.
Reckless and dangerous driving in Las Vegas is so routine that parents are volunteering to shepherd students across crosswalks at schools.
In the case of the bus driver striking the student Oct. 6, law requires all motorists to pass a bicyclist by a minimum distance of at least three feet. The mere fact that a society has to pass a law to mandate a driver pass a bicyclist by at least a yard is a rather obvious clue that drivers pose a safety threat to those people who simply want to pedal a bicycle to get to a place.
The bus driver was required to slow down to safely move around the girl on a bicycle and pass by a distance of at least three feet.
Further posing another danger to the bicyclist was another another driver who chose to park his car in a bike lane being used by the 12-year-old. Apparently, the girl on the bike veered around the parked vehicle in the bike lane and was struck by the bus driver who should have seen the bicyclist and parked car and slowed down to move over to pass the bicyclist.
The bus driver was negligent and needs to be charged as such. The driver of the car illegally parked in the bike lane needs to also be held accountable and assume responsibility for a role ion this fatal crash.
Overall, Clark County commissioners, the Clark County School District and Metro police need to sound the public alarm and take severe action in response to these road killings.
I have lived in five other major population centers around the country. I have not seen a city like Las Vegas here fatal crashes are routinely accepted as business as usual.
PSA