Pedestrian killed on Route 1 in Lorton (updated)
Update on February 12: The victim has been identified by police as Patrick Crowley, 58.
For the third time in 2020 a pedestrian has been killed on Richmond Highway in Fairfax County.
A police spokeswoman said that an adult male was struck and killed by a 2012 Hyundai Elantra traveling northbound around 1:15 a.m. Tuesday near Giles Run Road in Lorton (see map).
The name of the victim has not been released yet because police are still working on notifying next of kin.
The Hyundai driver stayed on the scene, according to the spokeswoman. The victim was not in the crosswalk, according to the police. Crash reconstruction officers are investigating the collision, but at this point it’s unknown whether excessive speed was a factor or if alcohol played a role for the pedestrian, police said. Alcohol was not a factor for the driver.
The area of Tuesday’s crash is in an industrial and commercial area. Unlike the Route 1 corridor between Huntington and Fort Belvoir, it is not densely populated.
Tuesday’s death comes in the wake of two fatal pedestrian crashes on Richmond Highway in January. The first one happened on January 9 when a 51-year-old woman was struck in the Penn Daw area. Then on January 16 a 52-year-old man died after being hit near Fort Belvoir.
There have been four pedestrian deaths in Fairfax County already this year. There were 16 pedestrian fatalities in 2019 in the county.
I wonder if there’s a need to:
1. Upgrade the street lights from the Alexandria border on route one to just the home less shelter just south of Ft Belvoir. Realize this may be expensive so it could be a phased project. Upgrade those lights along the high pedestrian-dense sections of route one.
2. Review the bus stops in this section of route one to move them closer to the intersections. The goal is to make it easier for pedestrians to use the crosswalks and not tempt them to cross in the middle of the block.
3. Consider putting pedestrian barriers along the raised medians of route one to encourage pedestrians to use cross walks.
4. Request our legislators and county officials work together to obtain authority for local jurisdictions to implement traffic light controls to include:
— speed control lights. Lights would change to yellow and red if cars approached at over the posted speed.
— camera technology to electronically ticket stop light runners and those making illegal turns on red.
— school bus camera technology to record and electronically ticket drivers illegally passing a stopped school bus with blinking red lights
4. Establish a citizens working group to work with our county and highway traffic engineers to discuss concepts for improving pedestrian safety along route one.
5. Work with the state highway experts to run queuing models to determine if prioritizing the stop light controls to favor north bound drivers during the morning rush hour and southbound drivers during the evening rush hour. This tech would be coupled with speed control camera technology that would cause the lights to change to red if drivers exceeded the speed limit. The goal is to more effectively move rush hour traffic at a posted speed. The traffic simulation models available to the highway engineers could run test scenarios and then report the results of the tests and make appropriate recommendations to move forward with this concept or to examine other alternatives.
Those ideas are very good. Hope they listen and act on some of them. ?