HOUSTON – It’s a growing problem across the city, pedestrians and bicyclists killed while trying to cross the streets.
On Monday, a 73-year-old man was hit by a pickup truck while crossing Bellaire and Fondren in southwest Houston.
Joe Cutrufo, BikeHouston’s executive director, said Monday’s accident proves how dangerous Bellaire Boulevard is. Cutrufo said the man’s death marks the first bike rider death in 2022.
“Bellaire Boulevard, Richmond, Kirby, lots of wide, multi-lane streets that act more like highways than streets in Houston,” Cutrufo said. “They really don’t accommodate anybody except drivers.”
Houston police said the victim was crossing Bellaire, “possibly in the crosswalk,” when he was struck by a brown Toyota Tundra pickup truck.
The 51-year-old truck driver remained on the scene and wasn’t intoxicated. Police say the driver was questioned and released. The driver wasn’t charged as police continue investigating.
Until a few months ago, it wasn’t a crime in Texas to drive into someone in a crosswalk. The “Lisa Torry Smith Act” went into effect in September, it makes it a Class A misdemeanor to hit someone in a crosswalk, and a “state jail felony” if the victim “suffered serious bodily injury.”
The law is named after the Missouri City woman killed in a crosswalk while walking her son to school in 2017.
“We worked really hard on this, and it was the right thing to do,” said Smith’s mother Elaine Brooks in an interview with KPRC 2 last year. “The right people were put in our path to get it done.”
Cutrufo said Houston leaders need to consider redesigning roads to prevent more traffic fatalities.
“If we’re going to make meaningful reductions we need to start now, we can’t be waiting,” he said.