Nearly a year ago in the early hours of September 13, 2021, Sarah Peaslee got the knock on the door no parent ever wants to hear. A police officer told her that her son, 29-year-old Will Davis, had been struck by a motorcycle crossing Richmond Road—U.S. 250 east—and died instantly.
“Will was coming home from a friend,” she says. Will, the grandson of Charlottesville Observer founder Kay Peaslee, was staying with his mother at Carriage Hill on Pantops, and she acknowledges he jaywalked. “He was jaywalking because it’s frustrating to try to cross.”
Richmond Road is not the only Albemarle County road built to move cars, not pedestrians, and eight pedestrians have died on county roads since 2016, compared to the five deaths in Charlottesville’s city limits over the past 10 years.
Through the ’80s and ’90s, “the flow of vehicles was considered more important than pedestrians,” says Kevin McDermott, Albemarle’s planning manager. At U.S. 250 on Pantops, “we had eliminated all of the opportunities for pedestrians to cross from the [Rivanna] river to I-64. The sidewalk system is inadequate and that’s why we’ve ended up with a road not safe to walk along or to cross.”
Five-lane Richmond Road is notorious for late-night speeding, says Peaslee. While the speed of the BMW motorcycle that struck Davis has not been determined, after it hit him, it totaled a parked Mercedes at the dealership there and its driver, Robert Nikodem, was hospitalized for weeks, she adds.
Nikodem has been charged with driving under the influence. Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Lawton Tufts declined to comment on the case, and says the investigation is ongoing. C-VILLE was unable to reach Nikodem.
While Richmond Road has seen two pedestrian fatalities in the past two years, it’s not the deadliest road in the county. The worst, says McDermott, is U.S. 29 from the city limit at Hydraulic to Hollymead. “Currently there are only two designated pedestrian crossings,” he says. “Drive on 29 any day, you’re going to see pedestrians dash across four or five lanes to the median.”
He says, “I consider that our most unsafe corridor for pedestrians.”
One option Albemarle’s Board of Supervisors likes a lot is photo speed cameras, which warns drivers, snaps pictures of speeders, and sends a ticket in the mail, but that may be a long-shot in photo-ticketing-averse Virginia.
“It’s very effective,” says Supervisor Bea LaPisto-Kirtley. “To me it seems like a no-brainer. We have to use technology because we don’t have the people to enforce speed limits.” Photo speed cameras are at the top of the board’s legislative agenda, she says.
Delegate Rob Bell carried a photo speed camera bill in this year’s General Assembly, but he says it was geared toward two-lane rural roads where it’s unsafe for police to ticket safely. That bill died in subcommittee.
Cameras have been used to target redlight-runners and school-bus-passers, notes Bell, but the “idea of the presumption of guilt and mailed tickets is not something generally done in Virginia.”
And when a bill fails 10-0, “I’m not planning to bring it back,” he says.
Albemarle is looking at other ways to make crossing multi-lane thoroughfares safer, says McDermott. Pedestrian crossings are in design for Richmond Road at Route 20/Stony Point Road and at Rolkin Road.
The 250 Access Management Project would close the center lane used for both right and left turns, which LaPisto-Kirtley dubs the “suicide lane,” and put in a median. The project should be ready for public feedback in spring 2023, with construction two years after that, says McDermott.
The recent federal infrastructure bill offers a Reconnecting Communities grant, dedicated to those areas—often African American—that previously were cut off from economic opportunities by transportation infrastructure. The county is applying for a grant, says McDermott, to “identify places we want to enhance safety.”
Plans for U.S. 29 include a pedestrian bridge north of Hydraulic at Zan Road, and an at-grade crossing south of the Hydraulic intersection, he says.
And unlike in the past, when adding more lanes was often a solution to traffic woes, “We don’t do any major transportation projects without a major pedestrian component,” McDermott says.
Albemarle traditionally has a higher number of traffic fatalities than the city, and county police are using public outreach, public education, and targeted enforcement to address dangerous behaviors by all road users, says county spokesperson Emily Kilroy.
With the shortage of school bus drivers and more children walking to school, pedestrian safety is an even bigger concern. Police posted a ped safety graphic on social media to lay out the best practices for walking, especially on roads without sidewalks or crosswalks.
Will Davis was “quite adventurous,” a big biker and walker who was interested in community permaculture, mushrooms, and music, says his mother. His family describes him with the phrase, “Where there’s a Will, there’s a way.”
Peaslee may be channeling her son in her efforts to prevent such accidents with safer crossings and attention to speeding and drinking. “I’d like his memory to live on as a safe crossing so that this doesn’t keep happening.”
She sighs. “It’s just so slow to get anything done.”