INDIANAPOLIS — IMPD said a pedestrian was hit and killed crossing 38th Street at Shadeland Avenue Thursday morning. Surveillance video shows the pedestrian attempting to cross 38th Street when she trips and falls in front of a tow truck moments before she's hit. The driver quickly realizes what happened and checks on the woman, who was pronounced dead at the hospital.
"It's a terrible way to start your morning. It was literally the first thing I saw when I woke up this morning," said Eric Holt, the founder of Indy Pedestrian Safety Crisis. "I'm not going to use the word 'accident' because these things are never really accidents. There's always mitigating factors behind them. Whether that's the infrastructure forces someone to cross where they maybe shouldn't cross, or a driver being distracted or whatnot."
According to IMPD, this is the 29th pedestrian hit and killed this year. By Holt's count, it's the seventh pedestrian or bicyclist fatality this month.
"It's hard to look at this data and see this data come in on a day-to-day basis and not get angry," Holt said. "Especially when you see the lack of response and the lack of urgent response from our elected officials."
IMPD announced an emphasis on traffic enforcement this week. Holt said that's something that has been lacking the past couple years, as well as infrastructure issues across the city.
"We have too many streets that are too wide and too fast and not built for people," Holt said. "They're built for moving cars quickly through the city, in and out of the city, and that becomes a deadly combination when you combine those two things together."
On top of long-term projects to improve infrastructure, Holt hopes elected officials in Indianapolis can come up with quick solutions to address pedestrian and bicyclist safety after tragedies like this.
"After 18 months of doing this, yeah, it becomes a little frustrating to see another person get hit, to see another person get killed when we know what works," Holt said. "We know how to fix this, we just don’t have the leadership pushing those things that need to be done."
A police report shows IMPD took two tubes of the driver's blood to test for impairment, which is standard procedure. No arrests have been announced.