County Rated 17th in State in Deaths of Pedestrians

Ventura County streets are safer for pedestrians than they were a few years ago, but they are still meaner than they should be, particularly for children, according to a report released Tuesday.

There were 20 pedestrians killed and 560 injured on local roads in the last two years. In 1998, the county was the 17th most dangerous for pedestrians in the state, an improvement over 1997, when it ranked 14th. But of the victims, a disproportionately large number have been children.

“You don’t get an F; you get a D,” Gloria Ohland, spokeswoman for the Surface Transportation Policy Project, said of the county’s overall standing.

The reason that Ventura County comes out relatively well overall, Ohland said, is because “you don’t have that many people walking because you don’t have as much of an urban situation.”

When the large percentage of child deaths and injuries is factored in, it drags the county’s standings down, she said.

The numbers for the last two years are promising jumps from 1996, when the county ranked as the seventh worst spot for walkers. In that year, according to the report, children accounted for one-third of all deaths and injuries. No comparable figures were available for 1997 and 1998.

The Surface Transportation Policy Project, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that drafted the report, surveyed 35 counties in the state with populations of more than 100,000.

Of the Ventura County pedestrians killed in 1998, two each died in Camarillo and Ventura, three in Oxnard and one each in Santa Paula and Port Hueneme, according to Anne Richards, spokeswoman for the California Highway Patrol.

The highest number of injured pedestrians was in Oxnard, where 64 were struck by cars, Richards said. The second-highest pedestrian injury rate in 1998 was in Simi Valley, where there were 35 reports.

According to the Surface Transportation Policy Project, being hit by a car is the second-leading cause of death in the state for children between the ages of 5 and 12.

That risk is higher, according to the report, for Latino youngsters, who made up nearly 50% of all child pedestrian injuries and deaths in 1996.

Ohland credited that statistic to a large number of children from low-income immigrant families who walk to school in urban areas from homes in rural areas.

Julie De St. Jean, transportation manager for the Oxnard School District, said districts with high percentages of Latino students will always have more incidents involving them.

“Our Hispanic population is roughly 79%. That may explain why there are more Hispanic kids who are injured,” De St. Jean said.

The Oxnard district has about 14,000 students at its 19 elementary and junior high schools. Only about 2,000 ride a school bus, with the remainder walking, riding a bicycle or getting a ride from a parent, she said.

“I think it’s terrible” that children are getting killed, De St. Jean said. “We are an area that’s gone from sparsely populated and agricultural to a more heavily populated, semi-urban area. We have a lot of streets and roads that don’t have sidewalks and other good places for pedestrians.”

In comparison with regions to the north and south parts of the state, Ventura County landed in the middle, according to the new report.

Los Angeles County was the most dangerous place for walkers in 1998 with 200 fatalities, and Santa Barbara County was 26th on the list with seven deaths.

San Luis Obispo County was the safest county in 1998 with one pedestrian death, and Fresno County, with a similar population to Ventura County--about 750,000, ranked 19th in 1998 with 26 deaths.

Statewide, more than 20% of all traffic-related deaths are pedestrians killed on roadways, the study states.