A 23-year-old died from his injuries this week after being hit by a car while skateboarding along this stretch of five-mile road where there's a designated sidewalk but it abruptly ends.
I'm your West Boise Neighborhood Reporter Jessica Davis asking Boise police about how often this happens, how it compares to last year, and the efforts underway to improve pedestrian safety across the city.
- Pedestrian fatalities are down from last year, but motorcycle fatalities are up due to high speeds and aggressive driving.
- Efforts are underway to improve pedestrian safety, including better lighting on Cloverdale Road.
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
"Over the last span of several years last year was the year that we really spiked in the fatalities that we saw," says Corporal Kyle Wills, with the Boise Police Department motorcycle unit.
Boise Police responded to more than a dozen pedestrian-involved accidents in 2024, two, turning fatal including one just this week on five mile road.
The only other pedestrian fatality this year, was in November when a man was run over by several cars on Overland Road.
Compared to 2023, the number of pedestrian-involved accidents was close, at 12, but seven of those were deadly.
Corporal Wills says, "Pedestrians and bicyclists are some of our most vulnerable population on the roadways and when a car ends up hitting either one of those two things it can be a very serious s injury or deadly and so that interaction is what we really want to avoid."
Boise police tell me Cloverdale Road, here in West Boise, was one area they saw repeated pedestrian related problems, so they took action to improve safety.
"We found one section of Cloverdale where there wasn't good lighting. So we worked closely with the Ada County highway district and trying to get some lighting in that area so that pedestrians are more easily seen by motorists and those sort of things," says Corporal Wills.
As I've previously reported pedestrian improvement efforts are also underway along state street in Northwest Boise and the city is working on plans to create a pedestrian pathway near federal and Broadway.
Wills says although pedestrian fatalities are down from last year, motorcycle fatalities are up.
These accidents often involving high speeds and aggressive driving.
Corporal Wills says, "a lot of them have been single vehicle or single motorcycle crashes when they've run off the road and that's going to come down to a lack of experience riding or and so they may enter a curve a little too fast and they're not able to negotiate that curb or their just driving way more aggressive than they should be."
If you're concerned about specific traffic issues in your neighborhoodyou can contact Boise Police, and they will send a motorcycle officer to investigate.
