all right good morning i'm pinellas county sheriff bob baltierian and then on behalf of florida sheriff's association president david shore and 67 sheriffs of florida here this morning to announce the results of operation safe steps which is a statewide pedestrian education and enforcement initiative just very briefly the florida sheriff's association through its task force does operations twice a year that we hope will have an impact in increasing public safety across florida we try and conduct these operations in a way that all 67 sheriffs and sheriff's offices can participate to again better effect public safety around the state the past initiatives focus on arresting people on violent warrants springtime alcohol consumption illegal alcohol consumption traffic enforcement drug enforcement and a variety of things so this is the fall operation for the florida sheriff's task force again affecting the problem across the state as we decided on this operation it was because of many recent reports and our own observations that florida has become one of the most dangerous states in the united states for pedestrians walking on and crossing our streets and roadways statistics show that the majority of pedestrian crashes occur during traditional rush hour and the majority occur outside of designated crosswalks which is especially tragic because many of these crashes can be avoided by following the rules of the road between 2011 and 2013 there was a 19 increase in pedestrian crashes here in the state of florida with approximately 7 600 crashes in 2011 and 9 300 crashes in 2013. pedestrian crashes are trending up again for 2014. so during that period of time of 2011 to 2013 there was a 20 increase in the number of pedestrians involved in those 7 600 crashes so not only are the crashes up but the number of people involved in the crashes so there's multiple pedestrians involved in some of those individual crashes so there are about 8 300 pedestrians who were hit in those 7 600 crashes and in 2011 there were over 9 900 so in total during this three-year period of 2011 to 2013. so over three year period 2011 to 2013 there were 25 900 separate pedestrian crashes in the state of florida involving 27 700 people that's a significant number of floridians and visitors who are adversely affected and impacted and hurt and killed as a result of these pedestrian crashes so you're talking over almost 28 000 people that were hit over a three year period and so during the same three-year period where we had over 27 000 pedestrians that were struck 1479 were killed so almost 1500 people killed in pedestrian crashes across florida during that three year period so think about that for a second that's over one a day needlessly killed on the roadways of florida so on top of those 1500 deaths that occurred during that three year period of the 27 000 crashes about 18 000 people were injured so we got a lot of people a lot of people being injured and killed on the roadways of florida due to these pedestrian crashes so to put it in a percentage about 71 percent of all pedestrian crashes result a death or an injury so not only are the number of pedestrian crashes up over the three-year period also the number involving injuries is trending up as well by about 20 percent so what we have is not only more pedestrian crashes but more involving death and injury and we have unfortunately uh way too many local examples of what's occurring across florida if you remember uh the six-year-old infant that was killed on missouri avenue here in largo back on november 10th when her mom and brother were crossing missouri avenue outside of a crosswalk back in march of this year a 17 year old young man was killed while crossing gulf boulevard in saint pete beach he was struck by one vehicle and then struck and killed by a second vehicle again crossing outside of a crosswalk on sunday november 30th another pedestrian a woman was killed in madeira beach while darting across gulf boulevard again outside of a crosswalk and last night the florida highway patrol reported in pasco county yet another pedestrian killed crossing u.s 19. not only is this a tragedy for the victims and their families but also in many cases for the drivers of the vehicles who struck these victims because despite their careful driving they could not avoid the crash due to the pedestrian darting into traffic also consider the impact of the individuals and families for lost wages while recruiting from injuries and the fiscal impact upon our state's health care system for something that is avoidable the majority of the pedestrian crashes occurred during daylight hours and outside of designated crosswalks of the almost 26 000 separate pedestrian crashes during this three year period 13 500 of those occurred outside of crosswalks this of course begs the question of how many injury and death pedestrian crashes could have been avoided simply by the pedestrians following the rules of the road and using these designated crosswalks at intersections or even mid-road the common traffic law violations that result in these serious pedestrian crashes include pedestrians not obeying the walk don't walk signals pedestrians walking on the roadway instead of the sidewalk and as i've mentioned now many times pedestrians crossing at roadways at other than designated crosswalks also cars not yielding to pedestrians at the intersections and the mid-road crosswalks so to address this problem the florida sheriff's task force designated as i said our fall initiative operation safe safe steps in order to educate the public and hopefully reduce this rising trend of pedestrian crashes and deaths between october 24th 2014 and november 20th of 2014 18 florida sheriff's offices and i'm joined here by this morning by representatives of the pasco county sheriff's office and the hernando county sheriff's office who participate in this operation stand out across florida with the primary goal to educate the walking and motoring public of their obligations and what the rules of the road are and in some cases to enforce the traffic laws so during this 30-day period sheriff's deputies across the state of florida issued 6847 pedestrian warnings 222 pedestrian citations traffic tickets over 8 200 motorist warnings and over six sixty seven hundred motorist citations for traffic violations invest in involving pedestrians we hope that the contact that our deputies had with almost twenty three thousand people across the state of florida during this 30-day period will have an impact and improve pedestrian safety nevertheless despite our efforts during this 30-day period and while this operation was ongoing there were 759 pedestrian crashes involving 803 pedestrians and again during this 30-day period sadly 33 people were killed on the roadways of florida still averaging over one a day while the operation has entered our efforts have not we will continue to vigilantly stop pedestrians and motorists to educate them and when appropriate enforce our state's traffic laws so that we reverse this trend of rising pedestrian crashes and the resulting deaths and injuries in too many of these cases the crash can be avoided by the individuals following the rules of the road having pedestrians cross at crosswalks and cars yield to pedestrians within those crosswalks the issue of pedestrian safety reaches far and wide the gulf beaches here in pinellas county in that area along gulf boulevard have been very susceptible to pedestrian crashes over the last year and we have with us here this morning robin solely from the ceo of the tampa bay beaches chamber of commerce who's going to speak to you for a minute and then also julie bond from walk wise tampa bay which is a florida department of transportation education initiative housed at the university of south florida so once they have an opportunity to make a few comments and to address you then we'll all be happy to answer any questions that you have robin thank you thank you very much i am robin sally and i am the ceo for the tampa bay beaches chamber of commerce and our organization uh has been exploring this unfortunate pedestrian safety issue for quite some time and about a year and a half ago we partnered with walkwise with an idea for us to implement education along the beaches not only for our current residents but for the transient business residents and drivers that walk drive all along golf boulevard and we developed what we call the key card and it's a pedestrian safety key card that as a transient person comes into a hotel property they can get this put into their key as they go to unlock the door to their hotel room and have a few bullet points about pedestrian safety additionally across the state and across this county we have welcome centers that welcome the people that are not familiar with our rules of the road and we've developed what we call our rack card and that again is an educational piece in those information outlets to provide that safety for those pedestrians and then finally we are in the proofing phase right now of our final piece and that is a tag hanger for the rear view mirror for those people that get into a rental car and it is our goal to spread this initiative statewide through our resources with chambers of commerce across the state of florida so that we can have a three-pronged approach for pedestrian safety and driver safety as people are traveling the roads of our local area thank you thank you good morning everyone i'm julie bond i'm with the center for urban transportation research at the university of florida and i'm the project manager for walk wise tampa bay and also walk wise florida and this project is funded by the florida department of transportation we started walk wise tampa bay as an education effort so this is education we have the enforcement i'm going to talk about education also of importance is the engineering that takes place so those three e's are very important working together to solve this problem that we have so walk wise tampa bay was formed about five years ago here in district 7. it was an original idea that we came up with and it's a grassroots effort to go out to the people and to speak to them about pedestrian safety bicycle safety and driver safety so over this time we have spoken to groups everywhere throughout this district and now we're taking this statewide into counties such as orange county lee county some of those counties that also have high crash rates so what we do is we go out and it's a grassroots effort we have a presentation and we meet with people we talk to them about what they need to do as drivers pedestrians and bicyclists so we have an interactive presentation and we're actually collecting data during these presentations we have um a turning point technology system that the people in that it's sort of like they're playing a game show so we're actually collecting data on their knowledge of pedestrian laws and pedestrian safety so at the end of the year we have a great idea of what people know about laws for example and then what how we need to tackle this and how we need to solve the problem so we not only go out and give presentations but we go out and we walk into businesses and provide information to them for their employees and for their customers we were very happy to partner uh with the chamber tampa beaches chamber uh with the key to safety cards that has been a very successful program now going statewide and so it not only educates the visitors who come here but it also educates their employees because their employees are walking daily along gulf boulevard or the other areas and so it's providing education in in a multi-pronged approach so this grassroots effort um we have people take a pledge for safety they actually take a pledge and then if they would like to become one of our ambassadors so we know we can't reach as many people as we'd like to so we're recruiting ambassadors throughout the counties and they're helping us spread the word about pedestrian bicycle and driver safety so for example this week we're giving two bike smart classes one at pinellas hope which is near here and one at safe harbor we reach out to all types of audiences we go to businesses to schools and we really talk about the importance of pedestrian safety everyone who attends gets one of our walkwise reflective bags and if they do a follow-up survey we also send them a walkwise t-shirt that has the walkwise tips on the back so we feel that this approach has been very successful we're finding that the counties outside of pinellas pasco and hillsboro are very excited that we're expanding statewide and the presentations we've given in the orlando area have also been very well received and we talk about laws we talk to drivers about speed limits speed limits are very important when you look at the crash rates and the impact that it has lower speed limits save lives and so that's very important when enforcement are out there providing education that we look at drivers and we we let them know that you know lower speeds do save lives so that's all i have on the education uh program and i'm going to turn it back over to you thank you so i i give you a lot of numbers a lot of stats i'm going to sum it up this way is that over three year period 1500 people died needlessly in florida because they weren't crossing where they should have been our car didn't yield to them 28 000 people involved in pedestrian crashes and it's all avoidable it can stop it needs to stop we're seeing a significant problem and we're doing something about it the florida sheriffs are committed to it and we will continue this effort but of all the problems that we face as a country as a nation and what we're seeing here locally is that this can be fixed this can stop it's a matter of people just paying attention crossing their crosswalks and doing the right thing there's so many things that happen that affect people's lives where people die that we can't fix we can't change we can't avoid in some cases this is avoidable this is fixable this is doable and we need to reverse this trend because we can and we should people don't need to die we don't need over one person dying every single day because they were hit by a car and a real tragedy too which can't be lost in this is that person who is just minding their own business and driving down the road not impaired by alcohol and drugs not speeding not doing anything wrong and somebody darts out in front of them think about the impact on that person they're a victim too because you know especially that six week old baby that was killed up here on missouri avenue uh you know last month that person didn't do anything wrong just driving down the road and they're darting out in front so again importantly this is a reversible trend this is a problem that can be fixed and we as the sheriffs of florida are committed to doing everything we can to do that