Date: 7 March 2020 To: USF Community From: Ángel Y. Borrero Laureano Subject: Pedestrian Accidents in the USF Campus Background Information: USF is a campus that counts with over 50,000 students, plus over 15,000 staff and faculty. Most of these people must cross a crosswalk in order to get to their work, classes or other destination and about half of this population brings a car to campus every weekday. Every day they put their lives in risk by being focused on their phones when they are crossing, or by a car being distracted and hitting them. “Within 2017 and 2018, USFPD has handled 32 pedestrian and bicycle accidents on campus.” (Morgan, “Distracted Walking: Researcher pins rise in campus pedestrian accidents to cell phones”, Tampa Bay Times) Although the speed limit in campus is 25 miles per hour, it has been seen that these range has not helped in reducing the amount of pedestrian accidents, because people do not respect this speed limit and are too distracted on their phones. Explanation of the Problem: In the past few years, USF has seen a slight increment in pedestrian accidents, where cars have run over pedestrians who are crossing cross walks in campus. “There are people in multiple modes of transportation moving throughout campus…,” (Clarke, “Where Are They Now”, University Police Department) and most drivers do not have this consideration when driving through campus. If to this you add, that most of the people walking are either listening to music or focused on their phones, the risk of being involved in an accident is much higher. “In fact, college-age young adults incur pedestrian injuries at a higher rate than any other age group.” (Wells, McClure, Porter, Schwebel, “Distracted Pedestrian Behavior on Two Urban College Campuses”, NCBI) Causes of the Problem: The cause of college students and faculty incurring in pedestrian accidents at a higher rate is due to all the distractions they face every day. Most of the drivers driving on campus do not obey the 25 miles per hour speed limit imposed on campus. They are usually speeding and going through crosswalks with higher speeds than they are permitted. Although people are usually distracted when driving, they are also distracted when crossing. People “…tend to stop and check the signal at an intersection, but some keep their eyes fixed on their gadgets while they're in the crosswalk.” (Morgan, “Distracted Walking: Researcher pins rise in campus pedestrian accidents to cell phones”, Tampa Bay Times) In a social media research that I did, a group of 50 USF people were asked if they tended to use their phones while walking through campus, a 46 of them responded with a yes. From these 50 people, 35 use a car in a campus and all of them said they use their phones when driving through campus. This is a big problem, because people’s focus is on the cybernetic world, instead of staying alert for possible threats to their lives. In addition to being in their phones, some of them are listening to music, not permitting them to hear any other signals that may save them from being hit by a car. Impacted Population: The impacted community is the USF population: students, faculty, staff. These are usually the people that are involved in these accidents on our campus. Although these are the people that are usually involved, it cannot be discarded that people involved in these accidents may be direct family members or friends of people that study or work at USF. This at the same time increments the insurance premiums for people that live around our campus, due to the amount of accidents being generated on our campus. This is a big hit to people around USF, but also for students that live in these areas. Works Cited -https://www.usf.edu/ods/documents/system-facts/usf-system-facts-2019-20.pdf -https://www.usf.edu/administrative-services/university-police/documents/wherearetheynow.pdf -https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5762430/ 
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