Pedestrian Hit by Hit and Run Drivers Three Times Here (Miami: insurance, crime)

[HotandHumid]

I was checking things out on the Internet to try to find out more about the body being taken away by the Broward County Sheriff's Department from the Dollar Store in Oakland Park this past Saturday afternoon and couldn't find any information on it but I did come across and article from the Sun Sentinel that said a pedestrian in a crosswalk this past Friday on Oakland Park Boulevard was hit by a hit and run driver and then he was hit again two more times by two more hit and run drivers. He was pronounced dead when the deputies arrived.

Oakland Park doesn't have it's own police force and contracts out to Broward County for protection and law enforcement by the Broward County Sheriff's Department.

Florida does have a law that states drivers must yield to pedestrians in crosswalks but as I regularly use crosswalks, I rarely see this happening and I've had drivers screaming out their car windows at me to get out of their way while I was crossing in a crosswalk with the Walk light on so people either don't know the law or ignore it.

A friend who once thought about moving here from Chicago said it seems pretty lawless here and he's planning on staying put in Chicago where he said he feels safe walking and biking around.

[Fiona8484]

Broward and Miami Dade have so many awful drivers, they won’t stop 75% of the time for a pedestrian
.
Yes, Fort Lauderdale is lawless and you will constantly hear about hit and runs, super sad. It’s a little taste of the third world here in the US of A. I’m so happy to have left!


Oddly enough, Californians are much better about stopping for pedestrians.

[HotandHumid]

I was just in Key West this past weekend where most tourists driving down from South Florida park their cars and walk or bike around town to see the sites and I found the drivers were very considerate there stopping to allow pedestrians in crosswalks to cross the street.

You also don't have the speeding traffic there in Old Town because the main streets are so narrow whereas most of the streets in the Fort Lauderdale area are set up like highways to move traffic fast, even though there are now traffic jams and bumper to bumper traffic here a lot.

But then again like you said, I didn't feel like I was in a 3rd world country like I do here and I can't blame you for getting out of the Fort Lauderdale area.

Everyone I encountered in the Keys spoke English and because it's so expensive to live there and there's a housing shortage due to Hurricane Irma, I don't think the Keys are a big destination for immigrants from 3rd world countries who leave their countries to make money in the U.S. like the masses of illegal immigrants who have moved into the Fort Lauderdale and Miami areas.

[blueherons]

Drivers in Key West are all from the midwest.

Yes, Fort Lauderdale is lawless.

[tom77falcons]

Originally Posted by blueherons

Drivers in Key West are all from the midwest.

Yes, Fort Lauderdale is lawless.

Are you being sarcastic or do you really think this? Doesn't seem different than any other large metro area I have been in.

[LA33301]

Originally Posted by blueherons

Drivers in Key West are all from the midwest.

Yes. I think Fort Lauderdale is lawless.

I live in Fort Lauderdale. It feels lawless to me. I see very few Police Units (Cars) when I run errands. I see a lot of immigrants, many of whom have a bad self entitled attitude. Having recently passed a week in St. Pete, I was shocked how people were so polite there. There is a growing resentment with immigrants in Fort Lauderdale as locals I know feel fed up with lawless driving, rudeness, road rage, aggression and a laziness or disrespect to learn basic english.

[HotandHumid]

Originally Posted by blueherons

Drivers in Key West are all from the midwest.

Yes, Fort Lauderdale is lawless.

Actually, Key West has a higher class tourism base that is from around the world and not just the Midwest than what we get here in the Fort Lauderdale area.

I've found that having money to spend on expensive hotel rooms generally, but of course there are always exceptions, means that Key West sees a higher class of tourist who go there to vacation than the people who come to Fort Lauderdale to stock up on clothing at all the big box discount stores we have here. Although that may be abating somewhat now that the dollar is so strong against foreign currency.

The tourism figures are also not realistic in Fort Lauderdale as tourists who fly into the airport here and then go on a cruise are counted as tourists here, although they don't stay here and don't spend any money here except maybe at the airport.

It's expensive to live in Key West as there's a housing shortage in the lower Keys, along with it being a smaller community where more people know one another than here so there aren't a lot of poor people moving to the Keys and turning to crime like there is in the Fort Lauderdale area and there aren't a lot of illegal immigrants living there being involved in hit and run accidents where they don't stop after causing an accident being afraid of being deported if found out to be here illegally.

A big article in The Nation magazine recently stated the facts about all these illegal immigrants coming into the U.S., including Fort Lauderdale. Most are unskilled and will work for low wages so they take away jobs from legal immigrants and native born Americans who work in jobs considered unskilled and once they gain some sort of legal standing to stay in the U.S. as residents but not as citizens so they aren't allowed to vote, they generally bring in three family members who are also unskilled workers and this creates a scenario where most of the unskilled labor in many areas of the U.S., which we see a lot of in South Florida, becomes foreign born residents who usually aren't U.S. citizens.

The article said that this practice will eventually become a huge burden on the system in the U.S. as these permanent resident workers don't usually gain citizenship and thus won't be eligible to receive social security and Medicare benefits when they become senior citizens, although they may work long enough to gain a pension from their employer if the company they work for still has one, which is becoming less and less the case as corporations turn to hiring part-time workers so they don't have to pay out pensions and they don't have to pay unemployment tax as part-time workers aren't eligible for unemployment insurance.

[HotandHumid]

Just the facts: Fort Lauderdale is the second worst city in the U.S. for pedestrian deaths due to motor vehicles hitting them.

[BNBR]

Originally Posted by HotandHumid

Just the facts: Fort Lauderdale is the second worst city in the U.S. for pedestrian deaths due to motor vehicles hitting them.

Who cares?

[retrodaddy]

I've come to regard Fort Lauderdale as The Land Of Doing Whatever The F*&! You Want.

Grew up in Deerfield, moved back to Broward and have lived in FtL the past five years after a few decades away in Gainesville, FL, and Atlanta. From my experience (backed up by data such as what HotandHumid posted) FtL's roads are relatively dangerous to travel regardless of whether you're a driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist (I'm a bit of all three). Disregard for rules of the road is a way of life down here, but it's not just drivers who are guilty of it. Many pedestrians and bicyclists feel free to cross roads in dangerous situations, with pedestrians often choosing to cross roads 30 or so feet shy of the relative safety of pedestrian crosswalks, amidst cars at red lights. Their disregard for their safety is perplexing to me. They're the most vulnerable. I get the feeling pedestrians making terrible decisions about navigating traffic have made a lot of other terrible decisions in their life, too.

Who's to blame? Law enforcement - or lack thereof - has to play a role. A few years back FtL announced they were gonna crack down on jaywalkers. How did that play out? I don't think I've ever seen a jaywalker cited by police, and people are sure af still jaywalking all nilly-willy. And it seems like police are never around when drivers blatantly run red lights of fly past stop signs. I was pleasantly stunned when a police officer recently pulled over a delivery van which flashed in front of me in its attempt to cross three lanes and get to a left turn lane on Federal Hwy.

Going back to the original post, ignorance is rampant. Many drivers don't get that they need to yield to pedestrians when making right turns and walk sign is on. Getting yelled at or honked at in that scenario isn't uncommon, though it's much better the closer I am to downtown. Same with being yelled at for bicycling in the right hand lane. A few weeks back some dude slowed down enough so he could roll down his window and give me a brief lecture about me getting onto the sidewalk. I laughed at him and told him I was where I was supposed to be. But he seemed to sure of himself...