Aidan Sims, a junior majoring in music theory, was walking across the street as a green car approached.
“The next thing I knew, I was on the ground,” he said.
Sims isn’t alone. Students at the University are no strangers to getting injured by cars on the way to class despite the University and the University of Alabama Police Department’s efforts. In the first month of the fall 2024 semester, WBRC News reported that the same amount of students — nine — reported being struck by cars as in all of 2023. However, it’s unclear the amount of people that could have been struck and not reported.
Shane Dorrill, spokesperson for UAPD, said that the number of reported accidents doubled from four to eight between the 24-25 and 25-26 academic years.
In 2024, the SGA and UAPD made a joint effort to improve traffic safety, approving the “Look Up Legends” initiative to display signs on campus promoting pedestrian awareness.
The University was also awarded $2.2 million in state grants for traffic safety in 2023, with over $700,000 earmarked “to upgrade traffic safety technology” but only to improve “timeliness and efficiency for law enforcement officers and emergency medical personnel.”
However, students in the meantime, say they haven’t noticed a difference.
“I’m not aware of any efforts being made to address those situations,” Sims said.
Undergraduate researcher Austin Yoder, a junior majoring in biological sciences and public health and a research assistant in the University’s Translational Research for Injury Prevention Lab, said that such vehicular accidents are far from rare.
Yoder is working on an academic study with TRIP Lab of over 300 UA students using “micromobility,” a category of vehicles that includes scooters, bicycles and their electric variants, saying he was inspired to do so because of the accidents suffered by his friends. Although his work has yet to be published, he found that 55% of students using scooters and bikes reported a near-miss, 30% had been in a crash and 18% reported an injury due to a collision. “These incidents are more common than you might think,” Yoder said. “You have a pretty good chance of being involved in a crash or even injured. Almost one in five, that’s pretty significant.”
He said the dense environment on campus, criss-crossed by major roads and heavily trafficked by bikes, cars and pedestrians, increases the risk of accidents.
Yoder emphasized that his findings are preliminary, came from a convenience sample and only covered students using micromobility. He said he has plans to do more analyses on the pedestrian situation on campus to uncover potential causes.
Students back up these observations reporting they feel unsafe as pedestrians or cyclists on campus, including Hannah Martz, a senior majoring in musical audio technology.
“I’ll keep going straight through a green light, and they [drivers] won’t pay attention that there are bikes coming,” Martz said. “They’ll try and clip me. I have to slow down to the point of about going over the handlebars.”
Martz said these near-misses with on-campus drivers happen regularly and that her co-workers at the University’s Aquatic Center often come in with injuries from car collisions on foot. These incidents are so common that Martz said she has had to dismount her bike in areas without dedicated bike lines. “If you’re biking on a road there, you’re liable to be hit,” Martz said. “Everyone’s trying to go around you instead of following the rules and staying behind.” Martz’s friend Lily Vierkandt, a junior majoring in marketing, said she was struck by a car crossing the intersection of University and Wallace Boulevard near campus just a month earlier.
After leaving Just Love Coffee Cafe on University Boulevard, Vierkandt said she was struck by a car turning left, jamming her finger and elbow, causing pain that lingered in her arm for days.
“I briefly ended up on the hood of the car at the moment of impact,” Vierkandt said. “In shock, I turned around expecting the driver to stop, but they did not.”
Vierkandt’s friend, a witness to the accident, called UAPD and was told that Vierkandt would have to file a report directly. After visiting the UAPD precinct on the Strip, Vierkandt said she was told that the intersection where the accident took place was Tuscaloosa Police Department’s jurisdiction. She said she had to call both police departments to get an answer.
“[I] was told over the phone that since I was not considered injured, there was no report to file and it would not be classified as a hit and run,” Vierkandt said.
In the end, no one investigated her case and no report was filed, even though the accident was captured by a nearby security camera. Dorrill said that police officers immediately respond to reports of traffic accidents but that UAPD possesses no record of Vierkandt’s accident.
“In my view, a lack of enforcement, particularly regarding pedestrian right-of-way laws, is a major contributor to pedestrian safety issues in Tuscaloosa,” Vierkandt said. “My interactions on the phone left me feeling dismissed rather than supported by both UAPD and Tuscaloosa PD.” Will Wenger, a senior majoring in music, said he was struck by a car in a pedestrian crossing near the Quad. A distracted driver hit him after pulling into the crossing, throwing him several feet and causing minor bruising and cuts. He said he had to miss class as a result of his injuries.
“You could tell that, when he looked up from his phone and saw that he hit me, his eyes widened,” Wenger said.
Yukino Shuchinohe, a junior majoring in music performance, said a car struck her in an unmarked pedestrian crosswalk by the Moody Music Building, the same place where a car hit Sims. Shuchinohe was mildly injured, but her bike was totaled in the collision, forcing her to travel campus on foot.
“These things happen quite a lot,” Sims said, reflecting on the near-misses he’d faced at the University. “Once a week, I cross the street thinking, ‘Wow, I wish people knew how to drive.’”
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