While the Virginia Department of Transportation marked the return of the school year with a Wednesday warning for pedestrians and motorists to exercise some safety, the state’s cautionary notice found little favor with Charlottesville’s most persistent pedestrian, Kevin Cox.
Arrested for chalking an unsanctioned crosswalk across Elliott Avenue in the city after a pedestrian death near the spot, he regards VDOT’s first-of-the-month safety notice as not just insufficient but misleading.
“The article repeats several myths about pedestrian safety and drivers’ responsibilities,” Cox told The Daily Progress.
Long before his May 21 arrest, Cox has pointed out that state law gives pedestrians priority not just inside painted — or, in his case, chalked — markings on asphalt.
“Crosswalks do not create a pedestrian crossing,” said Cox. “They only acknowledge the existence of a pedestrian crossing.”
Cox fears that Virginians could be steered into thinking that pedestrians are legally limited to crossing only where there is a painted path, due to repeated suggestions by VDOT to use a “crosswalk.”
“They know that crosswalk in their technical jargon means only a place people cross, and not necessarily with a marked crosswalk,” said Cox.
While Cox’s critique echoes his earlier plea to Charlottesville traffic officials to paint more crosswalks because, he says, they tend to get the attention of motorists, he asserts that VDOT’s emphasis on marked crosswalks muddies state law. The state code requires drivers to stop for pedestrians at intersections on all roads with speed limits of 35 mph or less, whether or not there are stripes on pavement.
“Drivers must yield at crossings whether they’re painted or not,” said Cox. “Suggesting otherwise puts the burden for pedestrian safety completely on the pedestrian.”
The burden on pedestrians has recently been particularly severe. Since 2020, there’s been a 43% rise in motorists crashing into people, with more than 1,300 Virginians killed over the past decade, according to VDOT, whose recent safety notice notes that most fatalities occur at night and away from intersections.
“Pedestrians are among the most at-risk road users because they lack the protection of a vehicle,” the notice warns. It advises motorists: Slow down, yield and put down the phone.
Citing a “shared responsibility,” the notice urges pedestrians to wear bright clothing and make eye contact with drivers.
Cox bristled at the suggestion that walkers should prioritize eye contact.
“That’s nonsense,” he said. “Telling people that this is a requirement is another way of putting the burden of responsibility onto the pedestrian.”
Cox was equally unmoved by the wardrobe advice.
“I’m not going to change my clothes just to go for a walk,” said Cox. “If you’re counting on neon shirts to stop some driver from running you down, you’re going to get flattened.”
Instead, Cox urges what he sees as a more realistic rule of thumb: Assume that drivers can’t see you.
“I watch the cars; that tells me what the driver is doing,” he said. “Between tinted windows and headlight glare, you can’t always see the driver.”
Cox’s no-nonsense posture recently took him to a school bus stop at the intersection of Old Lynchburg Road and Jefferson Park Avenue in the southwestern part of Charlottesville. A parent had asked him to take a look, and Cox said he wasn’t surprised by what he found: children spilling out of buses and dashing across the road toward the Fry’s Spring Beach Club parking lot, where parents sat in idling cars.
“There is no marked crosswalk across Old Lynchburg Road at that intersection,” Cox reported in a recent letter to a top school administrator.
He said that a teacher’s aide climbed off one bus to stop traffic.
“I really appreciate that,” he wrote, “and I also see it as acknowledgment of the dangers at that intersection.”
Cox said the hazard is compounded by drivers rolling through the stop sign on Jefferson Park Avenue’s south side. He suggested placing a “speed mat,” a more gradual form of a speed hump, to slow cars prior to reaching the intersection. He also floated the idea of additional personnel.
“Having one teacher’s aide stop traffic is not enough,” Cox wrote. “The intersection is so dangerous that it should actually have a school crossing guard.”
He expressed this suggestion via email to Kim Powell, the chief operations officer of Charlottesville City Schools. School division spokeswoman Beth Cheuk welcomed the message as appropriate for the division’s Safe Routes to School, or SRTS, committee, which brings city and school division staff together every two weeks.
“Kim is glad to learn of this concern and will add it to the SRTS agenda,” Cheuk told The Daily Progress in an email.
The incident that brought Cox’s arrest was his response to a year-ago traffic fatality on Elliott Avenue in the city. There, 64-year-old Liberian immigrant and family matriarch Mamawa Simai was attempting to reach a bus stop when a 19-year-old from Louisa County struck and killed her with his car.
Although the driver told a responding officer he was traveling about 40 mph on the 35 mph stretch, the commonwealth’s attorney later announced that the evidence wasn’t strong enough for a charge sterner than violating a pedestrian’s right-of-way. The young motorist, Matthew Kozub, paid a $94 fine.
Cox responded by chalking a crosswalk nearby and was charged with intentional property destruction. In July, he was convicted of a lesser count, and he then brusquely paid his $607 court-mandated damages directly to City Manager Sam Sanders at a City Council meeting.
In late July, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles unveiled a 54-foot tall ladder in Richmond with a message about the physics of a 40 mph impact.
“Would you push someone off this ladder?” it asks. “Hitting them with your car does the same damage.”
As for VDOT, The Daily Progress’ efforts to obtain a comment from that department regarding Cox’s criticism was unsuccessful.
Cox says safety may hinge less on telling people how to walk and more on telling people how to drive.
Hawes Spencer (434) 960-9343
hspencer@dailyprogress.com
@HawesSpencer on X
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