Published September 27, 2024 at 9:00AM
If you nearly get swiped by a turning car while walking across a street in Fairfax County, there’s a good chance that you or another community member has had a similar experience in that same spot before, newly released survey data indicates.
The inaugural “Near Miss/Dangerous Location” summary report from the Fairfax chapter of Northern Virginia Families for Safe Streets (NOVA FSS) found that 90% of the incidents recorded by pedestrians and cyclists since 2020 were recurring events — a higher rate than in Arlington (82%) or Alexandria (74%), the two other jurisdictions analyzed by the volunteer-run nonprofit.
The amount of incidents flagged as recurring suggests a feeling of “constant danger” in locations where people have reported safety concerns, Mike Doyle, a founding member of NOVA FSS, told FFXnow.
“What we’re finding is that there are pockets of real concern about dangerous locations, and they don’t [always] correlate, thank god, with the TREDS data where people have been killed or seriously injured,” Doyle said, referring to the crash data collected by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles. “But what we’re starting to detect is that if things don’t change, it’s just a matter of time before a crash happens and somebody gets seriously injured or killed.”