A female UA student was nearly struck by a car Tuesday afternoon in a campus crosswalk collision that seriously damaged three vehicles.
The driver, a male UA student, slammed on his vehicle’s brakes, narrowly missing a female student who was walking across the pedestrian crosswalk on Euclid Avenue and Second Street, witnesses said.
His car stopped just short of the white crosswalk lines before a black pickup truck collided with the back of his vehicle, said Darrel Fielder, driver of the truck, who was issued a citation for the wreck.
Fielder’s collision with the student’s car left little to no damage, but within seconds, a third car skidded 20 feet across the asphalt, wedging itself under the back of the truck. Fielder’s truck then jerked forward violently, seriously damaging Smith’s car, said officer Monica Carroll of the Tucson Police Department.
All three vehicles involved in the wreck were towed away, but no one was injured. The cars’ skid marks indicated that none of the cars were speeding at the time of the accident, Carroll said.
The Euclid Avenue crosswalk does not have a walk sign, a traffic light or a stop sign – only a sign informing motorists to yield to pedestrians crossing the street.
Since such crossing areas may be generally unsafe for students, the University of Arizona Police Department stressed the importance for students to stay alert both when walking and driving. Motorists should be especially careful since even an unmarked intersection implies a pedestrian crosswalk, said Sgt. Juan Alvarez of UAPD.
This is the second campus crosswalk collision involving a pedestrian this week. A car collided with three family members walking along a crosswalk Sunday on Mountain Avenue and Helen Street, sending the family to the hospital under stable conditions with life-threatening injuries.
Despite the two recent incidents, collisions on campus are not usually serious and inflict minor injuries and property damage, Alvarez said.
“”It doesn’t happen a lot – not too many (traffic accidents) in this area,”” Carroll said.
Although specific data is unavailable, the number of campus collisions has been holding steady and is not increasing, Alvarez said.
Most UA collisions are caused by a congestion of students mixed with a large number of vehicles, he added.
TPD can not release the name of the female student until after all citations and accident information is processed, which may take up to 48 hours, according to TPD’s public information office.
The two students could not be reached for comment.