FLORENCE — DawnMarie Versluys thought the car swinging toward her would stop.

She was ready to slap the hood and yell out “I’m walkin’ here!”

Instead, when the Chevy Tahoe turned left at the intersection of Irby and Evans streets in Florence on a late night in 2018, it hit Versluys — in the middle of the crosswalk — squarely in the side.

The impact flung Versluys several feet forward. She fell, and her head bounced “like a basketball” against the concrete.

The driver paused just briefly before steering around the body in the street and speeding into the night.

The Palmetto State is one of the most dangerous states in the nation for pedestrians, and fatality rates are only getting higher.

Smart Growth America, an advocacy group, ranked the state as the third most dangerous in the country in its 2022 report. In 2021, 194 pedestrians in South Carolina were killed in accidents — more than three every week.

Experts blame the problem on a combination of changing driver trends and poor design. But with a vast network of roads meant to transport vehicles, not people, there are few easy answers for South Carolina.

Versluys lay in the street on that night in 2018, staring at the sole of her foot, bent at an unnatural angle.

Her ankle was broken, the tendons and nerves damaged.

The accident ended Versluys’ time as a dance teacher, and she still suffers from memory loss, migraines and vertigo, which she blames on the crash.

To this day, fear rises in Versluys when she sees a car in the corner of her eye.

In a bad spot

Across the United States, pedestrian fatalities have been rising.

In 2022, more than 7,500 pedestrians are estimated to have died — more than 20 a day. That’s the highest it has been in 41 years, according to the Governor’s Highway Safety Association.

Fatalities began to rise in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

From 2010-21, the number of pedestrians killed in traffic accidents jumped 77 percent, according to the association.

Like the rest of the country, South Carolina has seen its pedestrian fatality rate rise rapidly in the past decade.

From 2009-19, pedestrian fatalities have increased 80 percent, according to a 2022 report on pedestrian and bicycle safety issued by the South Carolina Department of Transportation.

Preliminary data from 2022 and 2023 indicate the state continues to see an abnormally high number of pedestrian fatalities.

“South Carolina’s in a bad spot,” said Amy Johnson Ely, executive director of the Palmetto Cycling Coalition, a Columbia-based group that advocates for pedestrian and bike safety.

It’s not exactly clear why pedestrian fatalities have been rising, but research has suggested speeding and distracted driving increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, contributing to a more dangerous environment for pedestrians.

While fatalities began to increase more than a decade ago, they skyrocketed during the pandemic, jumping 13 percent nationally between 2020 and 2022.

Speeding was cited as a factor in 8.8 percent of pedestrian fatalities in 2020, and 8.1 percent in 2021, a greater proportion than each of the prior four years, according to the GHSA.

Fewer people used public transportation during the pandemic as well, transitioning to biking or walking.

Experts also say the number of sport utility vehicles on the road has increased the danger to pedestrians. Across the country, 56 percent of vehicles are SUVs.

That’s far more than 40 years ago, when just 1.6 percent of vehicles on the road were SU- Vs, according to data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The number of deaths involving SUVs increased 120 percent from 2012-21, the GHSA found. Meanwhile, the number of deaths involving passenger cars grew just 26 percent.

In South Carolina, the Charleston area is by the far most dangerous. Smart Growth America ranks it as the fifth-most dangerous city for pedestrians in the nation.

Over the past five years, the Medical University of South Carolina trauma center has cared for 633 patients suffering from bike or pedestrian injuries in Charleston County, according to previous Post and Courier reporting.

The city is on pace to surpass the six pedestrian deaths recorded last year. MUSC, the College of Charleston and the Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority launched an awareness campaign in July.

Charleston is hardly alone, however.

Columbia and the Greenville area also rank in the top 20 most-dangerous cities for pedestrians. Columbia sits at No. 16, Greenville at No. 17, according to Smart Growth America.

Bordering South Carolina, the Augusta, Ga., area and the Charlotte, N.C., areas ranked 39th and 44th, respectively, among the most-dangerous metro areas.

Bike Walk Greenville, a nonprofit working to make the Greenville area safer for pedestrians, recently published a project memorializing cyclists and walkers killed along Greenville County’s roadways.

In that project, published in July, the organization mapped all 38 deaths from 2021 to 2022, along with photos of most of those who were killed.

“You put faces to the deaths and humanize the loss,” said Frank Mansbach, executive director of Bike Walk Greenville. Rural areas are dangerous for pedestrians as well.

Fairfield County — a rural area outside of Columbia — had the highest rate of fatal pedestrian crashes in the state, followed by Lee and Williamsburg counties, according to South Carolina Department of Transportation.

The rural Pee Dee is overrepresented among counties with the highest rate of fatal pedestrian crashes, with Lee, Williamsburg, Dillon, Horry, Clarendon and Florence counties all in the top 10.

Built for cars

South Carolina isn’t alone in the Southeast.

Any map of the most-dangerous cities and states for pedestrians will show a wide swath plowing through the southern U.S.

Neighboring Florida sits at No. 2 in Smart Growth America’s list, while New Mexico takes the top spot.

Georgia and North Carolina are both in the top 15. Just five of the top 20 most-dangerous states are in the North.

It’s a trend that is well known to experts.
Clint Moore, Florence assistant city manager, said the southeastern United States developed at a different time than cities with safer pedestrian records.

Urbanization of many northern cities began at a time when connectivity was a priority and vehicles weren’t ubiquitous yet.

By the time the South began to grow more rapidly — in the mid-20th century — the car was king, and urban design prized vehicle traffic above all else.

Beth Osborne, director of transportation for Smart Growth America, described the sunbelt as “the purest example of the 1950s car-only experiment.”

“So much of the South is built on that kind of promise of what the car could do,” she said.

Now, some southern cities have begun to grapple with the ramifications, such as fewer sidewalks and higher speeds.

South Carolina, one of the fastest-growing states in the nation, has had to rapidly adapt as areas with once-rural, commuter-oriented roadways have become urban or suburban hot spots, Moore said.

According to a report from the state Department of Transportation, traditional roadway design in South Carolina has led to streets without adequate pedestrian and bicycle facilities, vehicles traveling at high speeds, large, complex intersections and limited roadway and pedestrian lighting.

‘We recognize we have an issue’ The Department of Transportation owns many of the state’s roads — over 60,000 miles. Even neighborhood roads within cities are owned by the transportation department, complicating municipalities’ attempts to make their areas more bike- and pedestrian-friendly.

In Florence, Moore estimated that 75-80 percent of the roads are run by the Department of Transportation — all streets with a small black placard beneath the road sign.

In general, state transportation systems in the U.S. use the logic of interstate and highway engineering when designing roads, Osborne said. Those roadways are meant to exclude pedestrians in favor of getting cars where they are going as quickly as possible.

But as state agencies grew, they applied that logic to residential roads as well, Osborne said.

“The state highway programs are applying their rules in a one-size fits all approach,” she said.

In Greenville, the deadliest roadways in the area for bikers and pedestrians, Bike Walk Greenville found, were what Mansbach called “stroads,” a term created by American civil engineer and urban planner Charles Marohn in 2011 by combining the words street and road.

These thoroughfares — which Mansbach said include White Horse Road, Wade Hampton Boulevard and Poinsett Highway — function as highways but cut through residential areas and include few or none of the safety measures typically used on hightraffic roads.

“It has all the problems of an interstate highway with none of the benefits, like limited access,” said John McBurney, Bike Walk Greenville’s vice chair. “You have businesses and even homes fronting stroads. So you have this juxtaposition of people trying to live their lives along a road where there’s heavy traffic and people go faster than you can believe.”

Bike Walk Greenville found five people had been killed on White Horse Road between 2021 and 2022. Four of those people died around a single intersection, where the road meets West Blue Ridge Drive.

Despite being flanked by homes and businesses, the road lacks basic safety measures such as lights, widened sidewalks and more crosswalks.

Similar conditions exist along Wade Hampton Boulevard, a seven-lane highway where four people died in that two-year period, and Poinsett Highway, where an additional person was killed.

All three roads are owned and operated by the state Department of Transportation.

George Jebaily, a Florence City Council member, advocate against distracted driving and the personal injury attorney representing Versluys, said Florence has historically clashed with the state agency when trying to implement pedestrian safety measures.

However, in 2022, the Department of Transportation released its first-ever Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Action Plan. The 141-page report reckons with South Carolina’s position as one of the most-dangerous states for pedestrians and bicyclists and lays out steps the agency can take to improve safety.

“It’s an area where we recognize we have an issue, and we’ve got to address it,” said Justin Powell, the agency’s chief of staff.

The plan included an assessment of current trends, developing a list of 1,000 high-risk roadways and recommending countermeasures.

Proposed improvements included additional signage, enhanced pavement markings, lighting, narrowing lanes, turning more two-way streets into one-way streets and providing more driver and pedestrian training, among other strategies.

Officials said 16 of the 18 highest-priority projects proposed in the plan are now underway.

In 2021, the SCDOT also adopted a “complete streets” policy — after lobbying from the Palmetto Cycling Coalition — that “requires and encourages a safe, comfortable, integrated transportation network for all users, regardless of age, ability, income, ethnicity, or mode of transportation.”

In many cases, the roadways are simply outdated, Powell said. They were built as corridor routes and weren’t meant to host pedestrians. As their use has changed, the state agency has had to change its approach as well.

Powell emphasized the Department of Transportation takes into consideration local factors, and he said the agency seeks feedback from local officials and the public whenever possible.

‘Safety isn’t our priority’

Ely is haunted by the rankings that South Carolina receives in traffic safety roundups.

The state routinely ranks among the worst states not just for pedestrians, but for all traffic fatalities per capita and per miles driven. “This is the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night,” she said.

The Palmetto Cycling Coalition works on a range of projects to improve pedestrian and bicyclist safety. It helped the transportation department adopt its complete streets policy and advocates for local governments to improve their street environments as well, through programs such as the SC Livable Streets Academy and an annual conference.

The coalition also lobbies for legislative fixes to pedestrian safety, such as enhancing enforcement of traffic violations and banning motorists from holding a cellphone while driving.

So far, those efforts haven’t seen much success, Ely said.

She expressed frustration that practices that she says enjoy broad, bipartisan consensus — like establishing walking or biking routes and cracking down on distracted driving — aren’t prioritized by elected officials.

“I think what we need from our leaders is the courage to do things that are common sense, and to make changes that are common sense,” she said.

But Osborne said blaming pedestrian accidents on driver behavior, education or even enforcement misses the bigger point: U.S. roadways are designed for cars, not people.

While Osborne said enforcing laws and educating drivers and pedestrians is important, she said it doesn’t address the root problem — engineers and public officials’ seeming disregard for the interests of anyone not in a vehicle.

For change to occur, those at the top — both bureaucrats and elected officials — have to make pedestrians a priority, she said.

“Safety isn’t our priority,” she said. “Moving cars quickly is our priority.”

Conor Hughes
contributed to this report.

Which South Carolina counties see the most pedestrian fatalities?

South Carolina ranks as one of the worst states for pedestrian fatalities in the country. From 2007 to 2021, areas around Charleston, Myrtle Beach, Columbia and Greenville saw the highest number of fatalities. Rural counties weren't spared, however.

Per capita, many of the state's most remote areas saw high pedestrian fatality rates.

Note: Union County data was unavailable at press time.