PERRY: Wheel problems afoot in Aurora. Cops work to counter auto-pedestrian risks

It took virtually no time at all last week for a motorist on a busy Aurora street to get pulled over and ticketed for endangering a decoy pedestrian who was traversing East Iliff Avenue in a crosswalk.

In the hour or so that reporters watched the police decoy shuffle back and forth across Iliff at South Chambers Road, two motorcycle cops got busy fast during the traffic-safety operation. They barely had time to write a ticket or warning for one scofflaw before an officer monitoring the intersection would flag another driver who encroached impatiently on the acting pedestrian, or just drove as if they didn’t even see the guy.

“It’s unbelievable some of the things we see people do,” said veteran Aurora police Sgt. Bill Hummel, talking about both when people are driving or crossing streets.

Hummel said Aurora police regularly run the traffic-safety and sting ops, but they invited reporters last week after a recent spate of auto-pedestrian fatalities across the city.

Within the last few weeks, a 12-year-old boy on a scooter was fatally struck while crossing an Aurora street in a crosswalk marked with flashing lights.

About the same time, a 72-year-old woman was run over by a driver along Havana Street when she fell into a divot in the street while using her walker to cross. This week, a 70-year-old man was killed when he was hit by a pick-up truck crossing East Sixth Avenue at Potomac Street.

Before that, an unidentified man crossing Havana on a bicycle was struck by a car and killed.

I don’t know where you all live and work, but everywhere in Aurora and Denver I drive — especially on interstates 25 and 225 — I see things that fearless stunt drivers would never attempt. Along Havana, Parker Road and even on Colfax, the sheer quantity of fabulously dangerous and moronic car and pedestrian stunts is so astounding that it makes you want to either never leave the house or Google “home remedies for PTSD.”

I’ve seen pedestrians suddenly appear from shrubbery in raised medians just to jaywalk across speeding rivers of traffic. I’ve seen ass-hat drivers careen and rapidly pass 70-mile-per-hour heavy traffic on the 55-mile-per-hour interstate in piece-of-crap cars and clearly without the skill set to pull it off. Every. Single. Day.

What the hell is wrong with these people?

Sociology and behavior experts pretty much agree that the psychology of motoring is unique. People act aggressively behind the wheel in ways humans normally behave only in high-stress scenarios, like running for their lives in a mob or trying to get inside a discount store at 2 a.m. on Black Friday amid a crowd of others determined to get one of only five $1 televisions.

The biggest problem is overconfidence, believing you’re a good driver even when you’re trying to text your boss that you’re almost to work in racing rush-hour traffic and the sun in your eyes.

You’re not.

Another aspect of why we’re so weird in our cars is because of the very nature of a car, experts say. Enclosed in a literal shell, a sense of entitlement and bravado swells up to proportions that don’t happen anywhere else. 

It’s not just the drivers, however. While lots of metro burgs bill themselves as “walkable” cities, they’re not.

For years, Aurora was notorious for having neighborhood places with no sidewalks or interrupted sidewalks along major pedestrian routes. There is virtually no sidewalk on the north side of Parker Road between East Yale Avenue and South Havana Street. But there is an RTD bus stop. Pedestrians have to dodge drivers buzzing along in the adjacent strip mall and office parking lots or walk in traffic on Parker Road.

One of the biggest and still uncorrected pedestrian gaffes on the planet is on the southwest corner of Havana and East Iliff Avenue. From the corner of one of the busiest intersections in the city — for both pedestrians and motorists — there is not only no sidewalk along Iliff, but there is a slanted, wide, concrete abutment to the donut shop it borders. On many, many occasions, I have seen pedestrians try to manage the slanted concrete or give up and just walk in speeding traffic on Iliff. On more than one occasion, I’ve been horrified to see people try and manage the stunt in a wheelchair or with walkers or strollers.

Despite the risks and the recent car crashes and fatalities, the city has seen a substantial decline in auto-pedestrian collisions and fatalities, according to Aurora police records. As of Aug. 12, the city marked 172 auto-pedestrian collisions, eight of them fatal. That’s about a third fewer than the same time last year, city officials reported.

But it’s still a huge number of injuries and deaths that are easily prevented. And while pedestrians often make mistakes in jaywalking or walking into traffic, attentive drivers can usually react fast enough to prevent a collision.

But not someone driving like they own the road and the world, police say.

Hummel routinely drives a big, black SUV that doesn’t look like a police car until it’s behind you with the red-and-blue lights flashing. He said that when he’s just moving down the highway like everyone else, not patrolling, he regularly sees motorists blow past him. When they jet by faster than about 20-miles-per over the speed limit, he hits the squad car lights to pull them over.

“You can practically see cheering from the other drivers around him, happy to see someone get caught and reprimanded for doing that stuff,” Hummel said.

He, too, has seen a steady increase over the past several years of motorists and pedestrians pulling stunts of aggressive craziness that used to be remarkable because they were so rare.

Colorado State Patrol famously reported after the pandemic that they took more calls about aggressive driving than they did about drunken driving, across the state.

Hummel thinks it’s mostly because people got used to virtually cop-less streets during the pandemic, and an increasing predisposition to driving and walking while distracted, mostly by cell phones.

“Pay attention,” Hummel cautioned drivers. “We’re asking people to put down their phones. Slow down.”

Pedestrians need, also, to attentively walk and cross the streets defensively.

He pointed out car-crash details they drill into everyone that police pull over for tickets, warnings, or even heavy scolding. Hummel said that people hit by a car traveling 20 miles an hour have about a 95% chance of surviving the crash. People hit by a car traveling 40 miles an hour have about the same odds — of being killed.

Speeding makes a huge difference, especially in neighborhoods where the loss of split seconds that can allow for a driver to brake or swerve is almost always lost, along with a life.

Despite the regular, state-funded motorcycle-sting operations, these cops mostly offer a limited but mighty public-education campaign.

Last week at Chambers Road brought six warnings and a ticket for no car insurance in about an hour. The day before, on East Colfax Avenue, the team wrote 22 pedestrian violation summonses and six motorist summonses for failing to yield to pedestrians.

Hummel said he mostly warns pedestrians and scolds motorists who don’t give pedestrians much space.

“We just want people to learn that the mistakes they’re making can be deadly,” Hummel said of both pedestrians and drivers.

He said neither he nor other officers usually hand out jaywalking tickets or citations for wandering into traffic, especially when it involves homeless people.

“That doesn’t do anyone any good,” he said. Instead, he usually hands out warnings and a heavy dose of “you could have been killed, and you just may be next time.”

 Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com