Adriesue “Bitsy” Gomez pulled on a straw hat with a turquoise bow for a short walk to the 99 Cents Only Store. The 72-year-old wanted to buy a roll of Bounty paper towels and some gladiola bulbs to plant in the yard of her Santa Ana home.

Spring had arrived, she told her daughters.

It was Sunday, April 19, around 3 p.m. Heading home, Gomez crossed Main Street between 15th and 16th streets, where there is no crosswalk or light. She glanced at the store receipt and something on it didn’t seem right, her daughters say. Their mother, a truck driver, Teamster and founder of the Coalition of Women Truck Drivers, was never too shy to speak up.

So, according to her family, Gomez headed back to the store.

She paused in the left-hand turn lane to wait for traffic to pass, police accounts and video footage indicate. That’s when Gomez was struck by a driver of a gold Nissan Maxima making a left turn onto Main Street.

The driver told police he saw three or four people run across the street as he turned, but didn’t see Gomez. The force of the impact threw Gomez onto her back in a northbound lane. Both of her sandals flew off; the left one landed several feet away.

When police arrived, they saw blood pour out of Gomez’s mouth and course down her chest. Fearing she would choke, an officer rolled her on her side and propped up her head on the roll of paper towels. She died in the intensive care unit of the former Western Medical Center two days later.

Tragically, the circumstances of Bitsy Gomez’s death are all too common. It’s been a particularly deadly year to walk Orange County’s busiest streets.

Forty-eight people have died since January – including two just in the past week – according to county coroner data through Oct. 15. That’s roughly one pedestrian killed every six days.

The county is on track to beat the previous year’s total of 55 pedestrian deaths, continuing an uneven, but upward trend over the past five years. Orange County coroner’s data going back to 1992 show that the worst year on record was 1994, when 70 pedestrians died.

Over the last month, the Register interviewed families, witnesses and authorities; reviewed police reports and other records; and analyzed a decade of Orange County traffic injury reports collected in the UC Berkeley Transportation Injury Mapping System, along with nearly six years of coroner’s data.

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COMMON FACTORS

The analysis suggests several factors are common in the deaths of Gomez and others:

• Victims generally are older adults. Many are walking at night, when visibility is poor.

• Over the past decade, nearly half – 47 percent – of pedestrians who died were struck when crossing the street outside a painted crosswalk.

• Drugs and alcohol played a role in less than 6 percent of deaths from 2004 through 2013. In just 4 percent of cases was the driver cited for speeding.

• Crosswalks make some difference, but less than might be expected. A quarter of pedestrians are struck and killed in a crosswalk.

• In the last five years, more pedestrians have died in Santa Ana than in any other city in Orange County, according to coroner’s data, and more of its residents have died this year than in previous years going back to 2010. Orange, Anaheim, Huntington Beach, Garden Grove and Westminster also have proved deadly.

That’s not surprising. Those are large, densely populated places designed to accommodate cars, with wide thoroughfares built for fast-moving traffic.

“The streets here are not designed for pedestrians,” said Gomez’s daughter, 52-year-old Rita Gomez.

Statewide, roads have become safer for motorists, but not for pedestrians. Federal data show that California motor vehicle deaths plunged by 45 percent in the decade from 2003 to 2013, while the rate of pedestrians deaths remained largely flat.

California ranks as the ninth-deadliest state for pedestrians, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, with 701 people, or about two pedestrians per 100,000 people, killed in 2013, the most recent year available.

Tamara Redmon, pedestrian safety program manager with the Federal Highway Administration, said it’s difficult to say why pedestrian deaths seem largely unchanged. She points to the state’s car culture, the lack of infrastructure for walking and bicycling and a growing interest in healthy activities like walking.

Who, where and how many? Explore pedestrian fatalities that have occurred in Orange County during 2015. < Go back Who died in my city? Who died in my age range? <!– Who died during a certain time? –> How many women and men died?

NO SAFE PASSAGE

Still, if there’s a common thread through recent accidents, it’s the lack of a safe passage.

Merchants along Main Street, where Gomez was fatally struck, say they routinely witness near-misses when pedestrians cross the street where there is no crosswalk. The block, home to multiple stores and bus stops, bustles with pedestrian activity.

When pedestrians are in the roadway, outside a crosswalk, motorists must, by law, “exercise due care.” Reality, however, is altogether different.

In a two-hour period on a recent Monday and Tuesday afternoon, a Register photographer witnessed about 40 people cross the street at the location near where Gomez was hit.

The photographer saw a motorist honk at an elderly man who was crossing. She witnessed another driver put on his emergency blinkers to stop traffic for an elderly woman with a walker. And she observed one man hold aloft a white piece of paper as he crossed, as if it were a truce flag.

Barber Anthony Encinas’ windows open onto Main Street, affording him a view. Sometimes, Encinas said, he runs outside to stop traffic so schoolchildren and the elderly can cross safely. The 38-year-old blames impatient drivers who exceed the 35 mph speed limit. And he wonders why the city doesn’t slow down traffic and make the street safer for pedestrians.

“We need a crosswalk,” Encinas said.

But crosswalks aren’t a magic bullet.

A controlled study of five years of pedestrian crashes by the Federal Highway Administration found that marked crosswalks on a two-lane street made no difference in the number of pedestrian incidents, while marked crosswalks on busy multilane roads actually produced more pedestrian crashes.

In comparison, multilane streets with a raised median in the crosswalk had a significantly lower number of pedestrian crashes.

Redmon, from the Federal Highway Administration, said flashing beacons also make crosswalks more visible and prove more effective in protecting pedestrians. She noted that safety measures must be noticeable and tailored to a specific location to make a difference.

“It’s not sort of a one-size-fits-all kind of thing,” Redmon said.

San Francisco, for example, sought to eliminate “conflict points” between pedestrians and motorists by restricting right-hand turns on a busy, mile-long stretch of Market Street.

Huntington Beach – where an average four pedestrians per year have been killed since 2010 – added an electronic sign at three heavily traveled areas, including two intersections on Pacific Coast Highway, in the past year. The signs flash messages such as “watch for pedestrians” and “don’t text and drive.”

DANGEROUS INTERSECTIONS

An analysis of 2013 and ’14 data in the UC Berkeley Transportation Injury Mapping System indicates the most dangerous Santa Ana intersection was Bristol Street at Warner Avenue, where 23 people were injured in 17 collisions among pedestrians, motorists and bicyclists over two years. No one was killed.

Other dangerous Santa Ana intersections were Harbor Boulevard and First Street, 17th Street and Grand Avenue, and Bristol Street and Memory Lane.

One of the most horrific incidents happened almost a year ago, on Halloween night, when a speeding motorist slammed into three 13-year-old trick-or-treaters, killing them. Just a few months before the girls were killed, the driver, Jaquinn Ramone Bell, had pleaded guilty to hit-and-run driving, driving under the influence and child endangerment. He is now serving 13 years, 8 months in prison.

Last year, Jessica Koch, who works at the Suit Company on Main Street, said she watched as a boy was hit by a car as he crossed the street near where Gomez was struck.

She also has seen people who were hit flee the scene – meaning a police report wasn’t filed. It’s difficult to know whether this is widespread, but it could indicate the actual number of injury crashes is higher than police records indicate.

After Gomez was killed in April, Koch said she saw Santa Ana police conduct sting operations to catch drivers who failed to stop for pedestrians.

“They know there’s a problem,” she said.

The Gomez sisters are sad, frustrated.

“My mom’s death was predictable and preventable,” Rita Gomez said.

NO STREETLIGHT

Dolores Gomez, 50, said when she recently asked a city employee about painting a crosswalk on Main Street, she was instead told the city couldn’t afford $630,000 for a streetlight. The sisters said it took months to get the police report on their mother’s death.

“I feel like they’re not valuing the lives of their citizens,” Dolores Gomez said. The family filed a claim against the city on Wednesday.

City spokeswoman Alma Flores disputes Dolores Gomez’s account. She said the city employee never said the cost was prohibitive. She said traffic engineering staff are “evaluating the corridor to identify if safety improvements are warranted.”

City documents indicate Santa Ana is on the fast-track for millions in state “active transportation” grants to spend on roadway markings for pedestrians and cyclists, a protected bike lane, “traffic calming” measures to slow traffic and community education. It plans to spend $3 million to make sidewalks more walkable, Flores said, but that money won’t go for crosswalks.

Flores also said the city has launched a bilingual traffic safety campaign, established a Traffic Safety Task Force and is conducting a “Safe Mobility Santa Ana” survey.

Santa Ana police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna said the department is putting more muscle behind traffic safety with a new $343,000 grant from California Office of Traffic Safety. Money will go to enforcement, training and education.

Bertagna said drivers often are unaware of traffic laws, such as those for an unmarked crosswalk.

When pedestrians are injured and killed, he said, police use that data to target and step up enforcement.

“We’re aware there’s a problem,” he said.

The solution, however, isn’t simple.

“We have a 20-foot crosswalk at Main and Walnut and people still don’t stop,” Bertagna noted. “Are they texting? Are they talking on their phone? Are pedestrians not paying attention? The circumstances differ from person to person.”

Contact the writer: nshine@ocregister.com or Twitter:@nicolekshine

A dog walk in the dark turns tragic

On the night Juan R. Terrones was fatally hit by a truck, he first fed the pigeons at his Santa Ana home. Then the retired factory worker put a leash on Frida, a chihuahua-miniature pinscher mix, to take her for a walk. Read more >>