He doesn’t remember much. A car horn blared as he rolled into the intersection. He saw a fender coming at him from his left. He flew through the air, and his face smacked the pavement.

Neil Kelly had just started a new job two weeks earlier, and one of his coworkers was the first to reach him.

“Are you OK?,” the coworker shouted, as Kelly was lying in the street at the intersection of Main and Central Parkway Downtown.

“I can’t feel anything below my waist,” Kelly replied. Then, as color drained from the coworker’s face, Kelly started to laugh. “No, no, no, that’s normal,” he said.

It was 7:57 a.m. on October 20, 2017. Kelly, who has been paralyzed since birth and uses a motorized wheelchair, was crossing Central Parkway on his way to work. He was in the crosswalk. He had the walk signal. The driver of an SUV apparently didn’t see him as she made a right turn onto Central Parkway.

It was just the first of three times in a 10-month period that Kelly would be hit by a vehicle in the Cincinnati area, two SUVs and a church van. He jokes about it – deadpanning, I would prefer, if possible, to not be hit with cars – but he’s afraid for his life and the limited mobility he has.

“It’s scary,” he said. “As I think about it more, I get legitimately worried about if somebody hits the right side of me. Because I’ve got one good arm. And if somebody hits the right side, where my joystick is, I’m just out of commission.”

Kelly, 28, wears a lap belt, but on that October morning, the nose of the SUV hit him at exactly the wrong angle, unbuckling the belt and throwing Kelly from his chair.

He went to the hospital in an ambulance, where he learned his left leg was broken in two spots. His wheelchair, worth about $50,000, he said, was totaled. The SUV driver was cited for failure to yield the right-of-way.

“My memory is literally: Exit sidewalk, see car, see fender, smack car,” Kelly said. “I have no idea what happened in between.”

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How common is this?

Nearly 6,000 pedestrians in the United States were killed in traffic crashes in 2016, according to the latest data available from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The Detroit Free Press, in a series called Death on foot, puts it this way: That’s twice the number of deaths tied directly to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In Cincinnati, six pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes in 2016. Taking into account population size, Cincinnati pedestrians are faring slightly better than those in Cleveland and slightly worse than those in Columbus. Cincinnati has launched a $500,000-a-year initiative to improve pedestrian safety. That money is largely going toward crosswalks and updated pedestrian-crossing signs and lights.

When it comes to crashes involving wheelchairs, fatal or not, data are scant. It's not something the city tracks, nor the state, so it’s tough to know how often people in wheelchairs in Cincinnati are getting hit by people driving cars.

All Kelly knows is, it’s happened to him three times. Twice at the same intersection.

Kelly's second crash was on Kemper Road in Symmes Township, where he grew up. It was 6:20 p.m. on January 8, and Kelly was on his way home from work. He’d just gotten off the bus and was travelling west on the sidewalk, heading toward his house.

An SUV was again the culprit. The driver pulled out of a driveway and hit Kelly on his left side. Kelly was too far into the driveway to back up, he said, and not far enough to make it through.

“I was looking up at them. Are they going to stop? Are they going to stop? And, of course, they did not.”

The impact knocked over Kelly’s chair, though this time he stayed buckled in. He went by ambulance to the hospital, but there were no serious injuries.

The driver of the SUV was cited for failure to yield.

The third crash was at 11:15 a.m. on August 27. It was again at the intersection of Main Street and Central Parkway, though this time on the opposite side of the road, where a hot-dog cart partially obstructs the view of the sidewalk from the street.

Kelly was traveling west on Central Parkway, headed toward Coffee Emporium to meet a friend. He came to the intersection and, when the light changed, he looked both ways and started to cross.

A church van turned the corner and ran into him, again on Kelly’s left. His chair was spun about 90 degrees but stayed upright. Kelly went to the hospital, but there was no serious damage to him or his chair.

The driver of the van was cited for failure to yield.

How do we fix this?

Central Parkway is one of Downtown's busier streets, getting more than 15,000 cars a day in some spots, according to a 2013 traffic count.

Where Kelly got hit, the parkway is six lanes wide, not including parking lanes, with a large, grassy barrier dividing east- and westbound traffic.

There are crosswalks and walk signals. Really, Kelly is not sure what else the city could do to ensure his and other pedestrians' safety. His biggest hope is drivers start paying more attention. People take driving for granted, he said, and to some extent, that's understandable. It's the same thing over and over, day after day.

“But, you know," he said, "I’ve gotten hit three times. I would like to not be hit with a car. I say that jokingly, but, seriously: I would prefer to not be hit with cars.”

According to a study from Georgetown University, pedestrians who use wheelchairs are 36 percent more likely to be killed in traffic than the general pedestrian public. Some of that may be attributable to wheelchair design, said John Kraemer, one of the study’s authors – things like wheelchair height and whether or not the chair has headlights and reflectors.

Then there’s just basic sidewalk design, Kraemer said. Does the architecture favor pedestrians? Are there crosswalks, sidewalk bump-outs and lights? If yes, does the pedestrian light change first, so walkers are well into the intersection before drivers get the go-ahead? At Central and Main, where Kelly was struck twice, the pedestrian signal changes at the same time as the light for cars.

“Some of it is probably just awareness about who is using the road,” Kraemer said. “A lot of cities have the same issue with cyclists, because drivers just don’t expect bicycles around them.”

Cincinnati can do better, said City Councilman Greg Landsman. Landsman, who has been friends with Kelly for several years, said he wants to appoint a "pedestrian czar," someone whose main or only job is to improve pedestrian safety in the city. He said he wants to focus in particular on Central Parkway and Main, where Kelly has been hit twice. He would support looking at changing the timing of the lights. He'd also support heavier traffic enforcement and perhaps even changing the city charter to allow red-light and speed cameras.

If people got tickets, Landsman said, they might slow down and pay more attention.

"I'm not looking to spend more money on staff. I'm looking to get better organized and focused," he said. "Making this particular intersection safer for Neil and others needs to be a priority."

Forced to change

Kelly was paralyzed from an injury at birth, and he’s been using a motorized wheelchair since he was about 4 or 5 years old. He’s been the same level of disabled his entire life, he said, no feeling below his waist and limited feeling from his waist to his chest. His left arm is weak and has limited mobility. His right arm is about 95 percent functional.

He's never been fearful or timid, and he refuses to let these crashes change that. He still goes to Coffee Emporium. He still takes the same route to work, across Central Parkway. But now, he checks two or three times to make sure no one is coming, and when he hears vehicles on his right side, where his arm still works, he flinches.

“Which is something I never did before,” he said.

After the first accident, where Kelly was thrown from his chair and his leg was broken in two spots, his brother bought him a flag to attach to his wheelchair. Kelly is 4’6’’ or 4’7’’ in his chair; the flag might make him more visible to drivers.

But Kelly refused to use it.

He knows there are some things outside his control, and he accepts that. But as much as it is up to him, he wants to be and look like a regular guy who happens to be sitting down. Waving a flag everywhere he goes would destroy that image.

Yes, he got hit. And, yes, he got hurt. But it wasn’t his fault. He followed the rules, and the drivers in each of the three crashes were cited for a reason.

“I don’t want to leave it to where I’m saying, ‘Yeah, it was my bad.’ Because it’s not,” he said.

"But, the third time is the charm."

On August 30, Kelly met with The Enquirer to share his story. He went to Coffee Emporium, just a few blocks from his office. He crossed Main Street, at the same intersection where he'd been hit just three days earlier. But that day, for the first time, he attached the flag to his wheelchair before heading out.

It's bright orange and sticks several feet above his chair.

He hates it.

“But you do what you gotta do," he said. "If I’m not going to be protected, I have to do something for myself.”

Then, just as he did the first time an SUV collided with him in an intersection, he cracked a joke.

At least it’s not a white flag, he said. Not yet.