Liberty University’s cross-walk safety is evaluated after accident on campus
On the evening of Jan. 20, two female students were walking through a cross-walk on Liberty University’s campus at the U.S. Route 460 on ramp. They were hit by a vehicle turning on to the ramp resulting in both students being taken to the hospital for the treatment of minor injuries.
Due to increasing foot traffic by students, poorly lit cross-walks around campus are becoming safety concerns for pedestrians and drivers.
Dan Deter, the vice president of major construction for Liberty University, says they are constantly reevaluating safety issues on campus when they get reports of dark areas.
“it’s not uncommon for us to get a building done and then a month down the road we get a call from housing or LUPD or one of the other monitoring agencies and they say there is a dark area over here, and we will take care of that,” Deter said.
Because many of Liberty’s roads are privatized, some of the City of Lynchburg’s regulations on who installs street lighting does not apply when the Department of Construction and Planning builds new roads and installs more street lights around campus.
“We try to look at it from a campus safety and security standpoint where the city doesn’t have that same protocol,” Deter said. “They are looking more for vehicular safety where we are looking for more pedestrian safety.”
In reference to the recent accident at the 460 ramp, Deter said that maybe they will look at lights or look at vehicle slow-down methods, but the pedestrians have to take priorities over the vehicles.
“(President Falwell) would fully support if I were to go down to him and ask for ‘x’ amount of money for street lights, he would sign off on it,” Deter said.
Matt Sammons, senior at Liberty, says he can recall a couple times where he has been close to hitting someone due to the lack of light on some campus roads.
“The lack of lighting definitely needs to be addressed for the safety of us,” Sammons said. “I don’t want to get hit.”
Sammons says that cross-walk areas around the Commons Residential halls and the Circle are places where under lit cross-walks can be dangerous for the students walking and driving.
Another student, Hannah Gwaltney, said that areas around Commons 2, the Circle and the East Tunnel seem to be areas that need to be addressed for their safety.
“When crossing from the East tunnel to Commons 1 can be dangerous because that is a huge spot were people will come down that hill and just speed up the hill so that is definitely difficult to cross,” Gwaltney said.
Despite work being done to prevent dark, unsafe spots from happening, low-lit areas still occur. According to Deter, some of the detriments of having built so much on campus over the last eight years is the areas in between new buildings that might fall through the cracks.
“LUPD is a good source and I have four to five people on my own staff that one of their directives is to let me know if there are areas that are dark,” Deter said. “I want to know if there are areas that are unsafe for students.”
During the fall 2018 semester, Deter was contacted by the office of Residence Life requesting that dark areas around Dorm 17 on the Hill would be evaluated and fixed. After assessing the issue, Deter and his team were able to provide more lighting and safety to the area.
“We are always looking for feedback if there are areas that we don’t see that the student body sees,” Deter said.