Whitton died Nov. 11 from injuries suffered Nov. 3 when he was hit by a vehicle as he tried to cross Concord Road in a crosswalk, on his way home from the college.
Public Works Director Doug Wright told town board members Tuesday night that a new pedestrian crosswalk sign would be installed within days at the crossing where Whitton was hit. Longer term, Wright said he and other town officials would be studying the cost and effectiveness of more elaborate crosswalk signals and stronger street lighting.
The sign to be installed will be mounted in the middle of the road. It reads, "State Law. Yield to Pedestrians Within Crosswalk."
Much of the discussion Tuesday dealt with what exactly that state law says about crosswalks, and whether drivers and pedestrians understand those rules.
"It's a little bit of a guessing game about what's going to happen" when pedestrians try to enter a crosswalk, Mayor John Woods said. "We've got a lot of drivers who zoom right through these things."
What many — if not most — drivers and pedestrians don't know, Police Chief Jeanne Miller told commissioners, is that the driver's responsibility to yield at a crosswalk (without a traffic signal) doesn't begin until the pedestrian actually steps into the street.
"They have to be in the crosswalk," Miller explained. "Being at the curb is not enough."
Uncertainty over when pedestrian protection begins can be as dangerous as ignorance of the fact that pedestrians are protected at all, Miller added. She noted watching one driver stop when a pedestrian stepped to the curb recently, while a half-dozen cars heading in the opposite direction kept motoring though the crosswalk.
Drivers like the one who stopped, Miller explained, "don't understand that (pedestrians) have to be in the crosswalk" before traffic is required to stop.
Woods noted that police and the town have successfully educated Davidson drivers to mind the 25-mph speed limit on Griffith Street (which connects I-77 to downtown), and that the same kind of effort could be applied to crosswalk safety.
The Griffith Street slowdown was largely the result of aggressive enforcement which, in the case of speeders, is easier to carry out than it would be with crosswalk-safety scofflaws.
"It gets a little bit tricky because the officer has to witness the (crosswalk) violation, and then has to go after the violator," Miller told commissioners. "It might even mean using two vehicles."
While Commissioner Margo Williams supported the idea of more visible crosswalk signs, she suggested some strong language on the signs welcoming drivers to Davidson might also be in order.
"We need to say, 'We love our pedestrians and we don't like speeders,'" she suggested.
Woods agreed, adding, "In Davidson, North Carolina, if you're walking, you're our top priority."
