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Hooper: Slow down Hillsborough drivers, let's be careful out there

 
Published June 4, 2016

BRANDON

A Facebook friend described it as the most horrific accident or disaster she had ever seen.

The tragic wreck that took the life of Rich and Tanya Crete on Monday morning at N Parson Avenue left a void in the hearts of many. Crete owned Rich's Backyard Birds in Valrico and had a lot of friends and customers.

But I can't escape the fact that the wreck occurred on a suburban road. The location serves as a reminder to us all:

Slow down.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office said that driver Sanita Sookdeo was traveling south on Parson at a "high rate of speed" in a 2007 GMC Denali sport utility vehicle when she rear-ended the Cretes' 2003 Acura. Her SUV drove over the couple's car and went airborne.

I'm guilty of stating the obvious — and I've written this before — but it bears repeating: Neighborhood streets are not designed for speed demons. Too often I spot drivers zooming around as if their pregnant wife is in the backseat, her water has broken and they're rushing to the hospital.

Beyond that kind of dire emergency, we have no reason to turn Lumsden Road or Bloomingdale Avenue into Daytona International Speedway.

Yet more than once, someone has jerked out into the other lane to pass me on the two-lane roads in the Brandon area. Yes, I'm that slow-driving parent with his daughter in the car, proceeding cautiously.

Sure, maybe I could speed up a little, but Kingsway Avenue is not the Palmetto Expressway in Miami. It's not even Interstate 75.

While we await for the Hillsborough County Commission to come up with some kind of meaningful transportation plan, let's recognize a helluva lot more people live here now and congested roads are the norm — not the exception.

It grows even more perilous this summer as teens out from school take to the streets. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety calls the period after Memorial Day the "100 Deadliest Days" because over the past five years more than 5,000 people across the nation have been killed in crashes involving teen drivers.

But I'm convinced slower speeds, plus defensive driving, equals greater safety.

One approach we can implement — and I do mean "we" — is to leave earlier for our destinations. We can avoid that sense of frustration and the urge to step on the gas if we allot ourselves more time to get where we're going. And these days, you need more time. A normal 10-minute trip now takes 15 minutes, and the 15-minute trip now might take 20 minutes in the middle of the day.

I gave myself 45 minutes to go from Brandon to St. Petersburg last week for a morning obligation. But with a major accident on the Howard Frankland Bridge and everybody else thinking they could outsmart the masses by taking the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway, I never made it.

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I reached Gandy Boulevard and Manhattan Avenue and gave up when it became apparent I wasn't going to come close to arriving at a reasonable time.

Consequently, I missed the opportunity to appear on 10News WTSP's Studio 10 Live and talk about people pushing Marvel Comics to give Captain America a boyfriend and the latest news about Ozzy, Sharon and Kelly Osbourne.

Dang.

Seriously, it's embarrassing to let a commitment go unfulfilled, and while I can utter any number of profanities to characterize my frustration, traffic jams aren't a viable excuse.

This is where we live now. Even if the Tampa Bay Express toll lanes opened tomorrow and we got light rail next week, we would still be a county of 2.3 million people where fender benders slow traffic to a crawl and major accidents can bring the city to a screeching halt.

So prepare.

If the folks at Studio 10 Live invite me back, maybe I'll leave at 7 a.m., get across the bridge early and then hole up at the Panera Bread on Ulmerton Road.

If I'm leaving St. Petersburg in the afternoon and it's close to 4 p.m., I know it's best just to give up on the Howard Frankland and take the Skyway bridge back to Brandon. Is it a longer drive? Yes. Is it more gas and more miles? Yes.

It's also less traffic and a lot safer. And the view from the Skyway is worth the toll.

Even with all these precautions, I still might not arrive on time — I'm so habitually late my friends call it "Hoopertime" — but at least I won't end up zigzagging through traffic at a frantic pace putting my life and everybody else's life at risk.

Florida's old Arrive Alive license plates need to be more than relics. They need to be a mantra. Some accidents can't be avoided but we need to double down on our efforts to take a deep breath and recognize it's better to be late than to never make it.

That's all I'm saying.