On July 1, 2018, our community experienced a tragedy when a car struck a young family of four walking on the sidewalk near Samson Oceanfront Park. The father died at the scene at 34 years of age. This terrible accident occurred less than a month after another innocent pedestrian’s life was taken. These events have left us with a heightened awareness of the dangers our residents and visitors face each day while walking on our sidewalks as pedestrians. This is especially true while traveling by foot on Collins Avenue. As a result of this unfortunate accident and our new awareness of the numerous extremely serious to deadly vehicular accidents involving pedestrians, we have become more vigilant as citizens of this great city.

 

Pedestrian City:

Sunny Isles Beach Residents and Visitors embrace our small city and we choose to walk from destination to destination. As a rapidly growing city and society we are encouraged to walk to our local parks, markets, schools, and more. We would like to continue to feel comfortable walking in the City of Sunny Isles Beach.

 

Police Presence:

We feel strongly that Sunny Isles Beach should increase police presence. We understand that drivers respect speed limits while driving through the City of Golden Beach; we notice that often these same drivers will speed through Sunny Isles Beach and then immediately respect law enforcement when they approach the city of Bal Harbour.

 

Confidence in Safety:

Although we have a lot of ideas, we do not know the best solution to this problem. We would like to feel confident that our city leaders are using their tools and resources as quickly as possible to investigate and implement safety measures for pedestrians.

 

Long Term Safety:

In addition to police presence, we are urging the city to consider supplementary safety practices such as protective barriers or bollards, speed bumps, widening sidewalks or anything else that will enhance our safety. We urge our city to act to help prevent future fatalities and help our pedestrians feel safer as they walk along Collins Avenue.

 

Forward Thinking:

Unfortunately, nothing can change the recent fatalities. We are forward thinking and as a community requesting that safety measures are put in place to prevent future pedestrian deaths and make our city a safer place to live and visit.

Please join us in protecting the lives of our people including you, your children or loved ones, your neighbors and visitors. We ask for your support by signing our petition requesting for our great city to protect its pedestrians by developing a long term safety plan and implementing immediate safety measures before another innocent life is lost.