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Published on Saturday, July 31, 2004
in the Daytona Beach News-Journal
It's a short walk, not even 100 steps. Still, Rick Ritter hates it. It's not a happy stroll.
Violent death obliges him to take the walk along U.S. 92 north of DeLand where he stops in front of a sign and changes numbers to reflect the running total of fatalities in Volusia County.
Sgt. Rick Ritter is the Florida Highway Patrol homicide supervisor for Volusia and Seminole counties. His team looks at tire tracks, crumpled metal, broken glass and bloody car seats to determine what caused deadly accidents, and if appropriate, to assign blame.
It's also his job to change the numbers on the fatality sign in front of the Highway Patrol office.
"I'm spending more and more time out here this year," he said, as four lanes of noisy traffic passes a few yards away. "The numbers don't even have a chance to get dusty."
Volusia County's traffic fatalities are increasing at a faster rate than any other county in Florida this year. The sign says there were 92 deaths last year. So far this year there are 71. In Flagler County, the death rate stands at 13 this year. In 2003, there were 17.
"I don't understand it. They're happening everywhere, for all kinds of reasons," said Ritter, a 22-year FHP veteran. "A lot of it is carelessness and stupidity."
The tall sign in front of FHP headquarters gives no answers. It just shows an impersonal body count to the 27,000 drivers passing by every day. It's hard to say whether the sign helps make safer drivers.
Such signs were once common in Florida, but not today.
Trooper Kim Miller, an FHP public affairs officer, said the sign here is one of three in Florida with running totals of fatalities. Others are in the Keys and Fort Meyers.
Some officials see a value in the signs, she said. Some think they're morbid. Maybe they are. Certainly they aren't cheerful or jolly, but fatal accidents aren't either.
"I truly wish we had more of them," Miller said of the sign. If it makes drivers think, just for a moment, that driving can be deadly, then they're worthwhile, she said.
"I think people get in a car, turn the key -- it's like brushing their teeth -- and just go on autopilot. They forget it's one of the most dangerous things they do," she said.
Ritter believes the sign is worthwhile: "Maybe if enough people look at it, some will realize, 'Holy cow, people are dying at an alarming rate.' "
But it's not alarming. Not really.
If 71 people were killed this year by firearms, or by alligators, or rip tides or falls from balconies, we would be more alarmed. Community and government leaders would rush to increase resources and efforts to stem the deaths.
But highway deaths, even two or three a week, isn't alarming. It's an acceptable, if unfortunate, price for personal mobility.
It's not acceptable to Ritter. It's distressing.
"Each one of these numbers is a story, a person," he said, as he slips new numbers into the slots. "I know in the back of my mind that the number represents a body, but what really hits home is when I deal with the family." Or sort through a mangled person's personal effects, a wallet, suitcase or address book, looking for next of kin.
"That's when I get a real dose of the reality behind the numbers on the sign," he said.
When I met Ritter, he was taking the short walk for two people killed the day before, one in Daytona Beach and one in DeLand. He changed the numbers from 68 to 70.
Number 69 was Gary Gantz, 32, Ormond Beach, killed on Main Street when his motorcycle hit a van July 21. The jeweler had one son and loved the beach. In Gary's pocket were tickets for a concert he and his wife will never attend.
Number 70 was Christopher Dornberg, 19, DeLand, hit by a pickup as he walked along West Plymouth Avenue. The South Carolina native graduated from Deltona High School only two months ago. Christopher's three brothers will grow up without him.
Number 71 was added after Mario Bellavia, 93, was killed July 23 in a car crash in Daytona Beach. Bellavia was an engineer with Emerson Radio before he retired. An Army veteran, Bellavia was born in Palermo, Sicily. He and his wife of 67 years, Vincenza, moved from New Smyrna to Daytona Beach earlier this year. He liked to fish and fly in his airplane.
The sign might be more effective if, instead of just a number, it featured victims' faces and a little about them. Like those poignant photographs we see of young soldiers who die in Iraq. Seeing a face and knowing even the barest of details somehow make a person, and a death, more real.
It might make the dangers of driving more obvious to passing drivers, and that might -- just might -- cut down on the short walks Ritter hates to take.