BRADENTON, Fla. — People across the Tampa Bay area are coming together to honor loved ones lost on Florida roads. On average, eight people die in crashes every day in Florida, but there is a statewide push to bring that number to zero.
Those closest to tragedy are helping lead the effort.
“When I'm here, I see lights, I see sirens, I see the crash site. You know, I see the face of my husband that I said goodbye to for the very last time,” said Melissa Wandall, standing outside an intersection of State Road 70 in Bradenton.
At the same intersection 20 years ago, Wandall’s husband Mark, his name now on a roadside marker, was killed when a driver ran a red light.
“I keep a red bow on it all the time, because I want people to recognize it,” she said of the sign.
Wandall was nine months pregnant at the time of the crash, which also left her brother seriously injured and changed her family’s course forever.
“It's still emotional 20 years later. The fact that it's gone by so fast, you know, and our daughter who should have known her dad has no idea who he is,” she added.
However, through tragedy Wandall found a mission, dedicating the last two decades to advocating for safer roads and greater awareness for the bike riders, drivers and pedestrians who share it. She serves as the president of the National Coalition for Safer Roads.
Her efforts even changed state law in 2010 when former Gov. Charlie Crist signed the “Mark Wandall Traffic Safety Act,” which led to the adoption of red light cameras in counties and municipalities.
“The ultimate goal is to have zero fatalities and zero serious injuries,” Wandall added.
It’s a goal she shares with the Florida Department of Transportation and their Target Zero Initiative, which is recognizing victims of road crashes this weekend, as more and more Florida families unfortunately relate to Wandall’s story.
Through Sept. 16 of just this year, there were nearly 2,300 deaths and 10,500 serious injuries from crashes on Florida roads.
“In this 12-county district in the last 10 years, we've lost 5000 people, that's moms, dads, grandmas children, right? So you take that 5000 people, you times that by five people that loved them, now you have 25,000, people walking around grieving,” Wandall added.
Despite how hard it is to revisit the spot her family’s lives changed forever, sharing the story could help change the course of another’s in a more fortunate way.
“We all want to drive down insatiable heartache on our roadways,” she said.