Some 142 children have been hit by vehicles in Clark County school zones over the past two months, a number that can be described only as astonishing. It's more than triple the number of such incidents over the same period during the previous two years.
The majority of these encounters did not result in serious injury. But two 12-year-old children were tragically killed this month when they were hit near school zones. Cristofer Suarez died when he was struck by a suspected drunken driver while walking to Smith Middle School. Haylee Ryan was riding a bike near Lied STEM Academy when she was hit by a school bus. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families and friends.
Drivers who disobey the laws in school zones should be punished accordingly, particularly those who are impaired. Those who willfully endanger children must be held accountable. But statistics released by various law enforcement agencies and the Clark County School District reveal that impaired, reckless or speeding drivers aren't the only problem.
Channel 8 reported last week that 35 percent of the collisions involved e-bikes and e-scooters. In addition, "about half of the crash investigations indicate that the collision was caused by pedestrian error," according to the school district.
In this era of shrinking attention spans, what driver hasn't encountered pedestrians who are so mesmerized by their electronic devices that they are oblivious to their surroundings?
This disturbing development near school campuses is in contrast with pedestrian-vehicle collision trends in the rest of the valley. After increasing in recent years, pedestrian fatalities in Clark County dropped by 17 percent over the first nine months of 2025 when compared with the same period the previous year.
Clark County Commissioner Michael Naft noted that additional crossing guards for middle schools last year led to a drop in student-vehicle accidents near those campuses. This seems a sensible way to address the problem. Additional awareness -- on behalf of both drivers, cyclists and pedestrians, along with stricter traffic enforcement in school zones -- would also go a long way toward reducing the odds of more tragedy.
"I wish and I plead that everyone in the community treats each of these tragedies as an opportunity to look within yourself, look within the actions that you take on a daily basis and double down on your own personal efforts to be aware of your surroundings," Mr. Naft said. "Each of us must do something to curb what is an all-too-routine loss of life."