A woman who was hit by a vehicle on Kilby Road two years ago is suing Summit County and High Valley Transit over the intersection’s “negligently designed” crosswalk, which she claims contributed to the accident.
Luana Aparecida Vera Santana, a resident of Santa Catarina, Brazil, said in Third District Court documents filed last week that she was a passenger on a High Valley Transit bus traveling from downtown Park City to a transit stop on Kilby Road on Aug. 3, 2023. She exited the bus around 10:16 p.m. and approached the nearby crosswalk, where she was then hit by a car traveling eastbound on Kilby Road.
“Due to the dangerous and negligently designed condition of the crosswalk — including but not limited to lack of adequate lighting or signals, poor visibility caused by its placement at the crest of a hill on a high-speed road, and the absence of advanced warning systems or signage — an eastbound vehicle struck Plaintiff (Santana) as she crossed,” the complaint says. “As a result, Plaintiff sustained serious and permanent injuries, including a fractured skull, brain injury, broken nose [and] broken ankle.”
The original report from the Sheriff’s Office on the date of the accident said the driver did not show any signs of impairment.
“He (the driver) told me that he had been driving and had not seen her in the crosswalk until his vehicle hit her,” the responding deputy said in the report. “He said that he ‘heard her first,’ then his vehicle hit her. I asked him what he meant by that, and he told me that he wasn’t sure but knew he heard a sound before his vehicle hit her. It had been raining heavily, and he said he had not seen her until he was unable to stop.”
The driver then backed up his vehicle to prevent Santana from being struck by other cars.
The police report said deputies later spoke to Santana at the hospital, and she said she’d exited a High Valley Transit bus on Kilby Road across from Powderwood Drive and had been crossing the street toward her apartment. Deputies also noted in their report the “possibility of the incident to result in a fatality” because of the severity of Santana’s injuries at the time of the accident.
Santana’s lawsuit states the decision to name Summit County and High Valley Transit as defendants because they “were responsible for designing, placing, approving and constructing the roads, crosswalk, warnings (or lack thereof), signage and signals.”
Alyssa Wood, a personal injury attorney representing Santana, said her client chose to not include the driver in the lawsuit because he has “already taken accountability.”
“The driver was willing to resolve the case pre-litigation, but my client has extensive injuries,” she said. “This road is unsafe, and this crosswalk is unsafe. If the county doesn’t make changes to this crosswalk, other people are going to get injured. For us and for our client, one of the most important things is ensuring that, in the future, changes are made so that this doesn’t happen again to someone else.”
The court filings similarly mention the County Courthouse’s and bus system’s responsibility to “ensure that the condition of the road and crosswalk was not defective, unsafe and unreasonably dangerous at night or under low-light conditions.”
Specifically, the lawsuit alleges the crosswalk and bus stop location were “negligently selected” because of poor visibility, a lack of proper lighting and a lack of warning systems for approaching cars.
The complaint further claims Santana has incurred more than $3,000 in medical bills as a result of the accident and “will continue to suffer from injuries into the future.”
Santana and her attorneys demanded a jury trial in addition to relief in the form of damages to cover her medical expenses, lost wages, future care and compensation for her “physical pain and suffering.”
The County Courthouse declined to comment on the ongoing litigation, and High Valley Transit representatives have not yet responded to a request for comment as of Monday afternoon. There are currently no scheduled court hearings related to the case.