Pedestrian hit by truck in Airway Heights

A woman was hospitalized with head injuries Tuesday afternoon after she was struck by a pickup truck while crossing U.S. Highway 2 in Airway Heights.

The 36-year-old pedestrian was crossing the busy four-lane road in a crosswalk around 1:30 p.m. when a dark blue Ford F-150 pickup with a personalized license plate reading “B1PILOT” hit her, said Airway Heights Police Chief Lee Bennett.

The Airway Heights resident, whose identity was not disclosed late Tuesday, was taken by ambulance to Sacred Heart Medical Center.

While snow sputtered from a gray sky, Airway Heights police, state troopers and Spokane County sheriff’s investigators paced the scene and diverted traffic.

A woman was sitting in the Ford truck, and pieces of a shattered headlight littered the roadway in front of the pickup. Its rear wheel rested on top of an island in the middle of the highway.

The crosswalks in Airway Heights are a consistent problem, Bennett said.

This is the 11th time a pedestrian has been hit since a $120,000 highway upgrade in June 2002 added pedestrian-activated flashing amber lights that were embedded in the roadway. Signs were added in 2003, alerting motorists to pedestrians in crosswalks. The lights blink for 37 seconds. It was unknown whether Tuesday’s victim had activated the lights before crossing.

The Airway Heights City Council recently voted to ask the Washington Traffic Safety Council to reconvene and look at the city’s crosswalk problems again, Bennett said.

On July 11, an elderly pedestrian died after a water tanker truck slammed into the back of a car that had stopped to allow the man to cross a quarter of a mile from the scene of Tuesday’s accident.