VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. — Members of the Volusia County Council voted recently to kick off a new pedestrian and bicycle safety program.

They partnered with the nonprofit organization Bike Walk Central Florida to bring the Best Foot Forward for pedestrian safety program to Volusia County, expanding on its current footprint in Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties.

“I’ve gotten too many calls about a pedestrian killed in A1A in Ormond Beach, in Deltona,” Volusia County Chairman Jeff Brower said. “It’s a serious, serious problem. So, this is a great way to combat it.”

Organizers say the goal of the Best Foot Forward program is to change drivers’ behavior to increase their yield rate at pedestrian crosswalks, as required by Florida law.

For more than a decade, the nonprofit organization Bike Walk Central Florida has been educating and advocating to make communities more walkable, bikeable and rollable.

“Volusia County is one of the most dangerous counties in the state for pedestrians. So, we want to make sure that we bring forth the same educational message we’re doing in the Orlando Metro area, which is to educate drivers that it is the law to yield to pedestrians at crosswalks,” 

The program focuses their efforts on what they call the four “E’s”: community education, low-cost engineering, high-visibility enforcement, and data evaluation.

“Drivers are not very aware of pedestrians when they’re crossing, and pedestrians are not very aware of where the best place to cross is,” Best Foot Forward Program Manager Vince Dyer said. “So a lot of times, you’ll see pedestrians just crossing wherever they want to. We don’t want that to happen. We want to make it really obvious that there is a specific place to cross, and we want drivers to pay a lot of attention when they cross there.”

Dyer said the group will be selecting 10 crosswalks throughout Volusia County where the program will be enforced.

“We’re not trying to trick anybody — we want them to know exactly where these crosswalks are that we’re monitoring,” Dyer said. “That way, when drivers pass them, they get in their mind that this is a crosswalk that I really need to pay attention to when I go. And the more often that happens, the more likely drivers are to pay attention as they come to any crosswalk.”

Data collectors will visit each crosswalk and do about 60 crossings in total to see how frequently drivers are stopping for pedestrians.

“They will cross that crosswalk 20 times, or 10 times each way,” Dyer said. “They’ll wait about an hour. They’ll come back again and do another 20 crossings. What about an hour and come back again to do 20 more.”

According to the organization, in 2012 only 17% of drivers yielded at Best Foot Forward crosswalks on roads 35 mph or slower. Today that number has increased to more than 52%.

“We advocate for making sure that the signs are very reflective, that the road markings are very reflective, that there’s adequate lighting and if possible, installing these flashing beacons, which is the best thing that you can do for pedestrians at these areas,” Dyer said.

The first two years of the program will come at no cost to the county, and it will be funded by the Florida Department of Transportation as part of its Target Zero Initiative.

Starting in 2026, the county will take over funding leaders choose to continue the program at a cost of about $80,000 a year.

Bike Walk Central Florida will be hosting their first crosswalk selection workshop in Volusia County on Dec. 12. The program will be in full effect starting in January.