LSU student Mari Dehrab returns to the crosswalk on campus where she was waiting to cross when she was hit by a car in August. In the past five years, a total of 41 pedestrians have been hit by automobiles on LSU’s campus.

BATON ROUGE — Mari Dehrab was standing near a crosswalk on her way to class at LSU when everything went black. A car had careened onto the sidewalk and smashed into her and three other pedestrians before slamming into a light pole. Screams filled the air as she landed several feet away.

Dehrab, 23, suffered a brain tear, causing memory loss so severe that at one point, she could not remember some of her family members. One of her ankles was broken and the other sprained, confining her to wheelchair for six weeks. She had to drop out of school this semester, making it impossible for her to graduate in the spring.

“I went through such a big depression, and I still have depression,” she said, adding that “my life has been put on pause because of this accident.”

“I feel like I’m not as whole as I used to be,” she said.

Dehrab is one of 41 pedestrians who have been hit by cars on LSU’s campus over the last five years. Police reports show that at least four of them suffered incapacitating injuries, including one woman who was in a medically induced coma for two weeks after a spinal injury. 

Dehrab was hurt on Aug. 24, five days into the semester, when one car hit another one onto the sidewalk at Nicholson Avenue and Skip Bertman Drive. Two students waiting with her at the crosswalk suffered concussions. One of them also had a broken pelvis and sacrum and some brain bleeding. 

Accident reports from the LSU Police Department described the injuries to 10 other pedestrians as “moderate” without giving details. Fifteen of the pedestrians who were hit complained of possible injuries, while the rest were not injured. 

An analysis of the reports shows that two intersections on Highland Road — at South Campus Drive and at Dalrymple Drive — have had the most collisions involving pedestrians over the last five years, with four at each of those corners. 

Two other intersections have each seen three accidents involving pedestrians–Highland and South Stadium roads and Nicholson where South Stadium Drive meets Skip Bertman Drive, where Dehrab’s accident occurred. 

The 41 pedestrians were hit in a total of 38 accidents, and at least two-thirds of them were LSU students. The police ticketed most of the drivers in the accidents with moderate and serious injuries. Five accidents were hit-and-runs in which the drivers were not caught.

LSU Police Lt. Reggie Berry said the department has worked with campus organizations to create greater awareness of the need for both drivers and pedestrians to be more careful.  

But Berry said the police have not publicized the riskiest intersections or stationed officers at them during rush hours. 

“I believe saying ‘well, this is a hotspot’ is limiting everybody because they think ‘well, if I’m not at that hotspot, then I don’t have to practice safe bicycling or walking or driving on campus,’” Berry said.

Berry also questioned whether having 41 pedestrians struck over five years was a large number for a campus with more than 30,000 students. He noted that the risks rise when major roads, like Highland and Nicholson, cut through a campus.

Still, while 17 of the accidents occurred along Highland or Nicholson, the other 21 happened on other streets or parking lots inside the campus. And some students said they had not seen or heard of anything the police were doing to promote greater caution. 

Drivers who hit pedestrians have been ticketed for failure to yield, careless or reckless operation of vehicles, disregarding traffic controls, driving under the influence of alcohol and improper turning or backing up.

One of the more serious accidents occurred on the first day of this school year when a 20-year-old sophomore was hit by a car on Ag Center Drive between the LSU Ag Center and Parker Coliseum. 

A police report said that the victim, a woman who had made the Dean’s List as a freshman, was struck in the back at 8 a.m. and flew seven feet through the air. The driver, who was only going 15 miles per hour, said her vision had been blocked by a turning car, and she was not ticketed.

Georgia Hansen, an LSU student, came across the victim lying on the side of the road, and her first instinct was to get on the ground and pray with the woman.

“There was blood all over her face,” Hansen said in an interview. “There was a huge hemorrhage on her back.”

 Donna Settoon was hit in the back by a car when she visited campus to participate in a breast cancer walk in 2016. The accident occurred on West Lakeshore Drive near the fraternity and sorority houses, and she nearly bled to death.

“I saw this car going around the barricade and headed straight for me, and there was nothing I could do to get out of the way,” Settoon, 57, an insurance agent, said in an interview.

 “I remember flying up in the air,” she said. “I remember landing on the hood of his car and being dragged underneath the car.” 

Trapped there and unable to move, the last thing she remembers was the shrieking sound of an ambulance and witnesses trying to lift the car off of her. Her two grandsons, 5 and 7, stood nearby, inches away from being victims themselves.

The accident “tore my hip up,” Settoon said. “My spine came unattached from my pelvis. I about bled to death.”

The police report says that the driver, a 54-year-old man, had just been released from a hospital and became disoriented on pain medication. He was cited for recklessly operating his car.

Doctors placed Settoon in an induced coma, and she underwent two surgeries to reattach her spine to her pelvis. She spent three months in the hospital and is still unable to sit at her desk longer than an hour without pain.