An 86-year-old Fort Myers man was killed Friday afternoon when his Hyundai Accent turned left in front of an oncoming Ford work van on State Road 80, just west of Iozzi Court near Buckingham Road. The crash happened around 3:30 p.m. and the man was pronounced dead at the scene.
According to the Fort Myers News-Press, the Florida Highway Patrol said the Fort Myers driver turned left in front of the van, and its front end struck the right side of his Hyundai. A 43-year-old Alva man was driving the Ford work van and was not injured in the collision, the paper reported.
The stretch of roadway where the crash occurred, also known as Palm Beach Boulevard, sits within a corridor that troopers and safety researchers have flagged as particularly dangerous. Nationally, left-turn maneuvers account for roughly 22% of all motor vehicle crashes and more than 53% of crossing-path collisions, according to research cited by Wolfson & Leon, since turning left requires drivers to judge the speed of oncoming vehicles across multiple lanes.
A Corridor With a Troubled Safety Record
State Road 80 remains one of Lee County's deadliest and most crash-prone roads, the News-Press reported, and 4 p.m. on weekdays has emerged as the peak-risk window along the corridor. Statewide, failure-to-yield right-of-way infractions — which include turning across oncoming traffic — accounted for more than 150,000 traffic collisions in a single year, according to data cited by Swope, Rodante P.A.
The road itself carries heavy commuter and commercial traffic across a wide swath of Southwest Florida. State Road 80 spans 123.5 miles from downtown Fort Myers to Palm Beach, making it the northernmost of three primary east-west highway corridors linking Southwest Florida to the Atlantic coast, per Wikipedia. Effective July 1, the state officially designated all 124 miles of the road across Lee, Hendry, and Palm Beach counties as the President Donald J. Trump Highway under Senate Bill 628, a renaming Florida lawmakers approved during the 2026 legislative session.
State Efforts to Slow the Crashes
The Florida Department of Transportation has been working to address safety concerns along the corridor. The agency initiated a project to install six Pedestrian Hybrid Beacons along Palm Beach Boulevard in Lee County, aimed at controlling traffic flow and reducing mid-block crossing collisions, according to SWFLRoads.com. State transportation records also show FDOT previously completed a separate safety and roadway improvement project covering the stretch from Buckingham Road eastward to the Hendry County line.
Emergency crews near the crash site are positioned to respond quickly. The Fort Myers Shores Fire Protection District established Fire Station Two near the River Hall community, located 0.8 miles east of Buckingham Road, to maintain under five-minute response times for fire and crash rescue calls in eastern Lee County, per Fort Myers Shores Fire Department records.
Fatalities Trending Down, But Still Frequent
Traffic fatalities have been trending down in Lee County even as the county continues to log a steady stream of crashes. The Florida Highway Patrol had classified 29 Lee County crashes as fatal as of Aug. 8, out of 7,992 total crashes reported in the county through that date, the News-Press reported. Lee County recorded 105 fatal crashes last year, according to the same News-Press report — a figure that aligns with separate data from Gulf Coast News showing 103 fatal crashes resulting in 106 deaths countywide in 2025, a nearly 20% decline from 2024.
The statewide picture shows a similar downward trend. Florida's total traffic fatalities fell 5.4% in 2025 to 2,930 deaths, down from 3,098 the year before, according to data compiled by Swope, Rodante P.A. Even with fewer fatal outcomes, Lee County still averaged about 37 reported traffic crashes per day in 2025, with peak afternoon rush hours consistently representing the highest-risk window for collisions, per Gulf Coast News.
