A pedestrian was left in life-threatening condition Sunday night after being struck by a vehicle on North Ponce de Leon Boulevard in St. Augustine, prompting a shutdown of all northbound lanes near the intersection with West San Carlos Avenue. Emergency crews converged on the scene late Sunday, and St. Johns County Fire Rescue transported the victim to a trauma center in critical condition.
The crash occurred at the intersection of North Ponce de Leon Boulevard and West San Carlos Avenue, according to News4JAX, which reported that the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office confirmed the crash involved a vehicle and a pedestrian. The Sheriff's Office assisted St. Augustine police with the response, and all northbound lanes of Ponce de Leon Boulevard were shut down at Matanzas Avenue as crews worked the scene. Drivers were urged to avoid the area and seek an alternate route.
Patients suffering life-threatening trauma in St. Johns County who need advanced Level 1 trauma care are typically transported roughly 40 miles north to UF Health Jacksonville, which operates the sole Level 1 Trauma Center serving Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia, according to UF Health.
A Corridor With a Troubled Safety History
Sunday's crash adds to a string of severe collisions along North Ponce de Leon Boulevard this year. In July, a 64-year-old woman riding a motorized scooter was struck and killed near State Road 16 and North Ponce de Leon Boulevard by a speeding driver, a collision that occurred just north of West San Carlos Avenue on the same heavily traveled commercial stretch of US-1, per earlier Hoodline reporting on the deadly scooter crash. The corridor also saw a fatal pedestrian crash near a St. Augustine Wawa on State Road 16 the same month.
The intersection where Sunday's crash happened sits immediately west of the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind, where student safety guidelines restrict walking routes on or across Ponce de Leon Boulevard, according to materials published by the school. The campus stretches between San Marco Avenue and the Matanzas River, with student access routed onto secondary side streets away from the high-speed US-1 corridor.
Detour Traffic Has Strained the Route
Traffic volume on Ponce de Leon Boulevard has climbed this year because of a seven-month, $13.4 million bridge rehabilitation project on King Street that rerouted downtown traffic onto US-1 starting in spring, according to the Florida Department of Transportation. The detour, detailed in earlier Hoodline coverage of the bridge project, is expected to keep extra vehicles on the corridor through spring 2027, and FDOT installed a temporary traffic signal at US-1 and Malaga Street to help meter the rerouted traffic during construction.
The corridor itself carries both U.S. Route 1 and State Road 5 through St. Augustine as an urban principal arterial, with unbalanced lane widths of 11-foot southbound travel lanes and 12-foot northbound travel lanes, according to design documentation from Protean Design Group. It also serves as a designated hurricane evacuation route for St. Johns County. A 2015 regional planning assessment from the North Florida TPO had already flagged sidewalk gaps and heavy traffic volumes along corridors connecting to North Ponce de Leon Boulevard as priority concerns tied to elevated pedestrian crash histories.
County Crash Data and Pedestrian Safety Measures
St. Johns County recorded 86 vehicle-pedestrian crashes and 7 fatalities countywide in 2022, following 88 pedestrian crashes and 9 fatalities in 2021, according to data compiled by the St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners. Officials cited Signal Four Analytics data while enacting enhanced right-of-way and pedestrian safety measures in response to those trends.
St. Johns County has enacted enhanced right-of-way and pedestrian safety measures.
No further details on the pedestrian's identity, the driver's status, or the cause of Sunday's crash have been released.
