A woman was struck by a vehicle on Old Hammond Highway near W Carriage House Drive around 6:23 a.m. Friday, and the driver took off without stopping. Emergency crews rushed her to a hospital, and police say she is expected to survive.
Officers believe a gray pickup truck was involved in the crash, according to the Baton Rouge Police Department's preliminary investigation, as reported by WAFB. The department is now searching for the vehicle that fled the scene after hitting the woman. No details about the truck's direction of travel, license plate, or driver have been released.
A Corridor Already Marked for an Overhaul
Friday's crash lands on a stretch of roadway that local officials have already flagged as dangerous. Move BR has begun a nearly $12 million project near Manson Drive on Old Hammond Highway to widen the road and add sidewalks, with city-parish officials calling the work critical to improving safety for everyone who uses the corridor, according to WBRZ. The outlet's records show Old Hammond Highway is one of six Baton Rouge-area roads that each saw at least one pedestrian or bicyclist hit and injured or killed in the four months before its report.
Among those earlier cases, a 40-year-old woman named Elizabeth Ready died after a vehicle struck her while she was walking along Old Hammond Highway on a Monday night, the station's report notes. It is not established whether that crash or others cited in regional coverage are connected to Friday's incident near W Carriage House Drive.
A Pattern of Drivers Who Don't Stop
Hit-and-runs involving pedestrians have become a recurring problem across the capital region. Cassieanna Dorsey was using a crosswalk on College Drive in May when a driver struck her and left the scene, and that driver was never caught, per the same WBRZ account. In another case, Louisiana State Police began investigating a hit-and-run on LA 327 Spur near Rush Avenue in East Baton Rouge Parish in June 2025 that killed 36-year-old Daniel Garcia of Baton Rouge, after an unknown vehicle traveling northbound struck him and fled without calling for help, according to Louisiana State Police.
Three people were also hit by vehicles on Plank Road within a mile of each other in a separate incident, leaving one person dead and two hospitalized, WBRZ reported. The Louisiana Highway Safety Commission says roughly 1,400 pedestrians are struck statewide each year on average, with Baton Rouge recording nearly 100 pedestrian crashes annually and ranking among the top three Louisiana cities for pedestrian crashes per capita.
Deaths Mounting Across the Parish
The numbers behind these individual crashes paint a grim statewide picture. Twenty-three pedestrians and four bicyclists died in East Baton Rouge Parish in 2025, the second-highest total among Louisiana parishes, with 55 more pedestrians seriously injured, according to The Advocate. Louisiana has averaged 166 pedestrian fatalities a year over the past five years, and a Smart Growth America study ranked Baton Rouge as the fifth-deadliest U.S. metro area for pedestrians, logging 183 such deaths from 2020 through 2024.
The newspaper also noted that three pedestrians died in East Baton Rouge Parish within 21 hours earlier this month, a cluster that intensified calls for intervention. In response to two pedestrian deaths on Nicholson Drive, the state lowered the speed limit on the stretch between Bob Pettit Boulevard and Brightside Drive from 45 mph to 35 mph on Wednesday, October 21. A separate $19.2 million project, SAFE Siegen, was awarded in July to improve pedestrian crossings and bus stops along a 1.35-mile segment of Siegen Lane.
Nationally, the trend mirrors what's happening in Baton Rouge. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has reported a 72 percent increase in pedestrian deaths from motor vehicle crashes since 2009, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recorded more than 7,000 pedestrian deaths and over 70,000 injuries in U.S. traffic crashes in 2024, per WBRZ's reporting. LSU's Center for Analytics and Research in Transportation Safety has found that the number of pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists involved in fatal or severe crashes so far in 2026 already exceeds the same point last year.
Police have not released further information about the truck or the driver involved in Friday's crash. The investigation remains active as the Baton Rouge Police Department continues searching for the vehicle that fled the scene.
