A lane closure was reported on Hodges Boulevard.
A lane closure was reported on Hodges Boulevard.
Traffic Update
A lane closure was reported on Hodges Boulevard.
Detectives were still working the crash.
A Rising Pedestrian Toll
JSO put Duval County's 2026 totals, as reported Wednesday, at 143 traffic fatalities, including 34 people killed while walking. Those figures come from a different snapshot than earlier counts and should not be read as one continuous official series.
On Oct. 5, News4Jax reported 127 traffic fatalities in Duval, compared with 130 at the same point in 2025, and 21,077 traffic crashes in the city so far that year. Overall deaths were tracking last year's pace. Walking deaths were not.
By Sept. 3, JSO had reported 30 pedestrian deaths in Duval, against 21 at the same point in 2025, News4Jax reported. A June 30 account from the Traffic Homicide Unit put the year's toll then at 92 traffic deaths, 25 of them involving a pedestrian. Wednesday's 34 pedestrian deaths sit well above that June figure and above the September count.
Hodges And Other Streets
Hodges Boulevard already had a fatal pedestrian crash this year. In late February, a woman was hit and killed there on a Thursday night at about 7:45 p.m., The Florida Times-Union reported. That death was described as the 10th pedestrian fatality of the year. JSO was investigating. The February crash and Wednesday's are separate cases, hours apart on the clock and months apart on the calendar.
Other deaths have kept the same pattern in view. News4Jax reported that three people walking on Jacksonville roads were struck and killed in a single week, according to Jacksonville police and Florida Highway Patrol. In early September reporting, JSO said a woman was struck early Wednesday on Capper Road near Wingate, later died at a hospital, and that the driver of a dark-colored SUV left the scene.
The imbalance is older than this year's count. First Coast News described a report in which about 25.1% of Duval road fatalities in 2023 involved pedestrians, even though pedestrians were involved in 2% of total crashes. Jacksonville placed 10th on a list topped by Pinellas and Lafayette counties. The same report put pedestrians at 14.9% of road deaths in St. Johns County and 15.1% in Clay County.
Jacksonville's Vision Zero Plan
Jacksonville has a Vision Zero Action Plan. It identifies a High Injury Network.
The plan also includes a "20 Is Plenty" program that would drop speed limits in targeted areas from 30 mph to 20 mph. The available reporting does not say whether any of those measures are in place at Hodges and Fario.
A lane closure on Hodges Boulevard was reported at 7:10 a.m. Wednesday.
What The Statute Actually Assigns
Florida law splits the duty. Under section 316.130, a pedestrian crossing a roadway outside a marked crosswalk, or outside an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection, must yield to vehicles. The same statute requires every driver to exercise due care to avoid colliding with a pedestrian. Neither sentence decides this crash.
A lane closure was reported on Hodges Boulevard.
