Osceola County using cameras for pedestrian safety

OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. (FOX 35 ORLANDO) - Central Florida leads the nation in a tragic statistic. We are the deadliest metro area in the country for pedestrians.

Osceola County is looking to solve the problem.  Their answer: more traffic cameras.

The traffic center in Osceola County is a whole lot busier these days. The team is now looking at dozens and dozens of new cameras at 19 intersections along West U.S. Highway 192, tracking how many cars, pedestrians and bicyclists come and go through the area. Osceola County is one of the first in the state to use this program.

"You see these blue boxes are lighting up as the cars are coming by? What they're doing is they're counting traffic and publishing it to our system," said system operator Tim Heins.

These cameras give the county an extra set of eyes, so they can keep track of what's going on at the intersections for your safety, gathering information to make potential safety improvement to the roads, intersections and crosswalks.

There's no need to do studies for new projects now when the county already has all the data. That data is stored indefinitely.

"We can adjust our signal timings based on that information. We have safety. There's grants. There's all kinds of things we can use this data for," said Traffic Management Center supervisor Lindsey Giovinazzo.

The goal?

"Less time spent in traffic, less people waiting at red lights, hopefully less collisions," said Heins.

And hopefully better, safer roads in the long run.