Three weeks after Brandon Taylor was hit by an SUV in a hit and run along a busy Calgary road, his family is still wondering when the 17-year-old will be able to come home to something that resembles normalcy.
But the road ahead for the family is long.
“We’re in between stages two and three when it comes to the mind being reactivated,” mother Kailey Naugler told Global News on Friday. “His body is moving — his left side, definitely. And he’s starting to move his eyes a little more, but Brandon isn’t quite there yet. It’s just his body reacting.”
Naugler said Taylor’s left side, including his left hand, is much stronger than his right. She said he responds to grabbing items and feeling textures, including her sweater.
“I’ve been wearing the same sweater because he knows by that feeling I’m there.”
Taylor requires the use of a feeding tube and a breathing tube while staying at the Alberta Children’s Hospital, where he gets regular physiotherapy. He’s now in a wheelchair, and the physiotherapists working with him are trying to help him move his limbs more often, part of the work to help him recover from brain injury.
“When it comes to brain injuries, it’s really unpredictable on the length of recovery because it could be the same impact, but it affects everyone differently,” Naugler said.
And with the son now in a wheelchair, the family faces the prospect of having to find an accessible home, ideally near the children’s hospital, to continue to support Taylor.
“We have high hopes that he will come back to us. It’s just going to be a very long road,” his mother said. “Not talking months, this could be years with the brain injury because brains are so unknown when it comes to certain trauma. We don’t know the long extent of this until each day happens.”
At around 7 p.m. on Oct. 17, Taylor was trying to cross 16 Avenue at 46 Street N.W. in a pedestrian crosswalk. Police believe the crosswalk signal was activated when the passenger mirror of a light-coloured SUV hit him in the head, sending him to hospital.
Ten days later, the Calgary Police Service said they located the vehicle they believed was involved in the hit and run with the help of a witness and Cochrane RCMP, but the driver remains at large.
Naugler said the news police found the SUV provided little relief and remains sympathetic to what the driver may have been going through. Her focus now is on the recovery of her son and her family.
“Can we just get this done and over with so me and my family can move on?”
‘Heavy traffic’ and pedestrians
The intersection her son was hit in and the urban stretch of the Trans Canada Highway is visible from her home.
And according to data from the City of Calgary, pedestrian collisions aren’t rare events in the area.
The data shows there have been nine incidents marked as involving pedestrians and two involving cyclists in a two-block radius from where Taylor was hit since 2017. And at that intersection – 16 Avenue and 46 Street N.W. – there have been 10 traffic incidents in five years.
“We all know that’s heavy traffic at all times. The lights were put there for a reason. The signs are put there for a reason,” Naugler said. “If you can’t read the sign or know what that light means, what are you doing driving?”
Melissa Valgardson is a mother who also lives in the Montgomery neighbourhood. She said in the eight years she’s lived there, she’s had to become “hyper-vigilant” when crossing 16 Avenue near 46 Street when alone or with her children.
“We press the button, we wait. I have (my children) wait behind me until I see that the first cars have stopped and then I’m constantly looking back and forth to monitor, to see if anyone new is coming and coming too fast. And if the cars are stopped, I’m always peeking around – if there’s a long line of traffic and I can’t see the next lane – peek around and make sure no one’s going to blow through the intersection,” Valgardson told Global News.
“But it just takes one moment of not being fully aware and paying attention on the pedestrians part and the driver’s part for something to go wrong. I do worry.”
City data shows that stretch of the Trans Canada Highway had at least six pedestrian collisions in four years:
- On Nov. 17, 2018, there was an incident involving a pedestrian affecting eastbound traffic at 16 Avenue and 46 Street N.W.
- On Jan. 8, 2020, an incident involving a pedestrian at 16 Avenue and Monterey Avenue N.W. blocked eastbound traffic
- On April 16, 2020, a man died after being hit by a vehicle at 16 Avenue at 44 Street N.W.
- On Nov. 2, 2021, another pedestrian-involved incident happened at 16 Avenue and Home Road N.W.
- On April 4, 2022, an incident involving a pedestrian had EMS on site at 16 Avenue and Home Road N.W.
- The October collision involving Taylor appears to be the most recent pedestrian incident along 16 Avenue N.W.
In Alberta, pedestrians have the right of way in marked or unmarked crosswalks, and failing to yield to a pedestrian could result in a $810 fine and four demerit points.
The City of Calgary studied the 16 Avenue transportation corridor, identifying short- and medium-term solutions for the area. The short-term fixes included reducing the speed limit and introducing a median.
A city spokesperson said the medium-term action items include pedestrian bump-outs, a new traffic signal and crosswalks in all directions at that intersection. The city is also looking at how improving lighting, adding a crossing signal at the side of the road and increased driver signage could help. But all of the medium- and long-term strategies in the study have yet to be funded.
Valgardson said despite the 50 km/h speed limit through that part of Montgomery and a recent addition of a pedestrian crossing signal at 43 Street, “it doesn’t feel safer to me by much.”
“I worry a lot about the schoolchildren that are crossing here (at 46 Street),” she said, adding she frequently has vehicles pass by her while she’s still in the crosswalk.
“The school is just a few blocks this way, so this crosswalk is the most convenient to cross to get to the school.
“It’s really nice to walk and ride our bikes to school and I want to continue doing that, but I’d feel much better if this crossing was safer.”
Naugler agrees that the measures put in for the stretch of road her son was struck in haven’t improved safety in the area.
“I see people unfortunately cross that crosswalk every day. I stop and I just hope that they get across safely,” she said. “Most of the time they do, absolutely. But my family was that chance that someone didn’t make it across that road.
“So are we working on percentages when it comes to people making it across the crosswalk and that’s how we’re running things?”