Preston Fischer moved home after finishing up a contract job as a fisheries research technician in Wyoming, studying his favorite fish, the muskellunge. He had obtained his captain’s license and had plans to start a fish farm, a lifelong dream of his.

Ten days after his return, that dream was taken from him.

On Nov. 2, 2025, following the Ohio State vs. Penn State football game, Fischer — a 2023 forestry, fisheries and wildlife graduate — was killed by a reckless driver on the sidewalk, as he was en route to escort a friend home from Fourth Street.

The vehicle was going 54 mph in a 25 mph zone, and struck a tree and street sign before eventually hitting Fischer. He was pronounced dead at Grant Medical Center shortly after the accident occurred at 1:30 a.m.

“He never met a stranger, ever,” Kristy Fischer, Preston’s mother, said. “There was someone in his life that was 62, and he said, ‘How could it be that my hero was 25?’”

Preston Fischer is one of two fatalities reported within the university area in the past five years.

Pedestrian deaths are relatively rare. In Franklin County, there were 25 reported in 2021 and 18 in 2024.

Though that shows a decrease, a Lantern analysis of pedestrian-vehicle crashes over the past five years shows a substantial increase in serious and minor injuries. Serious injuries in the county increased from 54 in 2021 to 77 in 2024, while minor crashes increased from 241 to 346.

The university area alone saw an increase from five serious injuries in 2021 to 11 serious injuries and one fatality in 2025. Minor crashes increased from 51 in 2021 to 71 in 2025.

The increase comes despite several efforts to make Columbus’s streets safer — including the University District, which boasts a daytime population of nearly 100,000 people, and its surrounding areas, according to the Columbus Planning Division.

In 2020, the City of Columbus launched its version of Vision Zero – a nationwide initiative to end traffic fatalities and serious injuries, with an emphasis on the idea that “all deaths are preventable.”

Community members at the Friends and Families for Safe Streets Columbus pedestrian vigil and protest outside Columbus City Hall. Credit: Courtesy of Ginger Tornes

“When someone is seriously injured, like in a crosswalk, the response of the community should reflect the severity of the outcome,” Harden said. “People assume, and rightly so, that they’re protected in a marked crosswalk, and I think this bill helps to bring the law closer to that expectation.”

?Harden has been working with Ohio House Representatives Mike Odioso and Mark Sigrist, who are taking action to increase the penalties that drivers who seriously injure pedestrians receive.

?“What used to be death is now a seriously maimed individual, and the world changes for them obviously, but also changes for their caretakers, their family — the feeling was we just need to have an elevated level of consequence for that,” Sigrist said.

?Under current Ohio law, a citation for Failure to Yield to a Pedestrian in a Crosswalk is typically classified as a minor misdemeanor, carrying a maximum fine of $150 and potentially community service.

?The Lantern reached out to the Columbus Police Department for comment regarding the citation process, but did not receive a response.

?In March, Representatives Odioso and Sigrist introduced House Bill 714, which would change the penalty for drivers that injure a pedestrian from a minor misdemeanor to a fourth-degree misdemeanor, increasing the fine to $250 and introducing the potential of jail time, depending on the circumstances.

?The bill was in-part inspired by a case in Grove City, in which Sigrist said a partially paralyzed man in a motorized scooter was struck and seriously injured crossing a wide, high-traffic street, leaving him nonverbal and unable to communicate with his loved ones.

?Pedestrians struck along arterial roads — main roads with multiple lanes — carry a high risk of fatality or serious injury, due to faster speeds and longer crossing distances. According to Jordan Petrov, senior planner at MORPC, the risk of injury on Ohio State’s campus is lower than in other areas, as the campus mainly consists of narrow, two-lane streets.

Despite this, campus is still surrounded by multiple principal and minor arterial roads, such as North High Street, Summit Street and Lane Avenue, where data shows these accidents predominantly take place.

While arterial roads make up roughly five percent of the area’s total mileage, The Lantern’s analysis shows they account for more than 50 percent of vulnerable road user crashes, and more than 60 percent of those crashes result in a fatal or serious injury.

In July 2024, Natalie Harvey was crossing one of these intersections — at North High Street and East 14th Ave — when her day took a turn for the worse.?

“I feel like it happened so fast … one second I was crossing the street, and the next thing I knew I was sitting on the street,” Harvey said. “I remember I looked around and I saw people looking at me, and then I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is bad.’ ”

Harvey, a second-year dental student at the Ohio State University College of Dentistry, had been struck by a car, fracturing her arm.

Two surgeries, 30 stitches, full-body road rash scars and three months of physical rehabilitation later, Harvey is still recovering from her injuries, nearly two years after she was hit.

“I have back problems and stuff like that, that I didn’t have before. Obviously, [when] you get hit by a car, your body is just not the same,” Harvey said.

Not only is she still dealing with her injuries, but with the financial and emotional repercussions.

“Even after insurance, the cost [of medical care] is just unbelievable,” Harvey said. “I’m also still a student, so I have loans for grad school, so it’s just on top of that.”

The Lantern’s findings stem from data obtained from the Ohio State Highway Patrol’s crash dashboard, the Ohio Department of Public Safety and MORPC data obtained from the City of Columbus’ Vision Zero Action Plan.

The data used by the city to track traffic incidents contains notable gaps. Key details — such as road type and the number of streetlights — are often not specified. Over half of the roads in the university area have no classification.

“There’s a kind of human error that compounds … officers are obviously, they’re reporting these crashes and they have a lot of other duties and things as well,” Petrov said. “The data is not perfect and it’s sort of an, again, multi-agency partnership to try and improve it.”

This year, Petrov said MORPC is planning to launch their own non-motorized data collection plan to better understand where there are higher volumes of pedestrians and bicyclists.

“There’s always a need for more data,” Petrov said.

The number of fatal or serious injury crashes seems small in comparison to Columbus’s rapidly growing population — roughly two percent of all crashes, pedestrian and non-pedestrian, result in a fatal or serious injury. Crashes involving pedestrians make up roughly nine percent of all crashes.

But looking inside those statistics unveils a concerning trend — over the past five years, the percentage of pedestrian crashes resulting in a fatal or serious injury has increased from 31 percent in 2021 to 55 percent in 2025.

Recent data from Vision Zero Columbus shows mixed progress for the city as a whole, with fatalities slightly decreasing but overall crashes and serious injuries trending upward. Swidarski said population growth and increased roadway use contribute to the trend, while the city remains focused on reducing the most severe incidents.

“Our preliminary data shows fatal crashes declining again in 2025,” Swidarski said. “There are a variety of factors here too … the population in Columbus is growing, so even as our city is getting larger, the population is getting larger [and] we have more people traveling our roadways. We’re still seeing a decline in those fatal crashes.”

Swidarski also noted that August 2025 was the city’s first month with zero reported traffic fatalities.?

A bar chart showing the percentage of mileage, vulnerable road user crashes and vulnerable road user crashes resulting in a fatal or serious injury, based on functional road classifications in the university area. Credit: Grayson Newbourn | Former Managing Arts & Life Editor

There are several upcoming projects in the University District, including crosswalk enhancements at Indianola and Chittenden that will add features like median islands, curb extensions and flashing pedestrian signals, according to Swidarski.

The city is also planning to resurface parts of North High Street and install a protected bike lane along North 4th Street, similar to the current layout of Summit Street.

Swidarski said for those who come across pedestrian areas that need improvement, concerns can be submitted to 311, Columbus’s non-emergency line.

Petrov said another important feature is road lighting. For bikers especially, a majority of crashes resulting in fatal and serious injuries occur at night.

“There’s a lot more pedestrian traffic … happening during daylight hours,” Petrov said. “Taking those into account, there is a disproportionate amount of these crashes that happen during dark, evening, middle of the night and early morning hours.”

Even with well-lit roadways, the risk of fatal and serious injuries during the night is still high. More than half of pedestrian-bicyclist crashes happen during daylight hours due to increased traffic. However, the crashes that occur at night account for nearly 60 percent of fatal and serious injuries.

Petrov said the Vision Zero Action Plan will be updated to include lighting improvements across the city, after analyzing which locations will take priority.

Despite these plans, Tornes said the city needs to listen to the community’s needs more, emphasizing the efficacy of “quick builds.”

“What I’d like to see the officials do is involve the community more, and the residents,” Tornes said. “Get creative and don’t be afraid to try something different, and if that doesn’t work, fine, take it out. That’s the beauty of a quick build.”

Tornes pointed to recent pedestrian-focused developments near Columbus College of Art and Design’s campus, specifically at East Gay Street and Cleveland Avenue, as an example of successful quick builds. Through a collaboration with the landscape architecture firm MKSK, the college implemented road diets, which narrows a street and adds medians between opposing traffic lanes, as well as a raised intersection and ample pedestrian yield signals.

Tornes said these road diets can be implemented on any street with 25,000 vehicles or less — which includes a majority of roads in the High Injury Network, the streets “that have had the greatest number of fatal, serious injury and/or vulnerable user crashes per half mile segment,” according to Vision Zero.

Traffic counts for campus’ surrounding roads are not frequently updated, but North High Street’s Annual Average Daily Traffic count ranges between 10,000 to 15,000 vehicles a day. West Lane Avenue saw just under 25,000 in 2025, according to the Ohio Department of Transportation.

For victims of these accidents, current safety measures aren’t enough to help them feel secure.

“I feel like I’m definitely less trusting of cars, obviously,” Harvey said. “Even if it’s a red light, crosswalk sign, I definitely wait to make sure the car’s going to stop before I go. I feel like I definitely approach that with more caution — not that I wasn’t cautious before, but I’m hyper aware of it now.”

Chad Fischer, Preston Fischer’s father, said the lack of cameras and other safety measures in the area is also a concern.?

“One thing I would like is a camera at every intersection, you know, with the technology nowadays and on heavy pedestrian areas, some type of concrete planners or poles or something should be along these high traffic, high-volume roadways,” Chad Fischer said. “We go to a lot of games and I’ve always thought to myself, even before this, that so many people [are] walking up and down these roads, and there’s no posts or nothing for protection.”

In Preston Fischer’s case, the motorist — whom the Fischers said was 18 at the time — was not caught until several months after the crash.?

Of the two fatal crashes in the University District area, both were hit-skips, meaning the motorists left the scene.

“Obviously, if a motorist stays on scene, there’s a much better chance of a pedestrian surviving that, because they will call emergency services,” Petrov said.?

Additional information regarding the motorist, his name and charges, could not be obtained.?

“We’ve tried to exhaust legal means and other things,” Chad Fischer said. “Unfortunately, there’s just not really anything here. If we can keep any other family from going through this, to me, that would be a positive out of this … [Preston] just had so much to live for.”