Two Florida sunbathers have been run over this year. How safe is beach driving?
Florida beaches already have lifeguards and safety patrols, but one part of the state might want to consider summoning Paul Revere: The threats in Volusia County can come both by land and by sea.
Two incidents this year in which vehicles struck county beachgoers ― in both cases driving over their heads ― illustrate the risks that come with allowing the decades-long practice of beach driving.
The most recent incident took place in Ormond Beach, where 33-year-old Coleson Janey of Ocala was struck by a Jeep attempting to back into a parking spot on April 5. Janey told Orlando’s WESH-TV that he was sunbathing and dozing face-down in the sand when was jostled awake by a car tire running over his head.
"I was just screaming," Janey said. "Screaming my head off, screaming bloody murder, of course."
Janey suffered a broken femur and forearm as well as a bruised face, while the 61-year-old woman driving the vehicle was cited for careless driving.
In February, a 71-year-old New York woman sitting in a beach chair at Daytona Beach was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries after a pickup truck ran over her head. The 84-year-old driver, chased down by a witness, told authorities she didn’t know she had hit anyone.
Most people are hit while just enjoying the sun
Few parts of the United States allow beach driving. In Florida, it's limited mainly to the East Coast areas of Daytona Beach and New Smyrna Beach, according to the Daytona Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau. The beaches have driving fees and rules in place to promote safety, including designated driving zones and hours, a 10-mile-per-hour speed limit and a ban on loud music.
In Volusia County, beach accidents involving vehicles and pedestrians have been a longtime issue: In 2010, the Palm Beach Post tallied 49 beach accidents there in the previous 15 years in which a pedestrian or sunbather was injured or killed.
That same year, a Daytona Beach News-Journal review of vehicle-pedestrian incidents on Volusia County beaches in the previous five years found most people hit aren’t pedestrians at all; most people were struck while in a chair or lying on the beach, with one in three incidents occurring as the vehicles were in reverse.
Both newspaper investigations came after two children were fatally struck on county beaches in separate incidents that year. In July 2010, 4-year-old Aiden Patrick of Deltona, Florida, was hit by a pickup on crowded New Smyrna Beach.
Aiden’s father had crossed a beach traffic lane to wash his hands in the water, but as he returned the boy ran toward him and into the truck’s path. He was hit by its right front tire and pronounced dead at a hospital.
Troopers declined to press charged against the driver, who they found was not speeding and could not see the boy. The next year, the family sued, charging that the county had failed to take appropriate safety measures and provide sufficient police patrols, but a judge sided with the county in 2014.
In March 2010, 4-year-old Ellie Bland of Britain was killed after being struck by a vehicle at Daytona Beach, but the family did not sue.
In another incident that year, a woman in a beach chair suffered a broken leg when she was run over by a beach patrol truck.
Beach driving accidents not well tracked
On Memorial Day weekend 2024, a Volusia County beach safety officer in a marked truck struck two 18-year-old women from Kissimmee, Florida. One of them suffered a lacerated liver, multiple fractures and significant facial injuries.
A county memo indicated the officer, who is no longer with the agency, had been talking to another beach safety official before the incident and violated policy by not surveying the area around his truck before driving away.
A CBS report in 2019 noted that beach accidents are not well tracked because unlike street accidents, they’re not reported nationally.
“We don't know for certain how many events, and how many injuries, how many deaths occur," Kelly Nantel of the National Safety Council told the network. "Any time there is a combination of motor vehicles and pedestrians in a relatively unprotected environment, and a very chaotic environment, the risk is really elevated."
Beach drivers don’t just endanger people. Earlier this year, Jacksonville Today reported that homeowners in American Beach, Florida, planned to sue Nassau County officials in an attempt to protect loggerhead and green sea turtle hatchlings from beach drivers on the area’s popular dunes.
Other areas of the U.S. that allow beach driving include North Carolina's Freeman Park, Oregon's Tierra Del Mar, Washington's Long Beach Peninsula and areas of Texas' Gulf Coast.