Teacher's death reignites debate over safety on Shore Drive

VIRGINIA BEACH

The half-mile stretch of Shore Drive between Starfish and West Great Neck roads is the informal epicenter of nightlife along the bay. About 10 bars and restaurants are all within walking distance.

There's one problem: They're on both sides of the road. With the nearest crosswalks a half-mile apart, bar hoppers often choose to dash back and forth across Shore Drive instead.

After leaving Cabo Cafe around 1:30 a.m. Sunday, Whitney Lynne Hulce, a 25-year-old Norfolk school teacher, was struck by a car and killed as she tried to cross Shore Drive.

The accident, the 10th pedestrian fatality on the road in eight years, happened in almost the exact same place as the last one. Arnold Lee Jones, 21, was killed there in October. Both walkers had likely been drinking, police said. Neither driver has been charged. Two flower-covered memorials now lie across the road from each other.

Hulce's death has reinvigorated the conversation about safety on Shore Drive. The road, a major artery between Norfolk and Virginia Beach along the Chesapeake Bay, has long been regarded as one of the most dangerous in the region.

Until the signs were taken down a few years ago, motorists were greeted with grim warnings about Shore Drive's death toll ("Warning. 81 people have DIED on this road since 1977").

Some have said the city should do more to make the road safer and complained that officials pay too much attention to the Oceanfront while Shore Drive is neglected.

Last year, at the request of neighborhood groups, the city reduced the speed limit to 35 mph from 45 mph on a section of the road between North Great Neck Road and First Landing State Park. That section, largely a residential area, starts about three-tenths of a mile east of where Hulce and Jones were killed.

"Shore Drive has been a dangerous spot for years and years, and the city isn't paying attention," Mark Emmett, kitchen manager at Cabo Cafe, said Monday afternoon as traffic roared by outside the bar.

He wants the city to lower the speed limit and install a cross walk and traffic light at the intersection of Shore Drive and Red Tide Road, the intersection nearest to the two recent fatalities.

In the wake of Sunday's accident, members of the Shore Drive Community Coalition, a civic group, and the Bayfront Advisory Commission, a city advisory panel, are meeting this week to talk about a another speed limit reduction, said David Williams, vice president of the coalition group.

"It's a serious consideration," he said.

City traffic engineer Robert Gey said the intersection doesn't warrant a traffic light based on traffic and pedestrian volume. Gey said adding signals can sometimes increase accidents.

"The city wants do something, but what can we do? Put a fence down the side of the road? Is that what the reaction should be? I'm not sure. How do you deal with social behavior from an engineering perspective?"

Across the street from Cabo Cafe, J.P. Murphy, owner of the Smokehouse and Cooler, questioned whether the city can solve the problem.

"The city can only do so much," he said. "People just have to be careful."

Hulce's father, Scott Hulce, said his daughter was in the last of four lanes when she was struck. The incident is under investigation, police said.

"It's important that people realize Whitney was not some drunk out there just haphazardly living," Scott Hulce said. "She was pretty normal. Maybe even above normal."

Hulce graduated from Great Bridge High School, where she was an honor student and cheerleading co-captain. Hulce went to Old Dominion University on a full academic scholarship, her father said.

She left ODU early but took college courses online while working full time at a law firm; that's how she earned her degree to teach, her father said.

Hulce was a second-grade teacher at Tanners Creek Elementary School.

"As you can tell from her picture she has just an infectious smile and just such a bubbly personality that everyone loved her and you couldn't not be friends with her," said Angie Floyd, a friend.

Pilot writer Dave Forster and Pilot researcher Jakon Hays contributed to this report.

Aaron Applegate, (757) 222-5122, aaron.applegate@pilotonline.com

INTERACTIVE MAP: 10 deaths in eight years

View A decade of Shore Dr. fatalities in a larger map

^{NOTE: Locations are approximate.}

^{SOURCE: Staff research}