Deadliest Road In America Is In Pasco County

I remember being a kid growing up in Pinellas County, and I'd ride in the car with my parents on US-19 and see bumper stickers that read, "Pray for me. I drive on US-19."

Sounds like a jokey bumper sticker, but there is some serious truth to that. When you travel a little further north on US-19, into Pasco County, you'll encounter the most dangerous stretch of highway in the country. That's crazy! US-19 running through Hudson, Port Richey, New Port Richey, and Holiday is statistically incredibly dangerous for pedestrians.

This portion encompasses three lanes going in each direction. When you add extra turn lanes on both sides that can add up to eight or nine lanes at most intersections.

The speed limit along this stretch is only 45 to 55 miles per hour. However, the cars travel at high speeds above the speed limit all the time. There aren't many crosswalks, so people chance it and jaywalk. This is not at all pedestrian friendly.

If you look at pedestrian death statistics, you'll see that Florida has a big problem. But it's not exclusive to Florida. According to Vox, two years ago there were more than 6,700 pedestrians who were killed walking along the road or crossing a road. And according to information from Governors Highway Safety Association, that was a 21 percent increase in 2020. An excerpt from the report explained that it was “the largest ever annual increase in the rate at which drivers struck and killed people on foot.”

Also tragically in 2020, almost 39,000 people perished in car crashes. That's been the largest number of car crash fatalities since 2007.

After these findings came out, the NHTSA’s deputy administrator made a statement to Reuters: “We’ve never seen trends like this, and we feel an urgency... to take action and turn this around as quickly as possible.”

These statistics are a good reminder to drive safely, avoid distractions, and look out for pedestrians.

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When you start your day before the sun is up in the five o’clock hour, it always helps to have some coffee to get you going. MJ is a very strange bird in that he doesn’t need coffee to start his day. He’s a ball of chatty energy on his own. But I need both tea and coffee, and Fester has a splash of coffee with his 15 packets of sugar and 12 ounces of cream, and Froggy drinks coffee and sometimes energy drinks.

I, personally, enjoy drinking coffee on the weekends because that’s when I drink it out of a mug (at work, it’s out of a Styrofoam cup). Drinking coffee in a mug is a nice, relaxing ritual.

Froggy came up with his list of his favorite coffee mugs. Here are the “mug” shots and what he had to say about each.

The first mug is one I love because it has every single bird on it that has a name that sounds dirty, including the tufted titmouse, which is my favorite bird.

The second mug is one of my favorites because it was the first mug given to me by my kids on my first Father's Day.

The News Channel 8 mug means a lot because it was given to me live on the news and live on-air on the MJ Morning Show by the news anchor Avery Cotten, who is class personified. I applied to win a mug online and kept losing so they brought one to me.

And finally, my Rodfather mug made the list because it was given to me by Roxanne on mÿ birthday, supposedly because I love fishing and Godfather movies. And for some reason the coffee always tastes better in this mug.