Push for statewide alert system to catch Hit-and-run drivers

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — The Florida Highway Patrol said hit-and-run crashes are at an all-time high.

Law enforcement officers responded to more than 99,000 hit-and-run crashes in 2016, a jump from 2015, FHP said.

There is a statewide push to add an alert system when someone is struck by a vehicle and the driver runs off. It's similar to an Amber Alert system. The vehicle's car description and any other information that could help track down the driver would be put up on a billboard.

It’s been 10 months and the pain is still fresh for Kimberly Wiggins, who lost her husband to hit-and-run drivers.

“And there in the middle of the street was my world,” Wiggins said.

Wiggins stood with other families Thursday, along with FHP, as troopers held their annual statewide campaign to bring awareness of the problem of hit-and-run crashes.

Rasheed Wiggins was standing in the median near Universal Boulevard at Destination Parkway on April 16 when he was struck and killed by three vehicles, two of the drivers stopped.

Channel 9 speaks with wife of man killed in fatal hit-and-run near UCF's Rosen campus

"I don't understand why we have to remind people that if you hit someone, you need to stop,” Wiggins said.

State Sens. Victor Torres and David Simmons have agreed to introduce the bill, which would create the alert billboard systems. Rep. Scott Plakon agreed to sponsor the bill on the House side.

"If it was a call, a text, or a Facebook message, and someone can say do something right then and there and you could save a life, that perhaps one car would have hit him instead of three that perhaps something could have been done to save his life,” Wiggins said.

The state senators backing the bill pointed out the need to improve our alert system when it comes to imminent threats in our community.

Cox Media Group