A Bokeelia man is sharing his story and advocating for road improvements after surviving a motorcycle crash on Burnt Store Road in June that left him critically injured.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kevin McGrotty says he doesn’t remember the moment he flew off his motorcycle and ended up in a hospital bed.<\/p>\n
“This car was going 40 miles an hour in a 55 and I slowed down, proceeded to go around,” McGrotty said. “As I did, he [the other driver] immediately turned left, and I basically hit the back end of his vehicle, and the bike slid up and I flew over his windshield.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
McGrotty sustained injuries to his head, collar bone, hand and leg.<\/p>\n
McGrotty sustained injuries to his head, collar bone, hand and leg.<\/p>\n
“They shut the road down and sent a sheriff to the hospital to do a death investigation,” McGrotty said.<\/p>\n
McGrotty survived but says he spent six weeks in a wheelchair.<\/p>\n
He says he contacted WINK News in the hopes that sharing his story would spark change.<\/p>\n
McGrotty isn’t the only one who’s been injured in a crash on Burnt Store Road.<\/p>\n
Cape Coral police records show officers have responded to 51 crashes on Burnt Store Road just this year, with 15 resulting in injuries.<\/p>\n
In October, \u00a0killed three people.<\/p>\n
Following the , city and county leaders said the \u00a0are concerning.<\/p>\n
“This is a road I’d like to see us widen as soon as possible,” Lee County Commissioner Brian Hamman said in an October meeting.<\/p>\n
A Lee County spokesperson said in an email, “Several phases of Burnt Store Road” have already been widened.<\/p>\n
“The only remaining segment is the one that is subject to the current Project Development & Environmental (PD&E) study, which is nearly complete,” a spokesperson said in an email.<\/p>\n
The Florida Department of Transportation recently approved the next phase of the widening project for Burnt Store Road, stretching from Van Buren Parkway to the Charlotte County line.<\/p>\n
The plan expands the road from two to four lanes, with room for six lanes in the future.<\/p>\n
The estimated cost is between $185 million and $190 million, but there is currently no timeline for completion.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Commissioner Cecil Pendergrass has asked \u00a0on the road.<\/p>\n
The Lee County Sheriff’s Office said traffic enforcement on Burnt Store Road is a multi-jurisdictional effort and traffic operations are ongoing.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, McGrotty said he has no choice but to continue to drive on the road he almost died on at least two to three times a week, something he says gives him immense anxiety.<\/p>\n
“You’re thinking about it constantly,” he said.<\/p>\n
He said the road improvements can’t come soon enough.<\/p>\n
“Just do whatever you can, whatever you need to do, to collaborate between the City of Cape Coral and Lee County, and get this thing done,” McGrotty said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Bokeelia man is sharing his story and advocating for road improvements after surviving a motorcycle crash on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[5377,209,211,210,212,853,2675,28,1126,1598,356,7692,25994],"class_list":["post-38000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-bokeelia","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-cape-coral-police","tag-charlotte-county","tag-driver","tag-florida","tag-florida-department-of-transportation","tag-law-enforcement","tag-lee-county","tag-lee-county-sheriff","tag-traffic-collision"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}