CINCINNATI —

Pedestrian safety is front and center on Cincinnati streets once again this week. Two deaths and two injuries in a span of about 72 hours, in three different neighborhoods. The city has made pedestrian safety a top priority.

"People have to slow down. It's just crazy at every neighborhood people are speeding up and down the streets," council member Jan Michele Lemon Kearney said.

$1.5 million is in the budget for safety projects. However, most would agree that is not nearly enough to deal with the problem. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, a pedestrian struck by a vehicle traveling at 40 miles per hour has an 80 percent likelihood of serious injury or death

Cincinnati has a program called Vision Zero — part of a national campaign to reduce and ultimately eliminate all traffic-related deaths and severe injuries. More than 200 projects were planned for design and construction last year but because of COVID-19, many rolled over into this year.

"All related to slowing traffic down because if you are hit by a car and you're going slow, it's not going to be fatal and if it's fast and speeding, we can lose lives and we have lost lives," council member Greg Landsman said.

CINCINNATI —

Reading Road was one of the trouble spots in Cincinnati on Thursday.

Not only was there a sheet of ice that went all the way up the hill, but there were also cars backed up two miles and people waiting for hours.

Essie Combs commutes through this area to receive medical treatment.

"We've been sitting here for about an hour now just to get down to the dialysis unit on the other side of Graeter's," Combs said.

Her center is just 500 yards down the road but she's been stuck in the same spot. She's been waiting and is frustrated.

"A few days ago the city had put salt out. No snow. There's no salt out now and I can see the sheet of ice. My driver told me there's ice over there and I can see it over here," Combs said.

The city said it did pretreat roads but that didn't stop scenes like this.

Combs was waiting on a Metro bus that rammed into cars parked on the side of the road.

A couple of hours earlier on Reading Road, a car rear-ended a jack-knifed semi.

After that, at Summit and Reading, a school bus sat at an intersection with three cars crashed into it — fortunately, no students were on board.

As the morning went on we saw crash after crash, leading to people being taken away in an ambulance to a pickup hitting a fire truck.

Crashes happened throughout the city and Combs said she's going to file a complaint with the city.

Millions of Americans reeling from a deadly storm and massive power outages are about to get walloped by more winter weather.

On Tuesday alone, at least 20 cities suffered their coldest weather in history. Many more new records are expected this week.

At least 15 people have died in weather-related vehicle crashes since the cold temperatures set in. In Oklahoma alone, 123 people were hospitalized Monday with weather-related injuries.

And in North Carolina, at least three people were killed when an overnight tornado shredded parts of Brunswick County.

Here’s a look at some of the wild moments this weather has caused:

A suburban Nashville man's surveillance camera captured a wild incident Sunday.

Adam Schwegman was leaving home to pick up his daughter from a sleepover, when his truck started sliding down the road. It's hard to tell from the video — but that road in covered in a sheet of ice.

Schwegman says he played it cool and watching a parked car at the bottom of the hill — bracing for a potential impact. Luckily, he didn't — his truck finally stopped before hitting the car. Schwegman estimates he slid about 150 yards. Schwegman then drove slowly to pick up his daughter.

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An apparent tornado killed three people and injured 10 others as it struck a coastal North Carolina town, authorities said. It was spawned along the edge of the same weather system bringing bitterly cold temperatures to much of the nation.

“The sky lit up and there was a lot of pop-pop-popping. And the loud thunder. And then it sounded like a train, a freight train coming through. The roar of a freight train. That’s when all the damage occurred,” Sharon Benson, who lives in the neighborhood, said by phone.

The tornado hit just before midnight Monday, ripping open homes, flipping cars and uprooting trees in Ocean Ridge Plantation, said Ed Conrow, Brunswick County's emergency services director. Dozens of other homes were damaged by the “fierce tornado," Gov. Roy Cooper said in a tweet.

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A multi-vehicle crash near Oklahoma City was chaotic on Sunday, with semitrucks burning and cars pinned against them.

Luckily, one man took it upon himself to save someone who was stuck in the middle of it all.

“He was my angel there. If he wasn’t there, this would have been a different story,” said Tyler Caldwell, who was rescued after being trapped by two semitrucks.

Take a look at the video above as Tyler recounts the harrowing moments after the crash

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In Kentucky, video from the state Transportation Cabinet shows how they use "synchronized snow plowing" to clear snowy roads.

In the video above, see how plows removed snow from the barrier wall along Interstate 75 in Kentucky.

This came in handy after Kentucky was pummeled with snow and sleet Monday.

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Texas, a state not used to brutal winter weather, has been one of the hardest hit. On Tuesday morning, temperatures were well below freezing across the entire state.

More than 4.1 million customers were without power, according to Poweroutages.US.

Because "customers" can represent a business or a household, millions more people are impacted.

The cold even interrupted cellular service in Fort Bend County on Monday night, Fort Bend County Judge KP Georges said.

Video: Subfreezing cold sweeps US, bringing rare snow to Texas

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In Pennsylvania, a man uses sprinklers to create a magical artwork display of ice on a tree.

T.J. Seller of Schnecksville in Lehigh County told WFMZ-TV it's a family tradition, and an icicle-covered tree on his property currently stands at over 25 feet, cascading with ice.

"Everybody loves it, I have people drive by two, three times a day sometime," he said.

The tree is also lit at night and become a tourist stop.

"Someone rolls down the window to tell me how cool it looks," he said, "that keeps me going."

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And it’s not just the U.S, dealing with wild weather. Heavy snowfall blanketed the Acropolis and other ancient monuments in Athens, Greece.

The snow, an unusual sight in the Greek capital of more than 3 million residents, also stopped most public transport services. Hundreds of toppled trees downed power cables, causing blackouts in several suburbs, while one area on the city's northern fringes was declared in a state of emergency for the next month. Some of the affected suburbs were also left without water.

Snow is common in Greece’s mountains and in the north of the country, but much rarer in the capital. Some Athenians emerged cautiously outside, snapping photos on balconies and in the streets.

CINCINNATI — When a driver struck a man who was crossing the street Thursday night near the intersection of Clifton and Glenmary avenues, police said speed wasn't a factor in the crash. Instead, they said the road was dimly lit and the man was not in a marked crossing.

But regardless of who was at fault in that crash, leaders in Clifton continue to push the city administration for more upgrades to the neighborhood's pedestrian safety infrastructure in order to prevent crashes like Thursday's from happening in the first place.

Sue Afunah lives in Clifton and walks through the neighborhood "almost every day, for errands or just for pleasure," she said. "I see cars just flying through the red lights regularly… I would not depend on the pedestrian light to cross safely."

As of Friday afternoon, police had not identified the man injured but said he was in serious condition.

"It's not surprising; it's very sad," Afunah said upon hearing the news Friday.

Clifton Town Meeting trustee and City Council hopeful Mark Jeffreys said, whoever was at fault in the crash, the issue remains: Too many drivers are hitting people with their cars.

"Unfortunately we've been seeing things very consistent across the city which is increasingly pedestrians and bikers are being hit by cars speeding," said Jeffreys, who also chairs the neighborhood council's transportation and public safety committee.

"People are distracted," he said. "It affects children; it affects anybody walking or biking on our streets."

According to city data, 123 pedestrians were seriously injured in crashes since 2019. Six of those people were walking in Clifton.

Jeffreys will be the first to acknowledge the improvements the city has already made in his neighborhood to address speeding and enhance safety measures: Last year, crews installed a temporary protected bike lane along Clifton Avenue near the University of Cincinnati. Soon, they'll install a crosswalk, signage and speed cushions at Clifton and Warren avenues, and starting next month, a speed radar sign will rotate through various neighborhood streets.

"That does force people to slow down, and it also provides us data, which we can share with the police for further enforcement," Jeffreys said.

Resident Sydney Sebastian hopes more improvements will continue to help.

"There's a lot of traffic on foot that comes through," Sebastian said. "I think there's definitely a big difference between the people who walk here and the people who drive here… I've had situations where I have a walk sign and still people drive through the red light. And I feel like I'm a little invisible."