Mickey Friedman
September 12, 2019
Gillian, hit by a car, died in the crosswalk in Sheffield. Cathy was seriously injured when she was hit by a car in the crosswalk in Great Barrington. Friends.
Most recently a young skateboarder luckily missed serious injury when he was hit by a car.
It seems more difficult to cross the street. I don’t know exactly why, except that maybe without the canopy of taller trees, the street looks more like an interstate than a New England Main Street. How with four lanes, even if cars in one lane going north or south see a pedestrian and stop, cars in the other lane don’t. Until it’s too late.
Several blame our skateboarder. Reminding us that some pedestrians don’t look both ways, don’t pay enough attention, are on the phone or texting, or precipitously rush into the crosswalk. Someone suggested if people were really smart, they’d walk a half-block or several blocks to the traffic light. We shouldn’t use the crosswalks at all.
Maybe there is something to be fixed besides the behaviors of the too old, too young, too distracted, too in-a-hurry, too naive to think you can skateboard across a crosswalk. Maybe while we all get smarter, we can increase the odds that all of us can make it safely across Main Street. Using the crosswalks somebody decided were important to our community.
Some facts. According to the latest statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Centers of Disease Control – I’ll understand if you want to stop reading because you think they’re part of the Deep State: “In 2016, 5,987 pedestrians were killed in traffic crashes in the United States. This averages to one crash-related pedestrian death every 1.5 hours.
“Additionally, almost 129,000 pedestrians were treated in emergency departments for non-fatal crash-related injuries in 2015. Pedestrians are 1.5 times more likely than passenger vehicle occupants to be killed in a car crash on each trip.”
Why did I even bring up age? Well, the most likely to be hurt are the young and the old. “Pedestrians ages 65 and older accounted for 20% of all pedestrian deaths in 2016 and an estimated 15% of all pedestrians injured in 2015. In 2016, one in every five children under the age of 15 who were killed in traffic crashes were pedestrians.
And just so you know, sometimes no matter how smart and how alert, you might be dealing with a driver who isn’t: 13% of pedestrian crashes involved a driver who was impaired by alcohol. And to be fair to drivers, 33% of fatal pedestrian crashes involved a pedestrian in that same condition.
This is a problem that is getting worse. The nationwide number of pedestrian fatalities increased 27 percent from 2007 to 2016, while all other traffic fatalities over this period decreased by 14.
Many assume pedestrians are at fault. Massachusetts law tells a different story: “When traffic control signals are not in place or not in operation the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right of way, slowing down or stopping if need be so to yield, to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk marked in accordance with standards established by the department of highways if the pedestrian is on that half of the traveled part of the way on which the vehicle is traveling or if the pedestrian approaches from the opposite half of the traveled part of the way to within 10 feet of that half of the traveled part of the way on which said vehicle is traveling.
“No driver of a vehicle shall pass any other vehicle which has stopped at a marked crosswalk to permit a pedestrian to cross, nor shall any such operator enter a marked crosswalk while a pedestrian is crossing or until there is a sufficient space beyond the crosswalk to accommodate the vehicle he is operating, notwithstanding that a traffic control signal may indicate that vehicles may proceed.”
Here’s a way to make things better: https://www.lightguardsystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/LightGuard_Selection_Guide_2018.pdf
Someone should check out LightGuardSystems’ flashing in-roadway warning LED lights. Activated via push buttons or passive detection they flash when someone is in the crosswalk and are visible up to 1,000 feet in advance of the crosswalk. They have a snow plow blade-resistant steel base plate. They claim they increase driver awareness up to 95%. You can add flashing LED signs.
By the way, the Governors Highway Safety Association 2017 report found that the seven states (Alaska, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, Washington) and DC that legalized recreational use of marijuana between 2012 and 2016 reported a collective 16.4 percent increase in pedestrian fatalities for the first six months of 2017 versus the first six months of 2016, whereas all other states reported a collective 5.8 percent decrease in pedestrian fatalities.
How about we use marijuana tax revenues to make crossing the street a bit more safe? Let’s light the way.
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Light The Way was first published in the September 5, 2019 issue of The Berkshire Record.
For more information:
https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/pedestrian_safety/index.html
https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXIV/Chapter89/Section11
https://www.visionzerocoalition.org/fatalities_map
https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2018-02/pedestrians18.pdf
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