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Another pedestrian hit at West Roxbury intersection where pedestrians keep getting hit
By adamg on Fri, 03/04/2022 - 10:27am
A man in a crosswalk at Centre and Hastings streets was hit by a Centre Street driver around 4:25 p.m. on Thursday, Boston Police say. The victim, who police say did not suffer serious injuries, was taken to a local hospital for observation.
This is the same intersection where a woman walking in the crosswalk was hit and killed by a motorist on Feb. 5, 2019, three years after a man in the crosswalk suffered a traumatic brain injury when hit by a car.
Following Marilyn Wentworth's death, the city developed a plan to increase pedestrian safety along West Roxbury's main shopping street in part by narrowing the road to slow drivers down.
However, the city quickly shelved those plans under an onslaught of anger by some West Roxbury residents convinced that sinister outside interests, like bicyclists, were behind what they said was a plot to destroy the neighborhood, for reasons that were apparently so well known that they were never specified in any of the fliers distributed around the neighborhood.
In addition to pedestrians getting hit by motorists on Centre Street, the intersection is also now notable for a December incident in which somebody in a pickup in the Hastings Street municipal parking lot somehow flew over the brick wall that separates the lot from the Centre Street sidewalk, plowing onto a couple and their three young children. Police have yet to say how that might have happened.
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Comments
Still can't believe the wall jumping accident is a mystery
I'm not a huge conspiracy theory person but the fact that the young children of a police officer were impacted and there's still nothing about any punishment or even an investigation is wild. What would the explanation be other than the driver was someone who was above consequence somehow? Or they knew the victims and no-one wanted grampa to go to jail.
They should put a light at Hastings for pedestrian use immediately. It would help a lot and would be easier to get done than fixing the street design.
Three months isn't that long
Three months isn't that long if there's a complicating factor like a party involved claiming a technical malfunction. I was in a situation where a vehicle part malfunctioned in a minor accident. It wasn't even a contributing factor (I rearended someone so I was at fault) but it gummed up the works for a while.
Thanks
That's interesting and useful info and kind of restores my faith in our local L&O apparatus.
The driver was not a cop,
enough with the conspiracy theory on that accident.
The driver of truck was definitely not a cop or connected politically in anyway. Just a regular blue collar worker and local too.
No idea why it was never announced but I am not sure we ever get the name of the person who causes the accident. Did we ever hear of who drove the car that caused the pedestrian death in Feb 2019? Or the motorcycle crash on the VFW parkway a few years ago? I don’t think so.
How many people need to get
How many people need to get run over before we do something? It's outrageous that an outspoken minority of cranks (whose lives are apparently perfect, because any change at all scares them to death) were able to effectively kill the road diet. You're taking your life in your hands every time you cross Centre Street. The vast majority of drivers don't even consider stopping at the crosswalks. On the off chance that somebody does stop, the cars behind them try to pass in the other lane. There is absolutely no need for 4 lanes and the traffic study from a few years ago showed that. ROAD. DIET. NOW.
How many people need to get
Wait till you find out about school shootings...
Huh?
As horrific as school shootings are, the carnage is absolutely dwarfed by what's created from road violence.
The point is that school
The point is that school shootings are high-profile, horrifying events that pretty much everyone condemns. Yet there is no political will to do anything about them. Where is that will going to come from for a situation where most observers shrug and say "Shoulda looked where he was going..."?
Do you honestly not see how
Do you honestly not see how ending all school shootings nationally in a country of 330 million people isn't exactly analogous to fixing 1 dangerous road in a Boston neighborhood? Hey my shoe came untied, but we haven't cured cancer yet so fuck it, why bother trying to tie it?
You think it would be easy
Yet here we are.
I was responding to the
I was responding to the previous comment, which claimed that "the carnage is absolutely dwarfed by what's created from road violence," presumably referring to more than this one road.
And anyway, regardless of scale, it's the same dynamic at work: People are killed, people are upset, calls are made for reform, the usual suspects oppose any change to the status quo, and eventually people's attention moves on.
How many roads must a man
How many roads must a man walk down [with cars flying by, endangering him] before you can call him a man?
No Way To Prevent This
'No Way To Prevent This,' Says Only Neighborhood Where This Regularly Happens
Oh, the roads should be safer across the city
You can see from the map here: https://www.visionzerocoalition.org/fatalities_map that there are many pedestrian and bicyclist deaths across the city.
I’m a big fan of the Westie road diet, but let’s not kid ourselves that the phenomenon is specific to West Roxbury.
In the meantime, feel free to skip patronizing the most fervent of the anti-diet businesses. I’m pretty sure there are other places to get home insurance, ethnic food and breakfast sweets.
breakfast sweets?
I hope you’re not talking about Sugar. Jokes on them if you are, I’ve driven there exactly once out of the dozens I’ve times I’ve visited. Even strapped a whole cake to the back of my bike before.
West Roxbury is unfortunately
West Roxbury is unfortunately not the only neighborhood where pedestrians get hit by cars.
No Way To Prevent This
'No Way To Prevent This,' Says Only Neighborhood Where This Regularly Happens
The haters that fought the
The haters that fought the very sensible lane reduction there have blood on their hands.
But have you considered
that without the lane reduction, they're now able to get where they're going approximately 30 seconds faster? Surely that's worth a few lives!
You also being a bigot
...against people who drive large pick-up trucks. It's hard for them to navigate narrower streets at normal speeds, so any attempt to improve safety for pedestrians is just anti-trades bigotry.
They’re lions, not sheep
At least according to the bumper sticker I saw recently.
Which I guess means they should be able to hop the curbs with impunity.
hard to navigate in pickup trucks?
Isn't the speed limit for the entire city (with some exceptions) 25 mph? no pickup trucks, vans, cars, etc, are difficult to control at 25 mph....
anti-trade? can't tell if that was tongue in cheek or not....
If a tradesperson cannot control their vehicle at 25 mph no matter what it is they should not be on the road!
centre street
we should listen to the experts, ignore the loud minority and make that street safe for both pedestrians and motorists. Difficult to drive and horrendous to cross to get to the stores who are objecting to losing parking spaces.
Unsignalized crosswalks on 4
Unsignalized crosswalks on 4-lane roads are problematic. When the car in the first lane stops for you, it's hard to see an approaching car in the second lane, and that driver can't see you either. Or a car could be behind the stopped car and pull around them to pass.
I always anticipate a hidden pedestrian when I see another car stopped at a crosswalk, but many drivers don't. I think some public education could help, with a photo showing a car stopped in the right lane, saying you shouldn't pass in this situation.
Another pedestrian was hit Feb 17
I only saw it reported in one place, but another pedestrian was hit at Centre and Maple on February 17th.
Cars are going to hit you
There's no political will to change this. If 35000 people a year were killed on planes or trains we would have shut them down. We take off our shoes for 20 years just to fly, can't open anything because 8 people died 40 years ago from tainted Tylenol but trucks are 5 feet tall at the hood and electric cars will be 30% heavier than current vehicles. No one cares and those that might say they do can often been seen breezing through a crosswalk in front of kids walking to school.
Not the only recent strike
Another pedestrian was hit in the crosswalk just up the street at Centre and Maple on Feb 17th at 6:45 pm. I wouldn't have known about it except I witnessed this tragedy just after picking up my food at Maria's Kitchen. Apparently pedestrians being struck by cars is now normalized in West Roxbury.
A little traffic enforcement wouldn't hurt either
When my wife and I were dating, one morning we drove our cars from her house to mine and along the way both passed a guy who was planted trying to cross at a crosswalk. We both got pulled over. Since that day I've been a hell of a lot more aware of people crossing and have rarely not stopped for someone in a crosswalk.
Studies have shown that
Studies have shown that traffic enforcement is much less effective (not to mention more expensive) than physical traffic calming measures such as road diets, lane narrowing, raised crosswalks, bulb-outs, chicanes, etc.
I'm sure that's true
But until the people in charge of redesigning the roads grow a pair, we could have cops handing out tickets today that would at least show that something is being done.
IDK seems PRETTY EXCESSIVE to
IDK seems PRETTY EXCESSIVE to consider asking cops to come ALL THE WAY DOWN from double parking in front of the 7-11 to enforce traffic laws. That's like a whole quarter mile down the road from their station!! Just absolutely an unreasonable expectation, especially when there's not even any will to enforce traffic laws literally in front of their door as per that nightmarish roundabout.
east st walpole
last july 27 an elderly woman was struck by a car and killed in the late afternoon right outside a church. it was in the news the next day.
https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/pedestrian-dies-after-being-hit-...
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/07/27/metro/woman-killed-after-being-hi...
https://whdh.com/news/https-whdh-com-news-police-investigating-fatal-ped...
that was it. never another word printed anywhere about it after july 28th.
last week there another accident in same spot involving pedestrians.
(walpole police facebook page)
that’s it.
so two serious accidents in the same location, one causing a death but again no details or follow up stories.
how do stories like this just disappear into thin air??
Sad as it is
It turns out "pedestrian is hit by driver and killed" is so common that its no longer really considered news.
Pedestrian Hybrid Beacon
This is a perfect location for a new Pedestrian Hybrid Beacon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3uc0_6ntgs
Solid red makes cars stop - blinking red makes cars stop and if clear proceed. This allows for reasonably short stops for cars and quick action for more peds.
Shhhh
No, it can either be a 2 lane road with protected bike lanes and a loss of parking spaces or a 4 lane road with no bike lanes and the same number of parking spaces. Those are the only choices. Depart from either of those options at your peril.
Oh please no more of those things
HAWK signals are solutions looking for problems. We used to have flashing yellow lights which could be actuated to become red lights. People (sort of, these are Massholes we're talking about) understood these: flashing yellow = go through, solid red = stop. Perfect? No, still Massholes. But whatever.
Then these HAWK signals come in. They're so bad. First, what are you supposed to do at a dark signal? Treat it like a stop sign. What do you do with one of these signals when it is dark? Treat it like a green light. Confusing? Not at all! Then, it introduces the flashing yellow light at the start of the phase (why? who knows, it just delays the pedestrian phase) followed by a solid yellow light, then the double red (why not a single red, which drivers know what it means?).
But then there is a flashing red, which corresponds to a "don't walk" pedestrian sign. What do pedestrians think when they see "don't walk" with a countdown sign? They think "there opposing light is red for n more seconds, so I can hustle across the street. Except here the light is flashing red, so cars are allowed to go after a complete stop (even if many don't) which is again different from how pedestrians would expect the light to behave.
So the light confuses drivers and pedestrians and winds up being different from how any other light works. If you want to do this, just bring back the good old Massachusetts "red-and-yellow-together" light which basically means "stop, there's a pedestrian phase, so don't turn on red" but is at least "a red light and something different, so pay attention."
In any case, if I ran the MUCTD, HAWK signals would be banned forever with great prejudice.
I was in Los Angeles a while
I was in Los Angeles a while back, before HAWK signals existed. I was surprised to see crosswalk traffic lights turn green (or maybe flashing yellow) while the pedestrian signal still had the flashing hand. Apparently that’s a thing in California, so the idiot who designed the HAWK probably assumed it was fine to use it there too.
Have you actually lived anywhere that uses these?
Because I have, and I can tell you that the number of cars that actually stop for them is about maybe 30%. Add in the fact that the rest don't slow down until the last possible second, and you wind up with a standard crosswalk where you get to see some fancy lights blink ineffectually while praying that the car zooming at you will actually hit their brakes.
Ah Westie….
Resistance is futile…. And just damned stupid.