Letter: ‘Near Miss’ Captured on Dashcam, Enforcement Needed
Audio By Carbonatix
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To the Editor:
While years of complaints by residents about the weekend chaos and rowdiness in West Hartford Center have led the police to increase their presence on weekends, increasing traffic volumes (even before the six new developments in the area have opened) have made the Center an increasing dangerous place for pedestrians.
General lawlessness pervades the center streets including rampant cellphone use while driving, speeding, failure to yield at crosswalks and blatant running of stop signs.
The dashcam footage below captures yet another “near miss” in the Center at the intersection of Ellsworth and Lasalle that could have led to a severe pedestrian injury or death.
The town continues to spend millions of dollars on consultants, expensive traffic management strategies and flashy projects like Vision Zero when common sense would dictate that the first step is enforcing our existing traffic laws.
Shawn London
West Hartford
I think that interest room could use more lighting and even have it be a raised intersection. Where people walk across at sidewalk height but the cars are forced to slow down. Link to a town in NC with similar intersection as ours and how it was improved.
https://www.matthewsnc.gov/newsview.aspx?nid=6438
* I think that intersection could use more lighting
Shaun, most of us in town share your concerns and also share your thoughts about enforcement. It’s a critical part of road safety and is a major part of the town’s Vision Zero efforts. I think the town could do a better job educating on what VZ is, because it definitely does include enforcement as a high priority. That’s why police have been working to step up enforcement and that’s also why the town has been working quickly to implement red light and speed cameras. Not sure what you mean by “expensive traffic management strategies”. I can’t think of any really aggressive or expensive strategies that have gone into place. They have been putting in brighter lightbulbs, building new crosswalks, and using things like speed bumps to slow down traffic – nothing incredibly fancy or expensive. If anything I think VZ has been well-intentioned but isn’t moving quickly or aggressively enough, as your dashcam video illustrates.
The fact is that police can’t be everywhere. They’re working hard but we have a big town with lots of enforcement priorities. Also, if anything, police are a lot more expensive than things like cans of paint and speed bumps! That’s where the other aspects of VZ come into play. Engineering, education, and other strategies are a big part of the solution. Engineering is especially important. It’s been proven to be probably the most critical part of preventing road deaths and severe injuries. Not a single town in this country has been able to enforce its way out of road deaths. Not one. We are one of the most heavily policed first world countries yet we experience the highest rates of road deaths. The reason is that our roads are not well designed. One town, Hoboken NJ, has been able to eliminate all traffic deaths for seven years running, primarily via engineering. I recently visited there and will be publishing an open letter illustrating how their successes can be a lesson for West Hartford. For example, that intersection in the dashcam is both poorly lit and very wide. Crossing distances for pedestrians are very long, while the radius for cars to turn is very large. This encourages cars to take the turn quickly before their headlights potentially illuminate a pedestrian, and the pedestrian is in harm’s way for much longer than necessary due to the long crosswalk.
I think it’s indisputable at this point that CT and probably all of the northeast are in a housing crisis that is hurting people, especially young people and people who struggle to find high paying work. The housing crisis is causing many young people to live worse lives than their parents’ generation and is wrecking the social contract that has for over a hundred years held that “if you work hard you can get ahead.”. Because of housing inflation (and other inflation, but mostly housing), people who work hard can’t get ahead or have families of their own, and I can hardly think of anything more un-American.
It would be an economic, logical, and moral failure if we used road safety as an excuse to not build housing. Housing does not cause traffic deaths or injuries. In fact, there is clearly safety in numbers for pedestrians. More feet on the street tends to increase safety overall for pedestrians, and infill development near the Center will do just that. Development will also increase demand for safer infrastructure. The most dangerous roads in this state are absolutely not our pedestrian friendly town centers. The most dangerous roads are wide high speed roads that are car dominated, such as Sedgwick Road, Main, 44, 185 (Simsbury Road), and New Britain Ave.
Happy to talk further, Shaun, if you have any interest. I’ll see if I can send you an email. I always want to talk to anyone passionate about road safety in our town!
Jason
Pedestrians are a big part of the problem. At night, no one in West Hartford wears reflective or light colored clothing when walking. Ct’s law allowing people to put up your hand and cross the street is IDIOTIC! People should use walk lights and CROSSWALKS. Another thing and I may not be 100% on this, but isn’t it ILLEGAL to make a RIGHT TURN AGAINST A WALK LIGHT? I see this everywhere and have seen many close calls because of this.
Agree with Shawn. Please have police monitor those busy intersections, and please TICKET those who drive through the intersections without stopping. I walk in the neighborhood surrounding The Center every day, and every day I see a violation.
@Jason – I appreciate your global perspective but I’m talking about a specific neighborhood which is not getting attention to basic policing and urban safety in the midst of an unprecedented development boom (which is _good_ for our town, overall) which is going to drive traffic off the charts. With another thousand residents (and their cars) soon to call this already busy five block radius home, the time to address these problems is _now_.
Since you bring up Hoboken, note that a pillar of their strategy was a decrease in the city-wide speed limit to >20mph< coupled strict enforcement of this law.
I would submit that the unhinged-looking zig-zag line repainting on Boulvevard between Ridgewood and Main Street, which cost tens of thousands of dollars (try crossing at Newport when cars hit fifty coming down the hill eastbound), is a great example of high level planning expenditures which fail to address the reality in our town.
West Hartford center needs a reputation as a great place to work and play where people who run stop lights, speed, ignore red lights and drive while intoxicated _WILL_ be ticketed. We can throw millions at innovative street design, but if people routinely ignore the fancy flashing stop signs and fancy intersections, then it’s all for nought.