Pedestrian safety issue hits close to home
from Welcome to the Fast Lane: The Official Blog of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation by Ray LaHoodEarly Wednesday afternoon, a Department employee was struck by a dump truck while crossing the street near DOT Headquarters and taken to a nearby hospital with life-threatening injuries.
She was in the crosswalk.
Sadly, she was not the first pedestrian coming to or from our building to be hit by a car. In late April, Amy Polk, a DOT contractor and mother of two young children, was killed.
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And I am really, really worried about our employees' safety.
So I met this morning with DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier, DC Transportation Director Gabe Klein, and staff from the Metropolitan Police Department and the DC DOT to see if we could brainstorm some ways to prevent future pedestrian injuries.
We agreed to work on a plan that attempts to solve this problem from a variety of angles. Some ideas under consideration include:
* Extended crossing-guard hours
* Stepped-up pedestrian and vehicle enforcement
* Pedestrian training and education
* Speed trailers (the roadside digital signs that display a driver's speed)
* Prohibiting "right turn on red" in the Southeast Federal Center area
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[B' Spokes: Say what? No targeting just j-walking pedestrains or billboards showing distracted pedestrains getting hit by cars? Come on let Balamore show you how it's done without these practical and might actually work type solutions. (And we wounder why DC's ped fatality rate is lower then the whole State of Maryland.)]
<a href="http://fastlane.dot.gov/2010/08/pedestrian-safety-issue-hits-close-to-home.html">http://fastlane.dot.gov/2010/08/pedestrian-safety-issue-hits-close-to-home.html</a>;
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