Somerville Police Looking for Witnesses to Pedestrian Accident on Powderhouse

[josephineave.livejournal.com]

Tufts Student in Critical Condition After Getting Hit by Car

http://somerville.patch.com/articles/tufts-student-in-critical-condition-after-getting-hit-by-car

The driver of the car who hit the student, also a Somerville resident, cooperated with investigators, police said, but they believe at least one more person was standing at the intersection when the accident took place and that another vehicle was driving behind the car involved in the accident.

Comments

[inahandbasket]

Ah, was wondering what happened there. I drove past that intersection last night around 10:30 and it was completely blocked off with about 10 emergency vehicles.
That intersection is such a mess, I've seen 2 accidents happen, narrowly avoided a couple myself, and driven past the aftermath of many others. As much as I don't want yet another stoplight in west somerville it might be time to put one in there.

[ron_newman]

Perhaps it should be a four-way stop? Right now I think it's flashing red one direction, flashing yellow the other.

[inahandbasket]

Yeah, that's the current status.

4-way stop might help, but I'd worry about people coming down powderhouse just blowing through the stop. It's a weirdly wide intersection so it'd be easy to miss the stop signs. A traffic light is much more visible.

[ron_newman]

I meant just changing the current yellow blinkers to red. The city did that a decade or two ago to the blinkers on Summer Street, at Lowell Street and at Porter Street.

[cutieperson]

I just moved out of a house at that intersection. I saw/heard a lot of accidents in the year I lived there and witnessed lots of traffic patterns. There are already enough people blowing through the blinking red lights that I don't think changing them all to red will work.
The other major intersections along Powder House already have non-blinking traffic lights, so changing to that would be consistent and likely effective.

[josephineave.livejournal.com]

The Tufts Daily blog has more details:

http://blogs.tuftsdaily.com/?p=8329

[somervilleguy.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised that it happened at all.
About thirty years ago when I went to the PHCS I dreaded crossing that street to get home and that was during the day. Many factors make that intersection a nightmare. Poor lighting, very shallow corners that allow people to walk out from what are often parked cars against the crosswalk and a marked increase in foot traffic over the years, particularly at night. One other thing I have noticed is the amount of people crossing the street with their heads buried in their phones, that's a serious problem particularly around Tufts (or maybe I notice it because that's where I drive most of the time).

I would love to see a set of lights there but a full working set would cost a lot and honestly Tufts should step up in conjunction with the city and get something done. They are already paying for crosswalks and lights all the way into Medford on Curtis/Winthrop street.