A few weeks ago I drove over the Pike on Walnut Street into Newtonville, traveling at less than 20 miles per hour and aiming for a vacant parking space on the corner right in front of the bank. I slowed to a near crawl, quickly scanned the intersection as I came through and, just out of the corner of my eye as I crossed the crosswalk, I saw movement.
As I parked a police officer pulled up. I’d been in the wrong, driving through a crosswalk as a person crossed.
But to be honest, I never saw her. She wore a full-length black coat and there is no crossing light. Yes, there’s a streetlight just above the intersection (as the police officer pointed out) but it doesn’t do much to illuminate the road beyond a small patch.
The same thing happened again a few weeks later at the same intersection, only this time without the police officer. I came up on the intersection, a car was turning left from the opposite side blocking my view and only when my wife yelled did I see the person on the other side of the street. But my stopping only created more problems, since the person taking the left could not move, the pedestrian didn’t cross because of cards on both side of the crosswalk and I was paralyzed by the law. I finally moved through to try to open things up.
This isn’t the first time I missed (or nearly missed) people crossing on crosswalks at night. Many of our crosswalks don’t have crossing lights and are dimly lit. To make matters worse, as New Englanders, we tend to wear dark clothing.
Compare this to how I usually see cyclists on the road at night, fully lit with multiple head and tail lights along with bright reflective clothing.
Still, I find I don’t have this same problem while driving through Watertown or Cambridge where the lights, to my eyes, seem brighter. The brighter lights from above also seem to cancel out the bright headlights from in front of me that also seem to keep me from seeing pedestrians clearly.
So my question is: is the problem the drivers or the streetlights? Do we need to put in more lighting to keep people safe?
Chuck. I’m 75 and one of my greatest concerns is that a pedestrian in dark clothing will just bolt into the intersection with no warning. And you are right. It seems worse here in Newton than in some adjacent communities.
The coat I wear is black, so I purposely wear light pants not dark when I work night shifts, in case I might be walking in downtown Lowell at night. I feel it’s very hard to see pedestrians in all dark clothing there, too.
The fault can also be hung on the pedestrian. Don’t be stupid when walking a crosswalk at night and you see on coming cars.
Newton put in the current (Sodium) streetlights several years back to save energy, and the light isn’t great. That can be a plus on residential streets when you have a streetlight next to your bedroom, but not so great at crosswalks and intersections. It’s my understanding that the city is looking to gradually replace these with LEDs. The current streetlights may have paid for themselves already in energy savings. Still, getting streetlights lined up with crossings would require work in some areas.
The problem at this particular crosswalk is that the road is just too wide. Three lanes of southbound traffic across the bridge are narrowing down to 1 (one turns right, one turns left), and the northbound roadway, despite being 1 lane, is super wide (and indeed, becomes 3 lanes on the bridge). There’s an island in the middle that both helps & hurts: it provides a refuge, but provides a visual break as well. Moving the crosswalk south of Austin St. would help quite a bit, in my opinion.
Having a walk signal would be a big help at that crosswalk. I got a ticket for not stopping for a pedestrian there during the daylight when I was heading north on Walnut towards Washington. I was busy trying to keep an eye on the traffic merging at that complex intersection – between cars turning left to go to Star, turning from Austin St. onto Walnut or vice versa, etc. it can take your attention just to track all the cars.
I think the problem tends to be more about drivers’ lack of awareness for pedestrians than about visibility. Yes, wearing a dark coat and walking into a busy intersection at night without regard for traffic is bad.
But there are many more stories of crosswalk enforcement actions in broad daylight, where the crossing officer is dressed as a giant rabbit, orange traffic cone or turkey. And the officers were still writing tickets to motorists by the fistful.
To the original question: the answer is both. The lights are dimmer (and have paid for themselves, Adam), drivers need to be very careful, pedestrians need to wear lights if they are out a lot (dog walkers in particular are often invisible and erratic), and we need to adjust the lights at crosswalks.
And Doug is right–this is the case at almost every crossing that the state has given us (over 128, over 9, over the Pike, under 9…) and we need to get them to fix it.