A crossing guard suffered minor injuries when she was struck by a vehicle on Jan. 23, outside of Memorial-Spaulding Elementary School, Police Chief David MacDonald said in a phone interview, the Newton TAB reports.
Memorial-Spaulding crossing guard OK after being hit by car
by Village 14 | Jan 24, 2020 | Newton | 19 comments
Not knowing the exact circumstances of this incident, I still say it’s amazing that this can happen in a school zone.
I hope that one of the remedies being discussed will be ways to reduce traffic – e.g., better availability of buses, and other means of encouraging ways other than driving to get children to schools
@Doug, traffic and distracted driving around our schools is a very serious issue. For the last two years there has been a joint city/school transportation steering group which includes school committee members, city councilors, public safety, school department,DPW and other city departments. We have the goal of encouraging students to walk, bike, take the school bus or public transportation. Improving the safety and sustainability of getting to schools is a systemwide goal of NPS.
We are working with a very active Safe Routes to School Newton group – https://sites.google.com/view/newtonsaferoutes
You will see some of the progress we’ve made on the NPS transportation page – https://www.newton.k12.ma.us/Page/3320
You can also learn more about Safe Routes to School which is a national program and is managed in Massachusetts by MassDOT https://www.mass.gov/safe-routes-to-school
“amazing that this can happen in a school zone”…I saw this almost happen multiple times in a school zone and at a busy crossing 2 blocks from the school during 8 years of walking my kids to school. The entitlement of drivers trying to get to work on time is staggering.
Multiple times, I saw a car stop for the crossing guard, and the driver of the car behind, who couldn’t see why the car in front had stopped, laid on the horn and swerved around, nearly hitting the crossing guard. Thank God the crossing guards were so careful about never signaling the kids to walk until all the traffic had fully stopped.
Excellent work by the transportation “steering” group aside, some school zones have had a reputation for having dangerous traffic conditions, Memorial-Spaulding at the top of the list. It’s horrifying but not a surprise that something like this would happen there, and many of us have seen near misses in other school zones. We need to redesign our school zones to calm traffic, some might say eliminate cars entirely during arrival and dismissal (obviously hard to do at places like Brookline Street)
In the meantime, how about stepping up enforcement near schools? How many tickets have been written? Crossing guards, unfortunately, do not have the power to write moving violations. They can’t even write parking violations while on duty.
The issue is larger than school zones. As Rhanna writes “The entitlement of drivers trying to get to work on time is staggering” is spot on. And that same entitled and distracted driver who almost plowed me and my dog over in a crosswalk in Newton Centre at 7am proceeded on to speed through a crosswalk in front of Mason-Rice at 7:10 AM. We need a police presence for enforcement
I agree that we need a police presence for enforcement.
But I also believe that we need better street design with traffic calming that can slow cars more naturally. The flexposts in Newtonville have worked to slow traffic there.
I, personally, would love to see traffic around schools shut down almost entirely during dropoff and pickup (with exceptions). This may not work for every school, but for schools like Franklin, Horace Mann, Mason Rice, and a few others it would solve a lot of problems. It would encourage more walking and biking on the part of parents and children, and keep everyone safer in the process.
Grateful that the crossing guard is okay. The crossing guards are gems and deserve a lot of credit for making the area surrounding schools safer.
“The entitlement of drivers trying to get to work on time is staggering”
Sorry, but this is spoken by someone who must not understand the stress of trying to juggle drop-off and getting to work by a certain time. The “entitled” people of Newton actually have a lot more flexibility than people lower on the ladder.
There’s no excuse for driving like a moron, especially in a school zone, but Rhana’s comment was frustratingly out of touch.
No, Rhanna has it exactly right. Our society’s prioritization of motorists getting to work, school kids and crossing guards be damned, is exactly the problem. Also, don’t you see the irony in your assumption that these stressed-out parents are battling congested school zones as part of their rushed commute?
When School is in session isn’t the speed limit 20 MPH in a school zone?
I am glad to hear that the Memorial Spaulding Crossing guard is doing ok. I co-founded the Safe Routes to School Task Force whenI was a Mason-Rice parent because I saw the craziness of the school zones and the many safety issues caused by too many cars. And this is a vicious cycle where parents drive because they don’t feel safe, making it even less safe for everyone, leading to more driving.
Good news is Newton is making progress. More children are walking and biking to school. Under the new leadership of Jenn Martin, there are representatives from every school as part of the task force. And with the School Transportation Working Group there are finally all the players at the table need to fix some of the more complicated issues.
Bad news is there are still too many cars, many of them parents. Our schools were not designed to be driven to. We need more students to walk and bike or take the bus. One of the best things we can do for busy parents is to get rid of the “school run” as the folks in the UK call it. It has the added advantage of building independence in children and being better for the environment not to mention quality of life in Newton by reducing the vehicles driving through the neighborhoods.
I’m very thankful the worker wasn’t injured. There is NO excuse for careless, distracted driving.
That said, elected officials, developers and city planners need to accept some responsibility for the consequences of their decisions which often set the stage for aggressive driving and frustration behind the wheel.
The proliferation of dense development which is simply too large for Newton…. the accompanying influx of people who clog our streets and create massive backups (in school zones AND beyond)….. gridlock the likes of which we’ve never seen before.
It’s no wonder drivers are feeling squeezed when it takes 3 times longer to get to work or get their kids to school. This problem is way beyond stricter enforcement, “school bus solutions” or school task forces that don’t see the big picture and don’t have the right players/real decision makers on board (i.e. zoning, developers, politicians). Although increasing the number of kids who bike or walk may help somewhat in school zones at certain times, it will not ameliorate the problem in a substantial part of the city.
Aggressive driving is only going to get worse with Newton’s prioritization of increased, large-scale development. The inevitable ensuing installation of stopgap “calming” measures exacerbate an already maddening scenario …more traffic lights, narrower roads without turning lanes causing longer backups, etc. Please spare me the NIMBYism lecture. This is a serious issue which threatens the very safety of our children, residents and workers.
It seems like a giant leap to suggest that congestion in this school zone is a symptom of development rather than school-bound traffic. But if we’re going to go there, do we really want to fool ourselves into believing that Newton is some sort of island and that people aren’t just passing through on their commutes from other towns like Needham, or perhaps getting off that new 128 exit at Kendrick and heading up Brookline Street? What’s the answer? Stop building in Newton and surrounding communities? Just push the sprawl further away from the inner suburbs and add to the congestion, commute times and frustration?
And where’s @seanroche? Was this a driverless-zombie car? (The idea of a driverless car is much more real now than it was in 2012) . @ReporterJenna’s Patch article suggests that the police aren’t pressing charges, but it’s unclear if a driver has been identified. If so, is it possible the police have not even issued a citation?
There was another serious crash involving a pedestrian and a dog today, at the crosswalk on Lexington St. behind the Burr School A woman was taken to the hospital and her dog was killed.
https://newton.wickedlocal.com/news/20200127/woman-hit-dog-dead-after-being-hit-by-car-in-newton?fbclid=IwAR3JJV07CWY_g5H7oif8XSsX3rorUJ-TeLQw3bXxZccRWX7SvQhv7uDE0bo
Places like Newton, Waltham, Lexington, Watertown, Wellesley, Needham, Brookline, Belmont, Natick, Framingham, Wayland, Weston, Boston, Cambridge are over crowded, to many vehicles, to much traffic, to much development, these municipal governments do NOT seem to understand or have the ability to acknowledge that this over development is causing these traffic issues, roads/highways are crumbling physically, emissions fumes are up, makes it hard for underground utilities/road level rehabilitation work to be done because of skyrocketing levels of traffic 24/7/365.
If the traffic was as bad as people continue to proclaim, then the cars wouldn’t be moving so fast. The issue isn’t that we have too many people, it’s that we haven’t built a safe pedestrian infrastructure for people to use. Cars are free to drive fast down very wide roads built for speeds that far exceed the posted speed limit. Stand on Waltham Street just outside of W. Newton and listen as the cars speed up. I heard a car race and gun on Bridge Street coming out of Nonantum today. There’s no reason for that, and it’s not isolated.
These crashes are reminders that we need to think about moving people and creating a liveable environment, and not focus on moving cars.
newton wants to re-zone/re-design west newton square, newtonville square, state of the art traffic signals that can adapt to changing traffic conditions. We will redesign the streets and the signs to make all of us safer. We will help get people out of cars with better, safer bike lanes and perhaps with a bike share system that features bikes that are blue rather than lime green. We will have some inconveniences and more than a few headaches in the next 18 months as we construct the improvements to two village centers — West Newton and Newtonville. The results will be well worth it — wider sidewalks, better lighting, coordinated traffic signals, more trees, stormwater improvements and safer conditions. Plus, these village centers will look great.
Driving around Newton is difficult. I have seen so many people not allow enough time to travel between two points, that they start driving very aggressively (a car stops for a yellow light and the car behind it veers into oncoming traffic to make a left turn – West Newton Square Washington Street). I gasp all the time as I slow down on Centre Street to allow a pedestrian to cross in a crosswalk and the car behind me zoom into the left lane to pass me and nearly hit the pedestrian. Some drivers now consider themselves and not everyone on the road. It is more about the driver themselves and less about community. It takes all of us to slow down, and if you are going to be late, so be it. Next time leave extra time. But don’t hit me in a crosswalk!
I forgot to add, that UBER/Lyft drivers literally stop in the middle of the travel lane to drop off customers or to pick up. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to watch someone get in/get out, while traffic builds behind them. It happens on Centre Street, Beacon Street, Watertown Street and many side streets. I have never seen so much “ME FIRST” over community than with these drivers/customers. It makes the other drivers drive recklessly around them, or have to wait.