When my husband rode up to me on his bicycle with an ashen face and close to tears on Saturday afternoon I knew that something was wrong. He’d just seen the distraught mother and brother of four-year-old Maya Hirsch screaming and crying at the sight of the beautiful little girl lying bleeding on the ground. Maya was struck and killed by a driver who allegedly blew through a stop sign at Belden and Lincoln Park West and failed to remain on the scene after the collision. It’s an intersection that I frequently cycle through on my way to the lakefront trail and it’s notorious for drivers blowing through the stop signs, hell-bent on getting God-knows-where.
The area is always full of children, with the zoo and Notebaert Nature Museum close by, and it has a residential feel, but that doesn’t deter many drivers. The city installed fresh stop signs on Monday (wow, ‘cos obviously stop signs really slow these drivers down – the old stop sign just mustn’t have been a deep enough red), according to last night’s news.
Ald. Vi Daley was interviewed, and she flagged the possibility of installing traffic lights and cameras. The news story showed police citing people who continued to blithely blow through stop signs on Monday, apparently unaffected by the memorial of flowers and stuffed animals that has been laid out at the intersection in honor of the little girl, whose funeral was yesterday.
When is this city going to wake up to itself? When will people stop bitching about red-light cameras and the fines for driving while holding a cell phone? We watched the news on Saturday night to see if any charges had been laid (a man was charged on Monday), and prior to the story about Maya, the TV anchors made an exasperated comment about red-light cameras, although one anchor then conceded that perhaps the cameras were necessary.
Bad driving and dangerous intersections are two of the biggest blights any neighborhood can have. Yo wants to hear from anyone else who has had a bad experience at this intersection, and from anyone who has suggestions on how to improve the situation.