In the annual tradition of fussing over the autumn time change, there have been articles in which the authors discuss how this shift is connected to an increase in street violence. Those working the standard shift (9-5) are suddenly exposed to the risks that second and third shift workers have year-round: commuting in darkness.
During daylight saving time — March 12 through 2 AM on November 5, 2023 — at least 31 pedestrians/cyclists in Connecticut were killed when drivers collided with them. That’s 31 out of the total 48 preventable pedestrian deaths, so far, this year. That’s an already unforgivably high number of lives lost. Seven of these deaths happened in October alone.
Late in the evening of October 5, 2023, on the other side of the park from where I live in Hartford, someone drove into Omar Espinal, killing him.
Every single initial news report parroted police without showing any knowledge of the area. They all said this happened on Hamilton Street, east of the intersection with Hillside Avenue — which implies someone using the road outside of the crosswalk. Considering how attitudes towards pedestrians shape the ways people decide to drive, decide to fund (or not) infrastructure improvements, decide to apply the law, so much more context is needed.
The intersection of Hillside and Hamilton has marked crosswalk on each leg, though it is faded. There is only sidewalk on three of the four legs.
The intersection has a stoplight, but there is no walk signal. This means that while by law a person using the crosswalk may have the right of way, they never have exclusive use of the intersection. In a state that allows right turns on red, a person trying to cross here on foot never stands a chance.
So, if the victim was outside of the crosswalk when he was struck, who can blame him?
Still, reports of this being east of the intersection should be taken with a grain of salt until there is video to show that’s where the collision occurred. One reason: even if we may prefer the sanitized version for our own sense of comfort, the reality is that a person does not fall exactly where they were hit. It’s not like if a person walks into another person or is hit by someone on a bicycle. When hit by a car, the person is likely to be — and I’ll euphemize this for tender readers — relocated by force. This is unpleasant to think about but important to understand because far too many people, upon hearing that a person was hurt or killed, lose all sense of compassion and immediately assume the victim’s actions played a major role in the collision.
Another reason to not assume accuracy of initial reports about where the pedestrian was: not everyone understands what a crosswalk is. A driver scolded a friend for not using the crosswalk when she was in a painted one with a sign indicating it was a pedestrian crossing zone. I wish I were making that up. Not all police even know that unpainted crosswalks at intersections are legal and legit crosswalks.
One more reason: People are desperate to explain away someone’s demise as the result of their own wrongdoing because it makes them feel safer, even if their beliefs are not based in fact. It’s why we still have people convinced that distracted walking is a thing, long after it’s been proven not, and it’s why we have safety performance theater about wearing reflective clothing despite numerous crashes — some fatal — involving workers who have on hi-vis clothing.
But back to Hamilton and Hillside. There are parking lots on two corners — one affiliated with an autobody, where vehicles are parked every which way. There is a home on one corner. One the fourth: Pope Park. Over the decades, those making decisions have chosen again and again to not give people a safe way to cross into a neighborhood park.
This intersection is also a three-minute walk from a middle school on Hillside.
This intersection is in a densely populated area where a large percentage of residents do not have regular access to a private motor vehicle. To put it another way: there are many pedestrians and cyclists. The 63 bus travels on Hillside.
None of this context was reflected in news reports.
They definitely spent no time talking the history of this intersection or others nearby, and that’s because many are still of the mindset that these are one-offs, accidents, results of poor individual choices. How I know is that every single area news outlet mentioned somewhere in the headline that this fatal preventable crash was a hit-and-run.
Many safety advocates, myself included, assume that a driver who leaves the scene was intoxicated/impaired. There could be other reasons, like someone driving without a license, but the big one is the drug and alcohol use. I would like to see the law changed so that it also assumes as much: anyone who leaves the scene of a collision receives same punishment as if they had been driving over the legal limit.
But we should not automatically reward someone for being a sober shitty driver. The consequences for injuring or killing another road user need to be more significant, and we need to treat driving as a privilege, not a right. But I hesitate to linger on the punishment — or what some dub “enforcement” — angle, because justice is not and should not be as high of a priority as prevention. I don’t want people languishing behind bars and I don’t want vigils. I want the traffic violence to stop.
That older and past generations built car-centric towns is not an excuse. Add transit. Add sidewalks.
In 2019 at Hamilton and Hillside, someone driving a Roughhouse 50 (50cc 2-stroke scooter) reportedly ran a red light. They were hit by a Chevy Astro traveling straight through the green. Even as the victim was at fault, the question is raised about how fast the Astro driver was traveling through the intersection. I recall learning to slow down going through intersections, and just to make sure I was not misremembering, checked it out, and this is still the advice.
But Hamilton was not designed to discourage speeding.
Early on foggy Christmas morning in 2015, the driver of a Honda Accord attempted to make a turn out of Pope Park Hwy #4 onto Hamilton Street. There are no stop signs on Hamilton Street. The driver of a pickup truck struck the Accord, and two parked vehicles were somehow damaged in this collision. The Honda driver died from his injuries about three hours later. Had anyone been driving at a reasonable speed, surely this would not have been fatal.
Just one block north, where Hillside enters Pope Park, someone killed a three-year old child. That was in 2011. All these years later, and I am at a loss to find anything that resembles improved infrastructure. Hartford could have installed speed humps along the park driveway so that people driving fast down Hillside Avenue would be motivated to slow down, at least inside of a city park where children play. Hartford could have reduced the width of the driveway, reduced the amount of parking, done anything to eliminate the car-centered culture that tells people it’s totally fine to behave irresponsibly.
On the day after Omar Espinal was killed, I walked through the park and to the intersection of Hamilton and Hillside. There are paths in the park which are intended for people walking and cycling, but there are no bollards to prevent motorists from entering. While there, someone was driving on the path. That someone turned out to be a City of Hartford employee in a marked City vehicle who decided to drive to use a portapotty. There was no park emergency, but this person thought it was fine to drive in a space dedicated for human use. This was literally hours after the news broke that someone was killed one block away.
The park continues to the corner of Hamilton, though there is no sidewalk on this part — just a dirt desire path that leads to the corner. There is a curb ramp at the corner, and it was covered in sand. I stood there, taking photos and video for a few minutes, and then turned back. I watched someone driving a mullet Jeep fast into the park, then coming back out before I reached it, which raises so many questions. Where I wanted to cross felt unsafe, so inside the park, I had to backtrack again. That was when I used a pedestrian path and encountered the City employee. Outside the park were two police vehicles, so let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that police presence changes motorist behavior. It doesn’t.
We actually have municipal code disallowing people from driving on sidewalks in our parks, but increasingly this is an issue, and it’s not due to lack of parking because whenever I witness this, there is always ample unused parking nearby.
We see this wherever barriers have not been installed.
On one Saturday morning in October, while a health awareness walk was happening in Bushnell Park, someone came bombing down the sidewalk in a large pickup truck. Here’s video of this dangerous driving in bushnell park.
When he parked on the sidewalk, I let him know that vehicles should not be there and that there is plenty of on-street or lot parking he could use nearby. He was dismissive of me and walked away.
He did not seem to care that he potentially endangered people participating in the event he was somehow connected with, nor did he care that his actions could be dangerous to any of the regular park users which include people of all ages and abilities, including those out walking their dogs in the rain.
So, when I write about vehicular violence, the fatality rate is only part of the story.
While I would like to give a more accurate picture by also including a full list of pedestrians (incl. cyclists, those using wheelchairs, babies being pushed in strollers, skateboarders, etc.) it is impossible for a number of reasons:
1. This information trickles in slowly and collisions that are not fatal for pedestrians are rarely reported by the news. 2. Regardless of how you feel about police, they are not medical professionals, yet they are the ones whose assessment of the victim injuries ends up in the crash data. What they might perceive as a minor injury can turn out to be serious, or vice versa. Without tracking down the victim, you can’t really verify how a victim is faring unless those injuries later become fatal. Deaths that come weeks after a crash are not always reported. In October, I learned of one such instance because a crash in Oxford back in early February, where only injuries were reported in the news, turned fatal. I have multiple examples of this every year.
3. Do all crashes receive the same degree of investigation, or is that only for those deemed serious (and even then, most likely, only the serious ones where the victim is carried off in critical condition)? Because of the underreporting and slow reporting, along with the fact that to get useful and accurate details I would have to make this my full time job, it is generally not very illuminating for me to get into all of the pedestrian crashes with injuries. Suffice to say, there are far more than what the average person would assume.
So, we’ll look at the other pedestrian deaths from last month, but we will begin instead with the death the media never reported.
On February 3, 2023 in Oxford, the driver of a 2022 Nissan Altima struck Reinhold “Ray” Wilhelm, who died about two weeks later from his injuries. Wilhelm was 87. According to his obituary, he was born in Germany but lived most of his life here, serving in the army even. The driver of a Nissan Altima hit Ray Wilhelm as he used Route 34 just after 6 PM. Here, the speed limit is 40 MPH, despite it being a residential area. There are no sidewalks. It was dark and there were no street lights.
On October 2, 2023 — at the same intersection in Stratford where a driver killed a pedestrian in February 2023 — another preventable death happened at 7:15 PM, when a motorist collided with a still publicly unidentified female pedestrian who was using the roadway.
Route 113 is a four-lane road with no marked crosswalk in this area, though there are bus stops on either side of the street, and, a nearby health clinic. Records show that in recent years drivers struck and injured pedestrians twice at the intersection to the south where there are more possible conflict points. At the nearby traffic light to the north, there is also no marked crosswalk and no pedestrian signal, despite the presence of a strip mall. The speed limit appears to be 30 MPH, but road design tells motorists to travel at higher rates of speed. Stratford officials have not yet explained why they could not be bothered to give Route 113 a road diet; this is the third preventable pedestrian death on Route 113 in Stratford in 2023.
In Southington the driver of a tractor trailer struck and killed Eddie Hill of Hartford at 1:45 AM on October 3, 2023. It was not said why the 2004 Hartford Public High School graduate was using the highway on foot, if he had a disabled vehicle or if there was some other reason for him to be outside of a vehicle on the interstate. Over a month later, there have been no follow up stories to provide an explanation.
Another fatal pedestrian collision occurred on I-84 last month, with the second happening in East Hartford just before 3 AM on October 7, 2023. Westley Clemente-Fuentes, 29 of East Hartford, was reportedly driving a Volkswagen Passat the wrong way on I-84 when he crashed it into a concrete barrier around Exit 55 (some news reports say Exit 52 — will have to wait for the crash data to be posted to find out where precisely this happened).
He exited the vehicle, becoming a pedestrian.
This is when another local resident drove a Honda Civic into the passenger side of the VW and then into Westley. The person who hit him showed obvious signs of inebriation, according to news reports. Westley was taken to Hartford Hospital, where he was pronounced dead; the two passengers in his car were not injured. Absolutely nobody wins when we keep talking about individual responsibility regarding drunk driving. We need to require alcohol detection technology in all vehicles, ensuring that cars cannot be driven if person is impaired. Once a person is impaired, they cannot be expected to make sound choices, and we have to stop punishing others by insisting that individuals make better decisions.
On October 11, 2023 around 7:15 AM in Fairfield, the driver of a garbage truck reversed, striking and killing a pedestrian by Campfield Drive and Bloomfield Drive — a typical Gold Coast suburban neighborhood where there are no sidewalks nor a marked crosswalk in the area. In this case, the pedestrian was a sanitation worker making this also a preventable workplace injury. This was the second pedestrian in Fairfield to be killed while on the job this year. The norm is for collection workers to wear hi-vis, though since 2015, over 250 people have been injured or killed in Connecticut while wearing hi-vis or reflective clothing.
When a Democratic candidate for first selectman and member of the Representative Town Meeting submitted a Safe and Livable Streets Ordinance draft months ago that could legally mandate Fairfield’s Complete Streets policy, the current First Selectwoman called this effort “a lot of babble.” By the end of October, Fairfield passed the “Safe and Livable Streets Ordinance.”
Just before 6 AM on October 24, 2023, a driver collided with Jeffrey Omar Enamorado in Bridgeport, killing him. Police described Jeffrey as using a “motorized bike,” a vague description that includes e-bikes and mopeds, even though these two vehicles are quite different. What they have in common is two wheels and that the rider is not encased in a metal and plastic box with the benefit of airbags and a seatbelt. In the CT Crash Data Repository, it was described as a “motored bicycle” older than 2003.
This section of Waterview Avenue abuts Water View Park, where there is a sidewalk and side path for bicycles; however, at Crescent Avenue, nearly all pedestrian/cyclist infrastructure appears to vanish, almost immediately. On Crescent Avenue there is no side path, only fairly narrow sidewalk, with it appearing to become unusable due to failed maintenance combined with people parking their cars over it by a business. An unforgiving stone wall is on the other side of Crescent Avenue.
According to the CT Crash Data Repository, the victim was traveling straight on the stretch of road that looks like this:
Although it was described as dark and lighted, it appears that street lighting is sparse in this area. Because there is a long stretch of straight road, it’s not an uneducated guess that the driver was likely speeding. That’s what long, straight roads tell drivers to do.
This is the fifth fatal pedestrian/cyclist crash in Bridgeport this year.
The seventh pedestrian to die on Connecticut’s roads in October was Willis C. Sands, Jr., 69, who had a lifetime of service as a paramedic and firefighter. On October 29, 2023, Sands had been helping with a Halloween Trunk or Treat event at the Gardener Lake Volunteer Fire Company in Salem. After, just around 7 PM, he was walking home on Route 354 when a driver traveling north struck Sands, killing him.
The speed limit is either 40 or 50 MPH in this area — signage is sparse. A person being struck by a vehicle at either speed would be at a significantly greater risk of suffering fatal injuries than if hit by a vehicle being driven at 30 MPH or below.
There are no sidewalks.
There is not much in the way of even a shoulder for someone to walk on.
There is no marked crosswalk.
There is no street lighting.
This is negligence on the part of the State of Connecticut and Town of Salem.
Some news reports stated that this happened by the firehouse. The one that had the most detail clarified that this was at the intersection of Route 354 and Witter Road. The intersection has a traffic light that flashes red or yellow — no pedestrian phase. There are stop signs on Rattlesnake Ledge Road and Witter Road, but not on Route 354.
Initial news reports did not indicate if the minivan had its lights on or was being driven at an appropriate speed.
Since 2015, there have been four fatal crashes in Salem. Three of the four have taken place on Route 354.
The October 29 crash is not the first collision at this intersection of 354 and Witter, nor the first fatal. In 2017 there was a collision involving three vehicles. Several drivers exited their vehicles in the aftermath. Another fourth driver approached, striking vehicles and pedestrians (former vehicle occupants). Two of the pedestrians were injured, along with others, and one vehicle’s 89-year old passenger died from her injuries. The intersection then was described as dark- not lighted. It appears that since 2017, no efforts were made to improve lighting.
In July 2021, a 33-year old male pedestrian was killed in front of the fire department, 0.2 miles away. The area was described as dark — not lighted.
Recently, while walking from a bus stop to a friend’s house in a rural section of Farmington, I was bedecked with reflective arm bands and blue fairy lights, and at intersections, turned on a flashlight while crossing the road. I did not do this because I believed for a second that any of it makes me safer. I accessorized like a dance party so that if a driver (looking at their phone, turning around to scream at the kids in the backseat, operating a vehicle while drunk/impaired/asleep) hit me while traveling down roads where street lighting was poor and sidewalks just vanish, this detail would have to be included in the crash report.
A lot of what people consider to be “freak accidents” or the results of one person’s bad choices aren’t that, or aren’t quite so simple, but as long as reporters fail to connect the dots for the public, what we get are towns that don’t correct their street lighting and decisionmakers who refuse to take reponsibility, describing calls for infrastructure improvements “babble.”
Safe Streets Connecticut: October 2023
In the annual tradition of fussing over the autumn time change, there have been articles in which the authors discuss how this shift is connected to an increase in street violence. Those working the standard shift (9-5) are suddenly exposed to the risks that second and third shift workers have year-round: commuting in darkness.
During daylight saving time — March 12 through 2 AM on November 5, 2023 — at least 31 pedestrians/cyclists in Connecticut were killed when drivers collided with them. That’s 31 out of the total 48 preventable pedestrian deaths, so far, this year. That’s an already unforgivably high number of lives lost. Seven of these deaths happened in October alone.
Late in the evening of October 5, 2023, on the other side of the park from where I live in Hartford, someone drove into Omar Espinal, killing him.
Every single initial news report parroted police without showing any knowledge of the area. They all said this happened on Hamilton Street, east of the intersection with Hillside Avenue — which implies someone using the road outside of the crosswalk. Considering how attitudes towards pedestrians shape the ways people decide to drive, decide to fund (or not) infrastructure improvements, decide to apply the law, so much more context is needed.
The intersection of Hillside and Hamilton has marked crosswalk on each leg, though it is faded. There is only sidewalk on three of the four legs.
The intersection has a stoplight, but there is no walk signal. This means that while by law a person using the crosswalk may have the right of way, they never have exclusive use of the intersection. In a state that allows right turns on red, a person trying to cross here on foot never stands a chance.
So, if the victim was outside of the crosswalk when he was struck, who can blame him?
Still, reports of this being east of the intersection should be taken with a grain of salt until there is video to show that’s where the collision occurred. One reason: even if we may prefer the sanitized version for our own sense of comfort, the reality is that a person does not fall exactly where they were hit. It’s not like if a person walks into another person or is hit by someone on a bicycle. When hit by a car, the person is likely to be — and I’ll euphemize this for tender readers — relocated by force. This is unpleasant to think about but important to understand because far too many people, upon hearing that a person was hurt or killed, lose all sense of compassion and immediately assume the victim’s actions played a major role in the collision.
Another reason to not assume accuracy of initial reports about where the pedestrian was: not everyone understands what a crosswalk is. A driver scolded a friend for not using the crosswalk when she was in a painted one with a sign indicating it was a pedestrian crossing zone. I wish I were making that up. Not all police even know that unpainted crosswalks at intersections are legal and legit crosswalks.
One more reason: People are desperate to explain away someone’s demise as the result of their own wrongdoing because it makes them feel safer, even if their beliefs are not based in fact. It’s why we still have people convinced that distracted walking is a thing, long after it’s been proven not, and it’s why we have safety performance theater about wearing reflective clothing despite numerous crashes — some fatal — involving workers who have on hi-vis clothing.
But back to Hamilton and Hillside. There are parking lots on two corners — one affiliated with an autobody, where vehicles are parked every which way. There is a home on one corner. One the fourth: Pope Park. Over the decades, those making decisions have chosen again and again to not give people a safe way to cross into a neighborhood park.
This intersection is also a three-minute walk from a middle school on Hillside.
This intersection is in a densely populated area where a large percentage of residents do not have regular access to a private motor vehicle. To put it another way: there are many pedestrians and cyclists. The 63 bus travels on Hillside.
None of this context was reflected in news reports.
They definitely spent no time talking the history of this intersection or others nearby, and that’s because many are still of the mindset that these are one-offs, accidents, results of poor individual choices. How I know is that every single area news outlet mentioned somewhere in the headline that this fatal preventable crash was a hit-and-run.
Many safety advocates, myself included, assume that a driver who leaves the scene was intoxicated/impaired. There could be other reasons, like someone driving without a license, but the big one is the drug and alcohol use. I would like to see the law changed so that it also assumes as much: anyone who leaves the scene of a collision receives same punishment as if they had been driving over the legal limit.
But we should not automatically reward someone for being a sober shitty driver. The consequences for injuring or killing another road user need to be more significant, and we need to treat driving as a privilege, not a right. But I hesitate to linger on the punishment — or what some dub “enforcement” — angle, because justice is not and should not be as high of a priority as prevention. I don’t want people languishing behind bars and I don’t want vigils. I want the traffic violence to stop.
That older and past generations built car-centric towns is not an excuse. Add transit. Add sidewalks.
In 2019 at Hamilton and Hillside, someone driving a Roughhouse 50 (50cc 2-stroke scooter) reportedly ran a red light. They were hit by a Chevy Astro traveling straight through the green. Even as the victim was at fault, the question is raised about how fast the Astro driver was traveling through the intersection. I recall learning to slow down going through intersections, and just to make sure I was not misremembering, checked it out, and this is still the advice.
But Hamilton was not designed to discourage speeding.
Early on foggy Christmas morning in 2015, the driver of a Honda Accord attempted to make a turn out of Pope Park Hwy #4 onto Hamilton Street. There are no stop signs on Hamilton Street. The driver of a pickup truck struck the Accord, and two parked vehicles were somehow damaged in this collision. The Honda driver died from his injuries about three hours later. Had anyone been driving at a reasonable speed, surely this would not have been fatal.
Just one block north, where Hillside enters Pope Park, someone killed a three-year old child. That was in 2011. All these years later, and I am at a loss to find anything that resembles improved infrastructure. Hartford could have installed speed humps along the park driveway so that people driving fast down Hillside Avenue would be motivated to slow down, at least inside of a city park where children play. Hartford could have reduced the width of the driveway, reduced the amount of parking, done anything to eliminate the car-centered culture that tells people it’s totally fine to behave irresponsibly.
On the day after Omar Espinal was killed, I walked through the park and to the intersection of Hamilton and Hillside. There are paths in the park which are intended for people walking and cycling, but there are no bollards to prevent motorists from entering. While there, someone was driving on the path. That someone turned out to be a City of Hartford employee in a marked City vehicle who decided to drive to use a portapotty. There was no park emergency, but this person thought it was fine to drive in a space dedicated for human use. This was literally hours after the news broke that someone was killed one block away.
The park continues to the corner of Hamilton, though there is no sidewalk on this part — just a dirt desire path that leads to the corner. There is a curb ramp at the corner, and it was covered in sand. I stood there, taking photos and video for a few minutes, and then turned back. I watched someone driving a mullet Jeep fast into the park, then coming back out before I reached it, which raises so many questions. Where I wanted to cross felt unsafe, so inside the park, I had to backtrack again. That was when I used a pedestrian path and encountered the City employee. Outside the park were two police vehicles, so let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that police presence changes motorist behavior. It doesn’t.
We actually have municipal code disallowing people from driving on sidewalks in our parks, but increasingly this is an issue, and it’s not due to lack of parking because whenever I witness this, there is always ample unused parking nearby.
We see this wherever barriers have not been installed.
On one Saturday morning in October, while a health awareness walk was happening in Bushnell Park, someone came bombing down the sidewalk in a large pickup truck. Here’s video of this dangerous driving in bushnell park.
When he parked on the sidewalk, I let him know that vehicles should not be there and that there is plenty of on-street or lot parking he could use nearby. He was dismissive of me and walked away.
He did not seem to care that he potentially endangered people participating in the event he was somehow connected with, nor did he care that his actions could be dangerous to any of the regular park users which include people of all ages and abilities, including those out walking their dogs in the rain.
So, when I write about vehicular violence, the fatality rate is only part of the story. While I would like to give a more accurate picture by also including a full list of pedestrians (incl. cyclists, those using wheelchairs, babies being pushed in strollers, skateboarders, etc.) it is impossible for a number of reasons:
1. This information trickles in slowly and collisions that are not fatal for pedestrians are rarely reported by the news. 2. Regardless of how you feel about police, they are not medical professionals, yet they are the ones whose assessment of the victim injuries ends up in the crash data. What they might perceive as a minor injury can turn out to be serious, or vice versa. Without tracking down the victim, you can’t really verify how a victim is faring unless those injuries later become fatal. Deaths that come weeks after a crash are not always reported. In October, I learned of one such instance because a crash in Oxford back in early February, where only injuries were reported in the news, turned fatal. I have multiple examples of this every year.
3. Do all crashes receive the same degree of investigation, or is that only for those deemed serious (and even then, most likely, only the serious ones where the victim is carried off in critical condition)? Because of the underreporting and slow reporting, along with the fact that to get useful and accurate details I would have to make this my full time job, it is generally not very illuminating for me to get into all of the pedestrian crashes with injuries. Suffice to say, there are far more than what the average person would assume.
So, we’ll look at the other pedestrian deaths from last month, but we will begin instead with the death the media never reported.
On February 3, 2023 in Oxford, the driver of a 2022 Nissan Altima struck Reinhold “Ray” Wilhelm, who died about two weeks later from his injuries. Wilhelm was 87. According to his obituary, he was born in Germany but lived most of his life here, serving in the army even. The driver of a Nissan Altima hit Ray Wilhelm as he used Route 34 just after 6 PM. Here, the speed limit is 40 MPH, despite it being a residential area. There are no sidewalks. It was dark and there were no street lights.
On October 2, 2023 — at the same intersection in Stratford where a driver killed a pedestrian in February 2023 — another preventable death happened at 7:15 PM, when a motorist collided with a still publicly unidentified female pedestrian who was using the roadway.
Route 113 is a four-lane road with no marked crosswalk in this area, though there are bus stops on either side of the street, and, a nearby health clinic. Records show that in recent years drivers struck and injured pedestrians twice at the intersection to the south where there are more possible conflict points. At the nearby traffic light to the north, there is also no marked crosswalk and no pedestrian signal, despite the presence of a strip mall. The speed limit appears to be 30 MPH, but road design tells motorists to travel at higher rates of speed. Stratford officials have not yet explained why they could not be bothered to give Route 113 a road diet; this is the third preventable pedestrian death on Route 113 in Stratford in 2023.
In Southington the driver of a tractor trailer struck and killed Eddie Hill of Hartford at 1:45 AM on October 3, 2023. It was not said why the 2004 Hartford Public High School graduate was using the highway on foot, if he had a disabled vehicle or if there was some other reason for him to be outside of a vehicle on the interstate. Over a month later, there have been no follow up stories to provide an explanation.
Another fatal pedestrian collision occurred on I-84 last month, with the second happening in East Hartford just before 3 AM on October 7, 2023. Westley Clemente-Fuentes, 29 of East Hartford, was reportedly driving a Volkswagen Passat the wrong way on I-84 when he crashed it into a concrete barrier around Exit 55 (some news reports say Exit 52 — will have to wait for the crash data to be posted to find out where precisely this happened).
He exited the vehicle, becoming a pedestrian.
This is when another local resident drove a Honda Civic into the passenger side of the VW and then into Westley. The person who hit him showed obvious signs of inebriation, according to news reports. Westley was taken to Hartford Hospital, where he was pronounced dead; the two passengers in his car were not injured. Absolutely nobody wins when we keep talking about individual responsibility regarding drunk driving. We need to require alcohol detection technology in all vehicles, ensuring that cars cannot be driven if person is impaired. Once a person is impaired, they cannot be expected to make sound choices, and we have to stop punishing others by insisting that individuals make better decisions.
On October 11, 2023 around 7:15 AM in Fairfield, the driver of a garbage truck reversed, striking and killing a pedestrian by Campfield Drive and Bloomfield Drive — a typical Gold Coast suburban neighborhood where there are no sidewalks nor a marked crosswalk in the area. In this case, the pedestrian was a sanitation worker making this also a preventable workplace injury. This was the second pedestrian in Fairfield to be killed while on the job this year. The norm is for collection workers to wear hi-vis, though since 2015, over 250 people have been injured or killed in Connecticut while wearing hi-vis or reflective clothing.
When a Democratic candidate for first selectman and member of the Representative Town Meeting submitted a Safe and Livable Streets Ordinance draft months ago that could legally mandate Fairfield’s Complete Streets policy, the current First Selectwoman called this effort “a lot of babble.” By the end of October, Fairfield passed the “Safe and Livable Streets Ordinance.”
Just before 6 AM on October 24, 2023, a driver collided with Jeffrey Omar Enamorado in Bridgeport, killing him. Police described Jeffrey as using a “motorized bike,” a vague description that includes e-bikes and mopeds, even though these two vehicles are quite different. What they have in common is two wheels and that the rider is not encased in a metal and plastic box with the benefit of airbags and a seatbelt. In the CT Crash Data Repository, it was described as a “motored bicycle” older than 2003.
This section of Waterview Avenue abuts Water View Park, where there is a sidewalk and side path for bicycles; however, at Crescent Avenue, nearly all pedestrian/cyclist infrastructure appears to vanish, almost immediately. On Crescent Avenue there is no side path, only fairly narrow sidewalk, with it appearing to become unusable due to failed maintenance combined with people parking their cars over it by a business. An unforgiving stone wall is on the other side of Crescent Avenue.
According to the CT Crash Data Repository, the victim was traveling straight on the stretch of road that looks like this:
Although it was described as dark and lighted, it appears that street lighting is sparse in this area. Because there is a long stretch of straight road, it’s not an uneducated guess that the driver was likely speeding. That’s what long, straight roads tell drivers to do.
This is the fifth fatal pedestrian/cyclist crash in Bridgeport this year.
The seventh pedestrian to die on Connecticut’s roads in October was Willis C. Sands, Jr., 69, who had a lifetime of service as a paramedic and firefighter. On October 29, 2023, Sands had been helping with a Halloween Trunk or Treat event at the Gardener Lake Volunteer Fire Company in Salem. After, just around 7 PM, he was walking home on Route 354 when a driver traveling north struck Sands, killing him.
The speed limit is either 40 or 50 MPH in this area — signage is sparse. A person being struck by a vehicle at either speed would be at a significantly greater risk of suffering fatal injuries than if hit by a vehicle being driven at 30 MPH or below.
There are no sidewalks.
There is not much in the way of even a shoulder for someone to walk on.
There is no marked crosswalk.
There is no street lighting.
This is negligence on the part of the State of Connecticut and Town of Salem.
Some news reports stated that this happened by the firehouse. The one that had the most detail clarified that this was at the intersection of Route 354 and Witter Road. The intersection has a traffic light that flashes red or yellow — no pedestrian phase. There are stop signs on Rattlesnake Ledge Road and Witter Road, but not on Route 354.
Initial news reports did not indicate if the minivan had its lights on or was being driven at an appropriate speed.
Since 2015, there have been four fatal crashes in Salem. Three of the four have taken place on Route 354.
The October 29 crash is not the first collision at this intersection of 354 and Witter, nor the first fatal. In 2017 there was a collision involving three vehicles. Several drivers exited their vehicles in the aftermath. Another fourth driver approached, striking vehicles and pedestrians (former vehicle occupants). Two of the pedestrians were injured, along with others, and one vehicle’s 89-year old passenger died from her injuries. The intersection then was described as dark- not lighted. It appears that since 2017, no efforts were made to improve lighting.
In July 2021, a 33-year old male pedestrian was killed in front of the fire department, 0.2 miles away. The area was described as dark — not lighted.
Recently, while walking from a bus stop to a friend’s house in a rural section of Farmington, I was bedecked with reflective arm bands and blue fairy lights, and at intersections, turned on a flashlight while crossing the road. I did not do this because I believed for a second that any of it makes me safer. I accessorized like a dance party so that if a driver (looking at their phone, turning around to scream at the kids in the backseat, operating a vehicle while drunk/impaired/asleep) hit me while traveling down roads where street lighting was poor and sidewalks just vanish, this detail would have to be included in the crash report.
A lot of what people consider to be “freak accidents” or the results of one person’s bad choices aren’t that, or aren’t quite so simple, but as long as reporters fail to connect the dots for the public, what we get are towns that don’t correct their street lighting and decisionmakers who refuse to take reponsibility, describing calls for infrastructure improvements “babble.”
Related Posts
Shoe Store Opens Downtown
Place this Place
Scenes from the Sidewalk: Installment 34