By Karen Klinger

At a meeting with city officials, it was pedestrian activist Astrid Dodds who perhaps best summed up the feeling of residents who think that flaws in the design and markings of an intersection on Oxford Street in the Agassiz neighborhood were an element in a fatal pedestrian accident on January 6.

Dodds, a former member of the Cambridge Pedestrian Committee, took issue with lead police investigator Lt. Jack Albert’s conclusion that the raised “crosswalk” in the intersection of Oxford and Wendell streets, designed to slow traffic, was not a factor in the incident that left 85-year-old Helen Chin of Medford dead.

Not only does the raised intersection platform not look like a crosswalk to drivers and pedestrians, and not only has it “thrown all of us who have to cross it daily for a loop,” she said, but “It isn’t behaving like a crosswalk.”

One of Dodd’s neighbors, William Bloomstein, echoed her remarks, telling representatives of the police and traffic departments who gathered with residents at a meeting of the Agassiz Neighborhood Council on January 21 that the “general perception most of us have is that drivers don’t interpret these platforms as crosswalks.”

There is, he said, “a sense in the community that they increase the danger for pedestrians.”

Among the concerns of those assembled: when paving stones replaced conventional white “zebra stripes” in the intersection, drivers were no longer “conditioned” to see it as a crosswalk; the yellow “Yield to Pedestrians” signs on either side of Oxford are too small and inconspicuous for drivers to notice them; no one understands the meaning of the white triangles painted on the approaches to the platform (they are supposed to warn drivers they are approaching a “speed bump”).

Susan Clippinger, director of the Department of Traffic, Parking and Transportation, noted that the platform at the accident scene is one of 14 similar raised intersections in the city, including another one a few blocks away on Oxford, none of them with “the traditional zebra stripes on top of them.” She said studies showed they had been successful in reducing speeds of vehicles, but conceded they apparently had done little to encourage drivers to stop for pedestrians.

Clippinger, who seemed alternately accommodating and defensive, said “I do understand that one thing people would very much like is to have zebra striped on the raised crosswalks,” but she made no promises. When one resident asked if the city could “start” by making some small changes to the Wendell/Oxford crosswalk, she shot back, “I don’t think I’m very interested in ‘starting’ anything.”

Driver Inattentive, Did Not See Pedestrian

The information about the accident told to those gathered included:

• Albert said the only explanation investigators have come up with is “operator inattentiveness.” He said the woman driver from Lawrence “to this day still does not know why she hit Helen Chin.”
• Investigators from the Cambridge police department and the state police likely will sit down within the next two weeks with representatives of the Middlesex district attorney’s office to discuss whether charges should be filed against the driver.
• Albert said the driver is believed to have been traveling no more than 5 mph when she hit Chin as she drove south on Oxford. He said the victim “went up on the hood of the car” then fell off after it traveled another 10 feet and hit her head on the pavement, the injury that likely killed her.
• A witness standing about 80 feet away said the driver apparently did not try to brake before hitting Chin. “The pedestrian was just invisible to the driver somehow,” he said.
• When the accident occurred about 3:15 p.m., the pavement was dry, the weather was clear, sun glare was not a factor, and the driver was not talking on a cell phone or doing anything else that could have distracted her.
• Unlike negligent or reckless driving, simple “inattentive” driving is not always a chargeable offense, Albert said. In addition, Police Commissioner Robert Haas, who was at the meeting, said that the “Yield for Pedestrians” instruction on signs does not “necessarily” mean that drivers have to stop for pedestrians.

In the end, with questions left unanswered, and with city officials unwilling to commit definitely to making changes to the Oxford intersection—used by many children from the nearby Maria L. Baldwin School—some people left feeling a bit like diners expecting a full-course meal and getting served hors d’oeuvres instead.

Even in dispute was City Councilor Henrietta Davis’s assertion that the raised intersections on Oxford and elsewhere had been successful in forcing drivers almost to slow to a crawl while driving through them. Dodds said that if anything, "Drivers seem to speed up."

Said Bloomstein, “People are flying over those speed bumps.”