bike in crosswalk has the right of way. |
huh? you’re confused. the point is the driver should have been going no faster than 10mph if crossing from a full stop, and the chances of surviving and accident at 10mph are high. thus driver likely did not stop and was going too fast, and that is why child died. also coming to a full stop and proceeding slowly would have given the driver better chance of seeing the child. |
FFS, stop spreading misinformation. In a Tuesday statement, police said the driver of the van had come to a “complete stop” before proceeding through the intersection at 14th and Irving streets NE in the Brookland neighborhood. Police said the girl was “unable to stop her bicycle and entered the intersection into the path of the moving vehicle.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/fatal-crash-girl-bicycle-washington/2021/09/14/67d4e70c-1568-11ec-a5e5-ceecb895922f_story.html |
How did a small child get out alone into an intersection without a parent there? |
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The Hill on Irving is pretty step, especially for a new rider. This is a terrible tragedy. Full stop.
Have some grace for this family. If it was your child (your only child)would you want complete strangers on the internet rehashing and providing armchair commentary on your worst nightmare? |
I fully support the 20 mph speed limit. They’ve recently dropped the limit on my residential DC street to 20 and cars are still flying by at 35 mph or faster, ignoring stop signs. Dropping the speed limit isn’t enough and I’d love some traffic calming as well, which I’ve said to DDOT and my ANC rep. But I still don’t get what this has to do with the tragic accident yesterday evening. I don’t see that this report says that an accident when a car is traveling at a slow speed cannot be fatal. I see it saying that faster speeds are more likely to be fatal or result in serious injury. I don’t understand why you’re offering this to contradict the police report that says the driver stopped and then proceeded into the intersection. I haven’t heard of any witness accounts that counter that report. I think this is so unthinkably awful, that people are looking for some one to blame - driver, parents, child, infrastructure. If someone did something wrong we can distance ourselves from it, it won’t happen to us because we won’t make that mistake. But sometimes there really isn’t anyone to blame. This was just a fluke. A horrible, unimaginably awful fluke where this poor child and that van were at exactly the wrong place at the wrong time and it could have happened to any one of us. Which is even more terrifying. |
says the “preliminary investigation”. |
Are you really familiar with the intersection where this happened, where the driver stopped, and where the child was hit? I’m not. It seems like you’re certain that the child was hit in the crosswalk closest to where the driver stopped, but couldn’t she have been hit in the crosswalk on the opposite side of the intersection, much further than 8ft away from where the driver had stopped? |
Right. This is the evidence we have so far. I don’t know why people are so quick to blame the driver. There are obviously plenty of what-ifs but it still doesn’t mean that anyone was negligent. Sometimes an accident is just an accident. |
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Even if the driver came to a complete stop as reported, they still need to look for peds, bikes, kids, etc. before proceeding through the intersection. If I’m at a stop sign and I see people approaching the intersection - whether walking or on bikes/scooters - I pause to see whether they are going to walk into the crosswalk. I don’t speed off to avoid getting stuck as they cross the street. Yet most of the drivers I see while driving and walking through the city do exactly that - they stop and then gun it to get through so that they don’t have to stop for the peds.
If the little girl was going fast enough that she couldn’t stop or control her bike and rolled into the intersection, the question is: should the driver have seen her? Was the driver trying to take off too fast? Did the driver think s/he could pull through the crosswalk before the girl got off the curb? Coming to a complete stop does not exonerate the driver from all fault here. |
YES, it’s appropriate. I’d rather have a terrified kid than a dead kid. |
| The parents will sue and receive a settlement. Instead, I am curious why the child was alone in the crosswalk. Wouldn't the parent have been hit, too, if she/he/they walked along side the child? |
Tell them. And then watch and supervise them carefully. |
| Ugh, what a nightmare. So sad for this family. |
I was reversing and only saw a kid in my rear view AFTER he had gone behind the car. |