Concerns raised about traffic safety after woman pushing stroller is hit in crosswalk in Massachusetts
A woman pushing a child in a stroller survived being struck by a car while attempting to make it across a crosswalk in Framingham, Massachusetts, raising concerns about the safety of concurrent traffic signals.
The incident was caught on camera with the video capturing the vehicle smashing into and toppling over the stroller. Miraculously, police said the woman and child only suffered non-life threatening injuries.
"The video is certainly hard to watch. We're just a few inches from a very different story," said Sgt. Ryan Porter of the Framingham Police Department, "Following the impact the child actually did come dislodged from the car seat. We are not at this time able to say if they were secured, but fortunate to not talk about a much different story."
What are concurrent traffic signals?
It happened at a busy, four-way intersection at Waverly Street and Hollis Street. The intersection does have multiple concurrent signals where the turning vehicle has a green light while the pedestrians have a walk sign for the crosswalk. It does occur at the crosswalk where the accident happened, and right now Framingham Police said they are looking into if it happened during the crash. In those instances, vehicles are supposed to yield to the crosswalk.
"You have multiple crosswalks all within close proximity to one another, you have left hand turn lanes, right hand turn lanes," said Porter, "Certainly has a lot of things going on in that intersection, a lot of distractions."
Driver remained on scene after crash
"It's a lot of cars, and we never know if there are crazy people behind the wheels," said Julio Valadares, a pedestrian who heard about the crash before having to cross that intersection numerous times, "Even if you cross the right way you got to be careful."
Porter said the driver did remain on scene and they cooperated with police. The driver was cited with a crosswalk violation.