Chicago Accident Lawyer Blog
The city of Chicago unveiled its first ever pedestrian safety plan according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The “Zero in Ten” program would identify high risk intersections and then would implement safety changes to try to bring down pedestrian deaths down to zero. Safety changes could include “lagging” lanes for left turns which would make the cars wait for pedestrians to cross a street before a car could make its left turn. Red light cameras could also be added. Other changes include adding count down signals to intersections and increasing the amount of time to cross a street near hospitals and nursing homes.
Gabe Klein, commissioner of the city’s Department of Transportation has set the goal of eliminating all pedestrian deaths. “We want to set an aggressive goal that forces us in every element of our job to look at pedestrian safety and make it everything we do….If at the end of the day, two people are killed, heaven forbid, vs. zero, I will still feel like we made huge, huge progress.”
The personal injury law firm of Zneimer & Zneimer P.C. handle many cases for injured pedestrians who were crossing in the cross walk with the light and were still injured by motorists who made left turns into them or made right on red turns into them. Even more sadly a high percentage of our case are minors going to or coming from school or going to or from a friend’s house. More needs to be done to protect pedestrians. One easy way would be to eliminate right on red turns. The law firm of Zneimer & Zneimer is currently handling cases for seriously injured pedestrians where the motorist is looking left for cars to attempt a right on red turn and never looks right to watch for pedestrians crossing from the right. When the motorist sees no cars coming from the left, he or she accelerates right into the pedestrian right in front of his or her car crossing from the right.