Thanks to Sarah Atwell’s status as part of the office of admissions, the problem of students being hit by cars has finally been dredged up from page 13 and placed up front. Here’s looking at you, Argus editors. Atwell accurately observes that my statement, “whoever set up the streets didn’t seem to notice” the university, is not historically specific. But Atwell also glosses over my substantive criticisms in order to create the illusion that Middletown in fact has no traffic problem, and that even if, as she says, “both incidents have proved to be accidents where both the driver and the student were at fault,” future accidents should be avoided solely by changing student behavior, a nonsensical argument.
So please allow me to reiterate the substance of my criticisms.
1) Middletown, or at least the area directly around Wesleyan, should not use the extremely inconvenient and inefficient push-button system of street crossing. It causes unfair and unnecessary delays for pedestrians, and is foundationally illogical. If all four directions of traffic are stopped, why aren’t there diagonal crosswalks?
2) Signs for pedestrian crossings are not adequate when the crossings are in the middle of what would otherwise be a drag-strip, i.e. a long straight stretch of road without stop lights. In places where the speed of car traffic could potentially be high, and visibility could be low, as is the case on Church street, pedestrian crossings should be protected by speed bumps.
So, despite the lack of a historical marker for my statement, I stand by my assertion that the traffic system, as it currently stands, is negligent toward the safety and convenience of pedestrians, who are mostly students. Rather than drifting off into fake history (Atwell herself didn’t even bother to look up the city’s development) let’s focus on the present. There is a problem, it is sending students to the hospital, and it must be fixed before it kills someone.
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