Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Pedestrian Struck by Car at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) in New Haven

Reporting in the New Haven Independent:

An 18-year-old girl told police she was in the crosswalk when she was hit by a car on Farnham Avenue on Tuesday night. The 83-year-old woman who hit her told cops the teen wasn’t using the crosswalk.

As is often the case when vehicles mow down pedestrians, the driver was not charged. In many other countries, they would have automatically been found to be at fault by the law, unless specifically proven otherwise (given that they are operating a more powerful vehicle).

Luckily for the student who was hit, the driver appears to have been traveling at a slow speed, perhaps encouraged by the presence of an in road pedestrian sign.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I witnessed the incident and this article is absurd. The driver was traveling at a quick speed and the girl was using the crosswalk. Thank God she is ok!

Moderator said...

Should say "relatively" slow- if the driver had been far exceeding the speed limit here, as most cars do, it is unlikely that the student would have been out of the hospital. At 40 MPH, virtually all crashes result in a pedestrian fatality. Good point though!