Engineering a School Tragedy

[XLFD]

It's always easiest for society to foist the blame of an avoidable traffic fatality on the innocent, young victim, rather than the longstanding causes in the background that the same society has let stand for years.  A child of Jenison has lost her life, the police and half dozen media covering the event do the usual routines:  ignoring the driver's participation in the crash, shaming the victim, and avoiding the root cause.  Here's a summary of the crash found on WOOD: 

The crash happened just before 4 p.m. on Thursday February 25th, on 12th Avenue near Blair Street, just south of Chicago Drive in Georgetown Township. 

Seven year-old Ruby Rissley and her 10-year-old brother were leaving school and walking north on 12th Avenue where a passing train had stopped northbound traffic.

The siblings didn’t see a car turning south from Chicago Drive and Ruby was hit by the car. Her brother was not hit.

The casual reader may prejudicially suspect that the little girl decided her own fate by running into the path of the car, and may leave behind thoughts and prayers for the girl's family, classmates, and the driver.  The less casual reader wants more information, since tragedies like this deserve at least a second look, and not just by police investigators who will issue an unviewed report a month later absolving everybody but the girl of any liability for the incident.  

WOOD told us the kids didn't see the car without interviewing the victim, we do not know whether the 'car' actually saw the youth they hit in this school zone.  This is a theme in the other reports on 

FOX 17, MLive, WZZM, where they leave out any information on the car's driver.  The Holland Sentinel finally tells us that there was a driver and she was a 37 year old woman from Wyoming.  

The reports are consistent in noting Ruby Rissley did not run out in front of the car, rather she walked across the lane and was hit.  They also assert a contributory cause was the backup of cars in the northbound lane leading to the assumed lack of good visibility by either party.  Additionally, we can pinpoint Ruby's home address by clues provided in these news sources and a little research.  We can conclude that the silent killers behind this incident were engineers.

For when one looks at the street where this happened, we see the complicity of traffic engineers and road design engineers in this incident.  An overview of the location is in order as most of our readers are likely unfamiliar with it.  

Ruby was hit where the red 'X' is, the schoolgrounds are highlighted in yellow; she was hit about 600 feet out of school property, legally inside a school safety zone.  The driver saw indication of this after turning off Chicago Drive, but they also saw a speed limit sign of 45 mph about 200 feet before entering that zone (marked by the yellow sign), the left side of the street turning residential immediately at that point, suggesting a much lower speed.

That sign indicates that a school zone is ahead and the speed limit will decrease to 25 mph, immediately after this is a school crossing sign.  Such signs warn drivers that they are entering an area where children cross the roadway.  

Ironically, only about 50 yards beyond this warning sign, Ruby was hit crossing the street, a street without any crosswalks between Ruby's house and the schoolyard 600 feet away, and a 45 mph limit all the way down to Blair Street, located 200 feet from the school itself.  The red line below shows where Ruby was hit.  

The problem is evident, the street is residential and within a school zone before you get to Ruby's house, it's likely prone to have traffic backups at times when school begins and lets out due to the train, so the speed of 45 mph is not warranted throughout this section of the street.  Another contributing factor is the lack or intermittency of pedestrian facilities on the right side of the street which continues all of the way to the school and is evident throughout the school zone.  These should be addressed before anybody else is buried due to poor traffic and street engineering.  

Yet what's even more deplorable is the lack of concern for schoolchildren exhibited on the southern part of 12th Avenue.  The avenue starts at Port Sheldon Street, and the school property is on that corner where they meet.  Even though you need to slow down considerably to turn from Port Sheldon onto 12th, the first sign you see directly in front of this school is the 45 mph sign which is totally out of place, being within the turnoff area that people drop off and pick up their elementary students.  Yes, that's the elementary school situated behind the sign below.

The 45 mph limit continues for the full length of the strictly residential school zone and the rest of 12th Avenue's northbound lane.  One does not need a postgraduate degree to ascertain that Ruby Rissley's death was not primarily caused by a traffic backup, her inattentiveness, or even a driver's inattentiveness.  It was caused by professionals that should have known better than to allow these unsafe conditions to exist on our streets near schools, where children like Ruby (shown below) play. 

 

[AQUAMAN]

I'd bet $100 that this driver was speeding and/or texting during her drive thru a school zone, but, she'll never admit that to anyone. I witness this same thing anytime I'm driving somewhere these days.

[XLFD]

There's a good chance that the accident could have been avoided by an alert driver, operating her vehicle at a reasonable speed given the low visibility conditions and the school zone appellation.  I would bet similar cash that the 37 y.o. Wyoming woman driver was heading up to the elementary school to pick up her own child(ren) and that she won't face any charges, nor will the investigators check her crash computer to determine whether she was speeding or her cell phone to determine whether she was distracted.

They might, if the township itself was going to be held to account by the victim's family for all of the engineering and signing failures on that section of 12th Avenue.

[Willy]

What a tragedy for her family. This stretch of road before and after the school needs to be re-engineered for the sake of the kids. From the high speed limit to train backups to adding sidewalks and street crossings with markers and crossing guards. I can't understand why any portion of that street has a 45 mph speed limit since the entire street appears to be mainly residential and is so short.

[XLFD]

Agreed that it's insane traffic engineering to have a stretch of road that is about three city blocks long and running right by an elementary school to have the speed limit be 45 mph travelling past the school one way and the same speed through a residential area on the other side.  

Yet idiot media and police in the area can't point that out, they're too busy blaming the young victim; I sure hope the citizens of Georgetown Township rise up and insist on getting this corrected by their local board.

[XLFD]

I was hoping that somebody among the readership either on here or at the Ludington Pitchfork on Facebook would catch a parallel issue soon to come to Ludington.  The new elementary here is soon to be finished on the corner of Tinkham and Bryant Road, both of these roads currently feature 45 mph speed limits.  These may come down, but this has yet to be publicly discussed even though the school itself is nearing completion.