Crosswalk Deaths of 2 Women Stir New Policy Debate

Six years ago, Hildegarde Haskell moved from San Francisco to an apartment in Beachwood Canyon in the Hollywood Hills. Friends said she never really adjusted to sprawling Los Angeles. It was too hard to get around on foot. And all that traffic. Sometimes she would wait five minutes to cross Beachwood Drive to mail a letter.

Last week, the 77-year-old woman and an elderly friend were killed as they walked across Beachwood on their way to dinner at the friend’s house. Haskell, using a shiny metal walker, and Hazel Selden, 80, were crossing at an intersection without crosswalks when they were struck by a gray Buick.

“Hildegarde never liked the way pedestrians had no rights in Los Angeles,” said Lynne Foster, who lived next to Haskell for five years. “She didn’t like the way you couldn’t get around and couldn’t cross the street.”

Vigil at Intersection

Haskell’s friends and neighbors have placed candles and flowers at the fatal intersection, and over the weekend held a vigil there to attract attention to safety problems. They want brighter street lights and stop signs or a traffic signal. And, some of them say, they want crosswalks.

“If nothing else, they would make drivers more aware,” said Lola Lynch, who owns a gift shop in Beachwood Village just north of where Haskell and Selden lived. “It is one more step in making drivers aware of places where pedestrians are likely to be crossing.”

100 Pedestrians Killed

More than 100 pedestrians have been killed this year in Los Angeles, most while simply crossing the street. But the Beachwood Drive accident--crystallized by images of Haskell’s walker standing next to her broken body--has roused emotions and reignited debate over the city’s unpopular crosswalks policy.

The Department of Transportation, citing studies that show crosswalks at locations without stop signs or traffic signals give pedestrians a false sense of security, has been removing them throughout Los Angeles. As public works crews repave roads, the Transportation Department has simply not repainted the crosswalks--to the horror of some residents who see them as the only bridge across the city’s murky thoroughfares. In the Beachwood Drive case, there never was a crosswalk and transportation officials rejected requests to designate one.

In recent months, facing pressure from several City Council members quoting a new federal study that appears to contradict the others, the department has eased its policy somewhat and has approved crosswalks that previously might have been rejected. Even so, the department has eliminated about half of the 500 crosswalks it has targeted for removal at so-called “uncontrolled” intersections--those without stop signs or signals.

“It is a real tough issue,” said Tom Conner, a city transportation engineer who has been trying to sell the crosswalk removal program to a skeptical City Council. “We are trying to work each one out on a case-by-case basis. . . . The people don’t always agree with what we have done.”

Transportation engineers in Los Angeles, joined by those in many cities across the country, believe marked crosswalks at uncontrolled intersections actually increase a pedestrian’s chances of getting hit. Crosswalks at controlled locations--those with signals or stop signs--are regarded as necessary to channel pedestrian traffic and there is no effort to remove them.

The engineers point to a 16-year-old study by the San Diego Public Works Department which concluded that pedestrians using marked crosswalks where there are no signals or stop signs are twice as likely to be hit as those crossing at unmarked locations. A study by the Los Angeles Police Department showed that four times as many pedestrian fatalities occurred in marked crosswalks than unmarked ones in Los Angeles between 1982 and 1986.

Transportation engineers acknowledge that the anti-crosswalk policy is a hard one for the public to digest. Painted crosswalks offer what appears to be a safety zone. They are particularly valued by the elderly, who derive a sense of security from them. Many council members, responding to demands from residents, push for the crosswalks even when transportation officials recommend against them.

“It comes down to what the people think and how they feel,” said Councilman Nate Holden, who recently had crosswalks on Fairfax Avenue repainted after the road was widened and repaved. “It is what people get used to. You can’t change it now.”

In a move to gain some control over the Transportation Department’s crosswalk removal program, the council’s Transportation and Traffic Committee voted unanimously in May to require council approval for all proposed crosswalk removals. The issue has not yet gone to the full council, however, because of concerns raised by transportation officials and the city attorney’s office.

Some officials fear the proposed policy will politicize the crosswalk issue, shifting the focus of the debate from safety matters to political ones. There is also a question of liability: Will the city be inviting lawsuits if the council rejects the advice of its own transportation engineers on a particular crosswalk and a pedestrian is later killed using that crosswalk?

“These cases are generally fought on the experts’ opinion on whether the crosswalk should have been there,” said Assistant City Atty. Philip Shiner. “It is hard to defend a case when your experts say one thing, and the (City Council) disregards its own experts.”

But Councilman Michael Woo, a strong opponent of the crosswalk removal program and a member of the transportation committee, said council review is essential to ensure that crosswalks are not unnecessarily removed. Woo’s office has been researching the crosswalks issue in an effort to rebut the Transportation Department and he said the issue will go before the City Council.

At the center of Woo’s strategy is a federal study released last year that appears to contradict the long-held view that crosswalks at uncontrolled locations are dangerous. The study, prepared for the Federal Highway Administration, concludes that “marked crosswalks were safe and unmarked crosswalks were hazardous for the majority of roadway characteristics.”

City transportation engineers have dismissed the study as inapplicable to Los Angeles. They said the study failed to differentiate between crosswalks at controlled and uncontrolled corners and was flawed in several other ways. When Woo’s proposal goes before the City Council, city officials expect the validity of the FHA study to be a key point of debate.

In the Beachwood Drive neighborhood where Haskell and Selden died, some residents agree with transportation officials who argue that crosswalks are not the answer. The balance between pedestrian and motorist rights, they said, needs to shift dramatically. In the city of the automobile, people need to come first, they said.

“Crosswalks alone aren’t going to stop a car from hitting someone,” said Carl Haskell-Hanson, who was among the first to see his dying mother in the street. “People are just in too much of a damn hurry. It creates a situation where people are flying up and down the street. It is a hell of a senseless way to go.”