speed bumps, isnt that what the kids are for?

I grew up on a major highway in town. I had to walk to school when I was 5. The first time you see your pet dead in the road, you learn that you are in a road not a grass field.

Drivers are at fault yes. Children wander with no care barely paying attention to where they are because they expect the vehicle to stop for them. Not just at a crosswalk in front of a school.

People drive like idiots on Crosby in the morning. Everyone is a hurry. They cut you off, they don't follow basic "right of way" laws. It is a dangerous area. To the people that say accidents happen, explain that to a parent who has a kid severely injured or worse because their child has been hit by a car or truck! I am glad to see that they finally put a crossing guard at that intersection.

No!

Absolutely not !!

...part of what influences my opinion on this is that I went to Madison Elementary, Franklin Middle School, and Parker High School. I'm familiar with the crosswalk in question. I do not recall any accidents or injuries in that crosswalk the entire time I was in school. That's not to say there weren't, but I don't recall. Obviously things change, but my experience was that the areas around all 3 of those schools were pretty safe.

janesvillean - what I'm saying is we can't expect to prevent every accident. If drivers (or kids or whoever) are going to make the decision to break the law and someone gets hurt, it doesn't mean that we should spend a bunch of money to prevent something that should've been prevented by the laws to begin with. For example, if a kid decides to j-walk and gets hit crossing in the middle of Crosby Avenue even though there are 3 crosswalks in the vicinity, does that mean we should fence off the roadway with barbed wire fences to prevent them from crossing anyplace except the crosswalk? If a driver is driving too fast, loses control, jumps the curb and hits kids standing in front of Franklin does that mean we should erect a interstate like barricade to prevent that from happening?

My point is, I think there needs to be more information here as to whether this crosswalk is really unsafe. The lack of accident history considering the traffic volume leads me to believe that perhaps the crosswalk is no unsafe. Perhaps the problem is that the driver decided to do something stupid, illegal, and unsafe. Those kinds of decisions are not something we can prevent against. However, if the crosswalk really is the problem, we certainly need to make some changes to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.

As I've said previously there are a number of engineering options available. One I believe should be considered is curb bump-outs so that students only need to cross two actual lanes of traffic, and whose visual obstruction will force drivers to slow down. This will eliminate the dangerous pedestrian/passing-vehicle problem that seems to have been a factor in this accident. There can also be a change in pavement to create a road surface that "feels" different to drivers, reminding them even in low-traffic time periods that there is something significant about the location.
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Speed bumps are nowadays often speed "humps" which are less of a problem for plows. I'm not certain this is a good solution, though, at least not by itself -- drivers tend to hate them with a passion.
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li713, just consider that saying "the driver was the problem" is the same as saying "there is nothing we need to do here" and hoping that drivers will never again be a problem. You're essentially crossing your fingers rather than offering a solution.

The gazette article said that this is the only accident that has occurred at that cross walk in the last 4 years, but it didn't specify in the time prior to that. The article stated that the truck that hit the student was traveling in a lane moving in the same direction as traffic that had stopped and waived the student across. I don't understand how there are 2 lanes moving in the same direction on that street. Crosby is one lane in each direction. It sounds to me like the driver tried to go around stopped traffic and that's when the student was hit. The gazette article did say the police report wasn't available at the time the story was printed, but I think more investigation needs to be done into that before we start talking about making big changes or spending more money. Kids shouldn't be crossing more than 2 lanes of traffic without a crossing guard, a stop light, etc. I'm just not sure that is the situation here. It doesn't seem like the crosswalk is unsafe considering its lack of accident history and very high traffic numbers. It sounds to me like the driver of the truck that hit the student is the problem here.

http://www.gazettextra.com/news/2013/jan...

No speed bumps are not necessary. They will wreck havock on snow plowing, and not do much to slow people down. In fact I can see kids puprosly speeding to go over them so they do bump more. They took them out of Lustic park for those reasons I believe.
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This was an accident, they do happen unfortunaltly.I also don't see a need for a 3rd crossing gaurd. There are 2 options available if one feels that cross walk is too dangerous 1 go down to the corner and cross with a gaurd or 2 go to the other cross walk and cross there with a gaurd. That cross walk is not the only one available, if you don't feel safe enough to cross it, then use the ones that do have a crossing gaurd...simple and costs nothing but a few extra feet to walk.