Comments about ‘Three hit by car after leaving Ogden theater’

There are three mid-block crosswalks on Washington Blvd that are death traps.

They are very poorly marked, dimly lit at night, and even in daytime with two or three lanes of traffic in each direction it is very difficult for drivers to see pedestrians. Recently some orange flags have shown up, but the last two times I saw pedestrians in one of the crosswalks, they had not taken a flag with them.

I am familiar with those crosswalks but have still had a couple of close calls both while driving and while walking. (I don't use those crosswalks when walking any more. Instead, I go to the nearest intersection where I'm protected by a traffic light.)

I've been in traffic in a center or outside lane when a car beside me stopped suddenly and a pedestrian who had been invisible to me suddenly appeared nearly in front of me.

Personally, I believe it is tragedy waiting to happen. Tragic for both the pedestrian and the driver who may hit them.

This is a case in which BOTH the pedestrians and the driver should be talking lawsuit with an attorney. Ogden City should be the defendant.

What a tragedy. We all know how hard it is to see pedestrians in the dark.

A very simple addition to a crosswalk would be a push-button operated flashing light that automatically turned itself off after about thirty-seconds. Flashing cross-walk lights would warn oncoming traffic that pedestrians were on the street. Almost any high-school "nerd" could program an Arduino controller (available from Radio-Shack for $29.99) or a microcontroller chip (available online for $1.25) to control those flashing lights.