Recently, I was driving home at night in a heavy rain storm. I was driving under the speed limit and keeping sharp attention to the road way because visibility was was a problem with the heavy rain, wind shield wipers furiously clearing the windshield and the glare of the on coming traffic. I was driving home down Western Avenue like I have done thousands of times. The road way was dark and wet and it was difficult to see any painted lines so I was aiming straight down the lane when right in front of me appeared the new concrete “pedestrian refuge median” that had been recently been constructed in the middle of the road way. My car wheel hits it at about 20 MPH blowing out the tire and leaving me shaken. I was left wondering how I could have hit the pedestrian island when I was going straight. Upon inspection of the new pedestrian island, I could see that drivers are now required to jog to the right to avoid hitting the pedestrian island. Upon inspection of the pedestrian island with all its black tire marks and chipped cement, it is clear that I wasn’t the only one to hit the cement. The personal injury lawyers of Zneimer & Zneimer, P.C. in this article will discuss the benefits and dangers of the recent additions to our Chicago roadways.
If you drive in Chicago, you’ve seen the changes: cement “bump-outs” at corners, concrete medians, refuge islands, protected bike lanes, and more roundabouts in places that used to be simple, wide-open intersections.
These features are often installed under the umbrella of Vision Zero—a traffic-safety philosophy that aims to reduce (and ultimately eliminate) serious crashes by redesigning streets so that inevitable human mistakes don’t turn into life-altering injuries.
