Crossing a street in Petaluma can sometimes be a dangerous proposition.
Cars hurry into a right turn as you step into the crosswalk or zoom past as you pedal in traffic. Over the past two years, more than 35 pedestrians and 32 cyclists have been injured in collisions with cars, a serious enough problem to make Petaluma eligible for a state grant to help police enforce safe driving.
And it's not just the drivers hitting innocent bystanders; plenty of pedestrians run across Petaluma Boulevard without walking to an intersection and cyclists blow through stop signs. Police have tried to curb the dangerous behavior by ticketing offenders, but the problem has persisted.
What's the solution? Putting in more crosswalks? Increasing fines for cellphone use and other "distracted driving"? Use the map above to tell us which intersections in Petaluma are the worst and use the comments below to add your suggestions for fixing them.
I've started the wiki map with two of my own suggestions:
- Sixth Street and A (near St. Vincent's) where Sixth Street curves dangerously and then splits into two streets and where despite a striped crosswalk, cars seldom slow down and,
- East Washington and North McDowell Boulevard where there are always a lot of pedestrians, but cars very often try to squeeze by even as a person is walking.
