Updated September 27, 2012
Last Saturday, a non-Hopkins affiliated woman was hit by a taxi at the corner of N. Charles Street and E. University Parkway, campus police officer Bill Anderson said. She is the second pedestrian to be hit this month near the Homewood campus.
The pedestrian who was struck is a 26-year-old Washington D.C. resident. The accident occurred when a taxi turned left from southbound N. Charles Street onto E. University Parkway and clipped her. An eyewitness said she did not use the crosswalk. Paramedics on the scene transported her to Hopkins Hospital, where she was treated for non-life threatening injuries. Campus Police as well as Baltimore City Police responded. The Baltimore City Police, however, could not be reached for further comment on the incident.
A Broadcast email was not sent out to notify students.
“It was known very quickly that the person had no Johns Hopkins affiliation, so there was no need to inform friends and the community that a Johns Hopkins person had been injured,” University spokesman Dennis O’Shea said. “Another reason we would opt to send out a broadcast email was if there was imminent danger. In the case of a car accident that was over, there was no imminent danger.”
Executive Director of Campus Security Edmund Skrodzki said that Campus Security will soon be launching a Twitter account to increase communication with students to report events like this one.
“In the near future, we’re going to have a Twitter,” Skrodzki said. “These types of [accidents] will be immediately reported. We’ll be able to put out more information on a timely basis.”
This accident comes on the heels of the university’s Road Scholar campaign to promote pedestrian safety. Nothing has been added to the campaign as a result of Saturday’s incident, O’Shea said.
“Certainly, we see both the Road Scholar Campaign itself, which is part of the three-prong effort on pedestrian safety, continuing for a long time,” O’Shea said. “There are plans going forward. The other two prongs of the safety efforts—the other two E’s—are engineering and enforcement. Those are continuing to go on.
“We see these as a long term effort for several reasons. First of all, it is important in any sort of campaign like this to repeat the message frequently. Second of all, in the long run, the undergraduate student body changes by 25 percent every year. It’s necessary to keep issue of pedestrian safety in front of our student body.”
The engineering component is being accomplished through the Charles Street reconstruction project. Associate Director of Building Operations Greg Smith wrote in an email to The News-Letter that some of the reconstruction measures will extend to the intersection where Saturday’s accident occurred.
“The intersection of North Charles and University Parkway is included in the project and will undergo changes,” Smith wrote. “Specifically, new curb cuts, crosswalks, medians, trees, lighting, marking and signage will all be part of the project.”
To Smith’s knowledge, however, there will be no additions made to the intersection of St. Paul and East University Parkway where junior Miriam Frankl was killed in 2009.
