RELATED STORY: Marchers turn tragedy into appeal for safety
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The march is over, the mission is not.
And at a Dec. 10 meeting of the Faculty Council, Interim Chancellor
William O. McCoy and Major Jeffrey McCracken talked about the additional steps
that they and other University officials are taking to make the streets safer
for walkers.
McCoy said he was close to announcing the members of a pedestrian safety
committee that will include University safety officials along with
transportation officials from the Town of Chapel Hill and the state.
McCracken, of Carolina's public safety department, said his department
plans to intensify enforcement efforts in the weeks ahead, both against
jaywalkers and drivers who fail to yield the right-of-way to
pedestrians.
The University already has received money from a state highway safety
program to buy radar and video equipment to increase enforcement efforts
against traffic violators, McCracken said.
The department has requested money to pay for two additional officers who
would only perform traffic duties.
"We want to be sure to keep [this issue] on the top of our radar screen,"
McCoy told faculty members. "I think I have become more aware of pedestrian
safety in the past month. I think you may have, too."
McCoy said he has talked with N.C. Department of Transportation Director
David McCoy and has been assured by the director that the state will do all it
can to help.
Faculty members organized a march on Dec. 1 to call attention to the
dangers of walking on campus following the death of a graduate student who
suffered fatal injuries on Nov. 4 while crossing Manning Drive.
The issue of traffic safety was not the only thing on the council's
agenda, but it was clear from the attention it received that it was the one
issue foremost on everyone's minds.
Most faculty members had more comments and suggestions for McCracken than
they did questions.
Some talked about relocating crosswalks and making it easier and faster to
get in and out of parking decks. Ronald Strauss, a professor of dental ecology,
went so far as to suggest turning Manning Drive into a two-lane road to slow
things down.
"This is a campus, it's not a racetrack," Strauss said. "Is this going to
be a pedestrian-friendly campus or are we going to cede it to the cars? This
has become a critical issue -- one that the faculty wants to weigh in
on."
Jaywalking may be as big of a problem as drivers who refuse to cede the
right-of-way to pedestrians at crosswalks, some faculty members said.
"We have 23,000 students on this campus who all think they are immortal,
and we have more and more aggressive drivers," said Steven Bachenheimer, a
professor of microbiology. "Some of them are the same people."
Faculty Council Chair Richard "Pete" Andrews said the problem is not so
much that people deliberately break the rules. The problem, too often, is that
they do not know what the rules are.
The signals at too many crosswalks are ambiguous, leaving both motorists
and walkers unsure of what to do and when to do it, Andrews said.
McCoy and faculty members talked about the dual nature of the problem:
Most people, in the course of the day, are both drivers and walkers. And the
attitude they take toward the problem depends on where they happen to be
sitting, or standing, at the time.
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