A bicyclist was injured in a hit-and-run at Memorial Drive and John F. Kennedy Street in Cambridge on Thursday, state and local police forces said.
The cyclist was struck by a white sedan that sped off before Cambridge police arrived on the scene shortly before 10 p.m., according to scanner reports.
Cambridge firefighters responded to provide medical help. The victim, a 27-year-old woman, was taken from the Harvard Square area to Mount Auburn Hospital for medical evaluation and for treatment of minor injuries, including a possible injury to the arm, said trooper Brandon Doherty of the Massachusetts State Police.
State troopers from Boston barracks are investigating the collision. The car and driver who hit the woman had not been found by Monday afternoon, Doherty said.
Reports on the incident are jumbled. Harvard University police officers who came to the scene described Somerville officers as responding too, which has not yet been confirmed by Somerville officials. They may have been in the area for a water rescue; someone jumped into the Charles River shortly before the crash, according to scanner reports.
State police also referred to the victim as a pedestrian, while scanner reports repeatedly referred to her a bicyclist. The department declined to elaborate on issues around the incident, including specifically where it happened.
The collision, on the line of West Cambridge and the Riverside neighborhood, does not appear in the incident log for Cambridge police because the crash occurred on “state property,” said Robert Goulston, the Cambridge department’s spokesperson.The crash was first reported by The Harvard Crimson.
It was the second of the day between a cyclist and a driver in Cambridge. Less than six hours before the Memorial Drive collision, a car hit a cyclist at Massachusetts Avenue and Lee Street. The cyclist suffered minor injuries after an “improper turn” was made by the car, according to the log.
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On this site, for the last three years , I’ve proposed that the city install CCTV cameras on Cambridge streets.
I’ve been consistently mocked for proposing this, most recently by Slaw who is worried about Big Brother, and by Sam Noubert, who, when he is not issuing childish schoolboy barbs a la Trump,
called my thought “absurd.”
When you walk, drive, or bike on a public street in Cambridge, there is no inherent entitlement to privacy.
We need CCTV cameras so that the city can catch hit and run drivers who injure bicyclists. We need CCTV cameras to see who fired shots at a Cambridge playground. We need CCTV cameras to assist police when crimes are committed.
When is the City Council going to wake up and see the virtue of having CCTV cameras on Cambridge streets.
Marc McGovern and Patty Nolan, why don’t you lead the way.
Hear hear
Some drivers routinely travel over the JFK bridge at dangerous speeds, endangering people walking and biking. There are proven, modern safety changes that would protect people outside of vehicles. These include protected intersections to harden turns, enforcement cameras on traffic signals, and modern signal timings to provide enough time for vulnerable road users to cross the street.
Given that this intersection includes a state bridge (MassDOT) and a state road (DCR), we need state help to make these changes. Could the City host a public meeting with the area’s state delegation (Rep Marjorie Decker, Sen Sal DiDomenico, and Sen Will Brownsberger) to identify the needed safety changes at this bridge and to advance the necessary legislation for a home rule petition to do camera enforcement?
@ concerned43 is absolutely right. Public streets are just that: public.
Install cameras now1
Time to amend the CSO, not to delay it and ensure the deaths and injuries of more people as some on the council have done, but to accelerate it and add intersection improvements as well.
I want the city and state to prioritize actually fixing dangerous street designs, not putting up cameras to punish people for following the design speeds of the roads they are driving on etc after the fact. The camera approach misdiagnoses the problem as caused by dangerous drivers and not caused by dangerous designs that encourage dangerous driving and as such it also proposes a solution that will not actually solve anything, only allow blame to be individualized. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/3/30/automated-enforcement
I do not want to live in a surveillance society where existing in public implies you have surrendered all right to privacy and must accept being watched by the state at all times. It is in my opinion a naive and privileged position to see no problem with surrendering rights in the same of safety. You can act like it is ridiculous if you want, but I think it is ridiculous how much trust people place in institutions repeatedly demonstrated to be violent, mendacious, corrupt, and vengeful and which lack any semblance of public accountability.
On the actual topic at hand cameras do not prevent behavior they catch people doing violations. At best they catch people after. That can even create perverse incentives not to fix dangerous designs which encourage dangerous behavior because it would interfere with revenue generation. However there are street design tools that can prevent or at least severely restrict dangerous driving in the first place. In the long run these investments are cheaper to build and maintain than existing dangerous infrastructure, they do not require constant surveillance to ensure safety, they do not create such perverse incentive structures, and they actually make places nicer to live rather a modern panopticon.
@concerned43: Cameras are helpful, but they shouldn’t replace efforts to make our streets safer.
Measures like bike lanes, traffic islands, road diets, and speed bumps have proven effective in preventing accidents and saving lives.
We must prioritize protecting people before they get hurt. Relying on cameras to catch drivers after incidents has limited effectiveness.
On the topic of cameras and road safety, there is a bill stuck in the Legislature that would allow Cambridge to use cameras for automated traffic enforcement. The Council is already in favor of this, but because of Massachusetts law, we need to be “granted” approval. Please get in contact with your Senator and Legislator!
Porque no los dos?
@cportus, I agree with doing both, but I would prioritize cameras that do automated speed and red light enforcement. Those would proactively reduce speeding all the time, rather than CCTV which would be reactive (e.g. people would only pull up the footage after somebody had been hit.)
The data for speed camera efficacy is really strong — in NY some cameras only give tickets from 6am-10pm, but are active all the time. It turns out that people only speed when they know they can get away with it:
https://www.amny.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/DOT-speeding-heat-map-541×700.jpg
But also I strongly agree with other posters that infrastructure changes also work 24/7 and reduce risks to pedestrians that are unrelated to speeding and red light enforcement.
I would like to see red light cameras (along with infrastructure changes). I see drivers regularly speeding and running red lights.
Since COVID began vehicles more often drive through red lights and STOP signs. Traffic cameras can be programmed so that photos are automatically discarded if there is no violation. I hope the state will allow Cambridge to install such cameras, which the city has said it wants (per earlier comments). Years ago I had to pay a fine for running a light in Virginia — but I still am in favor of this approach.