Signs reading “Slow down. Save a child” are still up near Main Street and St. Louis Avenue almost a year after 9-year-old Carter Vo was struck and killed by a vehicle.
The signs can be seen on traffic medians and residential lawns near where Vo’s death occurred.
According to police, the driver responsible for Vo’s death was Skokie resident Hanin Goma. It was later revealed that Goma, 23, had marijuana and amphetamines in her system at the time of the incident, police said.
The incident occurred about a block away from John Middleton Elementary School. Following the crash, the village assembled a committee to look at traffic data and make recommendations on how to improve safety near the school. A traffic-engineering firm was also hired to conduct traffic pattern studies.
Fast-forward to today, and the village board has approved a $308,687 bid to install several traffic signals at Main Street and Central Park Avenue. At Monday's board meeting, officials said that Lake Villa-based Home Towne Electric Inc. was the lowest and most responsible bidder. It is unclear when the traffic signal construction will begin.
“This was criminal conduct,” trustee Randy Roberts said. “You can have all the traffic signals in the world and someone runs and disobeys them and drives recklessly. That doesn’t mean we can’t try and do better.”
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This is all a result from covering Vo's death on May 21. Being on scene and learning that a child just died was a real eye opener (I also used to live near the area). I'm willing to bet other residents have changed their driving habits since Vo's death, too. I'm sure parents of students at Middleton appreciate the new signal, but police are already (and always have been) there after class gets out to direct traffic. On a side note, the village held numerous forums and open meetings prior to approving this measure, so residents did have their chance to voice their opinion. That being said, does anyone feel this was a knee-jerk reaction? Or is this something that is for the greater good of the community? Thoughts?
I, too, get honked at and tail gated by those who are not driving under 28 MPH down Main Street -- yes, I said "28" MPH because my foot just won't allow me to crawl at 25 MPH. There aren't enough 25 MPH signs posted so people don't know better.
Skokie is run by horrid amateurs and the quality of life here diminishes everyday for it. A CORRUPT ONE PARTY SYSTEM in what I have heard some people refer to as "The people's republic of Shakowsky". With George Van Dusen et al just junior clones, minions. The government and village management doesn't give a damn about the quality of life here. They are just narcissistic egotists who love sitting up on the dais going Aye, Aye, Aye. They are either self deluding, or idiots. You decide. Maybe both. There is NO efficiency in the way they operate this backwater village. Hanin Goma should have been picked off by the Skokie Police years before Carter Vo paid with his life. Anyone with an iota of intelligence knows that "the commission" was nothing but window dressing and yet another vehicle for more money in the village's coffers. How sad. And now, yet another "commission" is preparing to shaft landlords for more money. Licensing they want to call it. Odd, many of the apartments in Skokie have been extant since thhe Great Depresion (1929 for you non-history majors out there.) HOW DID PROPERTY OWNERS EVER DO IT WITHOUT "LICENSING" FOR MORE THAN 80 YEARS?
Meanwhile they arbitrarily hit every resident of the village with a 5% "utilities tax" which brings in millions in revenue. Trustee Perille remarked when they passed this new utilities tax that it was "fair, and wouldn't be a burden for oldsters, they could turn their thermostats down in winter and up in summer." PURE GENIUS. Oh, and the village has it's own additional 1% sales tax, doubling their take of local sales taxes to about $24 MILLION. And then they doubled the cost of vehicle stickers for the 30,000 + cars and trucks in the village. Did away with court hearings for parking tickets and seat belt violations Now you get a hearing before an "administrative officer" in village hall. .03 cents a gallon of additional gasoline taxes on top of all the other gasoline taxes we already pay. And don't you just love the condition of Main street from Crawford east to McCormick? Oh yeah, that's where little Carter was run down. What are they doing to fix that? The ride is crap in the westbound lanes, even worse in the eastbound lanes. I nearly get thrown off the seat of my motorcycle at a screaming 30 miles an hour near Dengeos in the eastbound lanes from a huge dip in the road.
Compare them to the same treatments in the city of Chicago. All the islands there have a perimeter surround of nothing lower than 18 inches to several feet. You see, in Chicago, they actually know what they are doing. Not only does this center of the road treatment impede visibility in the roadway, it impedes the ability of vehicles to cross over the center median. Such a perimeter might have saved Carter. It is impossible for cars to mount. Thus no one dies from distracted driving when their car mounts the center landscaping and piles into any of the numerous trees there. It's swell when the village builds in road hazards at our expense. Good thing fewer and fewer drivers today are distracted by smart phones and electronic gadgets. There have been at least two deaths along Dempster in separate one car crashes in the last few years. One car, One tree. One dead. But that's OK I am sure the dead had no mother,father, brothers, sisters or loved ones.The story says they think he had a medical "episode" prior to the crash. Somehow I don't think the tree helped him. Crowded close to the street. http://evanston.suntimes.com/17804140-781/evanston-man-dies-after-one-car-crash-in-skokie.html
The village makes changes when someone dies eh? Would a stoplight and a 5 mph lower speed limit have saved Carter? You seem to know a lot about it. Are you FOR unsafe center medians filled with trees? Snow doesn't fall on the mentioned streets and rain doesn't fall there either, eh? You seem to miss the point Michael. We have idiots for traffic engineers. No center K-Rails where Skokie Blvd winds beneath the train overpasses south of Oakton, but sidewalks on both sides of the road there. A single sidewalk would not have sufficed? With a center K-Rail keeping high speed traffic with closing speeds in excess of 80 mph separated with a physical barrier? No functional street lighting beneath it either. Though the broken and un-maintained fixtures under these overpasses remain. Unused and un-repaired for years. Nice right turn only on Dempster where the traffic contol light at the Skokie Swift entrance/exit is on Dempster. They re-engineered the entire damned street in front of it, but apparently our traffic Dodo didn't think it would be a good idea for eastbound traffic on Dempster to have a right turn only lane, expediting the flow of through traffic. The most basic of lanes.
You don't have contracts with the village do you Michael? Or do you have traffic study contracts? The speed reduction is solely for revenue. The stoplight unnecessary. Keep drinking the cool aid. And apparently you don't understand the concept of un-mountable medians. Shall I explain K-rails and retarded traffic engineers as well? Drive any modern car with airbags and belts into a four inch diameter tree at 25 mph or greater and the odds are about 90% THAT YOU END UP DEAD. Pretty trees me love leaves. Hank had it right, what a waste of money. A feat our city fathers have mastered in spades.
Also, slowing down traffic makes a city more pedestrian-friendly and the more pedestrian-friendly a city is, the higher the real estate values. Finally, why is everyone in such a hurry down Main Street? Honestly, do the math, how much extra time are you losing by going from McCormick to Skokie Blvd 5 miles less per hour? I have lived by Main Street in this area for over a decade and turning onto Main Street (with the high median greenery in the summer especially) is like taking one's life into one's own hands. I have children at Middleton and we have been trying to get traffic to slow down for years and years. People are in such a hurry that they even go around the cars stopped for children crossing with crossing guards and speed right over the crosswalks. Human life is so much more important than saving a few seconds down a street! (by the way, if the light was needed for the firehouse then fine, but I'm not happy about it going there near the school because studies show that drivers tend to speed up on yellow to avoid stopping at a red light and could injure pedestrians in the process -- another caution to everyone to slow down!)
You can find studies to prove gnats are hungrier on summer days..... our village is famous for all it's studies...however sadly, not for it's brilliance or low taxes. Whenever a "discussion" degenerates into a discussion of somebody's study or goes....comparative...Logic evaporates. Plain and simple. If we raised the speed limit on Main to 75 mph I'll bet no pedestrians would ever be killed. They would stay the hell away from the roadway. Does that work for you? The reality of this idiotic debate is that some irresponsible 23 year old who doesn't give a damn about anybody but herself, thinks it's OK to get stoned on weed and amphetamines and operate a motor vehicle...anywhere. Damn it, let's pass a law and make weed and amphetamines illegal without a doctor's prescription. Oh you mean there already is such a law? Well for God's sakes let's make some more laws. That will end the senselessness of irresponsible self centered behavior of people like Hanin Goma.
Please don't confuse reduced speed limits with reduced speeds. The study conducted by the Village's traffic consultants indicated that people were speeding - even in the 20mph school zone. So, the posted speed limit and actual travel speeds are not the same. Yes, reduced speeds do improve the statistical chances of survival in a pedestrian/vehicle collision. However, reducing speed limits does not necessarily reduce speeds. As you mention, people are in such a hurry that they go around cars - and that is likely to only increase with a lower speed limit. That makes the lower speed limits even more dangerous. The web-site that you suggested does not mention changing the posted speed limits and instead suggests changing the road design. While not mentioned on the web-site you suggested, the consultants hired by the Village indicated that the landscaping in the median (which you indicate is not desirable) in fact tends to slow people down. It has similar impact on drivers as the narrow lanes and chokers that the above mentioned web-site suggests. But the speed limit was at least temporarily reduced (Randy Roberts even said at the meeting that it could be considered an experiment). What I would like to see is whether it has had an impact on actually reducing the average speed people travel.
Now I am just repeating what the people the Village hired as "experts" have said. And a super preliminary search online "effect of medians on speed" seems to agree. So, do you have some other study that indicates that landscaped medians like on Main street tend to increase speed? Or are you just saying that people tend to speed on Main St (which is true). And it has landscaped median (also true). But if the Village hired experts and studies are also true, then people would be speeding even more if there weren't a landscaped median.