Car Crash at Waverly and Willoughby
On the heels of yesterday’s post about Berkeley Place residents who don’t want speedbumps on their block comes this photo from a reader who lives in the Clinton Hill Co-ops and witnessed the aftermath of a car accident at the corner of Waverly Place and Willoughby Avenue, a location, he points out, that’s seen its…
On the heels of yesterday’s post about Berkeley Place residents who don’t want speedbumps on their block comes this photo from a reader who lives in the Clinton Hill Co-ops and witnessed the aftermath of a car accident at the corner of Waverly Place and Willoughby Avenue, a location, he points out, that’s seen its fair share of accidents in its day. “This happens all the time – cars roar down Waverly Avenue from Myrtle Avenue and blow the stop sign at Willoughby and ‘wham,'” he writes. “Why can’t we get some of the speed bumps like they just installed on Berkley Place in Park Slope?” For what it’s worth, we’ve got them on Grand Avenue and people still speed down the street.
Funny, I missed getting hit by a car accident on Washington and Greene on Tuesday by about 10 seconds. My foot hit the curb and I heard a crash behind me — two minivans collided. Looked like one was speeding and one was turning, although I’m not sure. Same day I also watched a car doing about 60 down Willoughby.
What’s weird is, I expect a ton of traffic on the main avenues — Vandy, Clinton, Washington, but those little perpendicular side streets… which are of course nice alternates to the BQE… well yeah, it’s an issue.
“they did? i live on berkeley and haven’t seen them. at least not b/w 4th and 7th.
off topic, whats with that smashed up car on corner of Lincoln and 6th that’s been sitting there for days? can i legally squat in it and make it mine?”
Goldie:
Check out the thread on it from yesterday.
If Waverly was northbound only from Atlantic Ave. to Gates and also from Myrtle to Park, leaving the current southbound direction from Myrtle thru Gates, the thru traffic would stop. No thru traffic would mean less speeding.
I’ve wondered about running DeKalb Ave. in two different directions also. perhaps changing direction at Ashland or Cumberland, but the B38 would suffer from that. OTOH, now that developers have declared Albee Square their own personal front yard, the B38 is slower and more ganged up than ever.
Developers – ya gotta love em. : P
Maybe the cops should set up speed traps. DIBS, I have seen Behr on walls and it is absolutely terrible. Thank you for the confirmation.
the problem at that intersection is that there is a stop sign on waverly but there isn’t one on willoughby. there needs to be stop signs on both corners and in addition, cross walks. as for grand avenue, the bumps do not work because they are not large enough and there needs to be more than just one.
maybe the local councilperson could do something about it, since she refuses to do anything about the drug dealers.
Dave.
I WAS here, but confess to usually only reading HOTD items when they’re houses in PLG–I’m SO parochial 🙂
I’d guess 1850s–shortly before the Civil War. What a beautiful house!
Bob…you weren’t here yesterday and I gave you a shout-out in the HOTD. What year do you think it was built???
http://bstoner.wpengine.com/brownstoner/archives/2009/06/house_of_the_da_700.php#comments
Speeding on Waverly isn’t a joke – I kind of resent all of the sarcasm about window box color and pretend race wars because this is a serious issue.
I live near the next intersection on DeKalb and there are frequent bad accidents. The most recent one I witnessed a few weeks ago wrecked several parked cars as well as seriously injuring at least one of the drivers.
The problem is not only cars speeding down Waverley, it’s also the hugely increased speed on DeKalb since they’ve removed the parking lane on the right (north) side of the street. In the morning there are 3 lanes of super fast traffic tearing down to Flatbush causing cars inching out from Waverly and pedestrians to play a giant game of Frogger.
Pedestrians have been hit by cars speeding down DeKalb and it is only a matter of time before someone is killed.
I believe an even better approach than speed bumps would be to not maintain the streets very well, so that they are barely passable–something like the people in Fieldstone (Bronx) do with their privately owned Streets. Letting the streets get as bad as those in Willets Point, Queens would be going too far. In addition to improving safety, think of how much money the City would save.
BTW, I’m a car owner, but since I drive slowly and carefully on city streets, I wouldn’t mind at all. The idiots, many native-born, in addition to those DIBS wrote about, would be forced to slow down (and for those REALLY stupid, their cars would quickly be rendered unusable, thus getting them off our streets).