Downtown Crash
Sends 1 To Hospital

It seems to me that red light cameras would create an atmosphere that resulted in fewer people running red lights. If you knew a ticker were on its way if you ran a red light, I don't think people would continue to do it. State requirements would prevent abuse of yellow light timing, in the same way that their road standards for lane widths are followed.
Additional measures could be made to rewrite the street design standards to mandate narrower lanes on local streets, limits on the number of consecutive lanes that can run in the same direction, and other measures that encourage drivers to go slower and actually not let them get up to speeds high above the speed limit. I think that once our streets stop looking like highways, they will ceased to be used like highways.

Um, I'm not trying to play junior detective here or anything, but if the driver of the Acura was traveling East on Elm Street--a one-way street--and claims to have been struck by the Jeep running a red light on Orange Street--which means it must have been entering the intersection from the north or lefthand side--how is it all the damage to his front end is on the right, ie south side of his car? I'm jus' sayin'...

If the Cherokee driver thought that a photo of his vehicle would be snapped and he would be mailed a ticket I suspect he would not have run the red light. They have Red Light Cameras in ST. Louis and like them or not there is a marked difference in the driving habits of most residents. You can actually go when your light turns green without fear of being broadsided.

John, based on the photos the accident happened at the intersection of Elm and Church, not Orange, which makes the passenger-side damage on the Acura correct. The story said he was driving toward Orange, not that he'd reached it.

Junior Detective: look closer and you will see that the front end of the car is completely moved over to the right. therefore it was hit from the north or left side and hit fairly hard too.. trust.

Cameras in the City will not stop drivers who manifest idiotic and lawless behavior on the road, but strict enforcement of the laws with a period of incarceration and stiff fines will

John,

I think the Jeep was properly headed toward city hall, tagged the front of the car and smeared the bumper, hood and quarter panel in that direction.

@Dee: Check a map. That photo is the intersection of Elm and Orange.

Wow. I saw this on the way home on a bike ride last night.

When will our city get serious and try to prevent these accidents?

Elm street is a high-way!

I was present minutes after it happened. The intersection is Orange and Elm and I assumed from the scene that the Acura was coming down Orange and the SUV was coming down Elm. Perhaps the error is in the reporting not the confusing damage placements

Excellent photography.

It's a good thing this didn't involve a pedestrian.

Until a better solution can be found to prevent these types of crashes and injuries, Elm Street should be reconfigured as a two-lane street (which would dramatically reduce traffic speeds).

Just stripe off the extra lane, like the city has recently done on other streets.

Anon: Right on. Elm Street is a known danger spot with VERY fast traffic. I have seen police go after red light runners which is fantastic, but on the whole, we need a really comprehensive approach to this.

The New Haven delegation needs to support red light cameras to help reduce these types of incidents, and our city has to spend the money and energy required to redesign our streets away from high ways and toward city streets.

Doing almost anything else seems (to my biased opinion) a waste of everyone's time.

Do tax payers realize how expensive these types of accidents are?

$164.2 billion is the annual cost of automobile accidents (according to the AAA). Is there really a reason why we prioritize moving vast numbers of cars at the expense of lives?

I avoid Elm at all costs when on my bike. At least nobody was seriously hurt here.

Cities in at least 26 states have approved some variation of an "accident tax" to defray the costs of reckless drivers wreaking havoc on the streets and to municipal budgets. It is something that the Connecticut state legislature should enable and that New Haven should consider implementing. In an ideal world public safety would not be attached to user fees -- but at the same time New Haven should not have to shoulder the financial burden of cleaning up after the mayhem caused by bad drivers, especially those who are nonresidents.

I would love if this section of Elm was turned back into a two way street. I actually believe that the silly number of wide-one way thruways downtown actually contribute to congestion because they concentrate traffic only down 4 or 5 roads per direction, rather than distributing it over the grid.
I would love to know what avg speed of Elm @ this section was, since I think it's well over 25.

Just last night I was driving down elm before this accident happened, and there was a driver in a pickup just DESPERATE to get further down the street at any cost. Since there were 4 lanes, he tried each and every one, accelerating to top speed until he hit a cluster of cars, then veering over and around until he was next stuck.
Driving at ~30mph (which was the flow of traffic) I kept pace quite easily with him. His driving, while futile was also ridiculously dangerous. Wide travel lanes like this only encourage the thought that the traffic should be going faster than it is.

I've asked this on SCF but must ask again:
Why is their no pedestrian light at this intersection? Are there plans for one? It seems like the only intersection in downtown where peds should not cross.

I passed this accident shortly after it happened and I am relieved to know that no one was seriously injured - the upside down Jeep was a very unsettling scene. Can anyone confirm if the traffic lights have been re-set on Elm and around the city? There was talk of a new system of timing so that if you traveled the speed limit you would hit all green lights. It's one of the many traffic-calming systems that are desperately needed on our "arterial roads" like Elm St.

This is not the first accident at that intersection where a car has flipped over. The problem? A combination of a "blind" corner caused by the presence of the 59 Elm building and New Haven's running red culture.

If you run a red light at the corner of Church and Elm, you can pretty much see what's coming. But if you run a light on the Orange/Elm corner, you're playing New Haven roulette - and praying.

Elm Street is 6 lanes wide and is THE perfect candidate to kick off New Havens conversion of streets back to two-way. There's enough room to do two lanes in each direction and parking and a planted median. This could become one of New Haven's safest and most elegant stretches of road. Its just a matter of changing its tone through scale.

Fully agree with robn. See also http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/businesses_balk_at_midnight_plan