A Lefferts Gardens woman who watched her mother get mowed down by a car is
battling the city to improve a dangerous intersection.
Madeline Fix-Hanson, 38, is renewing a fight to slow down cars speeding around the corner of Parkside and Ocean avenues and make the well-traveled area safer for pedestrians entering Prospect Park at its southeast corner.
Neighbors have complained about the busy five-way intersection for years. Since 2008, there have been 131 car accidents and 13 pedestrians were struck. None of the accidents was fatal, but cops consider the area an “accident prone location.”
At the very least, residents say they want a traffic light for cars turning left, or a head start for pedestrians crossing the street.
“The fact that my mom got hit by a car really lit a fire under me,” said Fix-Hanson, whose 62-year-old mother, Charlene Fix, suffered minor injuries in the collision. As a result, Fix-Hanson started an online petition to appeal to local politicians for help in making the area safer.
Councilman Mathieu Eugene (D–Flatbush) said that he would hold a community forum this month on slowing the traffic. But this isn’t the first time the neighborhood has asked for improvements to the intersection.
In 2008, a group of residents presented a traffic-calming plan to the Department of Transportation that called for adding a raised median with bollards and sidewalk extensions to narrow the streets.
So far, the city has done nothing about it.
“We got a response saying they were looking into it. Then we got a form letter a year later saying basically nothing,” said Carrie McLaren, one of the principal architects of the plan.
An agency spokeswoman did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but Fix-Hanson said she wanted to “keep the problem on people’s radar.”
“It’s exhausting to always be near that level of danger and it seem to be easy to solve,” she added.
Councilman Mathieu Eugene and Department of Transportation officials will hold a safety forum at the Calvary Pentecostal Church [151 Woodruff Ave. at Kenmore Place in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, (718) 287-8762] on May 3 at 7 pm.
