CINCINNATI — A woman in Northside is well on her way to recovery after she was hit in a marked crosswalk last fall by a driver. Now she wants drivers to slow down and think about pedestrian safety.
“I just want to be better," Anna Barchick-Suter said. "I just want to feel like my old self.”
It's taken more than six months for Barchick-Suter to get the courage to cross the street again at Hamilton and Pullan Avenues. It's the scene where a driver hit her in the crosswalk after running a red light.
“I don’t remember the accident itself or the first two weeks,” she said.
Barchick-Suter spent a month in the hospital recovering from bone fractures and a traumatic brain injury
“For three months I existed with missing a part of my skull,” she said. “So my brain could become less inflamed. It could heal. And then I had a final surgery to replace it so now I’m part plastic part bone.”
Now Anna wants drivers to take it easy. In April, she said she was nearly hit for a second time at the same intersection when two drivers ran a red light.
“You know things happen quickly,” she said. “Even if you are not running a red light or breaking the law. Things change quickly and need your quick reaction.”
Northside Community Council President Bree Moss said despite signage and small improvements drivers are still being reckless.
“There still is not this very necessary cultural shift I believe in driver mentality,” Moss said.
The community council is working with a group called NEST to request money from the City of Cincinnati for pedestrian safety improvements.
NEST has applied for $295,000 for the project titled “Northside Pedestrian Infrastructure Improvements”.
“We’re seeking funding through the City of Cincinnati’s Neighborhood Business District Improvement Program (“NBDIP”),” Moss said.
If awarded that money it will build pedestrian bump-outs at the intersections of Hamilton and Pullan avenues, Hamilton and Chase avenues, Hamilton Avenue and Lingo Street and Hamilton Avenue and Knowlton Street. In addition to that, new crosswalks at Spring Grove Avenue at Cooper Street and Blue Rock Road at the entrance of the Northside Transit Center will also be built.
Northside Community Council will learn in June if they received those funds.
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