A pedestrian crossing a street at 17th Street and Lakeside Drive near Lake Merritt was hit and killed by a speeding driver early Saturday morning in a hit-and-run that Oakland police said is now under investigation.<\/p>\n
Just before 6 a.m., in the dark pre-dawn hours, a man carrying a bag of plastic bottles had entered the crosswalk when a driver, traveling northbound on Lakeside Drive \u201cat a high rate of speed,\u201d struck the pedestrian, throwing him into the air, the Oakland Police Department said. OPD said the suspect fled the scene in a white Nissan and has not been located. When the cops arrived, they attempted to revive the man who was hit, but he had died.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Police told The Oaklandside they don\u2019t know whether drugs or alcohol were involved in the collision. The department is not yet releasing the name of the victim as they work to notify his next of kin. The Alameda County Coroner\u2019s Office confirmed that the victim\u2019s identification is being withheld.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Police have asked anyone with information to contact the Traffic Investigation Unit at 510-777-8570 and to send any photos or videos of the crash, if available, to cidvideos@oaklandca.gov.<\/p>\n
According to a report<\/a> by KTVU, one of its anchors, Andre Senior, witnessed the crash as it happened. He told the TV outlet that he was walking his dog when the event unfolded. He said he saw a white Nissan barreling downhill on Lakeside Drive as the man was crossing in the crosswalk with his head down. Senior said the pedestrian attempted to run away from the vehicle just before being hit.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAt some point he looks up and realizes he\u2019s not stopping, so he starts to run,\u201d the anchor said. \u201cThe car thinks he\u2019s gonna outrun him by going this way, but he doesn\u2019t. Smashes right into him.\u201d He told the station that he immediately called 911, but when he turned the man over to try to help him, it appeared that he had already died. A few other bystanders also tried to help, Senior said.<\/p>\n In the aftermath of the killing, safe streets advocates pointed out the collision happened at a location that was set to receive an infrastructure redesign that would have slowed down car traffic.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rob Prinz, the advocacy director of Bike East Bay, a local nonprofit group, posted a statement<\/a> noting that the Oakland Department of Transportation had developed a project for the area that included a protected<\/a> two-way bicycle track. Prinz said the Oakland Fire Department took issue with the amount of roadway clearance, forcing a redesign that resulted in a two-year delay. Originally, the project was slated to start at the same time as the 14th Street redesign<\/a>, which is now nearly complete. That original plan might have been completed by now, Prinz said, but the new plan, with a buffered<\/a>, non-protected bike lane, he said, is not set to start construction until next year.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t definitely say what could have prevented this crash, but the more significant traffic calming from the cycletrack version would make speeding much harder,\u201d Prinz wrote. \u201cThese delays are resulting in actual lives lost.\u201d<\/p>\n The street safety advocate told us that he\u2019s been in contact with OakDOT to see if they can make some changes to the revised road design, such as adding hardened structures that \u2014 even without a cycle track \u2014 could maybe make a difference in pedestrian and cyclist safety.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe Oakland Department of Transportation extends its empathy and support to everyone touched by traffic violence in Oakland,\u201d Josh Rowan, the agency\u2019s director, told The Oaklandside. \u201cThrough the City\u2019s Safe Oakland Streets initiative, we are committed to preventing serious and fatal traffic crashes by working across departments and building partnerships with the community to implement the most effective and equitable strategies.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOakDOT and Oakland\u2019s emergency response departments routinely collaborate to identify solutions that allow for advancing traffic safety goals while supporting and ensuring emergency vehicle response,\u201d he said, calling it a \u201cstandard element of the street project design process.\u201d<\/p>\n Academic research<\/a> on road design and its effects on speeding<\/a> has found that adding protected lanes, which usually involve taking away a driving lane, narrowing roadways, tends to reduce speeding and crash rates.\u00a0<\/p>\n Prinz called on Mayor Barbara Lee and the transportation department to speed up projects that can save lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Oaklandside has reached out to the Fire Department and OakDOT about Prinz\u2019s claims about the design feedback process. We will update this story if we receive responses.<\/p>\n “*” indicates required fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pedestrian crossing a street at 17th Street and Lakeside Drive near Lake Merritt was hit and killed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144,2452,3273,1492,27297,3278],"class_list":["post-486400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-police","tag-oaklands-dangerous-roadways","tag-public-safety","tag-traffic-collisions","tag-traffic-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}