Woman struck by taxi in Oak Bluffs

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A 63-year-old Island woman was struck by a taxi Wednesday morning and taken to Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, Oak Bluffs Police Lt. Timothy Williamson told The Times.

The unidentified woman was struck at about 9 am as she crossed the street in a crosswalk at the corner of Lake Avenue and Kennebec Avenue near Trinity Episcopal Church, Williamson said.

Williamson responded to the scene with Sgt. Michaiel Marchand, and found the woman sitting on the ground in the middle of the road adjacent to the Flying Horses Carousel. 

Toni Cook, the driver for Harbor Taxi, is being cited for failure to yield at a crosswalk, Williamson said. 

The woman was taken to Martha’s Vineyard Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Williamson said she complained about pain in her elbow and lower back.

A surveillance video allowed police to quickly corroborate both parties’ stories, Williamson said. 

“Sometimes people are just in that really bad blind spot, and you don’t see them when they are crossing,” Williamson said.

6 COMMENTS

  1. And some drivers are just plain Blind. Not like a 63 yr old Sprinted into traffic. Prayers with the poor victim, speedy recovery!

  2. After driving for a living for the last 2 summers I am convinced we need to control people more than cars. We need walk don’t walk signals installed at all crosswalks. It is so difficult to determine what a pedestrian’s intentions are. So often people are looking at their phones, don’t make eye contact with the driver, stand unmoving until you decide they aren’t going to cross after all and then step off the curb. If there was a signal a group of people would gather to cross together and then they would stop crossing when the light turns. As it is now people just keep streaming across the crosswalk at a slow pace.
    I can’t say any of this is the cause of what happened the other day. I didn’t see what happened.

    • Salt– no ! sorry- we have 2 months of heavy pedestrian traffic. We are not going urban.
      But good you put out an idea to try to help, and it might. But accidents happen and we can not prevent them all.

      • I actually didn’t think of it to prevent the few accidents that happen but to get traffic moving in mainly downtown Edgartown and Oak Bluffs. It could always be done manually by traffic cops as well.

        • I agree with you that it must be difficult to drive as a profession here. The problem I see here most often is that people don’t even use the crosswalks. There are so many and they are crossing several feet away. Frustrates me!

          • True. I also want to point out that we already have the walker/bike lights on the draw bridge and they work great.

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