Christine Carter nearly always has close calls with oncoming traffic as she crosses Comstock Avenue.

‘You’ll be in the middle, and there’ll be a car coming to hit you,’ said Carter, a junior biology major. ‘A lot of people just tend to zoom right past.’

There are no speed limit signs on Comstock Avenue between Adams Street and Stratford Avenue, even though the limit is 30 miles per hour. Some students said the stretch of road has led to close calls between drivers and pedestrians.

The Department of Public Safety wants to lower the speed limit and has discussed it internally, said DPS Captain John Sardino.

‘It would create a safer environment for pedestrians and vehicles,’ Sardino said.

The street has been the location of a couple of accidents between cars and students throughout the past year.

An ambulance side mirror hit a student in April when he stepped off the curb around 11:55 p.m., according to an article published in The Daily Orange on April 6. The student went to the hospital for minor injuries.

On Sept. 1, a car collided with a student in front of the Theta Chi fraternity house in the afternoon, according to a Sept. 2 article in The Daily Orange. The student was taken to a hospital by ambulance, but sustained non-life threatening injuries.

Sardino said motorists usually don’t abuse the speed limit on the street, but pedestrians and drivers need to pay attention.

He looked back on the past accidents this year.

‘I think that some of them were avoidable if people were paying more attention, and that’s on both sides,’ Sardino said.

DPS placed more officers out on the corner of Comstock and University avenues after the September accident in front of Theta Chi.

Before the accident, DPS officers were out there a few days a week, but they were at the corner for two to three days in a row after the accident, Sardino said.

But lowering the speed limit on the street would be an extensive process, Sardino said.

‘It’s not going to happen overnight,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of different stakeholders in there.’

DPS has not extended the conversations to lower the speed limit beyond the department, he said.

Drivers on Comstock aren’t very aware there are pedestrians crossing, said Alexis Lawton, a sophomore biology major.

‘They’ll fly down the hill when it’s a red light,’ she said.

But she typically goes five miles per hour over the speed limit when she drives on the street, she said.

‘I’m one of those people who definitely go over a little bit,’ she said.

But Moeed Chohan, a junior biology and economics major, is pretty cautious about making sure he goes the speed limit on Comstock, he said.

‘It’s definitely dangerous,’ he said about the street. ‘People just start walking without looking.’

But lowering the speed limit on the street to 20 or 25 miles per hour would be a good idea, he said.

‘If it’s enforced,’ he said, ‘people will follow it.’

mcboren@syr.edu

Published on September 21, 2010 at 12:00 pm