Berkeley pedestrian death inspires probe of similar intersections

After a motorist fatally struck a 66-year-old Berkeley woman Sunday, three council members are asking staff to study adding stop signs to intersections like the one where it happened.

The driver, an 87-year-old Oakland woman, pinned Elise B. Lusk under a car at Ada and California streets, near Monterey Market, around 1 p.m., police said. The Berkeley Fire Department extricated Lusk, 66, and took her to Highland Hospital but she died from her injuries, police said.

Councilmembers Mark Humbert, Shoshana O’Keefe and Brent Blackaby drew parallels between the intersection where Lusk was killed and the intersection of Derby and Mabel streets where a driver on Halloween 2023 struck a 7-year-old trick-or-treater, breaking the boy’s femur, fracturing his pelvis and lacerating his head.

“Something these two intersections appear to have in common is the presence of traffic diverters without stop signs,” according to a proposal for further study that’s likely to go before the whole council in February. “Since there is generally no oncoming traffic, drivers may treat such intersections differently from intersections with through traffic in all directions.”

Humbert, O’Keefe and Blackaby specified a total of nine intersections with traffic diverters but no stop signs, though they noted there may be more worth studying.

These intersections aren’t exactly intersections, at least not in the conventional sense — traffic moves in all four directions but the streets themselves do not cross each other. Curbs or other physical barriers move motorists coming from every direction into 90-degree turns. The traffic diverters began popping up in the 1960s, a move aimed at deterring drivers from cutting through some neighborhoods.

The Halloween collision, a hit-and-run, inspired the boy’s mother to draft an online petition for safety improvements in her neighborhood near San Pablo Park, and it gathered more than 17,000 signatures. The City Council voted that December to put $900,000 into traffic-calming and safety measures around the city, including yield signs and painted crosswalks where the driver hit the boy.

The intersections Humbert, O’Keefe and Blackaby identified for possible study include:

• Ada and California streets
• Derby and Mabel streets
• Grant Street and Berkeley Way
• Yolo Avenue and Milvia Street
• McGee Avenue and Virginia Street
• Piedmont Avenue and Russell Street
• Hillegass Avenue and Woolsey Street
• Park and Russell streets
• Mabel and Russell streets

“Many similar intersections throughout Berkeley already feature stop signs, so their inclusion at additional intersections or other measures may be appropriate,” the council members wrote.

The three council members also asked for a review of whether the city is adhering to design guidelines from the National Association of City Transportation Officials, which the council agreed to aim for in 2022, following a referral by Councilmember Terry Taplin. 

NACTO’s Urban Streets Design Guide emphasizes safety for pedestrians, cyclists and other “vulnerable” people on city roads better than the Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, a national set of guidelines for infrastructure decisions that, Taplin wrote at the time, had “delayed or precluded street safety improvements in Berkeley.” The FHA and Caltrans had both made allowances for cities to use NACTO’s guidelines, Taplin said at the time.

As of Monday city police said Sunday’s crash was still under investigation by their Fatal Accident Investigation Team. There had been no arrests as of Monday.

“*” indicates required fields