Wayne pedestrian deaths highlight concerns of safety on Valley Road

WAYNE — Valley Road, where two pedestrians were killed this week, has long been a concern for Wayne police.

At 7 p.m. Tuesday, an unidentified woman was killed attempting to cross the busy thoroughfare near Birchwood Terrace with a 6-year-old child. The woman and child were hit by a car, according to Passaic County Prosecutor Camelia Valdes. The day before, 78-year-old Rosa Nikhamina was fatally struck near MacDonald Drive at about 12:30 p.m., less than two miles from the second accident.

Capt. Dan Daly, a former Wayne Police Traffic Bureau officer, said adding crosswalks "mid-block" to the road is not feasible because it lies outside the criteria from the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. The MUTCD is the set of nationwide minimum standards and guidelines that ensure uniform traffic control devices.

Valley Road has been the site of several "serious and significant" accidents, according to police. But options for the town itself are limited due to the constraints of Valley Road being a county road and national guidelines.

Sidewalks line both sides of the street but crosswalks are in short supply, and there are no street lights in the section where the woman and child were hit, police said. There are no places to cross the four-lane street at Birchwood Terrace or Michael Drive, the block where the accident took place.

The crosswalks closest to the site are located at the traffic signals on Preakness Avenue and Ratzer Road. Burns said that Valley Road is busy during the morning and afternoon, with some cars driving at speeds of up to 70 mph. The decades-old road runs through the length of the township, parallel to Alps Road, another busy thoroughfare, said Capt. Larry Martin.

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"Valley Road always a concern for us because it's a heavily traveled road," Daly said. "Many thousands of vehicles use that road every day — it's well into the tens of thousands."

The morning after the second pedestrian in two days was killed along Valley Road in Wayne, traffic whizzed by, with an electronic sign showing several cars hitting speeds 5 to 10 mph faster than the speed limit.

"It's a high volume roadway, which is something that we can't just engineer away," Daly said. "There's always going to be a great number of cars on Valley Road so you're always going to have those conflicts of traffic meeting traffic and traffic meeting pedestrians."

The posted speed limit is 40 mph where both women were killed. A sign that shows how fast people are driving did show some cars going below the speed limit Wednesday morning, but also showed many driving between 45 and 50 mph — and sometimes faster as people drove by police tape left from Tuesday's accident.

Daly said the traffic bureau is continually working to enforce traffic laws in the area to prevent tragic accidents as well as educate residents on properly utilizing crosswalks.

"Unfortunately there are times, even doing that, it hasn't gone the way we want and there have been crashes with pedestrians in crosswalks," Daly said. "We need drivers to pay attention and stop for pedestrians in the crosswalks."

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Dana Burns was getting on an NJ Transit bus on Valley Road on Wednesday morning, just several feet from where the accident occurred.

"It can be scary," Burns said. At night, the headlights of the cars can make it hard to see as well, Burns added.

Burns said she saw the woman lying in the street Tuesday night as emergency workers performed chest compressions. She could also see someone else lying on the side of the road, surrounded by people.

"I must have been there 20 minutes after it happened," she said. "It was awful."

The child and woman were brought to St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center in Paterson. The woman was pronounced dead at 7:46 p.m. and the child is being treated for serious injuries.

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Tuesday's accident was just blocks from where another pedestrian was fatally struck Monday afternoon.

"This investigation remains active and ongoing," Valdes said in a press release. "More information will be released once it becomes available."

The driver and the passenger in his car did not receive any injuries and remained on the scene.

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Many neighbors in the area said drivers are going too fast on the road and there have been problems for a long time.

Calls to Mayor Chris Vergano and an email to the Passaic County engineer were not immediately returned.

Josh Jongsma contributed to this article.

Email: kanzler@northjersey.com