Cristina Garcia was standing on the curb of Hyperion Avenue before sunrise on January 16, collecting bottles out of garbage bins to help pay for her daughter’s college, when a Toyota Corolla skidded onto the sidewalk.

The car’s driver lost control of the car speeding into a blind turn on rain-slicked pavement, video of the crash shows. When it struck Garcia, the force of the impact was severe enough to hurl her 15 feet from where she had been standing, according to a Los Angeles Police Department description of the fatal hit-and-run.

To Danny Cohen, who serves on the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council’s transportation committee, Garcia’s death was tragic and frustrating.

In 2017, 23 months before the crash, the neighborhood council sent a letter authored by Cohen to the Los Angeles Department of Transportation requesting that the city implement street safety measures and “manage speeding” on Hyperion and Fountain, between Sunset and Rowena Boulevards.

Cohen stresses that he can’t say whether additional safety measures would have saved Garcia’s life (it’s unclear how fast the driver was traveling when the crash occurred), but maintains that traffic-controlling measures could prevent future crashes.

“These road segments—that are part of our neighborhood and not simply a speedway and thoroughfare—need to be a priority to ensure that no neighbor or student is met with tragedy,” the letter read.

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Cohen says the council never received a response.

“It’s just unfortunate,” he tells Curbed. “Because it’s dangerous. People are dying, and this is an area where kids go to school.”

Last month, the neighborhood council sent another letter to the transportation department requesting “immediate action” along the corridor, which serves as the neighborhood’s southern boundary.

Cohen says that letter too has yet to garner a reply.

Oliver Hou, a planner with the city’s transportation department, says the department received the letters but typically doesn't send “formal responses.”

Hou points out that transportation staffers have installed several safety measures along the corridor in recent years, including warning signs and a pedestrian-only crossing signal in front of Thomas Starr King Middle School active during school hours.

The driver who killed Garcia was a janitor at the school, which is located less than a half-mile from the spot where her body was found.

Cohen argues that the transportation department should take more steps to prevent future collisions.

“All I’ve heard about for years is these insane collisions,” he says. “Driving into buildings, cars flipping over—it’s clear that something can and should be done here.”

Hou says the department isn’t planning any larger safety measures, but is considering adding speed feedback signs along the corridor.

A segment of the corridor that the neighborhood council expressed concern about is part of Los Angeles’s High Injury Network, a database of the streets and intersections with the highest number of deaths and serious injuries. It includes a stretch of Fountain that’s just a block from where Garcia was killed.

Through LA's Vision Zero program, a campaign to end traffic deaths by 2025, the department plans to install new safety measures at each of these locations. Those measures can include smaller changes, like center islands and lights that give pedestrians a head start when entering an intersection, or larger transformations of the road itself.

On some streets, like a stretch of Venice Boulevard in Mar Vista where 360 people were injured—and five were killed—between 2003 and 2016, transportation officials have reduced traffic lanes lanes and installed eye-catching new crosswalks and protected bike lanes.

But more transformative projects aren’t always popular with residents—especially those who get around by car.

Opponents of the Venice Boulevard project earlier this year filed an appeal of the city’s decision to make the changes permanent, arguing that lane reductions had worsened traffic in the area and encouraged more drivers to take side streets.

The appeal was rejected by the City Council but it had been supported by the local neighborhood council, and members of the neighborhood council spoke out against the project during a hearing at City Hall.

In Silver Lake, a lane reduction, or “road diet” on Rowena Avenue has been scrutinized by members of the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council, who pushed for a study on the project’s impact on cut-through traffic.

Cohen says he’s aware that rolling out similar safety measures on Fountain and Hyperion could be politically tricky, particularly since those streets mark the border of Los Feliz and Silver Lake.

But he says the lack of a response from transportation staffers is frustrating because few other neighborhood councils are actively pushing for major—and potentially disruptive—traffic safety projects.

Earlier this year, the city’s Neighborhood Council Coalition, mulled a proposal to formally request removal of road diets and other “traffic calming measures.” The group, which, like all Los Angeles neighborhood councils, wields no formal power but has clout with elected officials, eventually settled on an alternative resolution requesting that neighborhood councils be consulted before projects like these are implemented.

Cohen says members of the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council are ready to provide input and support for safety measures in the area, which could make them more likely to succeed.

“All we’re asking for right now is a dialogue,” he says.