Downtown Traffic Safety

If you follow us on Twitter (and you should be!), you may have noticed yesterday that we were retweeting a number of DCPD reports that Penn Quarter streets and intersections were closed due to traffic incidents.

Indeed, the separate traffic incidents were just minutes and feet away from each other:

First, a car traveling eastbound on H Street near 14th Street careened on to the sidewalk, grazing a woman pushing her baby in a stroller, and then into an office building at the intersection.  (Prince of Petworth has a great picture here.)  The woman and her baby were taken to the hospital but fortunately the injuries were not life-threatening.  The car hit the office building with such force that those in the office building reportedly thought another earthquake had struck DC.  The driver was also taken for medical care, also without life threatening injuries, though reports indicate that the Fire Department had to remove the car door to extricate him.

Not long after, a motorcycling DC police officer, while part of a motorcade for the president of Georgia, was struck by a car.  WJLA reports that a car went around a bus, drove into the intersection at 14th and F and struck the woman.  Though the officer was injured, her injuries were also non-life threatening.

You can see WJLA's report, "Traffic Nightmare," below: