If you drive down Georgia, be careful around Georgia between Newton and Park: there’s a raised and poorly marked median strip in the road that is hard to see in the rain.
On Tuesday during the storm I was walking by and saw two cars that had crashed into it: one had at least two flat tires and another had its airbag go off. An ambulance had responded to that vehicle, as they must have been hurt either by the crash or the airbag.
Both vehicles had stopped at the BP station, where I was hiding from the rain during a walk. People there said another car had crashed into the median the week before.
The median was installed in 2014 to help pedestrian traffic and used to have a sign on it, marking it. That sign is now gone, and it’s only painted in the front, nothing reflective or anything. I took some pictures the day after the crashes, you can see lots of scratches on the front from people hitting it, both on the front and from in the middle where it’s cut as the crosswalk goes through.
I called 311 and they said it would be 70 days to fix, so I contacted ANC chair for the area Kent Boese. He emailed DDOT and DC Water, and DC Water said they’d make sure there weren’t clogged drains in the area, in case that was the cause of the low visibility.
DDOT did not respond to me or Boese, and hasn’t responded to me tweeting at them either. Councilmember Brianne Nadeau also said she had contacted DDOT.
In short, be careful out there.
