Researchers to Study Hazardous Santa Ana Intersection

At the request of community activists, San Diego State University researchers have begun surveying an intersection near a Santa Ana elementary school to determine ways to reduce pedestrian accidents.

Residents have expressed concern about pedestrian safety at Hobart and Standard streets, and officials at Madison Elementary School have long pushed for a stoplight at the crossing. The intersection currently has a yellow warning light.

The study has just begun, but researchers say they have already identified some problems.

Santa Ana school crossing guards are overburdened with managing the high number of children crossing streets and directing traffic when parents drop their children off for school, said Sheila Sarkar, the director of the California Institute of Transportation Safety at San Diego State University.

“They’re more like traffic cops than crossing guards,” she said. “There’s a lot of confusion out there when parents drop off or pick up their children.”

A UC Irvine study recently found that Santa Ana had the highest pedestrian fatality rate in Southern California, and the third highest in the state.

The Santa Ana Unified School District found that 39 of the 72 people hit by cars in the first six months of 1998 were children walking within a quarter mile of school.