Courtesy of Jhan Setthachayanon

The Yale Traffic Safety Committee held a pedestrian safety and awareness campaign Tuesday morning at the College and Wall Street intersection. Committee members and volunteers marked key pedestrian areas at the intersection to promote pedestrian, bike and traffic safety. 

The committee — using crash heat maps — noticed many near misses at the intersection of College and Wall. Committee chair Kirsten Bechtel hopes that stenciling initiatives can reduce injuries, conflicts and fatalities by encouraging both pedestrians and drivers to be more cautious. 

“We want to get people to try to look all the way around before they cross,” Bechtel said. “Lots of people here, we just have been noticing, do stop and look and make sure the cars have stopped [after painting the stencil].”

The stencil design reads, “ALWAYS LOOK ALL WAYS.” The stencil was designed by Paloma Lenz ’26, who won the stencil contest through Yale College. The committee has previously stenciled her design near Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray colleges.

Committee member Jhan Setthachayanon ’26 added that they emphasize that pedestrian safety is not about victim blaming but about promoting mutual responsibility between pedestrians and drivers. Setthachayanon hopes that these stenciling initiatives can target dangerous intersections and invite students to raise awareness on pedestrian safety on campus. 

“It’s a dangerous combination of students jaywalking and cars disobeying traffic rules — a mutual bending of the laws enacted to keep both parties safe,” Jaeyee Jung ’27 who often walks through the College and Wall Street intersection said. “I can’t speak for drivers, but for us pedestrians, the inclination to jaywalk derives from convenience and perhaps a habit of living in a hurry.”

The Traffic Committee was established in 2011 after the death of a medical student on the medical campus in 2008. Since then, the committee has created mid-block crossings at Temple and Wall Street. 

For Setthachayanon, safety should be prioritized above all else. Setthachayanon added that both drivers and pedestrians should be paying attention to the roads. 

“Always look, always make eye contact with drivers,” Setthachayanon said. “Even though you might have the right of way, you always [need to be] cautious… Make sure that you prioritize your safety overall.”

Advocacy, pedestrian education campaigns and advising have been at the center of the committee’s work. 

The Traffic Committee wrote supportive legislation and testimony in favor of installing 19 speed safety and red light cameras in New Haven. 

“Hopefully next year, we’ll start seeing these red light cameras really make a difference in terms of changing driver behavior and stopping at red lights so that they don’t go through a red light when somebody’s trying to cross the street,” Bechtel said.

The committee plans on hosting more stenciling events in high crash detection areas. Stenciling relies heavily on the weather as the paint needs to dry in warmer temperatures. Bechtel hopes to host another stenciling event next week or in the spring. 

The committee meets around six times a year at the Office of Environmental Health and Safety, 135 College St.