A Somerville man struck and seriously injured a woman riding her bicycle across Gerry's Landing Road in West Cambridge on Tuesday evening.
According to a press release from the Massachusetts State Police, the crash occurred around 6 p.m. Tuesday evening. A preliminary investigation suggests that the driver, a 75 year-old man from Somerville, was driving north in the left lane when he drove his Volkswagen Golf into his victim, who was crossing Gerry's Landing Road in a marked crosswalk.
Police have identified the victim only as a 57-year-old Watertown woman. City of Cambridge EMTs transported her to Beth Israel Hospital, and police described her injuries as "serious."
The crash remains under investigation by Cambridge and state police.
Gerry's Landing Road is under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), the state parks agency.
During the Covid pandemic, DCR constructed some modest crosswalk improvements to the intersection of Mount Auburn Street and Gerry's Landing Road, where the crash occurred.
That project eliminated one of the three eastbound traffic lanes on Gerry's Landing Road to create a curb extension and reduce the width of the pedestrian crossing.
But even with one less lane for cars, the crossing of Gerry's Landing Road remains unusually wide, with 6 lanes of high-speed traffic.
According to MassDOT crash data, the intersection of Fresh Pond Parkway, Mount Auburn Street, and Gerrys Landing Road has seen 41 crashes since 2017; of those, 15 crashes resulted in a reported injury.
The crosswalk improvements that DCR installed during the pandemic appear to have had no effect on crash rates.
Including Tuesday's incident, there have been 6 reported crashes at this intersection to date in 2023. Two-thirds of those crashes resulted in a reported injury.
In 2018 and in 2019, the same intersection saw 5 and 6 crashes, respectively, with only one injury-causing crash recorded for each year.
