If you were injured or lost a loved one because a faulty traffic light told you it was okay to cross an intersection, would you be okay with it being left as it is? More than likely, you’d want the truth to come out and to receive compensation for your injuries and loss. In this case involving an incident in Colorado Springs that left a mother and her 10-year-old son dead, the lights involved won’t be changed.
The police have placed the incident under investigation to try to determine what exactly caused the accident. It’s been alleged that the traffic lights’ cycle was off, and that led to the 50-year-old woman diving her Ford Mustang into a Dodge pickup truck. As the woman passed through an intersection, she T-boned the other vehicle.
A preliminary review has shown that the lights weren’t working properly when the car accident took place, and that could leave the city liable for the tragic accident. The Colorado Springs’ senior traffic engineer did not discuss any further details about what might have happened to cause the lights to malfunction.
Since the accident, the lights have worked normally, the news reports. The cycles and functionality of the lights will not be changed, either, since they have been working correctly since the crash. She claims that until police complete the investigation, no one can say for sure if the lights were really the reason for the crash.
Currently, the lights are meant to work on a “rest on red” pattern, which means they are red until a car comes to the intersection. If the lights malfunctioned, it could mean that the lights were green in two directions at the time of the crash, but that hasn’t been confirmed.
Source: The Gazette, “Colorado Springs officials will not change lights after crash that killed mother, 10-year-old son” Andrea Sinclair, Aug. 12, 2014
