John Chambers speaks on 95th street and West End Avenue at a vigil Thursday for his wife Jean, who was killed by an SUV driver at that corner last week.
A crowd of at least 100 people gathered at the corner of 95th street and West End Avenue, spilling into the street where local resident Jean Chambers (pictured below) was hit by an SUV and killed on July 10.
“Because of our strong sense of community, you have come out tonight to remember Jean, not as a victim of an accident, but as your loving neighbor,” said her husband John Chambers, speaking with steady force as he recounted Jean’s life and called for action to make the neighborhood safer for pedestrians. (We’ve posted his full speech below.) Chambers was a graphic designer and the mother to an 18-year-old daughter, Maria.
Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal said that West End Avenue needs a full street redesign and that the city Department of Transportation has agreed to work with her on one. She’s planning a town hall meeting the week of July 28 (the exact date has not been finalized) to hear more from residents. The city has already banned left turns at 95th and West End on weekdays between 7 and 9 a.m. to protect school children at nearby PS 75. Next week, Rosenthal said, that intersection will also get a leading pedestrian interval, meaning pedestrians will get an 8-second head start before cars can go. Rosenthal also wants left turns to be banned at all times at the intersection and for a speed bump to be added.
“When it happened once it was a tragedy and we were sad. But this is an epidemic and it’s time to take our pain and turn it into an action plan,” Rosenthal said.
People have been pushing local leaders to make more drastic changes to local streets for years, however, and they’ve been slow to act on those recommendations. The intersection where Chambers was killed, for instance, was part of a street redesign plan first presented in 2008. Dana Lerner, the mother of 9-year-old Cooper Stock, who was killed at 97th and West End in January, said that the community board and Department of Transportation had been sitting on their hands for too long.
“Community Board 7 and the DOT over and over ignored suggestions as to how to make streets on the Upper West Side safer,” she said.
“What more needs to happen for you to be on our side? Please, I beg you, make this the last death.”
Rosenthal said she had a four-point plan to improve street safety: change street design, push for more legislation at the state level to punish bad drivers, add NYPD enforcement and education, and create a comprehensive public safety education plan. Rosenthal is inviting residents to add suggestions at the street safety page on her website.
John Chambers’ speech is below:
“Thank you for coming tonight.
My name is John Chambers. My wife Jean died at this corner a week ago today.
Jean was born in Bay Ridge Brooklyn in 1953. She graduated with a degree in fashion illustration from The Fashion Institute of Technology and later with a B.A. in English from Hunter College. She lived on the West Side for nearly 40 years. First at a fourth floor walk up on 84th street. Then in a ground floor apartment on West End Avenue. And, since 1984, at the Cliff Dwelling apartment building a block from here, where we moved when we were engaged.
Before devoting all of her energy to taking care of me, our daughter Maria, and our two dogs, Jean was a graphic artist. Her last employer was the New York Times.
Jean touched many lives. Many of you here knew her. Many of you are dog owners too and chatted with Jean during the morning romp before 9 a.m. in Riverside Park. Many of you are neighbors, who have been in our home, or been part of the familiar urban fabric. Many of you are fellow parishioners at Saint Michael’s Church at 99th street, where we’ve gone since just before Maria was baptized in 1996. You knew Jean as a kind, gentle woman, of grace and beauty, with affection for all her friends.
Although I come from Kansas, I’ve lived on the West Side almost as long as Jean had. Coming from Kansas, I know something of small towns. Robert Benchley wrote a story for the New Yorker in the 1930s saying that New York is a series of contiguous small towns, which we call neighborhoods. Once you get settled in to a neighborhood, you tend not to venture out that much. After a while, you get to know people. Maybe not by name but you know they are a local, whether it’s the lady who cleans your shirts, or the clerk who sells you hardware, or the redeemer who picks out plastic bottles from the trash cans. Because we share common space — in our parks, on our sidewalks, in our neighborhood shops — we have a strong sense of community. It fosters social trust. It makes people care for each other. It means that people who may live alone don’t feel alone because they have a regular personal relationship with their neighbors.
Because of our strong sense of community, you have come out tonight to remember Jean, not as a victim of an accident, but as your loving neighbor. You have also come to voice your support for measures that can prevent more pedestrian accidents.
These measures start with us. They entail not talking on a cell phone or texting while driving. They entail not speeding. They entail having a general idea of where you are driving or — if you don’t — consulting the GPS or map before you take off. They entail slowing down at the intersection instead of speeding up to try to catch the light.
There are also civic measures we can take. Councilwoman Rosenthal has put forward several sensible proposals, which she will explain. Jean, Maria, and I would like to see them enacted.
I would like to close with a few words of thanks. We don’t often think of the many public employees and private individuals who respond in an emergency until there is one. Many of these people I don’t know by name: the individual who alerted the driver to my wife being dragged under his SUV or the person who called 911 for example. I do know the names of the EMS medics: Raul Dawson and Rafael Lopez; the trauma surgery team who fought to save Jean’s life at Saint Luke’s Hospital: Doctors Jordan Sasson, Zeah Venitelli, John Danks, Jonathan Price, Amy Liang, Sanaja Vig. The staff psychologists who were with me when I was told of her death and saw her body: Deborah Travis and Abbe Frank. The Emergency Department team: Doctors Dan Wiener, Antoinette Golden, and Aaron Drake and Nurses Mary Swett, Sheryl Ostroff, Siobahn Frey, Bao Nguyen. The detectives who reviewed this scene: Michael Sharpe and Officers Diente and Zucconi. Carolyn and the folks at the New York Organ Donor Network, who harvested Jean’s corneas so that someone else could see. I would also like to thank Councilwoman Rosenthal and her staff who organized this vigil and have made concrete proposals to make our streets safer. Finally, I’d like to thank all of our friends, many here tonight, who have supported Maria and me with their love in this, the most difficult time in our lives.”
It all starts with aggressive prosecutions of reckless drivers who kill.
I agree.
I agree, Scott. That video was quite revealing and shocking. As a community, we need to bring more awareness as to why no charges have been made.May the Chambers family and friends be at peace.
The intersections that seem to work the best, and are the safest, are those with 4 way stoplights (like on 79th and Broadway), where all pedestrians can cross at the same time, and ALL cars are stopped while that is happening.
That is a tough intersections since many cars have just come off the West Side Highway and so are used to driving faster than they would be if they were on city streets. That block has at least 1 speed bump to slow down cars. Perhaps a deterring speed bump right at the intersection with WEA would help prevent another tragedy.
However, since this horrid event, as a driver in Manhattan, I have noticed many many pedestrians crossing the streets with ipod earbuds in their ears, either talking on their phones or listening to music. They are crossing the street when it shows there are 5 seconds left to cross (which is not possibly enough time for a pedestrian to cross 4 lanes), paying no attention to cars around them. This happens all the time on WEA as well as other streets on the UWS. In Driver courses on safety and education (required in order to maintain your safe driver insurance rates or reduce points on your license), they continually emphasize defensive and aware driving. The same should be practiced by pedestrians in a large city. Pedestrians would benefit from having to sit through some of these videos that I have sat through for many hours. Or maybe NYC should start airing PSA announcements targeted to pedestrians.
After all the hooplah around lowering the speed limit, it looks like this event had nothing to do with the driver exceeding the speed limit.
Some people have more arrogance than is conceivable. Why on earth is anyone who lives in Manhattan driving around like a jerk and telling people what to do!
There should be a ban on cars in the City. No reason on earth to add to the congestion and air pollution. Go and live back in the suburbs.
I knew ut wouldn’t take long before the victim blaming folks would begin commenting. This woman had the right of way, so please take the uninformed views elsewhere.
PS The speed limit legislation doesn’t go into effect until the fall. Strike 2 on the ignorance.
this from wendy is more blame the victim nonsense. if you are talking on the phone or talking to a person while crossing the street, whats the difference. This accident was clearly caused by the driver, who rushed to make a light and made a sharp turn, clearly illegal as he would have had to come in the downtown WEA lane before merging into the uptown lane. if he had done what he was supposed, make sure no one was in the crosswalk or about the enter, and not speed to make the light, and make your turn only after entering the intersection, this wouldn’t have happened. This is walking city wendy and if people are allowed to listen to music. It is not a right to drive a car in a congested urban setting. if people crossing streets not to your like bother you so much, you should not be driving.
Wendy that’s the most absurd thing I ever heard. YOU choose to drive your car in a dense urban area with millions of pedestrians, and THEY should sit through training sessions to cater to you?!
80% of Manhattenites don’t have cars. A huge percent of them moved here so they can live car-free, or because having a car is unimportant to them. You driving is a privilege, not a right, and they shouldn’t stuff the consequences for it.
And no, I don’t agree that someone who uses a phone or commits a minor offense like jaywalking deserves to get hit by car. Stop the justifications! What we actually have here is someone who KILLED another human being while BREAKING THE LAW, yet he’ll walk free!
I attended this street memorial service/rally, which was on my block.
John Chambers’s speech was truly remarkable. he succeeded in giving us a vivid portrait of his wife and also in capturing what, traditionally, has been so wonderful about the UWS. I hope he knows how much that speech meant to the people there, and the people who will read it here. Thank you Mr. Chambers.
We also heard from a number of pedestrian and bicycle activists — “safe street” activists.
New Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal deserves praise and thanks. She is getting out in front on this and other issues of importance to the community. She is doing a great job, following in the big footsteps of Gale Brewer.
New 24th Precinct commander Capt Marlon Larin was there, talking to everyone he could. He is another community leader who is getting out to fast start and doing a great job. he is dedicated to working with the community.
We need to say a good thing or two about some of our community leaders every now and then. They don’t deserve to hear b**ching ALL the time.
Before congratulating Captain Larin on a great job, please have a look at the moving violations last month for his precinct https://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/traffic_data/024sum.pdf
There were only 47 given to drivers who failed to yield to pedestrians, and only ONE for speeding for the entire month. These are the two deadliest moving violations in NYC, yet he couldn’t give even 2 summonses a day??
I don’t have the knowledge nor arrogance to advise Captain Larin on how to do his job. What i do know is that his community outreach is superb. Community outreach leads to good community policing.
I’m not sure what he’s doing is *really* community policing. Capt. Larin and Councilmember Rosenthal are very keen to show up at rallies or meet with interest groups, but neither have a great track record of engaging directly with residents outside of that context.
You can find many, many recent examples of constituents complaining on these pages about a lack of response to emails, letters or calls. Most UWSers do not have the time to go to rallies, fundraisers or town halls, and should not be ignored just because they have robust lives.
Gale Brewer was far from perfect, but she absolutely made an effort to respond to constituents quickly.
Suuuure Bruce – a political conspiracy is the most likely explanation for the comments that your neighbors are making.
You are conflating things. I have noticed no complaints on this Board about Larin or Precinct 24 not being responsive. (I’m sure some anonymous troller will now post a complaint… ) There have been complaints about Rosenthal’s office but i am skeptical that these might be politically motivated.
I knew Jean, not well… but I remember after 9/11 she said she waited hours for her husband to come home. She feared the worst because he worked way downtown. He walked all the way and she was so happy he survived.
Now he and their child have lost her. She was a lovely woman.
Here’s the video -the driver obviously was at
fault. She had the walk sign. http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/25994192/woman-killed-near-intersection-where-boy-was-struck-down
I agree with Wendy. In general, pedestrians need to be more alert and aware. I’ve seen so many people almost get hit on the corners because they choose to stand in the street.
I’m so sorry for the loss of another person because of an auto. I grew up on 88th street & Broadway. I used to see accidents too many times. Now I live on Staten Island and we have our share of accidents here too. Not enough people pay attention while driving.
Again, so very sorry this happened…again.
This morning at 8 am, saw large SUV turning left from 95th St to WEA despite two big signs saying no left turn. There needs to be enforcement.
The traffic laws don’t apply to large SUVs, didn’t you know?
Despite the whole argument a few people here use about pedestrians being careless about walking, the only deaths I’ve heard about on the UWS were about people who WERE obeying the laws. This could be have been prevented if drivers would be patient and perhaps remember that saving their time is not as important as a person’s life. If you have to get somewhere, plan ahead. Leave early as everyone knows traffic in the city is horrendous.
I’m a super cautious walker, actually, I’m more of a paranoid walker, and even then, I’ve had close encounters of cars almost hitting me because they turn so quickly. Pedestrians can only do so much – we are far more vulnerable than a driver who is protected by a hunk of metal. And, let me also point out, when I’ve seen drivers who wait patiently for a pedestrian to pass, there’s always (and I mean always!) one driver who beeps their horn even though it’s obvious a person is crossing.