Chicago set to Pay Family $3.25 Million for Traffic Accident

Four-year-old Maya Hirsch had been looking forward to a day at the zoo with her mother and brother for a while. Yet crossing towards the Lincoln Park Zoo, the family was stopped in their tracks when a vehicle hit them head on. The collision caused the death of little Maya and sent her mother and brother to the hospital. The driver of the vehicle was a 57-year-old motorist. He sped off after hitting the family, even as people yelled at him to stop. When apprehended by police, he argued that he hadn’t seen a stop sign or the crossing warnings on the street at the intersection.

Maya’s parents were devastated by her death, and sued the City of Chicago claiming that they did not have adequate traffic control markings in the intersection. They also said that some of the marks on the street had deteriorated because of neglect. The lack of attention to the traffic signs in the intersection, the alleged, caused the death of their precious daughter. The city statute for stop signs is 7-feet, but the stop sign in this intersection was only 5 feet high. In addition, the crosswalk had not been repainted in 6 years, so the markings were hard to distinguish from the street. In the investigation authorities also found that a no parking zone was placed too close to the stop sign so that cars parked there blocked it from certain angles.

All of these issues were fixed, but not until two days after Maya’s tragic death.The City Council Finance Committee recommended that the city pay the family for their loss. In Chicago last year, 32 pedestrians were killed and about 3,000 were injured in a vehicle-related accident on a city street. The city wants to try and reduce pedestrian fatalities to zero by 2020. If you were hurt in a pedestrian accident, or someone you love was injured, then talk to a personal injury attorney in your area to form a claim.