Another pedestrian victim of nightmare on King Street
By Catherine E. Toth
Advertiser Staff Writer
Ying Chun Tam walked to the bus stop in Kalihi on North King Street almost every morning for the past 13 years. Always the same route, always in the crosswalk.
Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser
On Christmas Eve, her family got a call saying she was hit by a car while walking to the bus stop down the street from where they lived and she became another sad statistic: the fourth pedestrian older than 60 killed on North King in a year's time.
Chinatown and downtown Honolulu have some of the most dangerous intersections for pedestrians, including this one at Kekaulike and North King streets.
Tam was also O'ahu's 67th traffic fatality of 2002, the 26th involving a pedestrian, surpassing the 24 that occurred during 2001.
"I still can't believe it," said her youngest daughter, Kitty Mak, 21, a nursing student at the University of Hawai'i. "You don't think things like this happen to your mom."
According to police, the 63-year-old mother of three daughters was hit by a car early Dec. 24 at North King Street and Richard Lane. She died the following morning.
City officials say the stretch of North King Street from Richard Lane to Peterson Lane where she was killed — with its constant flow of traffic, illegally parked cars, unmarked crosswalks and bus stop — can be a pedestrian's nightmare.
"It's a very dynamic area, there's no question about it," said Cheryl Soon, city director of transportation services. "That should be a tip-off for people to drive very slowly. People should expect the unexpected."
On an average weekday, about 23,000 vehicles travel through the Kalihi stretch of North King Street. Some 23,000 more go through Kapalama.
King Street is also a major bus route, with about 450 buses using the roadway every day.
Dozens of businesses, schools and apartment buildings line the entirety of King Street, which stretches from Mapunapuna through Kalihi and downtown to Mo'ili'ili.
"It's a very active street for pedestrians, businesses, for people going there or through there," Soon said. "There's a lot going on."
Tam was struck near the intersection fronting Richard Lane, where she lived in an apartment with her husband and three daughters. There's a crosswalk that leads directly to the bus stop, but no traffic signal. The closest traffic light is a street down the block on the corner of North King Street and Gulick Avenue.
Ying Chun Tam "was the perfect mom," said her youngest daughter, Kitty Mak.
Even without a traffic signal, many people cross the street there to get to the bus stop, said Oso Paisa, resident manager at 1260 Richard Lane, where Tam lived. He said many seniors will use that crosswalk to catch the bus to Chinatown or Ala Moana Center.
"They go out early in the morning and that's traffic time," Paisa said. "They get hit or almost get hit or scream at the drivers. There's a lot of commotion out there."
Tam's family doesn't know how she died yet; they're still waiting for police reports.
But they do know that she was hit hard enough to cause neurological damage, so much that by the time the family arrived at The Queen's Medical Center two hours later, she was unconscious and her brain wasn't functioning.
"It was hard to see," Mak said quietly.
The family spent Christmas Eve and morning at the hospital, waiting, hopeful.
"It was never easy the whole time," Mak said. "There was no celebration."
Of those pedestrians who died in traffic collisions in 2002, about three-quarters were 65 or older, said Maj. Bryan Wauke of Honolulu Police Department's Traffic Division.
"They may not survive an accident as easily as someone younger," Wauke said. "They're not as resilient."
The high percentage of seniors who have died in pedestrian-related traffic accidents has prompted both HPD and the city to look at improving and strengthening efforts to educate the senior community about traffic and pedestrian safety.
"We've seen that seniors are the ones who need to be spoken to," Wauke said. "But that doesn't mean they're the only ones who need to be educated."
This month, "Drive Akamai," the city-sponsored awareness and anti-road rage program run, will focus on pedestrian safety for seniors.
"We're not trying to blame anybody," Soon said. "We're just asking people to pay attention, walk safely, drive safely, share the roads."
Though the city has always urged pedestrians to be alert and visible to drivers, the recent increase in pedestrian fatalities has spurred officials to look more carefully at ways to improve communication to the community.
Last year the city published its safety brochure in four different languages — Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog and Vietnamese — to target particular ethnic groups.
And it has been looking more closely at King Street since the deaths of three senior citizens last year at the intersection of North King Street and Peterson Lane in Palama.
All three were in the crosswalk.
The city installed a traffic signal light there in January 2001.
"It's much safer now," said Ping Chang, whose family owns Family Market, a small mom-and-pop store at 930 N. King St., right at the intersection.
But it's not just the Kalihi and Palama stretches of North King Street that pose a dangerous scenario for pedestrians.
Recently, a 78-year-old woman was struck by a car in Chinatown on North King Street near Kekaulike Street at 8:45 a.m.
The bustling part of Chinatown is home to pho and chop suey restaurants, jewelry shops and grocery stores selling bags of ginger, eggplant and bananas. Trucks unload their goods right on the sidewalks, parked in between illegally parked cars.
This is where Tam used to catch the bus every morning to buy groceries for her family. Though she worked full time as a packager at a local wholesale company, she made a five-course dinner every night. Mak said she will especially miss her mother's dumplings and sweet potato soup.
"She was the perfect mom," Mak said.
Tam was supposed to visit China next month with her husband, Ming Yu Mak, for Chinese New Year's. Instead her family will spend the next few months organizing her belongings and figuring out what to do without her.
"I guess it's fate," Mak said. "But we're doing OK. We're trying to move on. We can't change anything, but we're trying to make the best of it."
Reach Catherine E. Toth at 535-8103 or ctoth@honoluluadvertiser.com.
