2nd deadly pedestrian crash on Wayne road prompts calls for change

There are calls for change after a woman and child were struck by a car on Valley Road in Wayne.
The woman died and the child is in the hospital with serious injuries. It is the second deadly incident in the area this week.
The accident happened around 7 p.m. Tuesday near Valley Road and Birchwood Terrace. The driver stayed at the scene. There isn’t a crosswalk at the intersection.
"They're in place for a reason and the areas that do not have crosswalks, there's a reason they're not there,” says Wayne Police Capt. Laurence Martin. “There's nothing to control the flow of traffic."
A 78-year-old woman was struck and killed about a mile away from the accident scene. Rosa Nikhamina died on Valley Road Monday afternoon.
Wayne resident Nick Lanni says that he was hit by a car at the intersection of Valley Road and Macdonald Drive last year as a car was pulling out of the shopping center.
"I was lucky, because he just bumped into me,” Lanni says. “I got knocked down but if I was out on the street, I don't think I'd be here."
Valley Road is a 40 mph zone but Lanni says he has seen cars go much faster.  The intersection does have a crosswalk but Lanni says he often sees drivers accelerate as soon as the light changes, regardless of pedestrians.
Valley Road is a county road so any safety measure would have to go through Passaic County. But Wayne police say that they have put extra patrols in high-priority areas.
There were 500 pedestrian deaths in New Jersey between 2014 and 2016, according to a state Highway Safety Association report. The report found that 26 percent of those deaths happened at intersections. The study did see a drop of cases between 2017 and 2016.