Can You See This Pedestrian Sign?

A roadside memorial for a small dog killed in a traffic accident last week is visible to motorists headed eastbound on Fourth Street at the G Street intersection.

The pedestrian warning that hovers above the memorial, however, is completely obscured by untrimmed trees.

And Janice Sterling believes that if that sign were visible, Arlo would still be alive.

“Absolutely,” she said. “I definitely would help.”

 It was about 8 p.m. on Saturday when she was walking in the crosswalk with Arlo leashed that a motorist who said he didn’t see either Sterling or her dog came barreling through the intersection, crushing the small dog to death.

Sterling said she was wearing a bright yellow parka.

“He immediately stopped,” Sterling said, telling her “ ’I took my eyes the road for a second and I didn’t see either of you.’

“He wasn’t texting, he hadn’t been drinking,” Sterling said.

The 8-year-old Portuguese water dog terrier mix had become a close companion to Sterling, providing some comfort recent months since her mother’s death.

“He was part of our family,” she said.

“Several merchants gave him cookies and left water bowls (for Arlo. He just had a little spirit about him that drew people in. He was my buddy.”

An extended community of neighbors and merchants are doing what they can to console Sterling, contributing flowers to the roadside memorial and calling for awareness of an intersection that they say is getting busier and more dangerous. 

The recent opening of a Yoga studio on Fourth and G streets has drawn more street traffic, and a proposed 10-unit building on G Street between Fourth and Fifth streets would increase congestion, neighbors say.

Sterling says she’s not calling for a traffic light or a stop sign at the intersection, just that the trees covering the pedestrian warning sign be trimmed and that motorists go through the intersection with caution.

Susan Zelinsky, Sterling’s landlord, has joined her in that call.

“There’s children that live here, it could’ve been a child,” said Zelinsky said.

“Everyone has to pay more attention when they’re driving. Everyone’s guilty of looking down, looking this way or looking that way or changing the radio or whatever was going on.”

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