East Falls: Neighborhood Sees an Increase in Reckless Driving

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An increase in fatal accidents in East Falls has brought light to the issue of reckless driving in the area and has brought community members to action.

Earlier this year, there were three deaths in a single week, said Meg Greenfield, the first vice president of the East Falls Community Council and longtime East Falls resident.

In the last year alone, there have been six fatal accidents in the general area, according to statistics from the Philadelphia Police Department.

The community’s location is one of the major reasons why speeding and accidents have increased in the area. Many commuters come off the Schuylkill Expressway and cut through East Falls on Henry Avenue, Greenfield said. Ray Lucci, the chair of the East Falls Community Council’s Traffic

Committee, said that there is a high volume of traffic during rush hour and many drivers forego basic traffic laws.

The increase in traffic violations and fatal accidents led members of the Council to hold community meetings with local and state officials to try to get answers on what has become a major problem in the area. “We have given the city a detailed report on what we’d like them to do to shift traffic lanes and to increase the overall safety of the area,” Greenfield said.

Within the last six months the council has also added a “Crash of the Month”section to The Fallser Newspaper to raise people’s consciousness of the issue, Greenfield said.

“We want people to be more careful and to be a little bit angrier and get more involved. The more you see this, the more it begins to have an impact.

People start to realize that it could happen to them and that they need to be more careful with the way they’re driving,” Greenfield said.