A pedestrian was left in critical condition late Thursday night after a white sedan struck her while turning in Bronzeville, police said. The crash happened around 11:10 p.m. in the 4700 block of South Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, leaving the victim hospitalized as investigators sorted out what went wrong at the intersection.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, citing Chicago police, the driver was a 40-year-old man who was turning south on King Drive when his sedan struck the woman. She was rushed to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where she remained in critical condition, per the same account.
Driver Cited on Multiple Counts
Police did not report an arrest, but the station's report notes the motorist was hit with several citations at the scene. Those included failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident, failure to exercise due care and operating an uninsured motor vehicle, according to police.
No further details were released about the pedestrian's identity or her condition since the crash, and it remains unclear whether additional charges could follow.
A Familiar Pattern on Chicago Streets
The crash adds to a grim tally for Chicago, where the city logged 109 traffic deaths in 2024 alone, including 38 pedestrians and two cyclists, according to a separate Chicago Sun-Times report on the city's stalled Vision Zero goals. The city had pledged a decade ago to eliminate traffic deaths by 2026, a target that report found the city is nowhere near reaching.
Turning vehicles striking pedestrians is not a new problem for Chicago streets. In a 2021 crash in North Lawndale, a speeding driver struck and killed a 14-year-old and critically injured a 12-year-old; police ticketed that driver for failure to reduce speed and failure to yield to a pedestrian, according to Streetsblog Chicago.
The City of Chicago maintains ongoing efforts aimed at curbing these kinds of collisions, including left-turn traffic calming measures designed to encourage safer turning behavior at intersections, according to the City of Chicago's traffic safety resources. The city also publishes monthly fatal crash data and an annual traffic crashes report tracking patterns like the one seen on King Drive.
