Correction: This post originally misidentified the location of a high-tech crosswalk system. It's at New Jersey Avenue and M Street SE.

Last week a pedestrian was hit by a dump truck while crossing at First and M streets SE in the District. It’s a grim bit of irony that the woman works for the U.S. Department of Transportation, which has its headquarters right around the corner and just announced its plans for a distracted driving summit in September. Earlier this year, another DOT employee was hit by an auto and killed crossing the street at more or less the same location.

As transportation secretary Ray LaHood explained Friday on his FastLane blog (not to be confused with General Motors’ own FastLane blog), the feds met last week with D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier and D.C. Department of Transportation head Gabe Klein to discuss what can be done to make the streets safer at the Navy Yard. A few of the possibilities on the table: Adding radar speed trailers, increasing ped and auto ticketing, doing ped “training and education,” and prohibiting autos from turning right on red in the Navy Yard area. “I am really, really worried about our employees’ safety,” LaHood writes.

What’s most troubling about Navy Yard street safety is the fact that the city has already been throwing a lot of resources at it. Since Amy Polk was killed there in the spring, crossing guards have been stationed in the area often if not permanently. One of the city’s mobile speed cameras was stationed on M Street. As we noted in our jaywalking story earlier today, MPD officers were issuing warnings and citations to pedestrians for walking on red there well before last week’s accident. And it’s been at least a couple of years since the city installed one of its most expensive and aggressive crosswalk systems at M Street and New Jersey Avenue SE, including speakers that count off the seconds as you cross and shout at you to wait on red.

And yet two DOT workers have been hit there this year. Part of the problem, I think, is that a fairly major employment and commercial district has sprouted up in what was largely a fast-moving industrial thoroughfare. Dump trucks still rumble down M Street as people head to work or make their way to the Nats’ game. As Streetsblog New York City noted last month, such trucks make for the most dangerous category of automobiles in terms of ped and cyclist fatalities per miles driven. You might remember that cyclist Alice Swanson was killed by a large truck turning right near Dupont Circle.

Navy Yard residents have expressed discomfort crossing not just at First and M streets but at corners throughout the neighborhood. No turning on red seems like a good idea to us. So does a permanent speed camera. Whatever the city decides to do there — and we’ll be watching — it should be with the 20-ton trucks in mind.