Driving

Anybody who gets a parking ticket in Boston today, tomorrow or Saturday can pay for it with a toy, specifically, "a non-violent, unwrapped toy of equal or greater value than the ticket fine."

Sorry, hydrant parkers and handicap-space violators, the city's annual Toys for Tickets program excludes you, as well as people caught double-parking or in crosswalks or fire lanes.

MassDOT reports it's opening the remaining fourth-lane sections of 128, er, 93/95/1/Hut!, between Randolph and Westwood this week. Schedule of segment openings. Important note:

With the opening of the new fourth travel lane, the authorized use of the breakdown lane for travel during weekday peak commuting periods will be discontinued to enhance driver safety and provide emergency vehicle access.

In other words, from now on, the breakdown lane is only for breaking down in.

Although maybe it helps when you say you're from the Boston Transportation Department. In any case, somebody complained about somebody else saving a space on Henchman Street in the North End with a traffic cone. A city minion marked the case closed tonight:

[T]old resident to remove cone and did.

Arturo Gossage spotted this colorful bird on a mostly empty Boylston Street on Thanksgiving.

Copyright Arturo Gossage. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

A box truck being carried on a flatbed truck hit the ceiling of the O'Neill Tunnel southbound around 9:30 a.m., causing some damage to wired in the ceiling, State Police report. The trucks were out of there and the damaged wires removed. Traffic impact was minimal, State Police say.

About an hour later, Mike Moura reports, a truck got stuck in a more traditional spot on Storrow Drive eastbound, just before the BU Bridge.

The Globe reports on a crash around 1:15 a.m. at Mass. Ave. and Haviland Street.

No doubt the driver of this $40,000 Lexus, spotted on VFW Parkway in West Roxbury the other day, had some old shmatte on.

In response to a citizen complaint about sheer chaos on the road, the city reports it's looking at installing traffic signals at Milton Street and Hyde Park Avenue just north of Readville station - an intersection that has it all: Hills, curves and, of course, Massholes.

Playing the role of Rte. 24 today is Rte. 3, which State Police advise ground to a near halt shortly before noon due to an apparently unrelated trio of incidents:

A rollover northbound near Derby Street sent two people to the hospital. Ten minutes later, a couch on top of a vehicle fell off on the southbound side of the same stretch of road, which forced a driver to swerve to avoid the sudden menace, only the car then rolled over as well, sending two more people to the hospital, with minor injuries.

Not long after, a car hit a deer on the northbound side by Exit 13 in Hanover. State Police add:

The deer ran off into the woods after causing damage to the vehicle.

Motorists are no doubt being advised to be alert for incoming meteors and newly erupting volcanoes.

UPDATE: No meteors yet, but there was a dishwasher.

The Globe reports.

Boston Police today identified the BU student who died on Brighton Avenue on Monday as Chung-Wei Yang, 21.

Police add:

Preliminary investigation suggests an MBTA bus did come in contact with the victim. There is no indication that the driver or any of the passengers on the bus knew anyone was struck. At this time, no charges have been filed.

Wellesley Police posted this video, showing an alleged drunk driver bursting out of the Whole Foods parking lot onto State Street (around 1:00) Friday morning. WCVB reports the driver is an ER doctor at Newton-Wellesley Hospital and that the driver of the car she hit was taken to the hospital with two cracked ribs.

The Daily Free Press updates us on the condition of Brenda Wynne, the Stingray Body Art co-owner seriously injured by a hit-and-run driver on Comm. Ave. in Brighton on Oct. 31. Benefits being planned for her in January at the Brighton Music Hall and she hopes to be out of Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital to attend. Still no sign of the coward who hit her, though.

A terrified citizen reports four-wheeled hooligans have taken to flattening the signs that tell them to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks on A Street:

The pedestrian crossing sign has been destroyed again. The speed people drive down this road is crazy, when do we get a 4 way stop?

At 7:20 a.m., jegerentwit tweets from the Allston war zone (where police will be asking "papers, please" for anybody claiming to live there):

Scores of tow trucks on Comm toward BC. Anyone towed from Comm Av should consider suing Aerosmith & naming Boston.

Dan Walker, who lives right there and doesn't understand the angst, responds:

It's posted all over the street and BPD left flyers on the cars parked on comm on Friday. It's your own fault if you got towed.

Police are looking for the driver of a white SUV that hit Brenda Wynne around 4 p.m. yesterday on Commonwealth Ave. near its intersection with Kelton and Warren streets.

Friends say Wynne, who owns Stingray Body Art, had her pelvic bone broken in three places, as well as her nose and leg. She also suffered a large gash in her forehead from where she hit the SUV's windshield - which is now cracked.

Wynne was already battling kidney disease. One friend says:

Brenda is the most positive happy person in the world and with her current health issues and being unable to work anymore this is just so damn tragic.

Friends are asking anybody who may have seen the collision to contact Boston Police. You can contact the anonymous tip line by calling 800-494-TIPS or texting TIP to CRIME (27463).

On Oct. 19, an out-of-control SUV crashed into Stingray.

Nichole Davis explains that the reason traffic downtown is at a complete standstill is because a water main at Sudbury and Congress decided the afternoon rush hour would be a good time to rupture.

UPDATE: Flaming Jeep Cherokee in O'Neill Tunnel.

The Jamaica Plain Gazette reports that Bridging Forest Hills, which unsuccessfully tried to get the state to replace the crumbling Casey Overpass with a new overpass instead of surface roads, hasn't given up its fight and is now trying to get Mayor Menino to help it convince MassDOT to change its mind. Menino had previously spoken against replacing the overpass with surface roads.

The state shut Morrissey Boulevard between UMass and Freeport Street around 11:15 a.m.

A police officer from Hyde Park will face charges in Suffolk Superior Court for a May 24 crash at Austin and West streets that broke a Hyde Park woman's leg and fractured one of her vertebrae, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Hyde Square crash.

Hugh Gilmore photographed this crash outside Fat Ram's Pumpkin tattoo parlor in Hyde Square in Jamaica Plain about 1 a.m. that left a pickup flipped, a light pole snapped and the driver of a small sedan taken away in an ambulance.

Jamaica Plain Patch has more.

Earlier:
Allston shop gets tattoed by out-of-control SUV.

Matt Laskowski looked out his window this morning at a monsoon along Comm. Ave. in Allston. He reports:

Adam Femino posted this video of an SUV whose driver seems to lose control when trying to beat a camper to the turn at Harvard and Cambridge this afternoon and so plows into the front of Stingray BodyArt. Then watch as the camper serenely glides by.

Via Amy.

A roving UHub photographer forwards this shot of the remains of a car involved in a crash in the 400 block of Hyde Park Avenue in Roslindale - about the same time as emergency crews were responding to a body on the train tracks behind Hyde Park Avenue a few blocks to the south.

Expressway scene. Photo by Dan Nadworny.

Boston and State Police are swarming the area from Boston Medical Center to Freeport Street in Dorchester, looking for evidence in a shooting spree that left one man dead and that ended with arrests after a chase down the Expressway.

The incident began shortly after 6:45, when three men started firing away where Mass. Ave., Melnea Cass Boulevard and Southampton Street come together. Boston Police report he was rushed to nearby Boston Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.