The long sound of honking tells me that was another close call in our intersection this morning. We hear it almost every day. From what I understand, a traffic circle was installed at the intersection of Pleasant Valley Road and 32nd Avenue because of “a fair number of accidents at that intersection.” Well, if that’s what it takes, we should certainly have one at our intersection by now.
We’ve lived at the corner of 41st Street and 27th Avenue for 11 years now. We’ve witnessed at least 20 accidents since we bought the house, and too many close calls to count. They’re so numerous, we almost tune them out. Almost, except we can’t afford to. We have to be vigilant because the sounds of a close call are the only warning we get that a car might be entering our yard any second. It’s happened before. Car met truck and then crashed through the concrete posts the city installed in our fence after a car hit it a few months previously. This time, the car made it through and landed within a meter of our house, where our children had been playing less than a minute earlier.
We’ve seen a three-car pile-up. We’ve seen cars T-boned. We’ve seen injuries and bleeding. We’ve seen car versus bicycle. The driver was fine, from what we could see. The ambulance that took the rider away didn’t bother with lights or sirens. Not a good sign, from what I understand. The police at the scene would not tell me if he survived or not.
Longtime residents of the neighborhood recall when a girl was killed crossing the street here on her way home from school. We all remember far more accidents and horrible outcomes than we ought to, and we wonder what it will take for the city to address our concerns adequately.
The current solution is over-sized stop signs, which are clearly insufficient. We’ve been given concrete posts in our fence line which were supposed to stop cars. They didn’t. That car ploughed through like the posts were nothing.
We’ve now got the barriers used on highways, though we’ve been warned that with sufficient speed, they could cause a car to launch over our fence. We keep our fingers crossed that no one will pick up that kind of speed.
I laid in bed with the window open one night last summer, at about 2 a.m., and heard a car coming along 27th Avenue at high speed. Approaching the intersection, I expected to hear him decelerate, but he just kept picking up speed. I don’t know how fast he was going when he flew through the intersection crossing 41st Street, but I heard the sound muffle a bit just a couple of seconds later as he entered the winding section of road past 43rd Street. He was flying.
Those over-sized stop signs didn’t slow him down one bit. About ten seconds later a car came around the corner from 30th Avenue and passed by our house on 41st Street. Of course, the driver was oblivious to the fact that if he had arrived a few seconds earlier he could have been killed.
Surely the $80,000 price tag of installing a traffic circle is less than what’s been paid out in ICBC claims on accidents here in the past 10 years. It’s only a matter of time before another tragedy occurs at this intersection. What are we waiting for? Enough is enough.
Samantha Zaharia
Vernon
