I live on a small residential dead-end street. It is barely wide enough to accommodate two vehicles passing each other. At the end of the street there is a high school. There are only four properties on one side and six on the other. Heck, the street doesn’t even have sidewalks! Now, one should think it would be a safe place to live and that children would be able to play outside in the street. Think again!

Since we moved here over twelve years ago, on and off we’ve been having problems with people speeding up and down the street. On weekends when there are ball games at the high school, people will park along the street on both sides which narrows the street down to one lane. And even under these conditions people still speed up and down that street! After several calls to the City we finally got 25 mph speed limit signs.

Over the past few months another problem has materialized.  Apparently, now some teenagers and young adults started to consider this street to be their personal race track!  I have seen them coming down in cars and on motorcycles with speeds a lot higher than the posted 25 mph.

When I got home this afternoon, there were police cars, a fire truck, and an ambulance in the street, in front of my neighbor’s house. And a man laying on the side of the street! First I thought maybe a heart attack or something, but that just didn’t feel right.  After talking to my neighbor Chris, I found out that the thing that the neighborhood was worried about, finally happened! Two cars (neither of them had license plates!) were speeding down the road. The neighbor, trying to slow them down, threw a big piece of wood in the street when they turned around at the end of the street and came back. Instead of slowing down, they went around the wood – one on the right and the other on the left! The vehicle on the left hit the neighbor’s friend which was standing next to the street on private property. He was thrown on the hood of the speeding car (just like in the movies according to Chris!) and then fell off when the vehicle swerved back into the street. Neither of the cars even bothered to slow down much less stop! We don’t know yet the extent of the injuries the friend sustained, but he was taken to the hospital by the ambulance. So, when exactly did this street become a race track?

Chris was extremely upset. Not only did his friend get seriously injured, but it could have been his six-year old daughter or any of the other neighborhood kids! We (Chris, myself, and hopefully the rest of the neighborhood) are now petitioning the City to install some sort of traffic calming measure, like warning signs or speed bumps. Personally, I don’t think the warning signs will do any good since apparently the 25 mph speed limit sign isn’t slowing anybody down! But getting the City to install speed bumps is going to be an uphill battle!  Chris said if the City won’t install any, he’ll pour concrete on the street and create his own speed bump!

More on this after our battle with the City!