Residents of London’s Old South have petitioned the city of Ontario to install a four-way stop at a two-way intersection, which they say is dangerous.
Homeless mother Ashley Culbert has lived on the corner of Duchess Avenue and Edward Street for more than a year. During this time, she saw a number of close gaps and created an online petition after witnessing a recent clash.
“I was at home and I was kind of an unofficial first person in charge,” Culbert said. “There was a woman who was injured and needed medical help, but it just scared me because I was in front the day before, watering the flowers with my children. And if that had happened when we were there, they would have been really bad. ”
The area is usually lively as young families and children go to and from school. Edward Street is also on the bus route.
Culbert said the intersection is often confused with stopping all the way, which causes pedestrians and drivers to communicate incorrectly. Every day she hears sounds of brakes and horns.
Culbert’s petition received more than 200 signatures in 24 hours, along with personal stories reflecting her own experience.
“With three young children, I want to be able to stay in my front yard and feel safe, and that’s just not the case,” she said.
John Balch and his wife have been advocating for the intersection to be four-way since 1998, when their 12-year-old son was nearly killed by a car.
The boy was returning home from a friend’s house when he was hit by a delivery car heading west on Duchess Avenue, throwing him 30 feet (9 meters). He was in a coma that night and passed away with a severe brain injury.
“It seems incredible that this safety threat has never been rectified,” Balch said. “A good part of that is that the neighborhood is full of four-way stops, but not here. Drivers really look puzzled by that … the city needs to get rid of the uncertainty.”
Traffic data is too late to justify a change: city
To support the petition, Culbert is in contact with the city on the issue and is in the process of collecting statistics on the number of incidents over the past few years.
Shane Maguire, manager of the London Traffic Engineering Department, said current traffic data and collision data do not support the installation of a stop all the way.
However, the city will conduct a new traffic survey, as the last one was conducted in October 2020, when the volume of traffic was low.
Meanwhile, the city will put up signs reminding drivers that cross traffic does not stop and reduces the speed limit in local residential areas from 50 to 40 km / h.
“Our processes are based on data, not anecdotal reports,” Maguire said. “That’s really the only way we can look at an intersection and compare it to other similar intersections.”
But even if the data can say that the number of actual collisions is small, the constant sound of squeaking brakes and horns tells a different story, Balch said.
“It’s just a combination of the speed that Duchess goes down and the people who think it’s a four-way stop,” Balch said.
“If they just look for the number of accidents there, they may not get the number they’re looking for. But any resident who lives around can tell you that this is a constant incident waiting to happen.
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