So with most of the widening of Rt. 113 completed, folks in the southern end of the county discovered the new crossover at routes 12 and 113 was suddenly much less safe than it was before dualization....hmmm .... So let's see here, the very plan that Bobby Hulburd and his group fought so hard, in the name of traffic safety, to be built has actually made the road less safe. And now, some are proposing a traffic light as a short-term fix, and a freaking overpass in the longer term. Sadly, those proposals may turn out to be the only solutions.
Nevertheless, I can't help but recall a conversation with Bob, several years ago, wherein I asked about the necessity of spending $100 million to dualize 113, especially since I had driven the road many times at 70-some miles per hour, and had nothing untoward happen. For his part, Bob recounted the 70 lives that had been lost in the previous 20 years as evidence the road needed to be expanded. And among those lives lost was a family member- a nephew, perhaps. And so I asked him for the details of that accident and others on the road, and in the telling of those incidents it became clear that every one was a direct result of driver error. SOme crossed the double-yellow line through inattention, others just absolutely had to be where they we going right now, and at least one was so foolish he backed his car out of his driveway onto the road and got hammered. But when I asked if the $100 million might be better spent on actually teaching people how to drive defensively, Bob got rather huffy, took umbrage, and abruptly ended the conversation.
So now, we are where we are; with a very expensive road that is less safe than it was before it was fixed, and my insurance rates here are still higher that they were when I lived in the DC metro area.
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5 comments:
Dear Mr. G.A. Harrison or David Suznavick:
Unfortunately there are too many fools like you driving at 70 m.p.h. on 113 so when somebody crosses the center line in your direction, there is too little time to "drive defensively." You have but a few seconds, or less, to stare death in the face. The death rate on 113 is above the national average. Because there are some apparent design flaws with one intersection does not make the entire highway more dangerous than it was before. Believe it or not, there has not been a single head on collision within the newly dualized areas. I hope that neither you nor none of your close friends or family are ever on their side of the solid yellow line when some idiot commits driver's error and slams into them head on.
Maybe we could designate you God and let you solve all of the problems in the county. Or, better yet, maybe you could just go back to the DC Metro area, get an insurance break, and stop telling us how to run our lives
yes.... but how many deaths or head-on collisions have there ben in the un-dualized area? That's the question to ask here.
There;s no question that dualizing the highway and putting in medians and guardrails would reduce head-on collisions. But the questions are whether such an expenditure would be better used to save a few lives of those using that road, or if perhaps spending that money on an an in-school driver education program would save even more lives region-wide or even state wide. One barometer we might use to help determine that is to find out if dualization has decreased the accident rate on that road. I don't have that answer, and neither do you. But I bet the state's traffic-safety engineers do.
Thank you for your response, Indrid, Anita, Worcester
You are providing some good laughs today!
You have been outed so now you are trying to out me. Go for it! You are not even close and this is so fun!
Who am I? Am I Tom Brokaw, Astroboy, Superman, Andrea Mitchell, Karl Rove, Justin Timberlake, Janet Jackson, Lucy, Ethel, Fred Ricky?
This blog is one long running joke. Thanks for the chuckles!
Apologies to the writer. I shouldn't have assumed that the writer of Duvalies knows who you are. Personally, i have no idea who you are nor do I care. My hostility comes from the fact that I have been run off that road more than once (I had time to drive defensively) and knew more than one of the fatalities.
Sorry.
no harm, no foul Worcester. I try to encourage everyone to speak their minds.... sometimes we get carried away... all the best to you.
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