Drivers Not Stopping For Valley Stop Signs
The north-south arterials of the south Valley are becoming dangerous gauntlets for unsuspecting motorists.
New housing developments around the area have brought more motorists, increasing east-west traffic through these neighborhoods.
East-west streets such as Fourth, Eight, 12th, 16th and 24th avenues were not designed to carry the heavy traffic they are now experiencing. This has resulted in dangerous intersections for motorists traveling north or south on Adams, Bowdish, Evergreen, McDonald and Progress roads.
The problem is that east-west drivers are running the stop signs at those intersections.
The Spokane Valley Fire District experienced a 20 percent increase in overall traffic accident responses from 1996 to 1997. Paramedic chief Larry Herberholtz says that is double what had been the normal annual increase in accident responses.
Valley Fire doesn’t break these statistics down to a specific area or a problem. But you don’t have to search far to find people who have been impacted by this type of accident.
At Valley Fire, for example, paramedic Terry Gesa tells that his sister was involved in a serious accident at Eight and Bowdish.
More recently, I was talking with Valley business owner Randy Gallion on the roadside at 16th and McDonald. While we were there, an eastbound motorist blew a stop sign at full speed. After we had witnessed this, Randy told me that his wife, Carolyn, had been hit by a motorist who ran a stop sign at Fourth and Evergreen just a couple of weeks earlier.
Last year, Kevin McClure, a Valley real estate salesman, was hit by a motorist who failed to obey the stop sign at Eighth and McDonald. He is no longer in the real estate business because his injuries and extended recovery made it difficult for him to run his business.
There are many, many others who have been injured in similar situations.
What can we do that might curtail these dangerous accidents?
There’s no easy answer, but after talking with many members of our community and carefully studying these intersections, I think we could come up with a solution.
The first step would be to increase public awareness of the problem.
The second would be to form a citizens task group that would assist the county in targeting specific problem spots by raising funds and providing manpower to help with such jobs as re-painting stop lines, trimming trees that might hide a stop sign or even buying and installing “Stop ahead” signs where necessary.
This is a serious problem. People are being badly hurt because motorists are failing to stop at these marked intersections. There have been fatalities as recently as a couple of years ago at Fourth and McDonald.
Perhaps, we as a community, we can do more to assist our local government in solving this growing problem. If you are interested in being a part of such a committee, please give me a call at 891-2022.