Jan 28, 2015


It is not my fault!

Teenagers say that frequently. Adults talk around the issue, for instance, reducing the speed limit to 40 km/hr in front of the Granite Ridge High School in Sharbot Lake. Several issues are at play here. The provincial government has outlawed smoking on all school property and now on many municipal recreational properties like our township ball parks. Smokers at the high school are forced onto township property adjoining the school property and the traveled pavement of Road 38 or they must hike to Dickson Crescent. The illness and death from smoking is well documented and numbers in the thousands. Accidents and injuries to teenagers, who exhibited a reckless mindset on public roads in front of schools are few. Any injury will create massive sympathy and fault finding.

This now is a community problem that needs more than a revised speed limit law to fix. No speed limit is better than one that is only enforced part-time. Motorists will slow down when they see an obstacle in their path, perhaps a police car waiting to ticket them. But having several police officers enforcing traffic by-laws will cause a rise in our taxes and create an environment of fear and loathing for many who encounter bad luck.

Many communities have installed traffic lights. Several enlightened communities like Kemptville have constructed ‘round-abouts’ or they divided traffic lanes with a median, like Carleton Place. I read of one that used chevrons (the < shaped design) painted in wide strips and spaced regularly on the pavement to correspond with a set speed. To help the driver reduce speed in

unsafe zones, they placed the chevrons closer together whereby giving the illusion that the driver was speeding. Drivers reacted by reducing their speed.

The Township may want to pass a by-law to ban smoking on municipal property in all school zones to signal to smokers that cancer and accidents are preventable. They may want to place obstacles like round-a-bouts on the road systems to slow traffic to accountable speeds. Or like Verona who built a highway bypass around the businesses and then abandoned it, they could just close off Road 38 and make us drive around on Gordon Crescent. Sharbot Lake will continue to be a great community when we design it for all the people and not for issues.

Doug Steele

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