Homeowner seeks protection from accident-prone intersection
By: Scott Morgan
NEW HANOVER Few things illustrate a point like a car in your son’s bedroom.
In the very first few minutes of 2006, a car coming up from the direction of Wrightstown along Cookstown-Wrightstown Road ran the stop sign at Hockamick Road, cruised across 100-or-so yards of vacant lot and plowed through the wall of Jamie Clugsten’s home. When it came to rest, the car was halfway inside the bedroom of Ms. Clugsten’s son, though no one was in there at the time and the driver was uninjured.
Still, the New Year’s accident became the latest and most dramatic example of traffic problems in this area. Or, at least it was the latest example until another accident happened at this intersection while emergency crews were still trying to figure out how to get the car out of Ms. Clugsten’s house.
And, since then, another driver found his way onto Ms. Clugsten’s property, this time in March, on a night Ms. Clugsten says she went to a Township Committee meeting to ask for a guardrail to be placed at the edge of the lot next to her property. She came home, she says, to find a car sitting in her yard.
There have been other accidents that do not involve Ms. Clugsten, of course. From January 2005 through January 2006, the intersection and its immediate area saw 18 accidents, according to Township Committeewoman Sharon Atkinson, who was mayor last year, but who happens to be Ms. Clugsten’s mother. Within those 18 accidents, however, there were four that ended up in her daughter’s yard, she says and "six or eight ended up in the lot behind her house."
Because of the frequency of accidents here, Ms. Clugsten wants a guardrail and depending on how you see it, this is where the issue gets muddy.
She says she has approached the Township Committee and Mayor Dennis Roohr repeatedly to ask for a guardrail only to "get no response." She and Ms. Atkinson flatly state that the township’s refusal to ask that a guardrail be put in is political, as Mr. Roohr, a Republican, and Ms. Atkinson, a Democrat, are known to be less than friendly toward each other.
While Mayor Roohr did not directly respond to calls regarding the traffic issue at this intersection, Township Attorney Tony Drollas spoke Tuesday on the mayor’s (and township’s) behalf.
Mr. Drollas denied that politics has anything to do with the township’s lack of interest in a guardrail. The real reason a guardrail, specifically, is unlikely to be put there, he said, has to do with the geography.
Where Gradlyn Drive, Hockamick Road and Cookstown-Wrightstown Road (also known as county Route 667) come together, the open field across which cars have driven en route to Ms. Clugsten’s property faces Cookstown-Wrightstown Road. Were a guardrail to be placed there, a driver who runs the stop sign would drive "head first into a barrier," Mr. Drollas said.
The issue, therefore, becomes one of liability and is one neither county nor township officials care to talk about. But placing a guardrail directly across from the Cookstown-Wrightstown Road stop sign could spell legal trouble if a driver hit it head-on. The liability issue could affect not only the township but the county, as it would involve a county road.
The final call on whether a guardrail would go in is a township decision, though county spokesman Dave Wyche said Monday that the county is not entertaining thoughts of a guardrail in the first place.
Rather than court legal trouble, township and county officials said they want to find ways of keeping accidents from happening in the first place.
"We want to work out an appropriate means to get people to stop," Mr. Drollas said. "You’ve got to get people to stop."
The joint township-county answer is to make the intersection more obvious to motorists highly reflective stop signs, rumble strips and the latest county recommendation, a blinking light. The measures were arrived at through talks between township and county officials and spelled out in letters between Township Clerk Geoffrey Urbanik and County Engineer Joe Caruso.
While Ms. Clugsten says she "would welcome anything" in the way of traffic control, she also says she does not feel that more signs and brighter lights will work; and, rather than waiting for someone else to visit her home at high speed, she had her father build a barrier of telephone pole beams and wire on her property. While she’s aware that it is not aesthetically pleasing, she says she’ll take the tradeoff.
"It doesn’t look good to see a car sitting in your son’s bed either," she says.
The owner of the vacant plot of ground, Donald Malloy, also has taken measures into his own hands and laid telephone poles along the ground. Though Mr. Malloy did not return calls for this article, the poles can be seen from the street. Ms. Atkinson also says she thinks road signs will do little. She says there are guardrails made to break away when hit that significantly slow traffic without being a solid barrier.
"I don’t want to kill anybody," Ms. Atkinson says. "But I don’t want anybody in my grandkids’ house."
While Mr. Drollas insisted that the township is trying to curb a problem that goes back many years, and while documents show there are measures being considered, Police Chief Gary Timmons said in a phone interview Wednesday that he expects traffic problems to get worse in this area.
Chief Timmons said the presence of McGuire Air Force Base at the edge of town already has increased traffic and that the planned expansion of operations at the base will only add to it.
"It’s just statistics," he said. "You can’t increase traffic and not expect more accidents."
The chief added that he has offered suggestions to the Township Committee (though he would not say whet they are) regarding keeping accidents from getting too near Ms. Clugsten’s property. His response, he said, "was for (the Township Committee) to tell me it’s not my business."
Mr. Drollas said the township is considering the flashing light suggestion and maintained that the township wants to address an admittedly thorny traffic situation at the intersection with "appropriate measures." He said officials are considering the county-suggested flashing light and a decision on it should come soon. Should the flashing light be installed, the county would pay for the installation and the township would pay for the monthly electrical costs to operate it, according to Mr. Caruso’s March 15 letter to the township.

