Couple says road funnels cars into their front yard

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Submitted photo John and Laura Noble say too many vehicles are flying off Whitten Road and winding up in their front yard, like this one is 2009 that flipped over onto its roof. Laura took the photo from the front porch area.

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MILFORD – Not long after midnight on Nov. 16, 2011, John Noble was awakened by neighbors who heard a car crash in front of his house. They found one man lying on the lawn injured and another man dead in a ditch across the road.

Noble was shocked but not surprised.

John and Laura Noble’s front yard on Whitten Road has been a landing spot for numerous accidents over the years.

The fatal crash last November was the worst, but during the 17 years the Nobles have lived here, there have been at least eight accidents directly in front of their home at 226 Whitten Road, they say. In six of those accidents a vehicle wound up in their driveway or their yard.

Once a woman talking on her cell phone went off the road and cut a diagonal through the yard. She later said she had just learned she was pregnant.

In 2007 a car traveled diagonally 120 feet through the front yard, over a small mound of snow their children had built the previous day.

That’s when the couple wrote the first of three letters to the town asking for help. In response to the first letter, in 2007 the town Traffic Safety Committee reviewed 13 accidents that occurred between the intersection of Whitten and Mason roads and 85 Whitten Road – about seven-10ths of a mile from the Nobles’ house – between 2002 and 2007 and decided the problem was a law enforcement issue relating to speed.

Still, Executive Councilor and Safety Committee member David Wheeler, who lives on nearby Mason Road, brought boulders to the yard that year to serve as barriers, and the couple say they are grateful for that neighborly gesture. The town has also put a couple of “curve ahead” warning signs.

But those changes were not enough to stop the accidents and prevent cars from winding up in their property, as evidenced on Feb. 14, 2009, when a car driven by a newly-licensed 16-year-old went airborne and flipped over in the Nobles’ yard. It followed the same path as the car in the 2007 accident.

By then the Nobles had decided they could no longer allow their children to play in front of their house.

The couple appealed again to the Safety Committee, which decided that more rocks and two signs warning of a 20 mph speed limit and curves ahead might help.

Fatal crash

Two years later came the fatal crash. The speeding car hit the utility pole in front of the house, sliced off tree branches and then landed in the Nobles’ side yard upside down on their children’s swing set slide.

And that crash wasn’t the last: The most recent happened less than a month ago when a car carrying high school students after school went out of control and ended up in the rock garden the Nobles had built as a barrier.

That crash “could have been really, really bad,” said Laura Noble, because it happened at a time when children where walking home from school and getting off school buses.

Over the years there have also been numerous smaller crashes, and the Nobles believe the road’s design makes it particularly prone to accidents.

Most of the vehicles that crashed had been heading south, past Heron Pond school.

As the vehicles pass Ches-Mae Lane and approach number 226, Whitten Road “turns to the left, but tilts to the right,” said Laura Noble, and drivers “overcorrect and it throws them into the yard. The road is sending people into our yard.”

In the couple’s recent letter, they noted that former Director of Public Works William Ruoff did an assessment of the accidents and concluded that the road is crowned and pitched properly.

The Nobles disagree with that determination, and say it doesn’t make sense to call it an enforcement issue. Police can’t patrol the road 24 hours a day.

“Something is wrong with the road,” said Laura, “People speed all over town, but if they go too fast” near her home, they wind up in the Nobles’ yard.

So the Nobles are asking for help: either a reconfiguration of the road or construction of a barrier along the east side of Whitten Road.

“It seems clear that the frequency of accidents along this short stretch of road is disproportionately high,” the couple wrote in a Jan. 30 letter to Town Administrator Guy Scaife.

“After the recent fatal accident,” they wrote, “a neighbor who has lived on this section of Whitten Road for over 50 years told us that vehicles have been crashing into what is now our property for as long as he can remember.”

John’s mother, who lives in Florida, also wrote to the town about her concerns.

“It’s unconscionable (the town) has done very little to make this stretch of a poorly designed road safer,” wrote Audrey H. Noble, in a letter she copied to The Cabinet.

Rumble strip?

On Monday night Scaife told selectmen there are more accidents on that section of Whitten Road than anywhere else in town and “they are all related to speed.”

Guardrails and stone walls are not the solution, he said, because they could become “launching pads” and cause head-on collisions. Having “24/7 enforcement is not realistic,” he said.

One idea, from police Chief Fred Douglas, is rumble strips. “to get people’s attention,” said Scaife, and it deserves consideration.

“It’s got to be so scary to see cars upside down in your yard,” he said. “It’s a miracle a child hasn’t been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The board voted unanimously to send the issue to the Safety Committee, which will research rumble strips.

Gary Daniels, the selectmen’s representative to the committee, said the solution is more enforcement of the speed laws.

Rumble strips would be “a step in the right direction,” Laura Noble said. “We hope they act on it.”

Last week she said in an e-mail that “John and I are encouraged by the town’s quick response to our most recent letter, and we are looking forward to hearing more about the proposed rumble strip.”

Kathy Cleveland can be reached at 673-3100, ext. 304, or kcleveland@cabinet.com.