Milton Citizens Express Need to Halt Speeding

publication date: Jan 11, 2009

author/source: Jonathan Copsey / The Beacon

When you drive to and from work, to and from dropping the kids off, to and from school, do you watch your speed? Do you go the posted limit? Do you place your faith in the “11 over rule?”

The City of Milton and some residents certainly hope you follow the speed limit, but are actively working on ways to make sure you do.

Milton held a shotgun meeting Thursday on the subject of speeding, with more than two dozen residents appearing to voice concern and discuss solutions to what they saw as an increasing problem on Milton’s streets.

“My brother was killed in an accident,” said Tim Enloe, of Accessmilton.com and organizer of the night’s meeting. “We lost him on his birthday. He was 25 and he was killed on the intersection of Mayfield and Providence. He was driving too fast, but it was also a problem intersection before that. Having someone ripped out of your life when they were so young, I don’t want to go through that again and I don’t want anyone else to go through that.”

Enloe lives on Bethany Road, a so-called “Open Road Neighborhood” – as opposed to a subdivision – where the houses are along the street instead of the relatively enclosed neighborhoods of the subdivisions. He and many of the people at the meeting expressed exasperation at having to deal with the constant danger posed by reckless speeding on Milton’s roads.

Many of Milton’s roads have a posted speed limit of 45 mph. For residential roads, this is seen by those who live there as too high, especially considering Georgia’s “11 over rule,” where police cannot ticket a speeder unless they are going more than 11 miles over the posted speed limit. Unfortunately, on a road posted as 45 mph, add on the 11 miles and vehicles can go as fast as 56 in a residential zone and not face consequences.

“At 56, it’s not safe for horses, bikes, or walking,” said Enloe. Or even for backing out of a driveway or leaving a subdivision.

TALES OF SPEEDING WOE

While all the residents who appeared had horror stories to tell of not being able to back out of driveways or worrying about drivers often passing school busses, some stories stuck out.

Lauren O’Neil, who lives on Freemanville Road, said: “Where I live, it’s an expressway. People going 60, 70mph. We just had a wipeout on our driveway. The kid was maybe 17 years old and he’s OK. But it was in our driveway. My son and daughter wait for the bus at the top of our driveway and thank God he missed them.”

Tara Chambers, who lives on Cogburn Road in a subdivision, wished to take her three-year-old son to the preschool across the street at the St. Aiden’s Church. “I was going to walk my three year old to school every day,” said Chambers. “All I had to do was cross the road. I had to stop because of the speed on that road, it’s just not safe. If he tripped, it was too dangerous.” She has been forced to drive her son across the road because of the drivers barreling down the road.

Paul Moore, of the White Columns subdivision, told of how his teenage daughter was driving a large SUV home from school and wanted to turn left into the subdivision. As she was doing so, another teenager, in another SUV that was going in excess of 60mph hit her.“All three cars were totaled,” said Moore. “Two SUV’s and a Lexus. The friend’s car was going so fast that the suburban was pushed into a Lexus and pushed 35 feet.”Luckily no one was hurt in the accident, but it goes to show that the issue of speeding is not just confined to the open road residents.

NO QUICK SOLUTIONS TO FAST PROBLEM

Various solutions were offered by Enloe and others, such as placing three-way stop signs at the entrances to subdivisions, allowing citizen speed patrols (much like in Alpharetta) and writing to GDOT to demand a lowering of the posted speed limit.

One attendee suggested a “Milton Pace Car” bumper sticker campaign, with drivers pledging to always drive the speed limit.

City staff were on hand to lend their opinions as well. Transportation Director Dan Drake almost immediately shot down the stop sign solution and writing to GDOT, saying they were impractical and not likely to get anything done. Instead, he suggested writing to local legislators to in turn put pressure on GDOT.

Public Safety Director Chris Lagerbloom lamented as to the many restrictions placed on police in catching speeders, such as police always having to be in marked cars and have visibility of 500 feet. Even a proposal to use a marked car with only a police dummy inside was refused, on the grounds that Alpharetta had done such a thing only to have the car broken into and the radio stolen.

The entire City Council attended the meeting and all pledged to do what they could to address the problem. That willingness should be evident by the very fact the meeting was held less than a week after hearing complaints. At Monday’s meeting, the Council created almost a dozen citizen committees to help the City have more input. One of those committees was a transportation committee, which is to deal with issues such as those put forward at the meeting.