“The SUV was hit with such force it was completely pushed up on the sidewalk and just missed hitting the two-family” house next to his, he wrote in a letter that was read at a council meeting.
“The other vehicle was hit so hard it was pushed up onto the grass.”
This month, another Rossville resident, Kristina Latta-Landefeld, told the council about three crashes that happened in one week along a five-block stretch, not far from where Sheyer lives.
In the most dramatic crash of the three, a police report said an eastbound car cut in front of an eastbound pickup truck and swerved. The pickup then struck the car from behind and their combined force flipped a parked Cadillac Escalade into a city light post and onto its roof near C Street. The pickup’s momentum continued eastbound, and it hit another eastbound pickup. The first pickup then struck a second light post, breaking it off at the base.
The car’s driver had to be extricated from it, and was transported to Kettering Health Hamilton. The woman who was driving that car also was cited for failure to control her vehicle.
“Many people in our neighborhood are really concerned, and especially with school starting up,” said Latta-Landefeld, who herself is running for council. “We’re going to have a lot more foot traffic.”
She noted at two of the crashes — one of them involving her own parked car near her house — her neighbor, City Manager Joshua Smith, was among the first there.
“The one that happened and sounded like an explosion, he was running down the street,” she said.
City officials frequently hear complaints about speeding. Police Chief Craig Bucheit recently said that at community gatherings and neighborhood meetings, speeding and parking issues usually are at or near the top of concerns he hears.
Smith during the council meeting said it’s time to start meeting with neighborhoods and figuring out solutions to reducing speeds, because it’s a given that some will drive faster than a posted 25 mph limit.
“In my neighborhood, I observed multiple people I would say on a weekly basis running stop signs at 20-30 mph,” Smith said. “I hate to say this. I wish we had red-light cameras, because I think that would get people to actually stop at stop signs and red lights. I know that’s not an option, but I think we need to put everything on the table.”
One possibility, he said, may be speed humps that people can’t drive around at high speeds.
Another possibility may be converting roadways like Park Avenue, which has two lanes going westbound, and Ross Avenue, which has a pair going eastbound, two-way streets because “one-way streets are always known for speeding,” Smith said.
“I know that the police department is stretched very thin and running radar is very low on their priority list, just due to all the other higher priorities that are taking their attention on a daily basis,” Smith said. “But we have to start doing something.”
“I don’t know what that solution currently is, but we have to come up with I think a variety of things and start testing them in some areas.”
Smith added: “I think that we need to literally put everything on the table, and, neighborhood by neighborhood, start soliciting input from people that live there and see it on a daily basis, understand exactly what their concerns are, and put together customized plans based on neighborhoods. Not on a one-size-fits-all across the entire city, but a plan for every neighborhood, because I hear this a lot.”
Mayor Pat Moeller asked city staff to set up a public meeting some evening in coming weeks at the nearby Miami School to “at least hear their stories, at least hear them out.”
According to city crash records, there were 98 wrecks on B Street between Wayne and Franklin from January 2019 through May of 2021. Wayne is one block north of where westbound traffic from the High-Main bridge turns westward onto Park Avenue, north of Main. And Franklin is a block south of where eastbound Ross Avenue traffic meets B Street.
Sheyer would like to see solutions, not only for Hamilton’s streets, but also for some of its alleys, where vehicles drive startlingly fast, perhaps because they’re frustrated by Hamilton’s street construction.
One day at an alley near his home in early June, he said, “I was right on the edge and two young girls — Oh, they were probably in their late 20s, and they had a bicycle rack, with bicycles — and they went flying through.” he said. “If I had stepped off, 8 inches, or maybe 10. Let’s say a foot. I’d have been nailed.”
A woman who wrecked his neighbor’s parked SUV a while back, also wrecking a large hedge and 18-year-old dogwood, kept on saying, ‘Oh, I wasn’t speeding’. “I thought, ‘Lady, you totaled a vehicle, you destroyed all this landscaping, and you’re trying to say you weren’t speeding?’ Sheyer said.
He’d love to talk with parents who speed through the neighborhood.
He’d ask them, “Now, you have children. And if they’re playing out front, what would your reaction be if the speed limit on your street’s 25, and I’m going 45? Wouldn’t you be furious? Then why do you do this on our street?”
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