Desperate plea for safety
RUIMSIG — Young resident is fighting for safer roads in the community.
A young Ruimsig resident has written a touching letter calling for traffic lights at an intersection, as she is still reeling from an accident which happened there last year.
Chloe Smith (11) and her mother were involved in an accident on the corner of Handicap and Hendrik Potgieter roads, Ruimsig.
She said she was travelling with her mother and a friend from Cradlestone Mall, turning into Handicap when a taxi hit them on the side.
“As we pulled over to the side of the road, two guys who had been walking by tried to open our passenger door car and steal my mother’s hand bag,” Smith had added.
The intersection is located close to several nursery, primary and high schools, thus there is a steady flow of pedestrians.
Ward 97 councillor, Jaco Engelbrecht said the Van Staden Road intersection had the same problem before traffic lights were put up and this reduced the number of accidents.
“I included a request for traffic lights at this intersection in my Integrated Development Plans (IDP) in May 2015 but the process takes a fair amount of time and the petition process is said to have a backlog of some two years.”
Bertha Peters-Scheepers, spokesperson for Johannesburg Road Agency said the engineering department conducted queue counts at the intersection on 25 February and at the time, the requirements for the installation of a traffic signal as per South African Road Traffic Signs Manual were not met.
“The manual requires an average queue length of four cars over a one hour time period of the day. The highest value our count returned was 2.45 vehicles over an hour. I also have to point out that this is a provincial road, thus the province has the final say.”
Based on the concerns raised, however, Peters-Scheepers added that they would undertake another queue count when schools resume because volumes are lower during the holidays.
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