While out for a walk at about 6:30 p.m. on Friday night, Jan. 23, I came across a pickup truck that was two wheels up in the deep ditch running alongside Church Road just north of the pedestrian crosswalk at Throup Road. The conditions were foggy and rainy, and admittedly it’s a bad dogleg that needs straightening somehow before somebody gets hurt. But all of this is just giving the driver of the vehicle a very large benefit of the doubt … after all, the nose of his truck WAS pointed in the “wrong” direction. Pretty obvious that he had been going too fast for the road and the conditions that night.
But the very next day, at about 4:30 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, again on Church Road, but this time at the point where a very busy and popular walking trail emerges at the Woodland Creek neighbourhood, I came across an identical situation: a pickup truck with two wheels up in the ditch. RCMP and other first responders were already on the scene. Clearly, speed was a factor. Though it was slightly rainy, there was plenty of daylight and this stretch of Church is arrow-straight. I asked one of the officers if the same driver was involved from the night before, but he said, “No. This is a different set of clowns.”
Clowns is right. Church is always busy with people walking their dogs, pushing baby strollers, jogging, riding bikes, or just kids playing. And yes, we do mind the antics of out-of-control drivers in our neighbourhoods. If rainy road conditions are too much for you, or if you simply don’t understand the principles of controlled steering, braking, and acceleration or how very small the rubber
contact patch is where it meets the road, then perhaps you should go back and spend some more time on your tricycle.
And to Maja Tait, I’d like to add this: Your Worship, please consider spending a little of that town core development money on a fix for the Church/Throup dogleg. Given the pedestrian crosswalk located at that very juncture, it’s brutal.
John Campbell
Sooke