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Yahoo!So, the Board of Supervisors has decided to raise the speed limit on Via Real between Greenwell Avenue in Summerland and Toro Canyon Road. Their reasoning was that motorists exceed the current speed limit anyway, so why not just raise it? My reaction is, “Are they crazy?” If motorists are exceeding the speed limit, why are they not being ticketed for their actions? Motorists need to be aware and respectful of the fact that Toro Canyon, to Sentar Avenue along Via Real, is a residential zone. This stretch is adjacent to another stretch of road where the speed limit was raised. Motorists do not slow down to the current speed limit when they enter this area; stop signs are needed on Via Real at Toro Canyon and Sentar Avenue.
Via Real has long been used as the third lane of Highway 101, and the drivers who use it as such are driving as if they are on the freeway and not on a rural road. Yet on Via Real, children wait for school buses, people walk their dogs, bicyclists and joggers traverse this stretch of road on a daily basis. This is a residential area. Still people habitually exceed the speed limit and create dangerous situations for those of us who live on Via Real and for the many who use it.
In the 35-plus years that I have lived at the same address along Via Real, I have seen people die on this road (a young man on a bicycle in a hit-and-run accident and another man in a roll-over accident). Numerous animals, both domestic and feral, have been killed on this road, and property damage, due to speeding vehicles losing control and running into peoples’ property, has not only occurred but has become an expectation among people living on Via Real. All this, and the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to raise the speed limit? Just what were they thinking, or were they even thinking at all? — Valerie Campos
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Raising the speed limit anywhere is rarely a good idea, and in a residential, or even partly residential zone, you would have to be out of your mind, or at least woefully misinformed. First we have a single-issue (destroy all traffic calming on sight) candidate elected to the city council, and now this. We give more respect to automobiles than we do to human life.
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tegrat (anonymous profile)
November 10, 2009 at 2:07 p.m. (Suggest removal)
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