To the editor,
On a Thursday afternoon last month, I was sitting on my deck enjoying the sunshine and watching the bees and butterflies in my garden. I heard a very loud vehicle collision. I hurriedly went toward where I knew a car collision had happened. My neighbour was in her garden phoning 911.
The collision of course was at the junction of Westwood Road and Jingle Pot Road.
I spent the next 30 minutes or so comforting the young female passenger from one of the cars and the young male driver of the other. Both were badly shaken. The female driver had tried to get out of her car but was obviously in pain so was advised to sit back in the car. So, one person was injured and two others, at the least, were badly shaken.
How did I know where the collision had happened? Because this junction is always an accident waiting to happen. If you are travelling from the lower part of Westwood and need to turn left it can be a very difficult manoeuvre at the busier times of the day.
I live on Cather View Place and often choose to turn left and go down the hill to Wellington to avoid the Jingle Pot/Westwood Road junction.
This junction needs to have some form of sorting system. I understand that traffic lights would be costly and that there maybe isn’t enough space for a roundabout. However, a four-way stop would not entail great expense and may save lives (someone one day is going to lose their life) and certainly would save injuries and trauma.
Susan Harper, Nanaimo