Motorists soon may encounter the first-ever four-way stop in Highland Park after a proposed traffic law comes up for its final vote Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2015.
The Borough Council at its regular business meeting is expected to approve two new stop signs at Cleveland and North Second Avenues. A pair of signs at that intersection on North Second Avenue already exists.
“Instead of waiting for something to happen, we figured we’d be proactive and do something now,” Lt. Gary Panichella, traffic safety officer, said of the police recommendation for the new ordinance.
The town has implemented no traffic study at that intersection, and Lt. Panichella was unable to provide information about how many cars use the road daily. Instead, police are seeking the change partly in response to residential complaints of speeding vehicles and motorists who run the stop signs already at the intersection.
In addition, police received a petition about the intersection, with more than 50 signatures, said Lt. Panichella.
Traffic on the road has increased with the extension of North Second Avenue beyond Jackson Avenue to Lambience Court and the rest of the Pulte Homes development.
“Several accidents have occurred there,” said Lt. Panichella, including “several” involving construction vehicles.
“We just wanted to clean up the intersection before it got fully utilized,” he said, indicating the town’s desire to be proactive rather than reactive.
The basic rules of four way stops are, according website: drivinginspectorblog.com:
For three-way, four-way, and five-way stops, each car should come to a complete stop prior to moving. Here are some guidelines:
• Whichever car stops first should go first. If yours is the second car to arrive, you should be the second to go (and so on.) It doesn’t matter at this point which direction the cars are going or who is on the right or left; simply go in order of arrival.
• If two cars arrive at the same time, yield to the right because the car on the right will clear the intersection faster than if the one on the left goes first. (This is because we drive on the right half of the road. When the car on the right goes first, it travels only half way across the road before it is out of your way. If the car on the left moves first, it will have to travel across the entire intersection before being out of the way. And since the point of driving is usually to get to a destination, this is a good system that keeps things moving in an efficient manner.
In Edit: L’Ambiance Court is not connected to Second Avenue and is not part of the Pulte homes. It is a cul-de-sac only connected to River Road ; a stream and the train tracks prohibit other connections.”
Slight error…L’Ambiance Court is not connected to Second Avenue and is not part of the Pulte homes. It is a cul-de-sac only connected to River Road ; a stream and the train tracks prohibit other connections.
I recently submitted some minor but accurate corrections to your article about the new stop signs but to date, no corrections have been made to the article that remains online. Why do you ask for replies and then ignore them? As a long time resident and professional in the community, I find your lack of response both inappropriate and unprofessional.
Sorry about that. But you are right about one thing…this enterprise is unprofessional. We are volunteers and the effort breaks even. Pam and I went on vacation. We are dedicated to providing free news to Highland Park, but we do need to occasionally go on vacation. And our crack staff of hundreds of professionals…I mean our staff of NOBODY, can’t back us up. If you are mean to us enough we will stop and you can go back to a complete news blackout.
Meanwhile, we are back now and will try to address your comments.