A neighbourhood is watching to see if crashes continue to pile up at the corner of Melville Avenue and McBride Crescent.
ICBC is interested as well. The confluence of Mel and McB was the scene of 10 confirmed collisions between 2004 and 2008, according to analysis done for The Citizen. One block over and Melville and Ross Crescent, there were five more and around the corner on 10th Avenue and McBride there were another five. Most residential intersections in the city have very few collisions in any given year. The three others analyzed in the same area (5th and Melville, 7th and Alward, and Laurier and Melville) show zero in the same time period.
It takes ICBC two years to have confidence in crash data because it can take that long for some claims to come through. It won't be easy to get quantifiable numbers for these places since changes were made by both the City of Prince George and School District 57, but the residents of the area will certainly be taking note, especially now that school is back in session at Duchess Park secondary.
"Traffic was especially fast after school," said Rachele Turgeon who lives in one of the homes at the intersection. "The majority of people coming down the hill go way too fast and a lot of people don't see or don't pay any attention to the stop sign, especially the ones going south. The ones going north seem to stop for the sign a lot more."
There have been serious arguments between drivers over who has the right of way, said Turgeon. In the past three years she has personally witnessed three collisions.
Some of the neighbours have taken to parking cars to protect pedestrian paths to their homes, so fearful are they that a fast moving or distracted driver will make a fatal mistake.
"Someone hit a big tree instead of our house in 2003," said the resident across the street from Turgeon's home. "It's dangerous. Lucky nobody has died yet. Cars get hit, people go off the road, it happens all the time. They have a sign up here but people drive fast and ignore the stop sign."
The city has put extra focus on the intersection, but residents are still worried it isn't enough.
A four-way stop was considered, said City of Prince George transportation manager Al Clark, but there were factors that dissuaded them from that. Visibility was identified as a potential factor so some trees were removed that obstructed some views. They also did some painting on the road to draw stronger attention to stopping points and crosswalks.
"We obviously don't want to have dangerous intersections, so if there is something we can do like clean up sight lines or lay down a stop bar, we will do that," Clark said. "At some intersections there isn't the warrant for that, but there we decided to add some extra reminders."
Clark stopped short of blaming the student traffic for being the problem. The drivers going to and from Duchess Park school may add pressure, but adults are often the ones who make poor driving decisions.
"When you get your driver's license you are in control of the car. You are supposed to have high awareness and observe your surroundings," said Clark. "People tend to want to blame others for incidents that happen, but each person has to take more care at that intersection and observe the rules of the road."
He said the new Duchess Park will mean new traffic patterns so the whole area will have to be watched with new eyes.
