Episode Information

Tom Condon is way too smart and too thoughtful to let him gloss over the legislature's responsibility on two issues:

1) The earlier issue mentioned about the loophole for commercial trucking companies -- no doubt achieved by some special interest lobbyist. This is grist for newspapers and investigative journalists, i.e. how such exceptions ruin good statutes designed to protect residents.

2) Legislative or state department override of local zoning boards, i.e. stop local approvals of private business and housing developments that will clog local and state roads and increase safety hazards, IF the capacity isn't there and the town (and/or state) hasn't got the funds to re-do roadways contemporaneously with the the development.

 Thank you for taking my call on air earlier. I asked why there are passing lanes on Route 44, especially on that hill. I suggested a separate trucking route as a possible solution. I neglected to add that my husband and our twin daughterss were involved in a car accident on Route 44 a few years ago. We were driving the girls to the Hartford bus station for their return trip to their lives in Boston. A car pulled out of one of the restaurants along 44 and drove at a high speed into the side of our passing car. The impact drove us sideways into the path of the oncoming cars. Fortunately, the oncoming traffic was able to avoid hitting us again. Our Subaru wagon was totalled, our airbags were deployed, we were bruised and banged up, but survived, I believe, because there were only cars on the road at that time. If we had been pushed into the path of a truck it would have been all over for us. I believe the disparity between the size of the vehicles allowed on that busy road contributes greatly to the number and severity of the accidents there. I asked on the air today what the average citizen can do to report unsafe roadways and intersections. As I said we lived for 18 years on a dangerous intersection of Route 202 in New Preston. We were the first responders to countless accidents in front of our home over the years. I administered first aid to many people. I wrote to the CT State Police and asked that a yellow blinker be installed in front of our property to warn drivers that they were approaching a stop light. I received a letter back that, after a review of the countless accidents at the intersection, that a light would not be installed because "the body count" at our intersection was not high enough" at our corner. Maybe we need to have some Town Hall style meetings in CT where the subject is the safety of our roads from the perspective of the citizens who actually drive on them.

Thanks for your show today - it really got me thinking. When the accident occurred on Avon MT. most people had not yet begun talking on cellphones and texting in their vehicles. Add that to the mix and the potential for another tragedy is increased exponentially.

Thanks again for taking my call and your excellent show,

Jennifer

Thanks again, Jennifer Almquist

Tom Condon is too kind to our state leaders when he suggests that it's easy to look back in hindsight and question that loophole that allowed Wilcox to continue to operate with dangerous equipment and even to be rewarded with state business in the face of all those violations. Why do we elect legislators - as we did yesterday - if not to have FORESIGHT - so the rest of us will not be left shaking our heads at tragedies of this sort