Letter: Cardiff Road speed dangerous

I am at a loss with regard the imminent risks that many drivers pose on Cardiff Road due to their refusal to slow down. I reside right on this rural busy road, and while the speed limit solar signs are obvious, they are largely ignored. Rush hour times are that of the noise and speeds of a highway with commercial vehicles and commuters clearly off the speed limit, endangering every resident and their families, with blatant disregard.

These signs do little to slow down the offenders, the speed traps at South Glens where a fence governs these homes, is a lazy and ineffective area, but only serves to collect money from those easy money speeders, but speed has very few risks to the citizens there. The hired monitors that sit in those cars lurking through their big cameras are a joke. I drove by one day to see a woman sleeping on her speed watch duty. Had I turned around and taken a picture of her, we would again prove how useless this area is to promote safe speeds, let alone this location.

Further east on this road just after Cardiff Echoes is the problem, and it is an epidemic with no solutions in sight, but the obvious – a photo radar camera. Commercial trucks, including school buses and passenger vehicles, clearly are 20-30 plus kilometres over the posted limit, potentially upping the ante for a fatal accident involving many of the residents of this pleasant community that walk with their young families or bike ride on this narrow road. The few and far between photo radar set-ups yield results, but seemingly only deter for the event and then resume to dangerous speeds.

Residents of this community and those of us directly on this road agree, that this is out of control, has been for years and since the road is paved its ways to Highway 28, this is now more than ever a commuter route with undue care and attention regularly over the posted limit. I would like to ask drivers with this blatant disregard for our safety, how they would respond to us flying down their residential toad at the rate of speed that they do ours? The old adage, “treat people how you’d like to be treated” comes to mind.

Although unlikely to change the ignorance and habits of these law breaking hazardous drivers, resident scan be pro-active and record drivers on your phones and cameras while they zoom past your house and that of your neighbours. Although this is not admissible, I tried this one day to see more brake lights pushed and speeds reduced, even though there was nothing I could do with this footage. Repeat offenders can still be brought to the attention of the RCMP.
Cardiff Road is a road of shame to those of you who put innocent families at risk due to your negligence. Speed kill; the pocket book hurts, simple as that. It’s only matter of time until the front page of the papers will report a fatality, but hopefully prior to that consequence, it’s only a matter of time when we have an active camera and the speeding tickets in the mail.

C. White
Cardiff, Alberta

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3 Comments

  1. Further to Mr. White’s concern about speed on Cardiff Road, I think we should reduce the speed down to 5 kmph and to ensure that speed is maintained law enforcement should monitor the speed limit 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including holidays. The county can also use traffic calming devices like speed bumps and barriers. Think of the possibilities here…we could create bike lanes, and walk ways that would make it safe for the multitudes of people that use Cardiff Road for this purpose. To reduce the heavy truck traffic we could ban all the waste disposal vehicles that travel this road from other communities from using the Rosehill dump or at least reroute the traffic through Morinville and let them gather revenue from their photo radar system. I think we should press forward to the council this idea…let’s make the Cardiff Road safe again. Your thoughts.

  2. This is the biggest joke I’ve ever heard. 40km/h is too slow and you wonder why people speed. In morinville the speed limit is 50km/h and 99% of the residents surprise, live next to a road that is 50km/h. You don’t hear them complaining because they have better things to do. The main roads should be 50km/h but the one ways should remain 40km/h because no one is able to go faster than that. If your looking for a problem you will always find one. The people of Cardiffs ability to estimate speed is laughable at best. that is why the rcmp does not take it seriously, because if it went to court and a witness had to estimate the speed of a passing vehicle they would be incorrect 9 times out of 10. Hence the case would be dismissed and the charges dropped. The 80km/h speed limit between Cardiff and highway 28 is ridiculous. There is no need for a almost completely straight normal 2 lane highway to be that slow. The people of Cardiff need to worry about themselves and quit stressing out over people going 10km/h over the posted speed limit. it is a waste of time and has negative health effects. Mind your own business and you’ll be happier and live longer. Have a nice day.

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