The Editor,
Last Saturday at approximately 11:45 a.m., yet another vehicle violently left the road on the upper section of Gatensbury Road, damaging the property at 1009 Gatensbury. This is the forth major incident in three months caused by speeding vehicles losing control, confined to approximately 100 ft. of the road.
The driver, exceeding the speed limit of 30 km/h as usual and showing no regard for road conditions (snow), was only stopped from colliding with our home or our next door neighbours' by large boulders placed, by private citizens, to prevent this very occurrence.
The car severed the 30 km/h sign at the first bend into Port Moody and then continued another 50 ft. off the roadway, only being stopped by these boulders. It threw several of them - three feet in circumference - into our neighbours' new steel fence, bending it.
The final resting place was on top of the pile of boulders, with all four tires off the ground. The car may very well be damaged beyond repair and a new fence will need to be replaced.
The homeowners were outside with their two children, ages one and three years, clearing their sidewalks, luckily not their driveway, which the car slid across.
While it would be easy to blame driver behaviour for this collision - and that does play a role, only in that she likely travels down the road at a speed well beyond the posted speed limit every day and was used to making it without incident - the residents of Gatensbury believe, and again the city's own data supports the conclusion, that the safety of the road needs to be seriously addressed.
We eagerly await the promised improvements and want to believe they will make a difference. We do, however, question if it will be enough. Further consultation with the city of Coquitlam would is also essential as a portion of the trouble starts on the section of Gatensbury for which it is responsible. While it did respond quickly to the initial conversations, it should be noted the lane markers it installed failed to survive the first snowfall. All have been scraped away by the city snowplows.
L. & D. Holdenried, Port Moody
