Editor:
Peter Thoss's letter “What is up with this stop sign?” (Optimist, letters, Jan. 12) needs a clear answer.
Back in the mid 60's the newly opened 52nd St’s Imperial Hill, saw cars speeding up and down the road. The location at the crest of the hill, was the confluence of Uplands Drive and a public footpath from Cliff Place to 52nd, meant a probability of a serious accident would happen sooner, rather than later.
It did.
A car speeding up the hill hit a neighbour's child and seriously injured him and my mother, a retired nurse, tended to the injured child until the ambulance came.
After the accident a new crosswalk and stop sign was installed to protect pedestrians and for 57 years, this despised stop sign has actively calmed traffic, preventing cars from speeding at the crest of the hill with limited visibility, from causing havoc.
Not one serious accident has happened at this location since.
So to unpuzzle drivers wasting a miniscule of fuel stopping and unfrustrating the frustrated, the lonely sentinel; the stop sign at the top of Imperial Hill has kept things a little safer for all.
Malcolm Johnston
