Residents ask Plain Township trustees to act after bicycle crash

PLAIN TWP. − Some residents are urging Plain Township trustees to take action to get motorists to slow down after an 8-year-old on a bicycle was seriously hurt after running a stop sign at Bretton Street NW and crashing into a van.

At the trustees' meeting Tuesday, resident Scott Fehlman, a former Jackson Township police officer, said he was driving by when he saw the collision. He stopped to help the child.

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"The poor boy just got absolutely blasted. Pounded. I mean, I've never seen anything like this before in my life," he said. "We thought he'd die right there."

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Fehlman said motorists using Bretton Street are going too fast. He said he's circulating a petition in support of more traffic control measures.

"People are just frustrated about the speed," he said. "Bretton. We've been back there 18 years. It's turned into a speedway. ... Something needs to be done to avoid something like this happening again. Because this boy he easily could have been killed."

Trustee Scott Haws said he could relate as he was the victim of a hit-and-run driver riding his bike in Paris Township as a teen. But he said stop signs is not an ideal solution.

"Stop signs are not a speed control mechanism," Haws said. "They simply control traffic flow."

Zoe Kandle, who also lives by Bretton, asked about putting up speed tables, which raise the surface of the road and act similarly like speed bumps.

Trustee John Sabo said township road workers would have to remove speed tables during the winter months because they impede snow plow trucks. And when the speed tables are removed, water gets in the holes that result and cracks the road when the water freezes.

Dan Holdsworth of nearby Chatham Avenue NW off Bretton said the man driving the van, who was later charged with leaving the scene, wasn't speeding according to the sheriff's deputy's report. He said Bretton has blind spots and large condo mailboxes, trees and fences impede visibility.

"We're not going to stop kids being kids unfortunately," said Holdsworth. "We can't wrap them in bubble wrap either. ... If they chase a ball into the road, it shouldn't be a death sentence. Or you're going to be in the ICU."

Sabo said that state law does not allow the trustees to put up stop signs arbitrarily. They can only be placed in accordance with Ohio Department of Transportation standards, which take into consideration traffic volume, how close intersections are to each other and housing density.

Fehlman asked if there was camera technology that could catch motorists speeding and have them ticketed. Marzilli wondered if residents could take down license plate numbers of those regularly driving too fast through the neighborhood and report them.

Eric Williams, Plain Township's law director, said state law requires that a law enforcement officer witness the traffic violation in order to issue a citation or ticket.

Stark County Sheriff's Capt. Ryan Carver said residents can point out to deputies which of their neighbors are frequent speeders. And deputies can go to them to talk to them about their behavior. But the law does not allow citations unless the deputies see the infraction, often with a speed detection device. He said deputies have been doing additional traffic enforcement and traffic stops around Bretton. They placed a device that displays motorists' speeds by the street.

Township Highway Supt. J.P. Neff said he has asked a traffic engineer at the Stark County Engineer's office to do an evaluation on what can be done to make Bretton Street NW safer. The evaluation is expected to take at least a couple weeks. The township gets one free evaluation for a location per year.

"It's our obligation for us to do whatever we can short of having a cop on every street," said Sabo. "We'll keep working on this. We will discuss this. We are going to do a study."

Reach Robert at robert.wang@cantonrep.com. X formerly known as Twitter: @rwangREP.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Residents ask Plain Township trustees to address speeding drivers