Petition urges action on 507 after fatal crash
Sound of motorcycles too often followed by sirens, resident says
A Trent Lakes resident who is friends with the individuals involved in the fatal crash on County Road 507 over Thanksgiving weekend has started an online petition in the hopes that something will be done to make the road safer.
Sherry Higgins’s friends were in the SUV hit by a motorcyclist on Oct. 10 on the road north of Buckhorn.
“They tried to avoid him. It was on a sharp, blind corner,” said Higgins. “You come around the corner and you can’t see anything, and then at the last second, this guy was way over on their side of the road.”
Higgins said the couple went into the ditch to try and avoid the motorcyclist, but he still plowed into the side of their vehicle.
The road has been a major concern for several years, Higgins said. “Every time we go on the highway, there’s a motorcyclist passing us and they’re doing excessive speeds; some
close to 200 kilometres per hour,” she said.
An OPP officer at the scene of the Thanksgiving weekend accident has been in contact with Higgins, she said.
“She told me there’s been 96 accidents in the last 10 years. I bet there’s been close to 200 in the last 20,” said Higgins.
The highway, which was originally used as a logging road, isn’t meant to be a raceway, Higgins said.
“My family’s been up here since 1950. It used to be an old logging road with just hills and corners, and then in the ’70s, they straightened it out a bit and paved it, but it leans all the wrong ways and forces the motorcyclists to go to the middle of the road when they’re doing these speeds,” she said.
Over the years, excessive speeding on the road has got significantly worse, Higgins said. “We sit at our home here on Catchacoma Lake and we hear the motorcycles racing down the road, and then half an hour later, there go the sirens,” she said.
After speaking with Trent Lakes Deputy Mayor Ron Windover, Higgins found out there are only two police officers to monitor all of Trent Lakes.
“I was just shocked when I heard that. It’s a huge area that two officers have to cover,” she said.
Higgins said she has never seen a police officer on the road. “Never. They don’t set up radars, they don’t do anything,” she said.
John Wright, chair of the municipality ’s police services board, said there was a meeting last Thursday with the OPP regarding the road. They discussed potentially making part of it a community safety zone, which would mean increased fines.
Further, Wright said, the OPP is now in the midst of developing an action plan for the road to reduce the number of collisions. While it’s unknown what the plan will entail, he said it’s likely that by next spring, the OPP will have the plan established.
“I just hope that they can come up with something,” said Wright. “A number of people are dying as a result of it and a lot of people are traumatized by the crash they’re involved in.”
Higgins said her friend who was driving the SUV broke all his toes and needed surgery on his arm and wrists following the accident.
“He’s black and blue. The trauma from all of this is just outrageous,” said Higgins.
Wright and Higgins said the accidents are also traumatizing for first responders.
“Something has to be done,” Higgins said.
As of Monday afternoon, 333 people had signed the petition, found at change.org/p/mayorjanet-clarkson-speeding -on-hwy-507.
Marissa Lentz is a staff reporter at the Examiner, based in Peterborough. Her reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. Reach her via email: mlentz@peterboroughdaily.com