South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
City to build guardrail along North Nob Hill Road
Resident urged Plantation to take action as cars kept crashing into same house
PLANTATION — For years, Jonathan Phillips hoped that the City of Plantation would take action after three cars crashed into his yard and home along North Nob Hill Road.
Phillips has almost incessantly urged city officials to do something to prevent another crash into another home in the 700 block of Northwest 102nd Way from happening after the successive blows, one which he said narrowly missed hitting his grandmother.
The city has now dedicated about $98,000 of its budget to build over 600 feet of guardrail along the grassy area behind Phillips’ and other residents’ homes that butt up against North Nob Hill Road. The city’s engineering department reviewed the area in August, and the contract bid for the job likely will be on the commission’s agenda for approval at the Jan. 25 meeting.
Phillips, 29, lives on Northwest 102nd Way with his grandparents. The first crash into their home happened in December 2015: An SUV driver crashed into his neighbor’s backyard before veering into Phillips’ yard, into the side of his house and continuing into another neighbor’s yard, he said.
His grandmother was in the bathroom, where the car hit, moments before the crash. They first thought it was storming outside after hearing a loud blast and the sound of running water — the SUV had also plowed through their jacuzzi in the yard.
“It sounded like an explosion going off,” he said. “It was just a giant hole of the wall missing, which was the exact room that she was in, the bathroom.”
Photos of the damage at Phillips’ home show one wall in the bathroom completely gone, shattered glass strewn around the room and debris covering the entire shower floor.
Neighbor Chuck Kirsch, 70, recalled he and his wife coming home that evening in 2015 to their destroyed yard. The SUV crashed into their outdoor jacuzzi, too, which Kirsch said prevented it from colliding with his home.
The impact crushed his fence, landscaping and jacuzzi and hurled wood onto his roof. Kirsch said it looked “like a bomb went off in the yard.”
They replaced the jacuzzi, but Kirsch said he still has concerns.
“My wife doesn’t go in the jacuzzi ... She hasn’t been in the jacuzzi since then,” he said.
Kirsch said he learned in August from a neighbor that the city would be building a guardrail behind the homes. He wishes they were building a wall instead.
“The wall would be ideal. Obviously we would love that. But something is better than nothing, I feel like. It’s scary,” he said.
Since 2015, two other cars have crashed into Phillips’ property, the second in 2017 hitting the corner of his home and the third in 2021 when a ride-share driver in an SUV hit his fence and a tree in the yard.
Repairs after the first crash in 2015 hadn’t been finished long by the time the second car hit his home in 2017, Phillips said.
“It entered through the same spot but hit the other end of the house,” he said. “It hit the structure of it, so it destroyed the stucco and side of the wall and gutters and everything.”
A guardrail was installed in the median on North Nob Hill Road in 2019. That, too, has been crashed into several times, Phillips said, and did not protect any of the at-risk homes. Then came the crash in 2021.
Phillips estimated his home sits about 20 feet from North Nob Hill Road’s edge. There’s a bend in the road, where the speed limit is 40 mph, which Phillips believes needs to be pointed out by a traffic sign.
He has made tracking crashes on the road something of a passion, creating a blog called “Nob Hill Road Home of Car Crashes” where he posts statistics and photos of pulverized cars, downed traffic signs and debris lying in the road.
Mayor Nick Sortal, who took office after the November election, said he made the issue on North Nob Hill Road a priority. Phillips was right about needing improvements, Sortal said, as “his house is in legitimate danger.”
“We need to address this. The idea of your house getting hit by a car, nobody should have to live with that,” Sortal said.
Sortal said patrolling on North Nob Hill Road is a “point of emphasis” for the Plantation Police Department. Sortal shared with the South Florida Sun Sentinel an email in which Plantation Police Chief W. Howard Harrison said Friday morning that officers “do conduct selective enforcement on Nob Hill Road,” having written 216 citations in the last year, not including written or verbal warnings.
Sortal said officials hope to get the commission’s approval for the contract bid for the project at the Jan. 25 meeting, and they aim to get the cost down by about $14,000 if the city’s Public Works Department removes the shrubbery in the project area.
The guardrail will cover the swale behind seven homes that have backyards facing North Nob Hill Road, extending from the corner near Central Park Elementary School toward the intersection near Northwest Sixth Street, according to the city’s contract plan.