Even this tiny village now needs a stop sign
When a notice went up a couple of weeks ago that the small village of Ivoryton would get a new stop sign, it was hard not to giggle.
The Jan. 6 select committee is peeling back the rotted onion that was the Trump administration. Inflation is at a record high. Russia’s war continues in Ukraine, but in Ivoryton, the sign made all the local papers, and a few wags joked that they would set up lawn chairs on the sidewalk to await the unveiling.
We make our own entertainment in this little burg, a village within Essex. Our part of Essex is home to less than 3,000 souls, most of whom live in older homes left over from the town’s booming industrial days.
In that, the town isn’t so different from other villages scattered around the state. We have the beautiful Falls River — the source for all that industry — a multitude of hiking trails that snake through verdant forests, boardedup factories, and houses that need paint. When we entertain out-oftown guests, we drive them over to genteel Essex and say “This! This is Connecticut.”
It really isn’t, but the downtown shops are nice.
Still, Ivoryton has the playhouse, some restaurants, and a quirky vibe that shows itself in town-wide parties thrown for just about everything — July 4, Halloween, end-of-the-year holidays. If you haven’t attended the town’s Illumination, the tradition of turning on hundreds of thousands of lights decorating the town green, you owe it to yourself to mark your calendar for early December.
To ease us into the idea that we’d need to stop at the main intersection in town, Essex public works employees installed the sign at a corner on Main Street, covered it with tarp, and placed nearby a flashing sign to alert us that the sign would soon be unveiled.
Cute, right?
But if you ever sat in the town’s gazebo and aimed a radar gun at the main thoroughfare, you’d clock some motorists going through that at 40 and 45 mph. The speed limit is 25. A local restaurant recently installed a stout concrete wall around its outdoor eating area after one more motorist crashed into the poles that stood there previously (after hours, so no one was hurt).
You’d also see pedestrians at the intersection now commanded by the stop sign hesitate as they gauge whether the motorists heading toward them would see them in the crosswalk, and slow down. (To the young man in his dad’s Saab who stopped but gunned his engine while I crossed the street a few weeks ago? I enjoyed our conversation as you passed by, in which I tried to educate you on what a crosswalk means in Connecticut. Do visit again, and enjoy our new stop sign.)
So cute, yes, but a recent preliminary report from the Governors Highway Safety Association said that last year, pedestrian deaths reached a 40-year high. There were 2.32 pedestrian deaths per billion vehicle miles traveled, well above the historic average of 1.9. The report also said that deaths among people on foot are the fastest growing segment of traffic fatalities.
There are all kinds of theories as to why the numbers are going up. Maybe the pandemic got more walkers out to exercise. There are definitely bigger vehicles to choose from, and some drivers, emboldened by the relative lack of traffic and traffic law enforcement during the pandemic haven’t eased their foot off the pedal yet. Then, too, we carry with us little mechanical distractions — our phones — and we ignore the fact that even a moment of looking down to check a text can spell disaster.
According to Watch Out for Me CT, a program from the state Department of Transportation and Connecticut Children’s Injury Prevention Center, every year some 1,500 pedestrians and 550 bicyclists are hit by vehicles on Connecticut’s roads. The program began after nine traffic crashes that involved pedestrians resulted in eight deaths in one week in December 2016.
Earlier this month, a 61-year old man was hit and killed at a busy West Hartford intersection. Enfield is still reeling after the death of a 14-year old student at the high school in March. The student was hit and killed while walking along Route 140 in East Windsor. The police said the driver was texting as he drove, and the girl was walking well off the roadway.
Town officials like to brag about walkability, or the ability for people to use non-mobilized means for getting around. If I have the energy, I can leave my house and head off on a sidewalk that will take me all the way to
To the young man in his dad’s Saab who stopped but gunned his engine while I crossed the street a few weeks ago? I enjoyed our conversation as you passed by, in which I tried to educate you on what a crosswalk means in Connecticut. Do visit again, and enjoy our new stop sign
the Connecticut River. That’s walkability at its finest, but if the motorists aren’t playing along, there’s really no point, is there?
For what it’s worth, the tarp came off late last week. We who wanted to toast the event missed it. Still you could almost hear town residents cheering. So the news was cute, yes, but oh so important.