Anyone who has been following the news around town lately will notice there have been numerous recent accidents on Cedarbridge Avenue.
In many of those accidents, utility poles were knocked down, requiring police to shut down the road – which caused a traffic nightmare around town.
Should the speed limit on Cedarbridge be lowered – and strictly enforced – in an effort to reduce accidents?
Take the poll below.
I don’t know, but people should be cognizant of the fact that if they drive recklessly, it affects 99% of the town. The traffic Is a nightmare!! Your actions have consequences. Drive like you know that and care!
How about installing guardrails along side the road to avoid half of these accidents?
Speed limit doesn’t change anything other than twp ability to ticket us. STOP!
And Ticket they should, till everyone slows down.
OF COURSE spead changes things.
Reaction time
Breaking Distance
General aggression.
This idiotic statement that “the limit doesnt have to change” but “people need to just blah blah”
WELL THATS THE PROBLEM ISNT IT???
“PEOPLE” have a tendancy to NOT DO WHAT THEY SHOULD!
Therefore we CANNOT rely on “PEOPLE”, we have to implement MECHANISMS and PENALTIES!
If you break the law, Chaim, what should the police do? Give you a Mabrouck.
It is not the speed limit. People should just watch the road!!
100% people should learn how to drive and then get Additional training to drive in Lakewood in general
NO! Just drive more cautiously! Stay off the phones! Obey the laws!
POLL:
Should drivers with no regard to traffic laws, or human lives, driving while using their cellphones have their license suspended (which includes a majority of drivers)?
Yes: 99.6% (11,932)
No: 0.4% (609)
There should be lectures on how a 4 way stop sign works. Most of town seems to have no idea. They just keep on going as if there the only one that has to reach there destination and everyone else has to wait for then to go.
Yesterday’s accident had nothing to do with speed. The dump truck’s back was lifted and therefore it pulled down wires.
How’s a speed limit help if it is not enforced?
Let’s start by ticketing drivers with phones TO THEIR EARS.
maskim 100%
I agree 1 million percent.
And running stop signs.
2)And running red lights.
3)And not yielding to pedestrians.
4)Ignoring a school bus’s flashing red lights.
Maybe the township should invest in a new utility truck to leave in clover and cedarbridge…
I think first we should pass a (another) law that you have to stop by a stop sign…
Driving carefully is the answer. Lowering the speed limit will not help if ppl have absolutely no regard for other’s safety. The craziness I have seen from other drivers is hair-raising! Half the time I feel like I should bentch gomel when arriving safely to my destination.
Give tickets to people who need to learn how to drive normally!
Whats the point?? Lakewood PD doesn’t enforce the traffic laws. What happened to the crack downs??
How about build more roads so the whole town isn’t dependent on one or 2 roads? When was the last time a new thru street was built in lakewood? Why do we have the same roads as when lakewood had 1 tenth of the cars???
Broadway
There’s no place to put the additional roads. that’s what happens when you teach children that if they don’t grow up and marry a boy from bmg, live in lakewood you’re worthless. Todays yeshivos and bais yaakov. For the last 35 years.
Interesting comment. BH klal yisroel is growing. Really, can’t you just think of something smarter to say next time?
Please post a neon-backed sign on every electric pole that states in large lettering: PLEASE DON’T HIT ME!
The speed limit should remain the same. Cedarbridge Ave is one of the few remaining streets we can actually travel at a normal speed.
No. Cedarbridge is a busy main street that is meant to be going fast.
What should happen is that the police should ticket for speeding and phone use. They should start an aggressive campaign to crack down on reckless drivers, much like NYC with stop and frisk. This will have a trickledown effect and force everyone to better their game.
How about not turning left after the light turns red
When there’s traffic, people go slower. The issue is there aren’t enough thoroughfare.
The speed limit isn’t the problem, it’s people’s carelessness and haste and doing reckless things. People should start driving according to the rules or get their licenses revoked.
Some people read the headline like this.
“Pole on Cedarbridge Ave should be lowered by use of speed.”
Some very good comments. All boils down to people learning to drive properly and to share the road with others and to have proper etiquette which means not pulling out of a side street or parking lot in front of a car going 45 mph when you can wait 10 seconds more to pull out and no cars are driving by and stopping completely by a stop sign and going when it’s your turn and if you didn’t learn when that is you should go back and read the rules of the road……… I can go on and on but just be a mentch and respectful of others no matter where you are because even amongst other yidden you can still make a chillul hashem
Roundabout?
You missed the boat.
The problem is not the speed limit, it’s the traffic.
We don’t need the speed limit lowered, we need it enforced! and anyway, speeding does not necessarily equal reckless driving. There are lots of ways to be reckless within the speed limit. Everyone should use their COMMON SENSE while driving.
Lakewood needs to adjust all roads to 35 MPH, and outlaw left turns except for stop lights and stop signs.
Of course this can never happen because even putting in a stop light requires state approval and takes 5-10 years.
When the NYC speed limit was lowered to 25 MPH, everybody got upset for a minute, and then traffic injuries and accidents fell to almost ZERO.
Not true at all. They just changed what falls into what category.
Not true. Lowering the speed limit on main roads does not help and you’ll just have more traffic around. Town 25-35 mph is made for side streets not Cedarbridge or New Hampshire or rt 9
There are more effective strategies to make Cedarbridge safer.
For example, at a turning lane by clover
Or at a sidewalk next to Cedar Bridge (this will change the perception of drivers from Cedarbridge being a wide-open highway to being a slightly more residential street)
There are many other minor changes, that can have a combined impact of making Cedarbridge significantly safer
I love how people assume the accidents are caused by “being on the phone”, “not looking at the road”, “driving too fast”, “breaking the law” etc.
If you ever pay attention to the posted videos on TLS, that is usually not the case. Usually accidents are caused by driver’s taking chances because of stress due to the traffic, or they couldn’t see a car coming because their vision was blocked by another car. TO REDUCE ACCIDENTS, WE NEED TO FIND WAYS TO REDUCE TRAFFIC! MORE LANES, MORE STREETS, MORE PARKING, BMG SHOULD OPEN BM’S IN OTHER PARTS OF LAKEWOOD ETC.
Aggressive enforcement of current speed limits will go a long way towards solving the problems.
Merely reducing the posted speed limit will not greatly reduce the level of accidents on any given road, street, or highway.
The reason for the many crashes is poor road design. People will drive as fast as they feel comfortable on a given roadway. The fact that Cedarbridge is wide, straight, and long means that people will drive fast because it feels safe to drive fast. The problem arises when cars and pedestrians enter the street or when a vehicle suddenly stops for someone entering the road or to make a turn. The street is telling the drivers “speed, it’s safe” but the environment of the road, where it is, and its context of being in what is effectively a suburban city, means it’s unsafe to speed.
The general solution to this problem is to change the street so that the speed at which the driver feels is safe reflects the reality of how safe it truly is. This can be accomplished by narrowing the lanes, placing barriers close to the street, optical markings, etc..
It so happens that the current plan by the Ocean County Department of Engineering is to remove the obstacles and hazards that necessitate vehicles to go slow; by shoring up the intersections. This is to be accomplished by putting barriers in the middle of the avenue, adding traffic control devices, adding new hi-visibility markings, adding new pedestrian crossings, and adding dedicated turning lanes. (https://www.co.ocean.nj.us/OC/Engineering/frmCedarBridgeAveSafety.aspx)
If this sounds like dealing with the symptoms instead of dealing with the root cause (you can never truly deal with the root cause of any complex system because it is a complex system; and therefore will have multiple and conflicting root causes, but anyways) is probably because it is. My current favorite quote in reference to poor road design is “Left to their own devices, highway engineers will always build New Jersey”.
Also, we shouldn’t be crowdsourcing infrastructure design because most people (and I certainly count myself among them) are not qualified, although they may have strong opinions. Which is, of course, a disagreeable combination.
Oh, and because The Lakewood Scoop orders comments by post date without any sort of filtering and because I decided to take some time to prepare my thoughts means that this comment will get very little exposure. Funny how certain designs actively discourage sensible/critical discourse by rewarding the most reactionary discourse. It is understandable that The Lakewood Scoop typically has very little comment engagement because everyone knows that it isn’t a place for sensible discourse. For other forums, this is a solved problem, just like road design is a solved problem if you care to look.