New Traffic Light Brings Comfort to Parents of Accident Victim

When Debbie St. John attended last month, she was prepared to tell her painful story once again – how her daughter had lost her life during a horrific car accident at the corner of Foundry and Prospect streets.

But after two long years, she had no need to retell that heartbreak.  Without any discussion, voters gave their approval to borrow $500,000 to install a traffic light at that intersection, as part of a capital improvement package.

Though the money can not bring her daughter back, it can at least give comfort to Debbie and her husband Dan, who lost their only child, 22-year-old Nicole, on February 26, 2009. 

“This was about my daughter, and I wasn’t going to leave until we got the money. Now, I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders,” she said.  

The St. Johns have been working to have a light installed at that intersection ever since they lost Nicole.   She was driving on her way back from working at Starbucks, and stopped to pick up two friends, who had asked for a lift.

Entering Foundry Street, from Prospect, her Honda Civic was struck by a tractor-trailer truck.  Both of her friends survived the crash, but Nicole died instantly.

“She was perfect,” said Debbie.  “She was wonderful and beautiful, and once you met her, you wouldn’t forget her,” she said.

The St. Johns gathered over 5,000 signatures to urge state officials to fund a traffic light, and they established a web site, www.seethelight.us, to help them with their cause.  They also got support from area residents and Town Administrator David Colton, who recommended the town spend its own money, rather than wait for state or federal funds.

Colton said the site has been one of the most dangerous intersections in southeastern Massachusetts, and statistics back that up.  A report done by the engineering firm Beta Group determined its crash rate to be 1.27 per million vehicles, which far exceeds the state’s acceptable rate of .67 per million. 

In the year Nicole was killed, there were at least two other accidents at the site, one of which involved injuries, according to statistics gathered by the Old Colony Planning Council.  And during the next year there was a serious accident that sent two people to the hospital.

“It (Nicole’s accident) wasn’t a freak accident.  Had the intersection been configured differently, or had there had been a signal there … there’s a high likelihood that that accident wouldn’t have occurred,” Colton said

After the accident, the town consulted the state, which then included the intersection in a safety audit report.  But the recommendations were daunting.  They included a number of major alterations, which involved widening and lowering the road, and the project looked to run into millions of dollars.

 Colton said the town continued to “fast track” the project, however, and paid $70,000 for an engineering design report, approved at 2010 Town Meeting.  This report provided much better news – it showed that the job could get done with just minor alterations to the street, and a traffic signal.

At that point, Colton recommended that the town do the project itself because it could be years before the state would fund the project. The state is already funding two others projects at and the intersection of , he said, and he doubted the state would consider funding a third project at this time. 

Selectmen agreed, and subsequently the finance and capital planning committees also approved expenditures for the project, which should meet a $500,000 budget.   Colton said he was not surprised that the money was approved without discussion, even in an economically difficult year. 

“All the people we talked with, building up to it, were all for it,” he said.

The St. Johns now plan to have a cerebration, on behalf of Nicole, once the light is installed, but they haven’t  yet planned the details.   They also appreciate Colton’s efforts, who, they say, has been behind them from day one. 

“He’s a wonderful man,” Debbie said.

Colton said the project will be going out to bid in about a month, and it should be under construction, or done, by Thanksgiving.  In the meantime, he hopes there will be no more accidents there.  Though police have been monitoring the site, and ticketing people for going too fast, he said there is no way the area can be truly safe until the light is installed.

“You always hear, ‘what are you going to do, wait until somebody dies?’  Unfortunately we did, and now we just want to make sure that it doesn’t happen again,” Colton said.