Laguna Shores resident reacts on speed limit
I have been a Laguna Shores resident since 1982.
In 1984, my son was born. At that time, I lived on the far north end
of Buccaneer Drive. Every single day, at least twice and sometimes more,
I would put him in a stroller and walk from my condo to Tarpon Drive
around Lagoon Road and then back down Buccaneer Drive to go
back home. When my son got a little older, we used to follow the same
path but with a tricycle or a motorized car.
When he got a little older we used to ride our bicycles through the entire
neighborhood on a daily basis. This is how we met the vast majority of
the absolutely wonderful neighbors that we had. Eventually, he got
into skateboarding and rollerblading. We would put on our rollerblades
and skate around the whole neighborhood regularly. In all of those
years, never once did we have an incident where someone was speeding
on our streets and we felt that it was unsafe.
Now we have this new 20 miles per hour rule because certain individuals
feel that it is unsafe. Well, maybe it wouldn’t feel unsafe if you weren’t
walking your kid(s) and/or your dog(s) down the middle of the street
with your back to traffic. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but, last I
heard roads are for everyone’s use.
The funniest part of this whole thing is these people had no
idea how fast 20 MPH is. I don’t think I have ever driven that fast on
these streets. A couple of weeks ago, my son and I took a ride through
the neighborhood (’cause we hadn’t in a while). We were coming up on
the intersection of Buccaneer Drive and Lagoon Road only to have some
lady (resident) literally scream at us to slow down (quite nastily).
And we were traveling at the mach speed of 14 MPH!!
In conclusion, I have the following suggestions: If you want to own a
road/neighborhood, there is plenty of land in the United States where
no one lives. Maybe you should consider that. Or if that is too
unreasonable, maybe you can start petitioning for a new rule that
would require everyone to stop upon entering our neighborhood via
Tarpon, Redfish and Buccaneer roads, put your car in neutral, turn it off
and push it through the neighborhood. Something tells me the latter is
not out of the realm of possiblity.
Sincerely,
Susan Ohlin