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Three accidents in 24 hours on a newly redesigned Christchurch highway have worried residents that the “homeless corner” will become a death trap.
A resident is calling for the corner of Worsleys Rd in Cracroft to be completely redesigned before someone dies.
A transportation engineer has also criticized the new curve, saying it is designed as a race track. But the subdivision developer behind the design backs the new design, saying it’s safer than the closed corner it replaced.
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Three crashes occurred on Worsleys Rd in Cracroft over the weekend, just days after the new corner reopened to traffic.
Part of Worsleys Rd has been realigned to help accommodate the Cashmere Estates subdivision and a new entrance to Christchurch Adventure Park.
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The new wide and wide curve was fully opened to traffic for the first time last week, but it is still a 30km / h zone due to the loose chip seal.
The first accident occurred at 3.30 pm on Friday, followed by another on Saturday around 2 pm and a third at 3.30 pm the same day.
John Phillips’ fence was damaged in the first crash when a 16-year-old boy lost control of his vehicle and ended up on the other side of the road.
JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON / Stuff
A new wide turn on Worsleys Rd has replaced the old road and the original sharp left turn, but three crashes occurred there over the weekend. The center lines have been laid out on the road this week.
In the second crash, a car carrying five people ended up on its side on the sidewalk, while the third crash destroyed a light pole. It is understood that there were no serious injuries, but Phillips worries that it is only a matter of time before someone dies.
“Someone is going to get hurt because someone thinks he is Lewis Hamilton.”
Phillips said all the cars were driven by teenagers, who he believed were going too fast around the corner and, in some cases, were trying to avoid it.
He calculated that the message had spread that there was a new corner adrift in Christchurch.
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A traffic engineer has compared the design of the new corner to a race track.
Transportation engineer Axel Downard-Wilke said the inside corner curb was the lowest point on the road surface and rose to the outside edge. For urban roads, the highest point should be in the middle of the road before going down to either side.
“The whole curve is very steep, as you would see it on a race track or a mountain bike track.
“It really puzzles me. Who designed this and why would the council approve something totally against best practice?
“If you wanted to build a racetrack, this is how you do it.”
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Residents worry that someone will die if the corner is not redesigned.
Downard-Wilke said he wasn’t sure how the problem could be fixed other than redoing the entire road, which would be too expensive.
The council’s transportation operations manager, Steffan Thomas, said the corner was designed by the developer, who had also completed the work, but the design was accepted by the council.
The road had not yet been returned to the council, but before that happened, it would review the corner from a road safety perspective to make sure it is safe and meets relevant best practices and standards, he said.
Cashmere Estates owner Hamish Wright said the corner was much safer now than before.
“It seems like people don’t know how to slow down.”
He said that given where the cars ended up, the drivers must have been traveling between 50 and 70 km / h.
“It was probably some too eager drivers. They were all young and I think unsafe driving was what we reduced it to. Hopefully now people slow down a bit. “
As part of the subdivision’s resource consent, Wright’s traffic engineers designed the corner to make it safer, he said. Instead of the original 6.5 meters, the road was now 11 meters wide.
The center lines, which were not in place at the weekend, had been painted this week.
