Same Problem A Year Later

To the Editor:

The accident rate at the Castle Hill/King Street curve is increasing again. This morning I saw yet another accident as I drove by. What follows is my letter from last year about this dangerous curve. It, plus the signs that were added, seemed to help in that the accident rate diminished. Unfortunately, both signs and letters lose their effectiveness overtime. Here is what I wrote a year ago:

While reading through The Bee last week, I saw a picture of the latest crash at the Castle Hill curve near King Street. According to town records, there have been five reported crashes at or near the curve within the last ten weeks; the latest, as shown in the picture, involved a station wagon and a delivery truck. It seems that almost every rainfall precipitates a crash.

The dangerous nature of the Castle Hill curve is not surprising. The curve is “physics in action.” Once the surface becomes wet, especially at the very beginning when the oil is raised but not washed away, the roadway becomes slick and thus nearly frictionless. Any car going down the hill too fast, overwhelming what little friction there might be, obeys Newton’s Law of Inertia and travels straight into the oncoming traffic lane. (Note that the law states: objects with mass in motion tend to go in a straight line unless acted on by an outside force.) For larger roads, this phenomenon is often counteracted by banking, i.e., making the outside of the curve higher than the inside. Castle Hill, however, being a small secondary road, is not banked. So, once a fast car begins its slide on the road’s wet, frictionless surface, it cannot stop from entering the oncoming traffic lane. If the driver is “lucky,” she/he will end up near the trees on the far side of the road. As we see in The Bee’s picture, the unlucky driver can instead end up colliding with a delivery truck. An exceptionally unlucky driver could end up hitting a motorcycle, causing grave injury to another — and there’s nothing a driver can do to avoid it once the slide begins.

Physics aside, the town has already tried to address the problem with signs. Perhaps one day there will be enough money for the town to bank the curve and give drivers more control over their cars. In any case, please, please, acknowledge the signs and slow down. Parents, advise your young, inexperienced drivers to avoid the curve, especially when the roads are wet. And on dry days, why not just make it a habit to approach the curve under the 25 mph posted speed limit so that staying within the travel lane is something done easily? Hopefully if we all do so, we’ll not see another disturbing picture of a crash at that curve for a long, long time.

Deborra Zukowski

4 Cornfield Ridge Road, Newtown                   August 23, 2006 &

                                                                                October 3, 2007