Digital speed sign set for Haw River Road after fatality

by CHRIS BURRITT

OAK RIDGE – The town of Oak Ridge is installing a digital radar speed sign on Haw River Road at the recommendation of the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) following a Halloween night pedestrian fatality.

Fourteen-year-old Aliyah Thornhill died the night of Oct. 31 after being struck by a sports utility vehicle as she and a friend walked along Linville Road. Three years earlier, Noah Chambers, 11, was fatally injured as he crossed the road to attend Halloween night activities at Bethel United Methodist Church.

Oak Ridge’s Town Council voted unanimously during its Feb. 2 meeting to install the sign at an estimated cost of $4,000. Council members said they hope the sign will be the first of other safety measures on Haw River Road.

Mayor Pro Tem Jim Kinneman cautioned that the sign “has the potential to fall in the category of window dressing” because NCDOT determined that speed wasn’t a factor in ornhill’s death. Road safety education for pedestrians would help prevent accidents, Kinneman said.

The vehicle that struck Thornhill was traveling 30 mph, 15 mph slower than the posted speed limit, NCDOT Division 7 engineer Wright Archer III told Oak Ridge Mayor Ann Schneider in a Nov. 23 email.

The crash report determined that “it was dark (with) foggy conditions and the road was wet” when the vehicle struck Thornhill, according to Archer. The victim “was in the roadway walking eastbound, with (her back facing) traffic.”

The investigation found that the impact threw Thornhill into her friend, and both came to rest on the shoulder of the road, according to the crash report.

NCDOT’s speed and traffic analysis found that drivers travel at higher speeds on Haw River Road west of Linville Road before they “typically slow to (an) average of 45 mph as they approach the more residential areas of the road,” Oak Ridge Town Manager Bill Bruce wrote in a Feb. 2 memo to the council.

Accordingly, placing the sign