Shire Lane is now a town road in Turner. The road is situated such that 30 percent of the cars may not be able to avoid a rear end crash at Shire Lane. It has inadequate stopping sight distance which is a key safety-related design element.

Turner and the MDOT don’t require adequate stopping sight distance. A key safety standard is ignored and the logical consequence shows in MDOT’s 10-year trend report which said, “Rear-end crashes have increased substantially,” while the overall crash rate decreased 12 percent.

We shouldn’t expect a drop in rear-end crashes until the MDOT and Turner include stopping sight distance in their road-design standards.

In the meantime, the future residents of Shire subdivision and innocent bystanders passing Shire Lane will probably be another statistic in the MDOT’s report.

Kenji DeLige, Turner