Collier shoring up safety measures for streets that dead-end with canals

Josi Teeters finally can rest easy.

She no longer tosses and turns at night, waiting to hear the sound of tires squealing and water splashing.

Her home sits at the end of a dead-end, Golden Gate Estates street where a woman almost died in January after driving her van into the canal, only to be rescued from the verge of drowning by Teeters’ husband.

Since then, Collier County government staff has installed additional signs, reflectors, reflective rumble strips and a collapsible barricade at 23rd Street Southwest.

“I think it’s absolutely perfect what they’ve done,” Teeters said. “We couldn’t be happier.”

The January accident was the final straw that prompted the county’s transportation division to conduct an in-depth safety study of dead-end streets with canals.

It’s done.

And the verdict is in: Just about every one of them is proposed to get some more signs or reflectors — if the Collier County Commission approves of an additional $90,000 allocation in the upcoming 2006-07 budget.

Through the study process, county officials also learned that drivers have been accidentally plunging their cars into the canals at the end of Estates streets more often than county officials first thought.

“We found that during the past five years, there have been 10 cases of people driving into canals at the end of dead-end streets out in the Estates,” said Bob Tipton, director of traffic operations for Collier County.

Since this latest accident, reports from the Collier Sheriff’s Office, Florida Highway Patrol and other law enforcement agencies are funneling down to the transportation division office.

“They are now coming through a central reporting site,” Tipton said. “We have a contract with the state of Florida in which we get copies of all crashes for Collier County that come directly from the state.”

More signs and reflectors are planned for those streets considered the most risky.

The county’s study showed there are 325 Estates streets that dead-end with a canal.

And 160 of those have a road that continues on the other side of the water.

Tipton said that 79 of these apparently don’t have enough of a visual vertical barrier, like trees, to slow drivers down.

Two red reflective signs are posted at the end of these streets — one more than the federal standard — but they don’t always do the job.

“We seem to have the most problems at the end of roads with canals where a roadway is on the other side,” Tipton said. “A big complaint we’ve had is if there is a car on other side of the canal coming toward you, sometimes you lose sight of red reflectors.

“Some people reported thinking red reflectors were the tail lights of another car.”

The study found the two most dangerous streets to be 8th Street Northeast, where two vehicles have plunged into the canal in the past five years; and 23rd Street Southwest, where four accidents have occurred in the same time frame.

These are the only streets to get the county’s treatment so far, costing about $10,000.

An additional reflective diamond has been added to the end of the streets on each side of the canal. Also, barricades that collapse if a car drives through them have been installed near both shorelines.

And a sign has been installed along both streets warning drivers that the road ends 300 feet ahead.

Work is also slated for more than 70 Estates streets that dead-end at a canal and lack visual vertical barriers alerting drivers to stop.

At the end of those streets, a third reflective red diamond is proposed to be added.

And a 30-by-30-inch sign is proposed to be posted along the streets indicating that the road ends.

Along the more than 240 Estates streets that end with a canal but also have vegetation that acts as a visual barrier, the county plans to install large dead-end signs.