Letter: Wider, safer road shoulders needed

Please get in your cars and go for a drive.

Drive down Lonestar Road, drive down Hillgate Road, down Wildwood Road. Drive down County Line Road, drive down Cortina School Road, drive down almost any other road in our beautiful flat spacious county and take your eyes away from the paved road for just a second and see the border of those roads clearly, and then ask yourselves, why?

Why, when we put roads across this beautiful valley, do we feel the need to place deep irrigation ditches within one to two feet of the paved area?

Right now there is a man sitting in some jail, with years to go on his sentence, because a bus he was driving went off the paved road and flipped and several people died.

Check the records for the deaths on Lonestar as well as other roads in this county. Think, would these deaths have occurred if there was an area on either side of the road that was flat bare ground?

If you would have gone off the road with the 3- to 4-inch lip on it, and plowed out into a flat weedy area, yoy may have dented the car.

Aren’t you tired of hearing, “the landloard doesn’t want to give up this much area for roads or safety? I know these people and will never believe that.

Wouldn’t the local police like to see you have an area to pull over safely if they are stopping you for a traffic violation? Or if you have car trouble, or if a slow moving piece of farm equipment could pull over to allow you to pass?

Judy Hageman Kalfsbeek
Arbuckle

Editor’s Note: Quintin Joey Watts was sentened in November 2009, to 26 years and four months in prison after a jury found him guilty of 11 counts of gross vehicular manslaughter and 21 enhancements for inflicting great bodily injury to surviving passengers. He was the driver of a bus that crashed on Lonestar Road on Oct. 5, 2008. For more, go to www.colusa-sun-herald.com/news/years-3770-sentenced-watts.html.