Bad City Council Decisions — By Tommy Purser

I got a message on my phone Monday at 7:09 a.m. from someone but I don’t know who it was. It said, “Another wreck at Broxton Rd. and Bell St. just happened. Two within five days.”
Later that morning, I went to my physical therapy appointment and there was a lady there who had been recommended for therapy because of injuries she received in an accident at the same intersection.
I’m not surprised. When Steve Land was Hazlehurst Police Chief, he called for a 4-way stop at that intersection because of how dangerous it was for motorists. But, after he retired, for some reason the council decided to put a 4-way stop at the intersection of Broxton Rd. and Charles Rogers Blvd., a block north of the dangerous intersection. Go figure.
It reminds me of the council’s decision to put a traffic light at the intersection of Miller Street and Coffee Street, despite the opposition of the Georgia Department of Transportation. One DOT person told me at the time that, in some ways, putting a traffic light at that spot made the intersection more dangerous.
That statement came to mind a few weeks ago when I was an eye-witness to a terrible accident there, despite the presence of the traffic signal.
Why the 4-way stop was located at a less dangerous intersection is a mystery to me. The traffic light decision, I strongly believe, was made for political reasons, not for safety reasons.