HHSA Employee Gets Speeders to Stop...Literally

The speed limit is 25 miles per hour, but vehicles used to whiz by at much higher speeds, putting pedestrians and pets in danger. Not anymore.

Two stop signs have been placed on Central Ave. at the intersection with Dwight Street in City Heights and Lourdes Sandoval couldn’t be happier. Her community is now safe and it is also easier for people to walk in their neighborhood.

“I’ve lived here all my life,” said Sandoval, who has worked as a social service aide for the County Health and Human Services Agency for almost 13 years. “They are more than stop signs. They’ve helped me understand that I have a voice in what goes on in my community.”

Sandoval, who lives four houses away from the intersection, got together with leaders of some local community organizations and Cherokee Point Elementary School to get the stop signs placed at the busy intersection, which she said has been the site of many collisions between pedestrians and vehicles.  Drivers also raced down the street on weekends.

“A lot of kids walk to school; elderly people ride their electric wheel chairs in the area, but the drivers did not care who was in the way,” said Sandoval.

She has witnessed the deaths of motorcyclist and a pedestrian along Central Ave., a wide street with no stop signs in an eight-block distance until the two new ones were installed recently. They had petitioned for speed bumps, but they were rejected because of the high number of cars travelling through the area.

Sandoval’s neighbor also got hit by a car when trying to aid a dog that had been run over. It’s been almost one year since the accident and she is barely starting to walk again.

The stops signs, Sandoval said, not only make her community safer but also make it easier for people to walk and be more physically active, a goal of the County’s Live Well, San Diego! initiative.

“It fits in with what Live Well hopes to accomplish,” said Sandoval, who, in spite of a bad hip, goes out for walks with her mother, who lives across the street.

The racing has almost stopped and the noise has decreased. She hopes two more stop signs they have requested will make the area safer.

 “Children used to dart across the street to avoid getting hit. Now they can walk. People can walk more safely,” she said.