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Study to examine traffic in wake of teen’s death
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(Arianne Starnes/ Baltimore Examiner)
Cars drive past a roadside memorial Wednesday near Route 31 at Tahoma Farm Road in Westminster. The stone is dedicated to Charlie Diegel, 17, who died Oct. 27 in a traffic accident there. Denise Diegel and her 17-year-old son, Charlie, always drove together to Westminster High School, where she taught foreign languages and he was a senior. But on Oct. 27, she had a doctor’s appointment,v so he drove alone and collided with a dump truck amid the busy morning traffic at Route 31 and Tahoma Farm Road. “You don’t send your children off to school expecting them to die,” Diegel said Wednesday after visiting the stone roadside memorial dedicated to her only son, a typically cautious boy who played tennis and earned straight A’s. Diegel recently sent a letter to Westminster Common Council asking that the city study traffic on Route 31 to determine if stoplights or other traffic-calming measures could be erected to make sure no one else is injured or killed on the road, which is lined with several residential subdivisions. City officials discovered that the State Highway Administration was already studying the road, Councilman Kevin Utz said. After SHA finishes its study, the city will present the state’s findings at a public meeting officials expect to hold in June, Councilman Gregory Pecoraro said. Preliminary results show that speeding on the road isn’t excessive, Utz said. But the problem, Diegel said, lies in the volume of traffic. “We have heavy traffic and poor design for three or four residential developments,” she said. “It was a rural road until about 10 years ago. The county wants to pretend it’s rural, but we are now suburban, and we need to change the roads to match that. Hundreds of people feel like they are taking their lives in their hands every time they pull out.” When told about the June meeting, Diegel said she was fed up with the timetables of bureaucracy but added that she and her husband have actively decided not to be bitter about their loss. She’s returned to work at the high school where her son was supposed to graduate. Still, one question lingers. “How many people have to die?” she asked. kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.coom |
