We live across from the Avalon apartment complex in Plainsboro. It harbors some careless drivers. Every five years or so our mailbox gets taken out by an apartment driver attempting to negotiate a quick turn into a traffic stream. Some attempt to drive while drinking coffee or something stronger. Others are on cell phones. One girl applied lip stick and fixed her hair in the rear view while steering with her knees. This is good training for the demolition derby or Cirque du Soleil. But multi-tasking in a car is deadly.
The last two of our five mailbox murders have been the most dangerous because they occurred on newly installed sidewalks frequented by mothers with infants in strollers, children and elderly on bikes, and students and neighbors on the way to the adjacent recreation, civic, and town centers. One driver tore across my lawn, demolishing a brick wall and path. It’s just a matter of time until some pedestrians are run over.
On Valentine’s Day I nearly was clipped by a woman bearing down on me in a scarlet sedan with my mail in hand. She jumped the curb, frozen to her steering wheel and sunk in her seat to shield from a shattered windshield and identification. The sounds her bumper breaking off, my mailbox being taken down, and her outside mirror bouncing on concrete left me in shock then dismay as she escaped down Plainsboro Road. I hoped she’d return to the scene she shattered rather than speed away. We could have settled up without the police. But as patrolman Nick Fazio soon reported, she said she didn’t think she needed to stop. She drove beyond civility.
No one should live with guilt and punishment for a hit and run, let alone doing in a neighbor. Perhaps a calming traffic light, curb barrier, safety awareness, and very tough issuance of driver licenses would help. In Sweden just one DWI reduces a driver to a permanent pedestrian, without exception or reinstatement. Driving should be a privilege earned and maintained, not an entitlement expected. And I want to support our beleaguered postal service, but it may be time to completely rely on inside e-mail and let the chips and people fall where they will.
The redeeming value for Valentine’s Day was not in greeting cards in my murdered mailbox but the quick, competent, and courteous service of patrolman Nick Fazio. I harbor hope.
Doug Opalski
Plainsboro
