West Charlotte residents fed up with dangerous driving; ask city for action

CHARLOTTE — Residents in Enderly Park are calling for speed humps to be put on their streets, in hopes of preventing a tragedy after several close calls by reckless drivers.

The latest incident happened along Tennyson Drive on Aug. 18.

Daniel Bar, who lives on the street, captured the shocking video on his front porch camera.

“It’s pretty crazy,” Bar said.

In the video, a car can be seen speeding down the street as its bumper flies off. Then, the car barely misses a person riding a bike down the street. The car exits the camera shot, but a neighbor just down the road showed Channel 9 where the car ended up.

He didn’t want to be identified but showed the damage done to his backyard fence. He said the car slammed into the back of the fence, traveled through his backyard and exited through his side fence.

Seconds later, his doorbell camera captured the car coming to a stop when it hit an electrical pole. A woman could be seen running from the car as she screamed.

“If there was a child in that backyard, that child would have unfortunately been killed,” said Bar.

It’s not the first time it’s happened, according to Bar and other neighbors.

They said this is the second time a car has crashed into the same backyard. Both incidents happened in a time span of less than a year.

“It’s dangerous,” said Bar. “The way that drivers drive through there, there’s no way they can stop in time to avoid hitting somebody.”

Multiple neighbors who live on Tennyson Drive and Plainview Road told Channel 9 about multiple instances of reckless driving.

One video shared with us showed a person walking along Tennyson Drive before the person was forced to jump out of the way of an oncoming car, screaming as the car came to a halt.

“In the eight months that I’ve been here, I’ve seen about five different accidents,” Bar added.

He and other neighbors have a solution in mind: speed humps.

“The best proactive move that the city could make would be putting in speed humps,” said Bar. “That’s the only way we’re going to slow down traffic on that road.”

In June, Charlotte City Council made it easier for neighborhoods to get speed humps put on their streets.

The new policy allows any one person to request speed humps. A petition with numerous signatures of surrounding neighbors is no longer needed. Instead, Charlotte Department of Transportation is required to notify neighbors when a speed hump has been requested and discuss any potential concerns that are brought up by any feedback.

Bar showed Channel 9 the formal request he submitted to CDOT in July asking for speed humps on his street.

He received a general response alerting him the city had received his request and noting that a staff member would be in contact with him.

“I have not heard anything,” he said. “I get the feeling that action will only get taken place if something terrible happens.”

Emails reviewed by Channel 9 show other neighbors have spent months going back and forth with CDOT, CMPD and Mayor Vi Lyles’s office about their concerns. They’ve continued to ask for immediate actions. So far, neighbors said CMPD has boosted patrols, but they added that hasn’t fixed the issue.

They want speed humps put on their streets, hoping it will slow down drivers and prevent someone from being killed on their neighborhood streets.

“I live there with my family. I’ve got a toddler -- it’s the front of my house. I don’t let my toddler go out front just because of the dangers of the cars driving by,” Bar said, adding that nobody should have to worry about that in their own front yard.

CDOT officials said they added a multi-way stop at Plainview Road and Tennyson Drive after seeing repeated vehicles roll through the two-way stop sign.

For a multiway stop and speed humps to be combined, the following conditions must be met per the revised policy:

Streets may qualify for both speed humps and multiway stops if:

• The first traffic calming measure was installed more than a year prior.
• Traffic volume on the street is at least 1,500 vehicles per day.
• Charlotte Fire Department analyses find no negative impact on emergency response times, resulting from another traffic-calming measure.

The volume on Tennyson Drive is approximately 1,200 vehicles per day and it does not qualify for multiple traffic-calming measures at this time.

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