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Editorial: A way needed to minimize roadside risk
A surprising and heartbreaking number of people have driven their cars accidentally into roadside ponds just recently. At least four drivers, three of them in Putnam County, have gone off roads and into ponds in the recent past. Two of those drivers died.
Most recently, 17-year-old Brianna Coon went off a road in Putnam County and into a pond. She managed a quick, frantic 911 call, but to no avail. Emergency responders needed two hours to find her submerged car, far too long for the Rockford teen to survive. It's still not clear why Coon went off the road.
Last month in Mercer County, Danny L. Boise, 61, died after his car went into a pond. Boise managed to escape the car and water but made it only a short distance before he collapsed and died. Snow-covered roads and darkness were factors in the crash, the Mercer County Sheriff's Office reported.
Putnam County has had two other such accidents in the recent past, The Lima News reported this week county. Neither of those drivers died.
Such accidents happen, Putnam County Sheriff Jim Beutler said, but not that commonly. Still, four in such a short span of time is the sort of thing that catches people's attention. Soon enough, someone might be calling for something to be done. What that something is, however, won't be so easy to say.
The quick answers to such tragedies are as shortsighted as they are easy. People should drive more carefully. Or lawmakers could just try to ban roadside ponds.
The fact is that they're called accidents for a reason. No one drives into a pond on purpose, not in frigid Ohio winter weather. People swerve to miss other cars, people or animals in the road. Tires blow. People miss turns on unfamiliar roads. Sometimes, people fall asleep behind the wheel or just aren't as careful as they should be. You can't change those issues, so you have to address potential roadside hazards.
But you can't ban private ponds, particularly in rural areas. Leaving aside the obvious property rights fight such would cause, eliminating ponds also eliminates a needed tool to fight fires in places where there are no hydrants: water.
The answer — we don't have one at this point — is to minimize the risk. Many townships and counties in Ohio have no zoning laws, so perhaps there's reason for statewide standards. People drive on non-local roads — Coon was from Rockford, her accident occurred north of Ottoville some 25 miles away from home — if you need further reason for statewide standards.
That might seem heavy-handed, so property owners could take it upon themselves to head off any form of government mandate. People who have ponds near roads could take it upon themselves to put up some form of barrier. We're not contractors, but you can buy guard rails online for anywhere from $100 or so on up. It's a relatively small price for someone already paying in the thousands of dollars to have an excavator dig a pond.
After these recent tragedies, that price might be repaid many times over in peace of mind.
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