SAN DIEGO — The community of Otay Mesa is giving the green light to to make a dangerous intersection safer.
The four-way stop at Del Sol Boulevard and Kostner Drive has been the site of dozens of accidents over the years, as well as a popular site for street racing. Otay Mesa residents have been sounding the alarm for years about the dangers of this intersection where too often, drivers simply ignore the stop signs.
"It's very dangerous!" said Maria Castaneda, who has lived on the corner of this intersection for more than three decades.
Over the years, she has continually witnessed drivers barreling through here.
"They don't make the stop sign, and they just fly like an airplane!" she told CBS 8.
Maria said that during the night, racing along this street is popular. It's frightening for residents like her and her young grandchildren.
"They go really fast, probably like 100 miles an hour," she added.
These driving patterns inevitably leads to accidents and a disproportionately high rate of injuries, according to the city.
In 2018 for instance, while there were only seven accidents here, they all involved injuries.
"I think we need something to make it safe," Maria said.
Something is now being done.
Wednesday night, the Otay Mesa-Nestor Community Planning Group gave the green light to allow a roundabout to be installed there, in place of the stop signs with the goal of slowing traffic down and decreasing accidents.
"It's very efficient, it has greater capacity, it's safer," said Steven Bliss, associate traffic engineer with the City of San Diego.
"It slows people down to about 15 to 20 miles per hour, 18 miles an hour average, and you just sweep through and you just move on your way," Bliss added.
"Safety is always an issue here," added Community Planning Group Chair Albert Velasquez. "And we get a lot of traffic as you can see. So anything that helps the community make it safer is always a good thing."
Money has already been earmarked in the city budget for this project, which can be installed quickly using military-grade materials.
This can't come soon enough for Maria Castaneda.
"We need something to protect our people here," she said. "It's so dangerous and we think there may be a really bad accident here in the future."
With this approval by the Planning Group and with funding already in place, this new roundabout could be completed and operational at Del Sol and Kostner by the end of June.
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