Help Me Hank: Stop sign stalemate

It's this intersection, right in the middle of Jason's neighborhood, right near his house. Every time Jason drove through it, it drove him crazy.

Jason, homeowner
“It's more of a safety issue than anything.”

Watch. See this car. It hesitates, and then goes. But this one doesn't even hit the brakes.

Jason, homeowner
“You need a way to slow people down.”

This three way stop in the middle of a kid-friendly neighborhood development is a traffic disaster, because there are supposed to be 3 stop signs but now there are only two, because someone swiped one. The minute there was no sign of that sign, cars zoomed by thinking it was legal, and not thinking about Jason's kids or all the others who live around here.

Jason, homeowner
“They wouldn't know whether to keep driving, they wouldn't know whether to stop.”

So Jason called Plymouth Town Hall to put a stop to it.

Jason, homeowner
“What I wanted to happen was the stop sign to be put up.”

But no sign of the sign. Town hall told him, the sign's not ours; it belongs to the subdivision developer. So Jason left voicemail after voicemail but says he never got a response. He called it a dead end, so he called someone else.

Jason, homeowner
“’Help Me Hank.’”

So we drove to the neighborhood, carefully looking both ways, and yup, Jason was right, driver's here considered stopping optional.

Some think about it, some slow down a bit, some just hit the accelerator and power right through. Yikes! It's actually scary.

Town officials explained that if the sign were on a street that the town owned the public works department would fix it at taxpayer’s expense.

But the roads here are private, owned by the developer, and it's their call about replacing it.

Surprisingly turns out they were annoyed too! They explained they'd replaced the missing sign once, twice, three times after it was snagged by vandals.

Still they agreed public safety comes first. And ta-dah, now there's no question about what to do at the intersection. The sign says stop, and watch these cars, it seems to be working.

Jason, homeowner
“I don't know what happened in between, but you did it.”

We called the local police department and they said they were on the case and on patrol. You should know stealing a stop sign can get you arrested and fined up to $300. If you're fighting a consumer battler, maybe I can help. Just go to our website and click on “Help Me Hank.” In the newsroom, I'm Hank Phillippi Ryan.

(Copyright (c) 2007 Sunbeam Television Corp. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)