Residents ask for safer entrance into park following fatal crash
By MARISSA SULEK
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NASHVILLE, Tennessee (WSMV) — After a deadly car crash Friday afternoon, a Metro council member is looking into how to make the entrance into Edwin Warner Park safer. Edwin Warner Park is a nature escape but getting past the stone column entrance is a challenge.
“Yes, we come here all the time, every day,” says Norith Soth.
He says to make his daily trek, he must make a daily turn.
“I try to be extremely patient because that left turn is scary,” Soth says. “People drive that street like it’s a highway. People are going really fast, and you have to slow down and make that left turn.”
It’s a left turn Metro Police say 65-year-old John Taylor tried to make Friday afternoon. That’s when Metro Police say Taylor was rear ended, pushed into oncoming traffic, and hit by another car. Police say Taylor was not wearing a seatbelt and died at the hospital.
To see what hazards Taylor dealt with, we drove into the entrance ourselves. With traffic moving at almost 50 miles per hour, we discovered it’s nerve-wracking to stop before making the left turn. And the hill blocking drivers from oncoming traffic is another concern.
“Safe routes to parks are very important to me,” says Angie Henderson, District 34 Metro Councilwoman.
She says after she heard about Friday’s fatal crash, she reached out to Metro Parks Department to find a solution. One idea she has is to relocate the entrance to a nearby traffic light at State Route 100 and Old Hickory Boulevard, toward Ensworth High School.
“It would look to moving this kind of to the southwest what is an existing three-way intersection and making that a four-way intersection,” Henderson says.
She mentioned that would put the nature center, park, and greenway all in one entrance; letting drivers take in the reason they came.
Henderson says she is part of a committee working on the Vision Zero Action Plan. It consists of multiple Metro departments who locate areas with the highest traffic accidents and find solutions. The first draft of that plan is expected to come out Dec. 15.
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