THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 21, 1996 TAG: 9601200112
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
No, No - Save our trees on Shore Drive! We've already spent a great deal of money to make the Shore Drive study and now more money will be spent cutting down trees. We live in a speed-bump society, where we all have to make accommodations for a few nuts.
Here's one solution to slow down traffic: Monitor drunk driving, and both save and make money on this 5-mile section. At the 2 1/2-mile point, set up a toll station and charge a scant 10 cents for the privilege of driving on this lovely, tree-lined stretch of road.
Solution No. 2: Turn Shore Drive into a bike path - bikers appreciate those trees!
Fran Adams
Virginia Beach
I see that they are after the trees on Shore Drive now. Do you know that not a single tree, with malice aforethought, has been known to jump out at a passing car? I have seen a few feint right or left occasionally, but only in jest.
Must we sacrifice so many trees to keep a bunch of drunks and speeders safe? After all, if it wasn't for the trees they might be crashing into you or me.
To paraphrase Joyce Kilmer, ``I think I have never seen anything as lovely as a tree, except when some idiot has draped his car around it.''
Tom M. Cauley
Virginia Beach How can anyone place tree above the life of a human?
To residents of the North End who oppose cutting down some trees along Shore Drive for safety purposes:
I am concerned at the lack of compassion shown for human lives from some recent letters. Are you sure that every single one of the nearly 60 deaths that have occurred on that stretch of road were the results of 60 worthless, drunken reckless humans that deserved to die at that particular time or tree? Tell that to the parents of each teenager, or to the child, parents, or wife of each young man who lost their precious life there!
I, also have lived near and carefully driven that route for eight years. I don't think that anyone drunk or sober, deserving or undeserving, young or old, drivers or passengers, has much of a chance of surviving an accident there once the car has left the road's edge. Especially driving in any type of adverse weather conditions.
If removing a fraction of the trees and spending some money on that roadway can save even one innocent human life, then it should be done and deemed worthwhile. Victims and advocates of accidents and crimes of all natures frequently spend their entire lives dedicated to making changes with the hope that one single life be saved or changed. Have some of you forgotten the worth of a human life?
We are not talking about bulldozing trees down in the state park - we're talking about making sufficient shoulders and installing, guard rails! The road is unsafe! How many cyclists have you almost hit on that road? How many other major thoroughfares that carry millions of people into a tourism mecca are so poorly or unsafely engineered?
I bet that most of the people who are placing a higher value on a few ugly trees over possibly saving a human life never cared about trees (or bays) until they had enough money to buy a home near a state park or a bay.
Do these opposers think that their self-righteousness or their money will spare the life of their teenager, or their grandchild, or grandparent, who might happen to lose control (perhaps accidently) of their vehicle on a dark, foggy, wet or slippery night?
Get a life - give a life a second chance.
Pam Favor
Virginia Beach by CNB