Hazardous Road Conditions in Chesapeake, Virginia (VA) Seriously Injuring Motorists

Two lane rural roads are a city’s worst nightmares. They are considered one of the most dangerous types of highway, and unsurprisingly, one of the most accident-prone. Chesapeake’s Old Dominion Boulevard is a great example of that. In 2006, an SUV slipped into a rutted shoulder then crashed into a teen’s dark green Mustang. The teen’s lawyers sued the city for negligence in the poor maintenance of the city’s road and eventually settled out of court for $4.3 million.

A bill that proposed a $1.1 billion tax increase that could have helped finance the expansion of these types of roads was killed by the Virginia (VA) House of Delegates. Instead, the City of Chesapeake is planning to continue to strengthen a preventative maintenance program which works to maintain the roads until the funding is reached for larger improvement projects.

It seems that the Virginia (VA) House of Delegates in Richmond isn’t quite in tune with the public as they would like to believe. I’m sure a majority of us wouldn’t mind paying higher taxes if they would in fact contribute to public safety or even lower gas prices. If anything, raise taxes on things like cigarettes. They’re a bad habit and we should discourage their use, but then again these big companies are tied to the officials we elected. It’s about time the people in charge stopped being about politics, but about the needs of the people.