Wells Brook Road unsafe bus stop for kids

I first met Henry MacDonald in May of 2006, as he stood waiting for me with his grandkids at the end of the Wells Brook Road where it connects with the South Black River Road.
As I pulled onto the side of the road and walked over to them, an eastbound transport truck could be seen kicking up a cloud of dust in the distance on the South Black River Road.
After introductions, he pointed to the Wells Brook
Road where he lives.
"Three small children come up this road every morning," MacDonald told me.
The transport truck disappeared into a dip behind a blind hill on the South Black River Road. Seconds
later it crested the hill and whooshed by the Wells Brook Road and us at high-speed only feet away. I’m a big guy, six feet tall and over 250 pounds, not exactly a lightweight, but I was literally rocked by the wind it made. "As you can see, it's not safe to leave them here by themselves," MacDonald said.
He wasn’t kidding. The way that truck came out of nowhere and roared
by us had the little hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.
"Those transports are running 24 hours a day, seven days a week."
He pointed to the blind hill a couple of hundred feet
from where the students got on the bus.
"When someone's coming over that hill, I tell you it's a dangerous situation. You get them sometimes flying up here and I mean flying," he said.
"I want action on the part of the government. This is a dangerous piece of road.I think it's been dragging on long enough. We have to live with this 24 hours a day."
That was 16-months ago.
The entrance to the Wells Brook Road was repositioned recently so the oncoming high-speed trucks aren’t hidden from view anymore, a welcome change for the families who live there.
But the fight is not over yet.
MacDonald and others have been fighting with the school district to have the school bus pick up their young children outside their houses instead of at the end of the road continuously travelled by high-speed heavy
machines.
The powers-that-be say the kids can’t be picked up outside their homes because Wells Brook Road is within a mile of the South Napan Road where the children go to school. A bus would pick them up outside their homes if they were more than a mile from the school.
The difference in distance isn’t a whole heck of a lot, MacDonald told a reporter for this newspaper last week, about an eight-of a mile.
Ok, guys, come on now. We’re talking about the safety of kids here, the very reason we're employing these school district civil servants in the first place. It’s a dangerous bit of road. I stood there myself to find out how dangerous and I cringed when those transport trucks loaded for bear went slamming by in a cloud of dust and smoke.
It didn’t take me long to figure out how terrifying that experience would be for an eight-year-old.
Will it cost money? Of course it will. Everything does.
Would it be worth the expense?
I’d say so. These are kids after all.
Maybe those people who are so resistant to spending a few dollars to protect children should stand on the side of the Wells Brook Road some morning to see how dangerous the experience really is. If they did, they probably wouldn’t be so quick to say no to picking up the youngsters at their driveway. They might even save a few lives.