Ryan Rd and Evergreen Mills - road closed

Lee-
I don't believe that's true. The intersection was initially built as a stop for Ashburn Vilage Blvd and Waxpool travelled through. The huge back-ups of traffic on Ashburn Village Blvd during rush hours let to making it a four-way stop. I do not believe there has ever been a fatality at that intersection.

 

Having grown up in rural Virginia where ALL of the roads are unmarked, country roads, I disagree that it's always the road's fault. My mother was one of the three drivers education teachers for the entire county where I grew up (this is back when the state provided drivers ed). When I got my learner's permit, she installed a passenger's brake in their car (I did NOT get my own car and had to ask for permission to drive one of their's) and had her own stick up rear-view mirror. She put me and my brothers through extensive training in addition to the county's training (which was 6 weeks of 4 hour training every other day at a driving range plus 6 hours of on-road training)--serpentine, evasive manuevers, off road recovery, merging, yielding, etc. In fact, she continued to instruct me on my driving until one day when I was 23 and asked her to please stop telling me to "let up on the brake...check my blindspot...etc."

Besides the brake (which she used as much as she wanted to when I was driving), they also enforced several rules:

1. No one would be allowed to ride with me until I had at least 1 year's of driving experience under my belt. Their theory was that if I was going to hurt someone, it would only be myself.

2. Everyone must be buckled up. The car does not move until all seat belts are latched.

3. I was not allowed to ride with anyone who got below a B in driver's education (since she was THE teacher, she knew all of the kids grades).

Now that I'm an adult and have kids of my own, I plan to applying the same rules when my children start to drive.

As for the country roads, we did not have a large number of accidents involving teens. I actually feel more comfortable driving a country road while my "city" husband feels more comfortable on a freeway.

Additionally, I think some arguments could be made that we were all driving steel boats then that could withstand a hard impact compared to today's cars with the fiberglass bumpers, but I also think that driving was a privilage and parents took it more seriously to teach us how to drive correctly. These days you only need a few hours with an instructor and you're handed keys.

 

We also should require formal training for the following important, time-critical tasks while driving

• Talking on the phone
• Emailing
• Text messaging
• Eating breakfast
• Applying make-up or shaving (or both if you swing that way)
• Yelling at kids
• Reading a map blocking the windshield
• Operating a navigation system
• Falling asleep

These are all skills that teens should learn because as adults they need to be able to do at least a few of them simultaneously when driving. A road test should be required and a written exam about how to blame road design for an accident

 

Two days ago driving down clairborne there was a teenage blonde behind me who was very busy putting on her makeup, going so far to even use the eye lash curly thing that women like while driving, now that's tallent, she should contract out to teach the other teens how to multi task.

 

I'll be dating myself when I write this, but here goes. I moved to Ashburn in 1980 & can vouch for Cliff's take on AV Pkway & Waxpool. Not long after Farmwell Station opened (1995) a Math teacher was critically injured at the intersection, but I don't recall any fatalities there.

At the other end of AV Pkway - Rt. 7 - the 17-year-old son of then-School Superintendent David Thomas was killed, about 1988.

 

First off I was amazed that today while I was heading westbound on Evergreen Mill Road a little before Gum Spring I was passed by 3 (what looked like) teenagers driving some sort of small red (Hyundai?) car. I was amazed they did this risky maneuver on that road...passing me in my more powerful (comparatively speaking) SUV while I was doing the speed limit. Terrible!

Second comment, anyone know if there are more plans to widen Belmont Ridge from Evergreen Mill to Route 7????? I sure hope so.

 

As Brambleton is developed southward, the southern portion of Belmont Ridge will be widened and improved. Also, Evergreen Mill will be a north of where it is now and will be improved as well (not sure how much of it though).

 

When pigs fly!!!