Letter: Ambiance or safety?

At the intersection of Marshland Road and Mathews Drive on Hilton Head Island, there is a traffic circle. If you are coming from the circle back onto Mathews Drive, with Marshland Road on your right, there are hash marks serving as a divider between the exit lane from the circle and the lane from Marshland Road.

On a regular basis, I watch drivers come off the circle and cross those hash marks to get into the far right lane, which will allow them to exit onto U.S. 278 headed toward mid-island. Crossing such hash marks is illegal, as any police officer can tell you, and which every good driver should know; yet this occurs several times daily.

Small reflectors placed in that area as a guide to traffic direction have not made any difference in the number of people who cross those hash marks illegally. It is a place waiting for an accident to happen.

I was told by a town official that putting orange stanchions that would keep drivers from crossing this area has been deemed by higher-ups to be “not in keeping with the ambiance of Hilton Head Island.” Is a fatal traffic accident in keeping with such ambiance?

This story was originally published February 28, 2016 at 7:50 PM with the headline "Letter: Ambiance or safety?."