VILLA HILLS, Ky. — A mailbox here. A mailbox there. Another mailbox over there. Residents in one Villa Hills neighborhood said they've had to replace them more than once after they were hit by speeding cars.
Frustrated neighbors say the problem seems to have gotten worse lately and now they're looking for solutions to slow down traffic.
"Our mailbox has been hit three times," Leslie Scott said.
Scott has lived on the stretch of Buttermilk Pike, which runs west of the Collins Road intersection, for five years. She said she avoids letting her grandson play in her front yard.
"I like to keep him on the front porch or out in the backyard so that I don't have to worry about him going too fast down the driveway and being too close to the street," she said.
Buttermilk Pike is a main thoroughfare, running perpendicular to I-71/75. While a portion referred to as KY-371 is maintained by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, the portion that runs through Scott's neighborhood is maintained by the city and has a speed limit of 35 miles per hour.
"I think the speeding has become worse since the new curbs and the new road went it," Scott said. "I mean the road is great — it's smoother and it looks nice — but people tend to speed more."
She pointed out black scuff marks scattered across the curbs, indicating the spots where car tires made impact.
More spots marred by car tires? Her neighbors' front yards. A car drove through them last week before crashing into a tree.
Video recorded on two different doorbell cameras shows the moment the car, moving at a high rate of speed, catches the curb. It's briefly sent airborne before skipping down the road, crossing through three yards, felling a tree limb and coming to a stop.
"It was crazy," Blake Hamilton said.
Hamilton spoke with WCPO a few days after the crash, pointing out the large branch still lying under his tree.
"Thankfully (the driver) didn't hit the middle of the tree, otherwise he probably would have been dead stopped," Hamilton said. "To go airborne for like three to four seconds and then land almost 30 yards away from where he took off — he had to have been going extremely fast."
Speeding was a factor, but Villa Hills Police Chief Matthew Hall said there's an unfortunate reason. The teen driver had fallen asleep at the wheel, likely causing him to step harder on the gas.
Still, Hamilton said in the two years since he moved into his home, he's witnessed cars hit several mailboxes and heard the sounds of cars accelerating through the curved hill.
"They've taken out a mailbox there, there, there, there. We're the first one that hasn't been taken out," he said. "I'd say it's worse coming down the hill than up the hill, but there are still people that will still fly up the hill because, I mean, sitting in our living room we can hear people going, 'vroom' all the way up this hill."
But according to Hall and City Administrator Craig Bohman, as far as they know speeding isn't a prominent issue along Buttermilk Pike. The city doesn't have the data to support that, they said.
Since January 1, 2020, there have been more than 1,000 traffic incidents down that stretch — 17 of them were crashes, with two reporting injuries.
That adds up to 1.6% of all recorded data in four years, Hall said.
In that same time frame, officers have issued 31 traffic citations with a total of 38 charges. Most of them were not speeding-related.
Bohman said if officers do pull cars over for speeding down Buttermilk Pike, it's not where neighbors can see. There is nowhere safe to pull off on the two-lane road, so traffic stops would almost always occur at another location.
City leaders said it breaks down to this: if residents are seeing cars speed down the road, they're not reporting it. Scott said she agrees.
"I haven't done anything to make it an issue to them. I haven't brought it to anyone's attention. That's my fault," she said. "I think that if it was brought to their attention, then they would look into it."
After WCPO brought residents' concerns to the city, Bohman and Hall said the police department would run a traffic study on the road, utilizing radar technology to track speeds.
If the results echo what Scott and Hamilton said, then steps will be taken to assess the area for the need for any traffic calming measures.
"I think the need to put some sort of sign that says like, 'slow down' like they have over by on Beechwood Road where it says if you're going over 25 it'll flash and say, 'slow down,'" said Hamilton. "People that are going to have younger kids — younger kids don't understand, 'Hey, you need to not go too close to the street' and when someone comes 10 feet off the street and runs through people's yard, it's dangerous."
