PACE — Milton resident Michael Bell spotted a traffic accident on Bell Lane just south of Highway 90 in Pace. It occurred when one car turned right onto Bell Lane and attempted to immediately turn left into the Tom Thumb parking lot at the same time as another car left the same parking lot at the same exit.
Bell believed the driver turning left into the parking lot was crossing a double-yellow line. He said courteous drivers letting a car out from the parking lot created the space where the accident happened.
That’s not surprising.
“A lot of accidents occur when people let you in. That’s not to say that it’s a bad thing. The more driver cooperation we see, the smoother traffic is,” Santa Rosa Sheriff's Office Public Information Officer Rich Aloy said.
However, Aloy said, in this situation, multiple lanes of traffic have to work together to let another driver enter or leave a parking lot.
“The right-hand lane, which is a right-turn only, (has drivers) zooming by. They don’t know the two drivers on the left are stopping to let someone in,” he said.
The double-yellow line appears almost nonexistent at this accident’s location.
The Santa Rosa County Public Works department is in charge of painting stripes on the county roads. The department’s director, Steven Furman, said he always tells his daughters not to cut across traffic like this; the safer option is to go through the intersection and turn right into Tom Thumb.
However, Furman confirmed the gap at the double-yellow line there is intentional.
“Based on my understanding of traffic control and stripping for intersections, the current configuration of the striping on Bell Lane, at the intersection with U.S. Highway 90, does not prohibit a southbound left-hand turn into the convenience store parking lot,” he said.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Sheriff's Office: Courteous drivers can cause some traffic accidents