‘Municipal laws don’t matter when people are being killed’: London resident calls for safety improvement at Highbury and Dingman

Following another crash at Highbury Avenue and Dingman Drive, a London man is demanding a light be installed at the intersection. CTV’s Lauren Stallone reports.

Allan Tipping lives just down the road from the Highbury Avenue and Dingman Drive intersection in Southeast London.

“This intersection is crazy,” said Tipping. “It’s just gotten worse.”

For Tipping and other residents nearby, the sound of accidents has become all too familiar.

“I heard a bang and then I heard sirens and stuff like that, so I drove down to see what it was,” said Tipping. “There was a transport on its side and a white car that had been hit.”

Two people had to be removed from their vehicle following the crash that involved a transport trailer Wednesday afternoon.

“Luckily I saw nobody had died,” said Tipping. “That’s got to be one of the first accidents nobody’s died here.”

Tipping is raising concerns about the safety of the intersection.

“The vehicles are coming down Highbury over 80, way over 80 kilometres an hour,” said Tipping. “You can’t see coming out on Dingman and they’re just getting hit.”

He says he’d like to see the city of London step in.

“There needs to be streetlights here and Highbury Avenue has to be slowed down to 60 [km/h] in this area so everyone will do 80 [km/h],” said Tipping. “Right now, it’s 80 [km/h] on this road and everyone does 100 [km/h].”

This comes a little over a month since the city signaled sudden progress in local efforts to transfer the expressway portion of Highbury Avenue to the province of Ontario.

“This is a critical economic corridor between the southern end of our city and the really important transformational investments, Yarmouth Yards in the St. Thomas and Elgin area,” said Mayor Josh Morgan.

He says the process is “progressing” at its expected pace.

“I’m optimistic that it’s going to happen,” said Morgan

If the plan does not come to fruition, Morgan says the city would consider making safety improvements to the intersection following proper assessment.

“That includes traffic volumes,” said Morgan. “It includes the history of accidents or collisions and the severity at the site and pedestrian movements.”

Tipping argued something needs to be done sooner rather than later.

“I’ve warned the city about this corner, and they just brush me off about it, they say it’s not that important,” said Tipping. “I talked to the city about the speed here and they said, ‘Oh they follow municipal laws.’ Municipal laws don’t matter when people are being killed.”

Tipping says he hopes somber memorials along the side of the road remind drivers to slow down and drive safe.

“They think it’s never going to happen to them,” said Tipping. “That transport driver probably thought the same thing too and he ended up on his side.”