JOYCE — More pullouts, more left turn lanes, a more visible police presence, better shoulders, poles moved off the roadway and moving a bus stop into a parking lot.
These were among the suggestions made by Joyce residents to make state Highway 112 safer.
A Monday night meeting at Crescent School drew 70 people to tell four Washington State Patrol troopers and a state engineer how to improve the sometimes-deadly route between U.S. Highway 101 and Neah Bay.
The road — officially the Strait of Juan de Fuca National Scenic Byway — has seen seven wrecks since October.
Two of those crashes involved fatalities, including a Jan. 20 head-on collision of two log trucks.
Washington State Patrol Capt. Mark Thomas said of seven fatalities on North Olympic Peninsula highways so far in 2004, three were caused by crossing the centerline, two by failure to yield and two by alcohol.
The most recent fatality occurred Sunday afternoon on U.S. 101 south of Brinnon when a pickup truck driven by a Centralia man struck an embankment, skidded across the road into a guardrail and went airborne into a tree about 10 feet above ground.
Thomas, the State Patrol commander for the district that includes the North Olympic Peninsula, said the solution involves education, enforcement and engineering — which is why the patrol has embarked on a public relations campaign recently.
