Large Speed Bump Rattles Jersey City Drivers
JERSEY CITY, N.J. (CBSNewYork) -- It's like the Mount Washington of speed bumps.
As WCBS 880's Peter Haskell reported, the gouged and scarred asphalt on Erie Street near 8th Avenue in Jersey City tells the story. Some cars come to a complete stop at the large speed bump, but others go way too fast, bottoming out and banging bumpers.
Dan hit it so hard he got out of his car to take a look.
Large Speed Bump Rattles Jersey City Drivers
"I thought I had damaged the car on the bottom or something," he told Haskell.
Drivers and residents say the speed bump is no good.
"I think it's a little too high," one man said. "I see a lot of cars are bottoming out on it. It's all scraped and everything."
"I've never seen one that big," one woman 1010 WINS' Derricke Dennis talked to said. "It's very wide, too. Usually speed bumps are narrow."
Large Speed Bump Rattles Jersey City Drivers
"A speed bump is good, but this one doesn't announce itself and it's higher than the average speed bump," added one woman who lives down the block.
A Jersey City representative said that safety was the city's top priority.
"The city's number one priority is the safety of our residents, especially children. That is why we have taken the proactive step of installing effective, permanent speed humps to reduce speeding on residential streets, with a focus on streets around schools," the city said.
Mace Bell told CBS 2's Tracee Carrasco that he totaled his car on the bump on Tuesday morning.
"It put a hole the size of my fist in the bottom of the oil pan so it leaked all the way to Newark Airport and then the engine went dry and it seized up," Bell said.
If cars aren't flying over the bump they're carefully maneuvering past it, either way residents say it does more harm than good.
"I'm all for slowing people down. There is a school right here. I totally get it, but it was very poorly done," Bell said.
Drivers said that not only is the size of the speed bump a problem, but they complain that it isn't properly marked.
"Somebody went too high with it and there's no warning," Jason Scala said.
"It should be flaming, bright yellow," Bob Jones added.
As Dennis reported, the city has taken so many complaints about the bump that it now plans to send crews out to lower it.
The city said that they'll soon be lowering the bumps, and putting reflective markers on them, but for many the damage is already done.
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