News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Medics went to the aid of a 93-year-old woman who fell from a vehicle after it clipped a power pole on Highway 126.
A 93-year-old woman escaped serious injury after she was ejected from the vehicle she was riding in during a single-vehicle wreck on Tuesday, August 2.
According to Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office reports, Florence Stuart of Spokane was the backseat passenger in a Toyota Highlander being driven westbound on Highway 126 by her daughter, Bonnie Rae Stuart of Seaside. Bonnie Stuart’s sister Carol Lynne Fletcher was the front seat passenger.
Stuart allegedly told investigators that the women had been looking at the mountains and drifted onto the gravel shoulder near Willow Lane just east of Sisters.
Stuart reportedly pulled the vehicle back onto the roadway, clipping a wooden power pole with the right rear quarter of the car. Stuart reportedly turned to ask Fletcher if she was all right, then looked around to ask the same question of her mother in the back seat.
But Florence Stuart was not there.
Apparently the impact had popped the back car door open and Stuart had fallen out. Then the door swung shut again.
The elder Stuart had fallen onto a grassy area in the ditch along the road.
Paramedics from Sisters-Camp Sherman Rural Fire Protection District responded and transported her by ambulance to St. Charles Medical Center, where doctors evaluated her. According to sheriff’s office reports, doctors believed she had suffered nothing more than some bruises and abrasions.
A deputy cited Bonnie Rae Stuart for careless driving.
The accident was far from the first in that section of road, according to neighbors.
Kit Stafford reported that several cars have driven through her fences there after drivers missed the curve — in either direction. One driver plowed more than 300 feet into her property.
Mary Crow, who has lived at the juncture of Highway 126 and Willow Lane for three years, said that she has contacted the Oregon Department of Transportation to try to get speed reduced on that section of highway.
“The speed through those turns is 55 miles per hour and that’s our big objection,” she said. “People can’t anticipate that 55 is too fast for those curves.”
Crow said that ODOT has told her that speed reduction is not in the cards on the highway.
That answer does not satisfy Crow, who notes that there are driveways along that stretch of road and lots of cyclists and pedestrians.
“It’s a terribly dangerous section of road between here and Sisters,” she said.
Crow said she is aware of at least five accidents in the last three years in the immediate vicinity and there have been numerous additional incidents of vehicles hitting deer. She also recalls a car hitting a steer in the roadway, killing the steer and totaling the car. The driver was not hurt.
She said the ODOT, at the urging of local residents, did put up a sign warning of deer in the area, “but it didn’t slow traffic down any.”
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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