PLANTATION, Fla. – New guardrails aren’t usually revealed with pomp and circumstance, but that’s exactly what happened Friday morning along Nob Hill Road in Plantation’s Westport neighborhood.
Officials hosted a ribbon-cutting for the new barrier.
Why is the city making such a big deal about a simple guardrail? Ask Jonathan Phillips.
He’s had cars slam into his house not once, not twice — but three times.
“The first time, it was honestly kind of terrifying,” Phillips said. “(An) SUV slammed through my neighbor’s house. Made it through my backyard, took out the side of my house and ended up in my other neighbor’s backyard. Definitely terrifying, because everything from the backyard just kind of blew up.”
He added: “The whole inside of the house looked like a bomb went off. Seconds before, my grandma left that room, so if she was in there, (she) probably wouldn’t have made it.”
The same type of terrifying, not to mention costly, crash went on to happen two more times involving different drivers, but hopefully no more.
The risk is still there, but “there’s definitely more relief,” he said.
“We finally get to make a neighborhood safe,” Plantation Mayor Nick Sortal said. “We had three cars hit the same house. We can’t have cars hitting houses, obviously.”
Neighbors said they were also relieved.
“(It’s) not only prevention and being safe for the people that live out here, but also the people in the vehicles,” David Brownell, with the Westport Homeowners Association, said.
Sortal added: “We want people to sleep better at night, and the idea of having a car hitting your house, I don’t think is conducive to people having good sleep.”