‘Where’s my guardrail?’ house gets huge boulders as solution to frequent accidents

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio (WOIO) - Cars speeding down South Taylor Road hit John Gall’s home twice in the past year, doing massive damage where the street dead ends into Fairmount Boulevard in Cleveland Heights.

“This is an obvious danger zone, certainly for me and for my neighbor, so I think something needs to be done,” Gall said.

There have been other accidents as well over the years.

“Knowing what the problem is and what I’ve gone through over the last year and in prior years, the city hasn’t done anything to address it other than put up these two little yellow signs in the yard,” said Gall. “They’ve been knocked over a number of times themselves, so they’ve been putting them back up. It’s not going to stop anything.”

Gall said when he bought the home, there was a guardrail on the tree lawn, but it disappeared during a redesign of the intersection.

19 Troubleshooters orchestrated a meeting between Gall and Cleveland Heights Mayor Kahlil Seren and director of public works Collette Clinkscale, where they told him they couldn’t put up another guardrail, but proposed boulders instead, which makes him feel safer.

“Not so much for the state of the my car and my eventual new garage back there, but one step at a time,” said Gall. “At least the rocks are there and I can sleep a little more comfortably at night knowing I’ll probably not get killed, so that’s something!”

Gall says he wants the boulders to be a temporary solution.

“Ideally, I would like no more left hand turns from Taylor Road onto Fairmount Road,” said Gall. “Extend that median out, put something large, put those boulders out, perfect use, you only have to move them a few yards!”

And Gall sees a bright side to the solution as well.

“At least I have some rocks to gaze at out the window and hopefully they’ll stop a big truck from crushing me.”

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