CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — On Friday night, John Gall was sitting at his home in Cleveland Heights when he heard a crunching sound. He said that sound is now a familiar one, as a car crashed into a boulder in his front yard. His home, at the intersection of Fairmount Boulevard and South Taylor Road, has seen a number of car crashes, in some cases, cars even crashing into his home.
In photos from Friday night Gall shared with 3News, a car is visible on top of one of the two boulders the city put in Gall’s front yard in an effort to protect him and his home. According to Cleveland Heights police reports, one person was arrested for OVI for a crash at his address Friday night.
Gall was in his front yard later in the weekend when he noticed signs that a second crash had occurred. 3News found a traffic crash report from Cleveland Heights police from Sunday night, in which a car was reported to have “failed to stop for the red flashing signal and slide across the intersection due to the accumulation of water, coming to a final rest between two large boulders on the front lawn.”
“The rock had moved, the other rock had moved, there’s debris on the lawn and a tire on the tree lawn, and none of that was there on Friday, so that’s how I found out about the second one” Gall said.
In July 2022, 3News spoke to Gall after a car came off the road and up his driveway, taking out Gall’s car, which was parked in his driveway, and his garage. Gall said there was also another incident where a car when right into his kitchen.
The house is at the end of a T-style intersection. Unfortunately, Gall has seen how in some cases, cars continue straight through the intersection and onto his property, instead of turning.
“My house has been hit, my garage has been destroyed, I’ve lost two cars already,” Gall said.
Gall said the City of Cleveland Heights placed two larger boulders on his front yard sometime after the July 2022 incident. However, Gall said that considering the boulders moved after the crashes this weekend, they’re not enough.
“This past weekend proves to me that number one, the rocks are inadequate as a barrier because the two cars that hit them were small, it didn’t really cause damage,” Gall said. “The one [squeezed] between them and pushed them apart, what if it was a large truck?”
3News spoke with Cleveland Heights Mayor Kahlil Seren about the situation and what’s being done at that intersection.
“The protective measures that we placed on his yard at the city’s expense, as we saw over the last week, had a demonstrable impact on his safety and the safety of his home,” the mayor said.
The mayor said the expectation is that they can find a way to inhibit reckless driving in the city, but said that’s difficult to do if people are driving at excessive rates of speed or while impaired. Additionally, Mayor Seren said the city is “absolutely willing” to work with Gall to find solutions.
Gall said ideally, he would like to see the median extended in front of his home, so that drivers cannot turn left in front of his house, instead, they would have to turn right.
Mayor Seren said ultimately, nothing would stop someone from driving over an extended median, and also sited an impact on traffic patterns should that change occur. He also said installing speed bumps could affect the traffic pattern of those commuting, and could cause other issues if someone were to drive over one at a high rate of speed.
When Gall moved into his home than a decade ago, he said there was a guard rail outside his house on the tree lawn. However, he said that when road construction happened, the guard rail was taken out, an accessible crosswalk was installed in front of his home, and the guard rail was never replaced. Gall said he believes the guard rail was simply “omitted” from those road plans.
“The guard rail was there one day, gone the next, and in my opinion, zero consideration was given for the reason why that guard rail was put there in the first place,” Gall said, expressing frustrations over reaching a solution with the city of Cleveland Heights.
However, the mayor said they do not have a record of a guard rail, and said a guard rail would not be an adequate solution.
“Ultimately this started for a request for a guard rail, which is not only against regulation in that location, but also would be completely ineffective in stopping any car,” Mayor Seren said. “Guard rails are not designed for head on collisions, they’re designed for side swipe collisions and keeping people on a road when they might be swerving off of it. And in this case, a guard rail, which was the requested implemented solution, would have been wholly inadequate for any of the cars that have found their way onto Mr. Gall’s property.”
Mayor Seren said the city is continuing to look at what else can be done at that location and along Taylor to decrease the likelihood of speeding, mentioning additional signage or different traffic light signals, for example, but acknowledged the challenges in finding a fix.
“One of the difficult pieces is that we don’t know how long the stopgap is supposed to take while we figure it out,” the mayor said. “It was never our intention that this would be the only permanent solution. But we also can’t guarantee that there’s another more appropriate solution in this particular context.”
“The rocks were put there what I was lead to believe as a temporary measure while the city consults with engineers or whatever to figure out a big picture solution to this,” Gall said. “My feeling at this point is the city put those rocks there and figured, ‘problem solved, we’re done.’’
Gall said he hopes to have additional conversations with the city about what else can be done.
“I want something done, I’m tired of it, I’m tired of having cars on my lawn,” he said.