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thing,” he repeated, adding that a truck ban would have prevented two deaths already. Mr. Sinnott reported counting 12 18-wheelers in one hour and 135 trucks in total during the same time period, all with commercial plates, none with county stickers, crossing the mountain.
“This is a serious problem. It’s a killer!” Mr. Eastham emphasized.
The statistics and the rhetoric swayed the supervisors, bringing a shift from opposition to support of a petition to the Highway Department. For Rappahannock to take its proportionate share of the truck traf-fic and the risk of accidents, Route 17 must be reopened, Supervisor Miller said. The county is bearing a disproportionate share now because its 6,000 people do not have the same political clout as Fauquier’s 35,000, he said. “We’re being discriminated against because we’re a minority and that’s illegal in this country!”
None of the board members contended that Route 17 is safe for tractor trailers - just that Route 522 is equally, if not more, dangerous. In a unanimous vote, they directed their administrative assistant John McCarthy to draft a letter to the Highway Department seeking either the reopening of 17 or the closure of 522. Mr. McCarthy will bring the letter back for endorsement at the next board meeting.
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