The in basket: A reader says that four or five months ago, “on northbound Silverdale Way where it curves just before Mountain View Road, someone went off the road and crashed into the guardrail. The guard rail is still not repaired.

“Is there a plan to repair it? Is it due to funding or material?”

The out basket  Jeff Shea, traffic engineer for Kitsap County, says, “We have been working with the residents that abut the end of the guardrail. We have had to install it a little shorter in length because of an approach (driveway).

“We got approval from those property owners to block the abandoned approach. Now we can provide better protection for errant motorists.

“Secondly it takes time to procure the guardrail end treatment. It is specialized and we have to ensure we are getting appropriate end treatment for the location. Parts are on order and the guardrail will be installed when they are received.

The in basket: Chester Peek said there was something wrong with the school zone signs at Mountain View Middle School in Bremerton.

Northbound on Perry Avenue, one comes to a school zone sign saying the 20 miles per hour limit is in effect from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., he said, but there is no sign ending the school zone or reestablishing the 25 mph limit one was in before the school zone started.

The first such sign isn’t until just past Sheridan Road, where it says 35 mph, the default speed limit on county roads. Perry Avenue is in the county from Stone Way north.

It had been that way for a couple of months, Chester said.

When I drove past the school, I noticed that that wasn’t the only problem. While the school zone extended all the way past the school southbound, the first school zone sign northbound was mid-way past the school.

The out basket: Doug Bear of Kitsap County Public Works says, “According to our traffic division, the signs were stolen. The posts were there, but the signs were gone. They were replaced June 17.”

Chester’s inquiry called it to their attention, Doug said.

The in basket; Twyla Cottrell of Mountain View Road in South Kitsap has been trying for a long time to get a sign posted on her road that will be more alarming to speeding drivers.

There is almost no sight distance to the left  of cars coming from the direction of Collins Road at the driveway she shares with others, she said.  There is a yellow sign just around the corner reading “Limited Sight Distance” with “20 mph” below it, but the sign is routinely ignored, endangering anyone pulling out of their driveway. A neighbor has a horse trailer, which takes a while to get moving, she said.

She advises visitors who are leaving to turn right no matter which way they want to go, then double back if they wanted to go left, rather than take a chance that a car might come around the arcing curve as they pull out.

I advised her to get a parabolic mirror such as I see out on North Shore Road in Mason County where sight distance is short. They have put one up across the road from their driveway, she said, but it’s still a dangerous place.

She’d like a sign reading “Danger” or something that would get more drivers’ attention.

The out basket: I sat in her driveway for several minutes recently and noticed three things:

A. The mirror isn’t that much help and you’re lucky to get three seconds warning between when you see a car coming and its arrival.

B. There is very little traffic. Two minutes can go by without a car passing.

C. You can hear a car coming long before you can see it.

Jeff Shea, traffic engineer for Kitsap County, says there are other words they can use under federal guidelines, but neither “Danger” nor Hazard” are used. Even if they were, the sign would have to be the same advisory black-on-yellow as the Limited Sight Distance sign that’s already there.

“Hidden Driveways” used to be an approved message in such situations, he said, but the federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices no longer authorizes its use. Studies showed it did nothing to change driver behavior, Jeff said.

He also said, “We use as few words as possible on the sign face to provide motorists with plenty of time to read and react to it. Too many words require smaller fonts making it difficulty reading and requiring drivers to focus more time reading than driving. We are seeing more and more signs in the MUTCD using symbols and eliminating words all together.

“We do not install or maintain warning signs at privately owned approaches,” he said. “Existing data shows these signs are not always understood, and do little to change motorists’ behavior. Placing too many warning signs tends to degrade the limited impact they have.”

I told Twyla she and her neighbors might appeal to the county commissioners. Beyond that, her advice about turning right seems sound, and I’d suggest turning off the vehicle radio and rolling down the driver-side window while waiting to turn, to improve audibility of oncoming traffic.