Whether through GPS — the Global Positioning System installed in newer cars and on smartphones — or by willful choice, Northfield’s Gulf Road is becoming more heavily traveled by heavier vehicles, and feels like a tragedy waiting to happen.

For readers unfamiliar with this stretch of road between Northfield’s Main Street and Erving’s Route 2A, Gulf Road is a continuation of Maple Street, a residential neighborhood, which becomes Gulf Road as it wends its way over Brush Mountain. Within the memory of many residents, Gulf Road was a dirt road as recently as the 1960s, when the town Highway Department paved it. It is still narrow and shoulderless, constrained by stretches of rock ledge on one side and ravine on the other, with a steep, winding elevation between where Alexander Hill Road branches off and the intersection with Orange Road, a stretch of about two miles. Locals know to avoid Golf Road during freezing rain or icy conditions. The safe alternative is to go south on Route 63, a better treated state road, to reach Route 2A in Erving.

With the advent of GPS, however, truckers driving large tractor-trailer rigs have “discovered” Gulf Road as a shortcut to get to Route 2A. Going up or down, it is a harrowing route, even in fair weather, especially for those who live along the road and for drivers sharing the road with 18-wheelers.

Bill Kilpatrick, who lives on the road, said, “There have been issues where they (big trucks) have literally driven passenger cars over into the roughage because there isn’t enough room when they come into the turn.”

Martha Rullman, who lives on Pratt Hollow Road, in the ravine beneath Gulf Road, said, “I hear this truck noise and I look up and it was backing up right in the road, in a blind curve, because he realized he wasn’t gonna make it up that mountain path.”

Residents have only to look as close as Colrain for an analogous situation. On Aug. 15, 2017, a Winchester, N.H., truck driver was killed when his loaded dump truck ran off the Route 112 curve and crashed into a brick wall of the “Blue Block” building at 3 Main Road, a route with a history of collisions, including at least one large truck crash, from vehicles traveling down the steep Greenfield Road. Colrain officials fear that GPS systems are sending more drivers onto this route, rather than directing them to take Route 112 North from Shelburne Falls, which is a flat roadway. Black ice in winter is also a hazard along this stretch.

Northfield Police Chief Robert Leighton said that he has “without a doubt” noticed the change in traffic over roughly the last 10 years, a period coinciding with the advent of GPS systems. Leighton said that most of the truck drivers that have had problems on Gulf Road are from out of the area. The last two trucks that stalled out on the road, he said, were following GPS directions.

In Colrain, a Road Safety Audit was prepared for the state Department of Transportation, compiled by a 19-member team that included DOT district and traffic safety officials, Colrain police, Selectboard members and State Police. Suggested improvements included adding a “truck exclusion zone” on Greenfield Road, more warning signs of roadway curves and slopes and reflective pavement markers for better nighttime visibility.

A “truck exclusion zone” sounds like an appropriate response in Northfield, too. Erving is conducting a traffic study on Gulf Road and Northfield Selectboard Chairwoman Tracy Rogers told Kilpatrick recently that Northfield will begin its own as soon as the paperwork is properly filed with the Franklin Regional Council of Governments.

This action is coming none too soon. As Kilpatrick said, “Something has got to be done … before we have a situation that makes the front page.”

We concur.