Jim Davis is a retired airline pilot. He knows a thing or two about radar.

That doesn’t mean he enjoys pointing a device at drivers speeding around a 90-degree curve near his home on Southwest Hensley Road in Portland, OR. But according to city-adopted guidelines, documenting actual speeders is one of the requirements toward getting speed bumps installed on this accident-prone elbow at Sunrise Park.

“I’m not in favor of doing this myself. It’s just a necessary step,” he said. “I don’t think I’d like some guy in baggy shorts and sandals pointing a gun at me either. I wish the city would run with the whole ball.”

Davis, his wife, Karen, and some neighbors including Michael McRae, are ready for some changes at the problematic Hensley curve. These longtime residents have lost count of how many speeding drivers fail to finesse the sharp east-to-north turn.

Cars have careened into Michael McRae’s block wall so many times, he wonders whether the latest damage — inflicted by a teenage driver on May 11 — is worth repairing anytime soon. He reels off wreck and near-miss details like a historian recalls war skirmishes: the ominous sound of cars barreling down the street, flying gravel, the GMC truck bumper left hanging on his fence.

“The first thing they see is the mountain,” McRae said, gesturing toward Larch Mountain and Mount Hood towering behind Sunrise Park. “Then they lose control.”

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