After a long winter of trying to beat the red lights between Oak Bluffs and Edgartown, Islanders can look forward to a summer without traffic signals on Beach Road. On Tuesday highway department supervisor Richard Combra confirmed that stoplights at the two bridges on Sengekontacket would be gone for Memorial Day weekend as work wraps up on their reconstruction this week.

The time-honored Vineyard tradition of jumping off the Big Bridge into Sengekontacket Pond has now been joined by a yearly concern about the safety of jumpers — not for their daring leaps into the water below, but for the time they spend sitting and standing on the bridge as traffic whizzes by.

Low railings that divide pedestrians, including bridge jumpers, from Beach Road are the worry, and Oak Bluffs and Edgartown are taking steps to address the problem that they say ultimately should be dealt with by the state.

Robert (Hawkeye) Jacobs, 64, of Oak Bluffs received a hero’s greeting from a few of his friends at the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby on Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Jacobs was honored for saving the life of a 22-year-old woman who was driving a car that went off the Big Bridge in Oak Bluffs in the wee hours of Friday morning.

Mr. Jacobs was presented with his first Vineyard cell phone at derby headquarters, on the Edgartown waterfront as he posed for pictures with representatives from the derby, state police and Edgartown police.