Every morning, I drive along a busy highway with intersections controlled by 4-way stoplights. At one particular intersection, drivers heading east know to hesitate even when their light turns green because cars coming west and making a left turn in front of us consistently blow through their red light—usually five or more vehicles in a row.

This happens every single morning. It’s been going on for years, and I just can’t understand why neither the Highway Patrol nor the local police monitor this intersection during rush hour. They could write enough tickets to fill a stack a mile high.

I’ve called the local police to report it, but the typical response is, “We’ll look into it.” And nothing changes.

A few times a week, there are serious accidents because drivers assume it’s safe to go on green, only to collide with or be hit by someone running the red light.

It’s beyond frustrating.

Get a 1970's 3/4 ton pickup with the extra huge crash bumper on the front,
get a dashcam, make your left turn and live off of your lawsuits!
Just kidding of course.

Intersections get lights when there are a sufficient number of wrecks. Same thing with enforcement. If there’s not a lot of wrecks, you won’t have a lot of enforcement unless a cop has decided that area will be his personal fishing hole.

One guy calling the PD won’t get an officer there, but if you have your coffee friends each call and complain and keep complaining every day for a month, they might send an officer out to watch.

We have an intersection almost that bad near where I live my 20 foot wide 25MPH road empties out to a 45MPG road that people do 50-60 on during rush hour. And no turn lane or light. Making a left against this traffic to turn down my road can take minutes of time sometimes. There have been some absolutely brutal wrecks in the 3+ years we have lived here. County road and state road. We even had a neighborhood meeting and a neighbor who had seen terrible wrecks at a similar intersection in another town said the state DOT told them there had to be x fatal accidents in a certain amount of time before they’d put a light in. Which is the most Florida thing ever. So that may well be the answer.

Local TV News often will "showcase" these situations and it can have good results.

Call them if it is applicable to your issue.

People often get behind such stories because "no one likes an asshole that gives everyone the finger", even if most of those people at the finger flippin' asshole.

If the news finds a history of accidents, that gives them more "Dirty Laundry", and we all know how the song goes.

Once those in positions that will get heat from the story, someone will push the pile into another's inbox, and you may see remedy.

Go to your city council or county commission and get it on the record that there's a problem there. Once government is notified, they usually find a pathway to solving problems so as to reduce their liability. Most traffic divisions have a standing "special patrol" list of problem spots.

lolz.

I have been complaining about an intersection for 26 years. City won't do anything.



When you stop at the stop bar for #1, you can see the light above you (circled). But people being people always stop past the stop bar and they think the light for #2 is their light, so when it turns green for #2, people at 1 go or turn left and cause a crash.

I take it back, city did do something, they installed a camera nearby that watches apartment buildings and can sort of see the intersection. The camera actually helped me solve a crash where a guy ran across the street and got hit by a car, then the guy in the car took off. So guy that got hit by the car got a jaywalking ticket, and the guy that hit him got a leaving the scene ticket.

I did complain my first few years about #1 needing a no turn on red sign, so they finally did put that in. Basically, out of the four cycles of this intersection, #1 right turn gets a green for 3 of the cycles.

A few years ago, my daughter was bringing me something to work and I told her, hey, if you are at the red light after you pass Speedway, when it turns green, wait a few seconds. Sure enough, she said someone ran it.

I complained to the people who put up the traffic lights for two winters as well. They installed LED lights for #2 and put louvers or something in them for some reason. In the winter, it would fill with snow so you couldn't see the signals. The LEDs didn't put enough heat out of the front to melt the snow. They finally removed the louvers so snow wouldn't collect in them.

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When you stop at the stop bar

In my area, one of a thousand pay attention to the stop bar. I would bet most of them don't even know it's purpose. I'm always tempted to take the front end off the a-hole sitting a car length past it.

Contact the chief or police or Sheriff that runs the local enforcement, not just an underling.

Contact your local politicians to put some heat on them too, and hopefully they'll do like politicians concerned about votes and pass the buck to the police.

Went back and read your post OP, I missed the wrecks. Those are your proof. Go to the local PD for copies(go back several years) on the wreck report wil be a code for how badly the drivers were injured , this could drive the city council to install or change the intersection.

Many studies have shown that absent traffic controls, the majority of people will drive properly.

This leads me to believe that existing traffic controls are improper when being ignored by so many people. Perhaps they need to adjust the light cycle to allow for a better flow of traffic from the problem direction.

quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:
Many studies have shown that absent traffic controls, the majority of people will drive properly.

This leads me to believe that existing traffic controls are improper when being ignored by so many people. Perhaps they need to adjust the light cycle to allow for a better flow of traffic from the problem direction.

I have long contended that traffic engineers hate cars and will do anything they can to impede/slow the flow of traffic, such as awkward merge areas and counter-productive traffic light timing. It makes perfect sense for drivers to intuitively recognize this and resist these obstructions. Traffic engineers seem more interested in "calming" than they are in getting people where they need to go in an efficient manner.

And for the poster above who talks about 50-60 MPH "rush hours," come to DC and experience our 0-5MPH rush hours (that actually last all day).

Someone already mentioned TV news and getting previous accident reports. Stand on a safe place near that intersection. Take a few seconds worth of video catching exactly what you mentioned. Send a copy of the video and accident reports to Local News and your city council.

Send a formal letter documenting the issue with the City Engineer and if any of those roads are designated State Routes, copy the Director of the Dept of Transportation and your politicians. I've worked for local and state level govt, and the squeaky wheel gets the oil. The more evidence you can provide the better.

However, as an engineer, we look at the traffic reports generated to ID problem areas. Typically, the past 3 years worth. If there are like 2-3 fatalities during that period, then something must be done. If not, it becomes a cost:benefit/risk analysis and something may or may not be done or targeted enforcement by LEO.

I had several very risky intersections including ones where the cross traffic would pass through at 55+ MPH. Most crashes occurred at times of peak traffic and actually getting out and onto violators was difficult. In fact, drivers would from time call in complaints about me "driving recklessly".
Damned if you do, damned if you dont!

quote:

Originally posted by architect:

quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:
Many studies have shown that absent traffic controls, the majority of people will drive properly.

This leads me to believe that existing traffic controls are improper when being ignored by so many people. Perhaps they need to adjust the light cycle to allow for a better flow of traffic from the problem direction.

I have long contended that traffic engineers hate cars and will do anything they can to impede/slow the flow of traffic, such as awkward merge areas and counter-productive traffic light timing. It makes perfect sense for drivers to intuitively recognize this and resist these obstructions. Traffic engineers seem more interested in "calming" than they are in getting people where they need to go in an efficient manner.

And for the poster above who talks about 50-60 MPH "rush hours," come to DC and experience our 0-5MPH rush hours (that actually last all day).

I agree 100%. If I was in charge of the traffic department in a city, I would go through employee records and see which of my employees have a degree in civil engineering, then fire them. Then I would make a list of all 4 way stop intersections and convert most of them to 2 way stops. I would make a list of all "no left turn" and 'no right turn" signs and pull most of them by the roots. Then I would start working on removing curbs that obstruct traffic and prevent people from going where they want to go.
When I was finished with the reforms, there would be half as many vehicles on the road because the other half already arrived at their destination.

quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:
Many studies have shown that absent traffic controls, the majority of people will drive properly.

This leads me to believe that existing traffic controls are improper when being ignored by so many people. Perhaps they need to adjust the light cycle to allow for a better flow of traffic from the problem direction.

I agree that lots of traffic lights need to be adjusted to keep the main roads flowing. Surely these days the controller can have different times for inward or outward peak flows.
In general just actually having traffic enforcement do ANYTHING ANYWHERE would help keep people honest. Around here there is no reason to worry about being ticketed.

“Calming” We do that here. We make roads impossibly slow and dangerous so traffic jambs are certain everyday. I would remove lots of 4 way stops and lots of left turns both off of and onto the main roads. If traffic wasn’t backed up by the stop on the main road it would be easy to turn right.
The calming goes beyond that to the expressways. Police and fire closed the highway for a truck accident and funneled two expressways into the city streets. Only thing blocking the highway was fire trucks and debris they were piling in the roadway. The accident was entirely off the shoulder.

We have a similar situation to what is described in the OP. Major 4-lane highway running right through the center of town. It was originally put in as a bypass, but the city planning idiots let businesses build up all around it, and then added a bunch of intersections with lights every time a shopping center requested one, so now it's a nightmare to drive that road at all. Adding to the problem is that we have tons of truckers coming in and out of Chicago who use that highway to avoid the tolls on the 80/90 toll road about 50 miles north of us, so they blow lights all the time, and the ones who do stop clog up traffic by taking forever to get going again when the light turns green. It's a mess.

We do targeted enforcement out there...we even got state funding to pay double-time to do it. We write a bunch of tickets, but it does nothing to stop the problem. You can have 3 or four vehicles stopped on the side of the highway with all the cops tied up writing tickets and watch somebody else come through and blow the light right in front of us. Thankfully that road is outside my town limits so I don't have to go out there that much, but I can't hardly drive through there in a marked car on my way to doing something else without witnessing something stupid and having to make a stop. No amount of tickets is going to fix it.

There have been lots of wrecks, lots of fatalities. They're now doing studies to figure out how to make the road limited access again. It's going to take at least a decade, cost millions of dollars, make a huge mess while they're doing it, cause all kinds of public outcry about which of the current intersections are going to get closed or cut off from the highway...all of which could have been avoided if they'd just been smarter about it in the first place.

It'll be worth the effort though. They did something similar on US31 down around Kokomo and Carmel about 10 years ago, and it's so much better to drive through there now. Kokomo in particular has been really good about not letting companies move out onto the ag-zoned land around the new bypass, which keeps traffic moving really well and it's a lot safer.

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Police and fire closed the highway for a truck accident and funneled two expressways into the city streets. Only thing blocking the highway was fire trucks and debris they were piling in the roadway. The accident was entirely off the shoulder.

They probably had to close the highway to get the debris off, and then when the wreckers get there they'd just have to close it again (semi wreckers need lots of room), so it was probably a lot easier and safer to leave it closed until the entire scene could be cleared.

I hate working wrecks on the highway...if you could trust everybody to slow down and use their head you could get away with much fewer precautions, but you can't. It only takes one idiot to ruin everybody's day, and anybody who drives knows there's a lot more than one of them out there!