Taking A Look At Dangerous Intersections

NOXUBEE COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – Intersections can be deadly, dangerous and known for terrible collisions.

Law enforcement say people not paying attention or stopping at stop signs cause many of the crashes.

The responsibility of doing something about dangerous intersections, falls into the hands of the Mississippi Department of Transportation.

The department is over maintenance and safety projects throughout the state and know how many deadly accidents happen at intersections.

The Mississippi Department of Transportation studies the crash history of intersections throughout the state, on a periodic basis.

They also look at intersections from a traffic standpoint.

“Take volume counts, take turning movement counts, and try to evaluate what might be contributing to the accident and then, try to put a countermeasure in place to address that when possible,” says MDOT District 1 Engineer, Mark Holley.

Some of those safety countermeasures include a range of things.

“Could be warning devices, could be signalization, could be a directional median on four-lanes that even would prevent a left turn out of an intersection, from time to time.”

A warning device was placed in Macon, after a deadly crash several years ago.

That’s when a group of people got together calling for action to be taken.

“Intersection down by the new high school on the highway, I understand that there were flashing lights put up and I would think that they would be there anyway, being in a school zone. That’s about the only one,” says Macon Police Chief Lucious Mason.

Mason says there have been a number of deadly accidents from people not stopping at the four-way stop intersection of Highways 45 and 14.

He says the key is for people to pay attention to the signs that are there to alert drivers.

“There are road signs up that tell you all about a highway, you know, if it’s a curve or an intersection coming up and I think a lot of times, that’s what people forget to look at because they could be distracted by looking at the phone, and you know, not paying attention to the highway.”

Holley says the department is constantly looking at dangerous intersections for improvements that can be made when funding is available.

“It’s not really limited to a length of time. It can depend on the intersection and how complicated the intersection is and the amount of traffic that’s involved. Certainly, higher volume traffics require a little more in-depth reviews.”

Holley says the department is in the finishing stages of a project that addresses some issues at 100 different intersections in District 1, in the Tupelo area.