A spate of car crashes on South Camino del Rio – the stretch of road between Nature’s Oasis and Home Depot in Durango – has drawn criticism from residents who fault the signals, speed limit and road design through the busy corridor.
Flashing yellow turn signals are confusing to some. Others say the speed limit could be lowered.
But if you trust statistics, compared with a couple of years ago, the stretch actually is safer.
Complaints ratcheted up last month after Durango resident Willis Irvine III was killed while making a left turn from South Camino del Rio onto a frontage road that services Nature’s Oasis.
The traffic signal was reported to be malfunctioning twice during the day, once three hours before the accident and again two hours after the crash. Police were unable to determine whether the traffic signal was malfunctioning at the time of the crash, and conflicting witness statements made it impossible to determine who was at fault, said Trish Hutchens, a detective with the Durango Police Department.
No charges were filed, she said Wednesday.
Traffic crashes seem to be a common occurrence on South Camino del Rio, said Joe Lewandowski, a Durango planning commissioner who drives the road every day. He observed two accidents within three hours last week at Sawyer Drive and South Camino del Rio, the main intersection for the Durango Mall.
“People really carry a lot of speed on that road,” he said. “I’m just wondering if knocking it down 5 mph would prevent some problems.”
The corridor, particularly the intersection at the mall, has a lot of distractions as a result of two frontage roads on either side of South Camino del Rio, Lewandowski said.
“That area is pretty busy, and there are a lot of places where you can get in trouble if you’re not paying attention,” he said. “You kind of have to have eyes in the front and the back of your head to make it through there.”
Durangoan’s near miss
Lori Walters, 57, of Durango, said she narrowly avoided an accident about a month ago at the Durango Mall intersection. While driving north on South Camino del Rio, she planned to turn left at Sawyer Drive. She eased out into the intersection, but while waiting, the lights turned yellow for northbound traffic. She needed to clear the intersection, and assumed the lights also would turn red for oncoming traffic.
“I went ahead and turned left, and I honked at the people that were still coming south, and when I got across, I realized they still had a green light,” Walters said. “I was the one who was wrong.
“When the light turns yellow, you think you have to get out of the intersection,” she added. “I think the lights need to turn red and green at the same time for both the north and the south directions.”
A double-fatal crash in June 2011 at the Walmart intersection prompted the Colorado Department of Transportation to install protected left-hand turn signals sooner than planned. The protected turn signals require oncoming traffic to stop before cars can turn left.
CDOT also installed flashing-yellow turn arrows at 18 intersections, or 36 left-turn lanes, in the Durango area.
The flashing yellow arrows allow drivers to turn left while yielding to oncoming traffic, but they are programed to become protected turn signals during high-traffic volumes.
“The bottom line is yellow means ‘proceed with caution,’ no matter what other lanes of traffic are doing,” said Nancy Shanks, spokeswoman for CDOT.
Several residents have complained that the flashing-yellow arrows are confusing.
But CDOT data shows a decrease in the number of accidents ever since the flashing-yellow arrows were installed in December 2011.
Crashes dropped 24 percent
At the Herald’s request, CDOT compiled crash data from 18 months before installing the flashing yellow turn signals and 18 months after installing the flashing signals. The study area included four major intersections on South Camino del Rio, including the intersections at Nature’s Oasis, the Durango Mall, Walmart and Home Depot.
(No flashing yellow arrows were installed at the Walmart intersection. Instead, CDOT installed protected turn signals that are in effect 24 hours a day.)
According to the data, the number of crashes dropped 24 percent, from 45 accidents before the lights were installed to 34 after they were installed. The number of crashes involving left-hand turns dropped 65 percent, from 17 to six.
The corridor is one of Durango’s busiest, with an average of 29,500 vehicle movements per day. Yet it has a “better than expected” safety performance when compared with highways across the state that are similar in size and traffic volume, Shanks said.
The ranking means there are “not too many crashes, not zero crashes, right where it would be expected with any traffic safety analysis,” she said.
The flashing yellow turn signals may confuse some drivers, said Durango police officer Rob Haukeness. CDOT should consider a public education campaign to help the public better understand the lights, which are being used across the state, he said.
Shanks said residents may perceive South Camino del Rio as dangerous because it is heavily traveled and it has a 50 mph speed limit – one of the fastest in Durango – so when an accident does occur, it causes more damage and injuries.
The agency has no plans to make improvements to the stretch of road, she said.
“Because the numbers don’t suggest that there’s an issue anywhere, there are no plans to make any changes,” she said.
Durango police officer Ron Wysocki said South Camino del Rio seems pretty safe considering the number of cars that travel it. Drivers need to pay more attention to what they’re doing and be more aware of what the signals are doing and what they mean, he said. Too many drivers run red lights or fail to yield to oncoming traffic as they make left-hand turns.
“It’s one of our quickest roads in and around town,” Wysocki said. “Any time you have vehicles traveling that fast and then someone makes a left turn in front of you, there’s potential for somebody to be killed,”
shane@durangoherald.com
