Morning Sentinel
Some motorists say they're playing rotary roulette as transit officials track crashes at bad intersections
BY MEGHAN V. MALLOY
Staff Writer Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel 03/16/2008

BY MEGHAN V. MALLOY

Staff Writer

Augusta drivers, check over your shoulder before leaving that rotary.

Waterville motorists, watch your speed while headed south on Drummond Avenue.

These spots are among the area's likeliest to lead to an accident, according to the Maine Department of Transportation.

"I know one of these days I'm going to get hit," Readfield resident Janet Elliott said. Elliott commutes on the Cony Circle rotary in Augusta daily.

"People are in too big of a hurry and just don't watch where they're going," Elliott said. "They're trying to watch the traffic coming, but forget that someone is stopped in front of them."

Betty Tinker, who also commutes daily on Cony Circle, called the rotary "dangerous."

Tinker said her major concern with the five-exit rotary is people's lack of diligent driving, especially at rush hour.

"There are times I'm sitting there for several minutes, trying to find a way to get in," Tinker said. "You either take a chance and maybe get hit, or wait."

The rotary is one of a slew of intersections in Maine that transportation officials say have exceeded their "expected crash rates."

MaineDOT derives this figure by dividing the average number of crashes that occur at any given intersection by the actual number of crashes that happen over a designated period of time, said Greg Costello, a crash-records manager for MaineDOT.

In central Maine, at least 52 intersections have been identified as having above-average crash rates from 2004 to 2006. Almost 900 vehicle accidents have been reported at those 52 intersections alone in that three-year period. Accident data for 2007 will be available in late spring.

It will come as no surprise to many Mainers that 34 percent of those accidents occurred in the two rotaries in Augusta.

Don't blame the rotaries, says MaineDOT, or any of the intersections, for that matter.

The danger is in how motorists negotiate them, said MaineDOT official Duane Burnell.

Disregarding traffic signals and driving at illegal speeds make intersections risky, said Burnell, who serves as a safety-analysis manager for Maine- DOT.

"Ultimately, knowing what goes on at a crash site relies heavily on driver behavior," he said.

"I hesitate to say these intersections are 'dangerous'," added Costello, because MaineDOT uses the number of accidents to track accident frequency at an intersection, but not the severity of those crashes.

Thirty percent of all traffic accidents and 10 percent of all fatalities in Maine occur at intersections.

Of these, the Memorial and Cony circles cause "the highest number of accidents probably in all of Maine," according to MaineDOT safety office Director Brad Foley.

Between 2004 and 2006, there were 309 reported accidents in the Augusta rotaries, resulting in 81 reported injuries.

Cony Circle, east of the Kennebec River, was the site of 230 of those accidents, most of them happening at the cut from Memorial Drive to Stone Street, which connects to the rotary just adjacent to the old Cony High School flatiron building.

"It was absolutely horrendous," former Cony Principal Geri Massey said of the flatiron's location in relation to the rotary. Cony High School moved from the rotary to Pierce Drive in 2006.

"When we applied to the state for money to build the new high school, state representatives could not believe how close we were to that rotary," Massey said.

In her 43 years as an educator in Augusta schools, Massey said, one student suffered minor injuries when she was struck by a car in Cony Circle, a truck going around the rotary too quickly tipped over, and the noise from the street was so distracting that teachers would have to stop lessons and wait for the noise to dissipate.

"We were very lucky we didn't have any serious accidents," she said.

Analysts and engineers for the DOT also report that drivers are 10 times more likely to have a crash at the off-ramps from Interstate 95 to Western Avenue, headed westbound. Officials received 61 accident reports from the site from 2004 to 2006, with injuries suffered in 18 of them.

In Waterville, Ron Cutter, manager of Ace Tire and Service at the corner of Drummond Avenue and High Street in Waterville, has been an eyewitness to several of the intersection's collisions.

The intersection has been the scene of eight reported vehicle crashes from 2004 to 2006, with injuries recorded at six of those accidents.

"We've seen some pretty good ones," Cutter said. "Some cars even veer into our parking lot and stop just short of our showroom."

Meghan V. Malloy -- 623-3811 Ext. 431 or

mmalloy@centralmaine.com

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