BAD INTERSECTION
Saskatoon has a new intersection being labelled as most dangerous.
The development boom in Saskatoon’s far west end has led to a spike in collisions at the intersection of 22nd Street and Diefenbaker Drive.
It now has the highest rate of car crashes in the city, surpassing even the historically troublesome intersection of 51st Street and Warman Road, according to 2013 data from SGI.
Charlene Lafontaine, manager of the adjacent Fairhaven Laundromat, had a close call of her own recently. As the light turned green and she started to cross 22nd Street, “a woman’s talking on her phone and goes right through the red light and just about hits me and my grandchildren in my van,” she said.
“So she wasn’t paying attention. I think it’s mostly people aren’t paying attention, or trying to run a light.”
Co-worker Erla Campbell said that people merging onto 22nd Street are “forever getting rear ended. They yield to the oncoming traffic and the cars behind them don’t. Yesterday I think there were three of them I saw.”
In terms of actual multivehicle crashes, the two intersections tied at 53 in 2013. However, while 51st Street and Warman Road has hovered around that mark for a decade, 22nd Street and Diefenbaker Drive averaged just 34 over the previous five years, with as few as 27 in 2011.
City administrators are preparing a report to prioritize intersection improvements across the city, transportation director Angela Gardiner said. It will be presented to the transportation committee within the next few months.
The intersection of 22nd Street and Diefenbaker Drive is one of about 10 to 15 locations being monitored, she said, noting the city has already “protected” the left turn signal there, meaning drivers can only turn on the left turn arrow, and not into oncoming traffic.
Without looking into the details of the collisions she couldn’t identify a direct cause for the increase, but said the intersection has seen an increase in traffic with residential expansions like Blairmore and Kensington.
“Any time you have more traffic going through an intersection, there is a greater potential for collisions.”