Crash stats: Bennett Road intersection among most dangerous in Oregon

That doesn't mean the Columbia County road will get more attention from ODOT

By Darryl Swan

The South County Spotlight, Jul 28, 2010, Updated Jul 29, 2010 (6 Reader comments)

Cornelia Combs / For The South County Spotlight

The scene at the intersection of Highway 30 and Bennett Road, where a woman was killed on July 22 after a cement truck crashed into the Honda Civic she was driving as she attempted to pull onto Highway 30 from Old Portland Road in Warren.

Recently released Oregon Department of Transportation statistics measuring state roads by how dangerous they are place the stretch of pavement at Highway 30 and Bennett Road in St. Helens in the top 5 percent of dangerous roads statewide.

This is the third year in a row the Columbia County intersection has ranked that high. And at the intersection’s worst stretch it places within the top 2 percent of dangerous roads in the state.

Still, that doesn’t guarantee any additional ODOT focus in terms of safety funding.

The report also shows an updated traffic count of 23,400 motor vehicles that pass the intersection segment daily.

The data does not include 2010 statistics, such as the July 22 crash that claimed the life of 23-year-old St. Helens resident Kristina Brixey. Brixey was killed when the car she was driving was hit in the side by a cement truck as she attempted to pull onto Highway 30 from Bennett Road.

In ODOT’s Region 1 sector, which includes Columbia County, there are 149 road sections that rank in the top 5 percent on the state’s Safety Priority Index System, which ODOT officials use to make decisions on where safety dollars should be spent.

“I have 149 Bennett Roads, and the region probably gets enough money allocated to address two, maybe three, maybe four,” said ODOT’s KC Humphrey, transportation safety advocate for Region 1. “It breaks your heart.”

Humphrey is proposing a change for how ODOT measures dangerous roads, including adjusting how roads receive SPIS points. By changing the threshold, fewer sites would qualify in the top 5 percent category. He’s proposing the change to ODOT engineers next week, he said.

“It should narrow our focus a little bit,” he said.

Also, SPIS data is analyzed in three-year sets, though for situations such as those on Bennett Road there is a deeper history of fatal and near-fatal crashes.

In fact, the Bennett Road intersection first cracked into the top 5 percent in 2005. In 2006, it was in the top 10 percent of dangerous roads, and going back further it measured in the top 20 and 30 percent in the years 2004 and 2003, respectively.

Humphrey said incorporating more history into the SPIS analysis will help the agency more clearly identify chronic problem spots and those areas that might have one significant fatal crash and then be silent for the next few years. In such cases, the one event becomes diluted by crash-free years. But in cases like Bennett Road, the average versus other roads remains high due to the sustained frequency of bad crashes.

“If you look at the history, you don’t see the natural tendency to fall back to the average,” he said.

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