The Minnesota Department of Transportation recently released a list of the most dangerous intersections in Northern Minnesota which the Grand Forks Harold looked at with a great graphic:
The accompanying article then took a look at the most dangerous: E Grand Forks U.S. Highway 2 and Minnesota Highway 220 .
The reasons seem to be:
and a interesting issue with new cars: the A Pillar:
“Not only do we have a distinct pattern of crashes there, but we actually know the reason for them,” Pirkl said. “It’s a rarity when you know the exact reason for accidents.”
Fourteen of the 16 crashes are blamed on the angle at which the roads meet. Highway 75 and Highway 21 don’t intersect at a 90-degree angle. Drivers traveling east or west have a blocked view of Highway 75 traffic.
The culprit is the A-pillar, the support structure between a vehicle’s windshield and side window. The A-pillar is wider on newer vehicles because it contains an air bag. Tests showed that drivers on Highway 21 can experience as much as an 11-second blind spot while looking to the right at the intersection.
Hopefully, this kind of report will quicken the plans already in discussion to make the intersection safer.
