West Broward's Most Crash-Prone Intersections
PEMBROKE PINES (CBS4) - Rush hour is the worst!
"The growth in Broward period," explained Plantation Police Detective Philip Toman.
No, it's nighttime and wet streets.
"That's a very busy intersection," insisted Toman.
Older drivers versus younger drivers.
"There is a high school nearby," said Toman.
CBS4 Investigates waded through hundreds of crash reports for the first six months of this year looking for links between car crashes in eight communities in Western Broward County.
We wanted to know which intersections were the most hazardous and why.
We also watched you drivers and videotaped.
"They're not practicing safe driving habits," Toman said.
So honk if you recognize yourself, as we put South Florida drivers on display.
Only one intersection in West Broward logged a fatality in between January and June of this year. That was in Commercial Blvd. and 441 in Tamarac... where there have been 13 traffic accidents.
The City of Sunrise had four locations with more than 20 crashes at each intersection... including Sunrise Blvd. and Flamingo Road, West Oakland Park Blvd. and Hiatus Road... Oakland Park and North University... and here at Oakland Park and Nob Hill Road, where we met up with Sunrise Police Sgt. Steve Curran.
"When I analyze the data, I see people failing to use due care... failing to us the right of way... being distracted... just not paying attention and running red lights. So all that equates to bad driving habits," said Curran.
It was here, even standing with cops on the corner, that we observed four brazen drivers all blowing through a red light at once. Maybe those drivers already knew what we were about to learn... that those cameras overhead are NOT red-light cameras, but the county's traffic flow cameras, used to set the signal length and timing.
"Well we've installed red-light cameras as six intersections within our city," explained Sgt. Curran. "We're in the process of installing more. In fact, this intersection now Nob Hill and Oakland is next on our list."
Next on our list is the city of Plantation, where we found the top three most "crash-prone" intersections in all of West Broward.... Sunrise Blvd. and 47th Avenue had 36 accidents... Sunrise Blvd. and 56th Avenue 43 smash-ups... and the number #1 "most crashed intersection is here at Peters Dr. and University, where we discovered 62 accidents... that's almost 10 car wrecks every month.
"That's a very busy intersection," said Det. Toman. "It does get backed up during rush hour. There's also a lot of young drivers. There's a school nearby."
In fact, according to the reports we examined, drivers under the age of 35 accounted for almost half of all accidents. Another trend to be on the alert for... 70% of all intersection car wrecks were rear-end crashes.
"Distraction is one of the highest causes of crashes. People either failing to use due care, texting and driving, checking their email... whatever the case may be, just not paying attention," Sgt. Curran told CBS4's Vanessa Borge.
If you were surprised to learn how high the accident rate is at Peters Dr. and University, consider this, not only is it a high volume intersection, but it's also just blocks from the gigantic construction project at I-595 and University and that could be a contributing factor police believe.
