MILWAUKEE — Three intersections in the city are considered the most dangerous by Milwaukee Police. A grassroots organization that has partnered with the state is now trying to change that.
For more than forty years, Lester Staple has owned Staples Bros. Paint and Hardware right on the corner of 35th St., Burleigh and Fond Du Lac. It is one of the intersections Milwaukee Police consider the most dangerous in the city when it comes to reckless driving.
"They start speeding up a block away when they see the yellow light. So by the time they get here they run the red light,” said Staples. “They just don't care.”
In 2019, a vehicle police were chasing blew through the intersection and ended up taking out the front wall of Lester's store.
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MPD says that corner is one of the top three most dangerous intersections in the city. The other two are Capitol and 51st Street and 27th and Center. It's something the Sherman Park Reckless Driving Committee Chair Steve O'Connell says they are now zoning in on.
“How do we slow down? How do we begin to slow our traffic?” asked O'Connell.
The Sherman Park Reckless Driving Committee called on the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to study the two intersections that fall into the Sherman Park neighborhood boundaries, the intersections of 35th, Burleigh and Fond Du Lac and 51st and Capitol.
“Something that we really hope to get out of the study rather than just looking at how we can bring down crashes, is to really kind of get community feedback and help understand,” said Jeremy Kloss, an advanced program and policy analyst with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, the Bureau of Transportation Safety and Technical Services.
When the Wisconsin DOT looked closer all three intersections, it found that one in three of the crashes that happen at those locations resulted in serious injury, compared to one in five of all crashes city-wide.
"We know that injury crash is happening at disproportionately in these intersections, which is the top hotspots in the city. But the first thing we really wanted to clarify is red light running contributing to that? And what we've seen is just looking at the crash data is that about one in eight drivers in 2022 were involved in a crash at these intersections. And they were disregarding a red light or a traffic control, and that compares to about one in 20 city-wide,” said Kloss.
The DOT began a Red Light Running study in August and they are looking into the crash numbers to see if they can recommend any engineering changes, community education or enforcement to make those intersections safer.
The Milwaukee Police’s Traffic Safety Unit Captain Jeffrey Sunn has already be told those three intersections make up some of the worst in the city.
"That's where we deploy our resources, because we only have a limited amount of resources,” said Sunn.
Lester hopes these combined efforts starts to make some real changes because he has no plans to retire and leave his business.
"I'm not going to go any place. I have to deal with it as it is,” said Staples.
The study will be completed in December. The DOT will share their findings with the city of Milwaukee and MPD and the Sherman Park Reckless Driving Committee. It will then be up to the city and MPD to decide if engineering or other enforcement changes need to happen.
