Kaneville/Keslinger Road at Randall Road most dangerous
If you’re injured in a car crash at Geneva’s most accident-prone intersection, you don’t have far to go for medical treatment.
The intersection of Kaneville/Keslinger Road at Randall Road again tops the annual list of where most crashes occur. There were 43 incidents there in 2011, up from 32 in 2010.
Geneva Police Operations Cmdr. Eric Passarelli said the likely reason is volume. Randall Road is a commercial corridor through the Tri-Cities, and Delnor Hospital is on the northwest corner.
“It is just a very heavily traveled intersection,” Passarelli said.
Coming in at Nos. 2 through 5 were Route 38 at Kirk Road, with 28 crashes; Fabyan Parkway at Kirk, 27; Fargo Boulevard at Randall, 24; and Glen Eagle Drive at Randall, 17.
“What all of these have in common is the volume of traffic on those roads,” Passarelli said.
He said the Kane County Transportation Department evaluates accident data. It lengthened a turn lane at Kaneville/Keslinger, and installed a light several hundred feet before the intersection that flashes yellow to warn drivers the light is about to change to red.
He said the “vast majority” of crashes at those sites were rear-end accidents. Many of those were due to people not paying attention, he said. Traffic may be stopped at a red light. The light turns green, and the car in front of you starts to move. You do too, but take your eyes off that other car for second, and fail to notice that it had to stop again.
“Glen Eagle is a hard one to understand. I’m not sure why it is so high,” Passarelli said. He speculated construction on Randall near there, which resulted in temporary lane closures and narrowing, might have contributed.
Intersection-related accidents accounted for 437 of the 1,039 reported incidents. The Illinois accident-reporting standards say an accident is intersection-related if it can be tied at all to a change in a traffic signal or stop sign, even if the crash happens several hundred feet away from the intersection, Passarelli said. The report tracks 110 intersections.
There were 344 reported non-intersection crashes and 258 reported parking lot accidents last year.
Leading the parking lot mishaps was Geneva Commons shopping center. Route 38 was tops for mid-block crashes, with 66, and Randall was second with 62.
Overall, there were 44 more reported crashes in 2011 than in 2010. But in 2010, there were fewer crashes than in 2009.
Nobody was killed in a crash in Geneva in 2011.