Traffic light pattern is causing accidents on SRT

[Saintmarks]

Originally Posted by TheOverdog

You should email the city council with your description attached. Hopefully they forward it to someone who can review accident statistics, make an assessment of your description, and work with TxDOT and the NTTA (whomever owns the stop lights) to make any necessary safety improvements. I've never noticed any confusion with traffic lights in that area, but don't pass through it everyday.

Thanks. Most helpful comment on the post. Blaming the driver is an easy way to brush this off, but it happens with such a frequency, I can't help but feel that the engineering and design of the lights plays into this. I have teens that drive this area. I don't want to get that dreaded call that every parent fears and all I have to say is "well, that other person wasn't paying attention." Something really needs to be done to address this.

Part of the difficulty in this is that the SRT is the border between Plano and Frisco. In reality, the light that stays red (if you are going southbound) is in Frisco while the light on the other side that turns green first is in Plano. At least I am supposing the line is in the median of the SRT. The original boundary was the two lane 121 and it's exact location for the most part would be the median today. So any action would have to be the two entities working together with the NTTA.

The NTTA is probably the place to start.

[hell_storm2004]

Originally Posted by Beardown91737

These are also in certain SRT locations between Lake Forest/Watters and the DNT. Hard to see until you are right there, so they are probably designed to prevent confusion like the one the OP encountered.

But it's so hard, that even if you are careful, breaking at the last moment from 45 to 0, you might not even stop in time and not to mention the wearing out of the brakes pretty quick!

[keribeth818]

The lights are maintained by Plano.

[jdallas]

Originally Posted by hell_storm2004

But it's so hard, that even if you are careful, breaking at the last moment from 45 to 0, you might not even stop in time and not to mention the wearing out of the brakes pretty quick!

Why are you braking at the last moment instead of a controlled deceleration? Again, not the stoplight's fault.


At the Springcreek/121 intersection mentioned above, there's actually a striped pedestrian walkway in the northbound intersection with the wider stop line in front of it. I often see people stopping at the front pedestrian line instead which cuts their visibility by roughly 10 feet. It's even worse when people think the front edge of the median is where they should stop. That puts them about a car length and a half in front of where they should be.

[TheOverdog]

FYI, the City of Plano Police just produced their yearly report to the city council regarding traffic safety measures, and at the intersections of the SRT that are being talked about here, the number of accidents are low compared to high collision areas like Preston south of Parker and Central Expressway, so I wouldn't expect much traction on improvements to these intersections in the near future. Sorry, and be careful.

Report here:
http://pdf.plano.gov/agendas/ccpacket/pomp022216.pdf