CHAPEL HILL - With limited visibility and cars zooming over the speed limit, Jeanne Brown has a hard time turning onto Mount Carmel Church Road from Bennett Road as it is.

There have been 12 reported accidents at the intersection in the past six years, many of them nasty. In May, Brown said, a father and daughter were broadsided while turning and landed in a ditch.

But Brown and many of her neighbors think the N.C. Department of Transportation's proposed solution would make things even worse.

The plan is to install a left-turn-only lane on both sides of the two-lane road at the Bennett intersection. Chuck Edwards, a DOT engineer, said the idea was to prevent the rear-end collisions caused when cars stop to turn.

"There are concerns about that design," Edwards acknowledged Thursday after a community meeting Wednesday night at the Chapel Hill Public Library.

"We realize there were other issues folks were dealing with there that data may not have shown us."

Brown said, "We rely on cars that are stopping to turn left as a way for us to cross."

Neighbors would prefer a stop light at the intersection.

Edwards said DOT is conducting a survey to see whether traffic volume warrants a signal. It should be completed in a few weeks.

Neighbors also want to see the speed limit reduced from 35 mph to 30 mph. Edwards said DOT officials haven't committed to studying whether that's warranted.

"It's a bit early," he said. "We're at a position now where we're going to compile all the notes we took [Wednesday] night and go through them and try to assess each one of them and what action needs to be taken."

The DOT is going ahead with repaving Mount Carmel Church Road from U.S. 15-501 to the Chatham County line. It also will add 2-foot-wide shoulders. That work should be completed by the fall, Edwards said.

-- staff writer Matt Dees

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