Wake Forest commuters beware: Here are the town’s riskiest intersections

The Wake Forest Police Department has tallied crash numbers for the past year and identified the highest-risk intersections in town.

No one died in any of the 152 accidents at the intersections, but people were injured in several of the mishaps, and damage to vehicles was in the thousands of dollars, the town said.

The causes of most crashes were the usual suspects: failure to reduce speed for slowed or stopped traffic, inattention and distracted driving, the town said. In other words, most of the accidents were avoidable.

Here are the intersections:

▪ Capital Boulevard, also known at U.S. 1, at Wake Union Church Road — 55 accidents between July 1, 2017, and June 30 of this year. (That intersection is one way into and out of the shopping centered anchored by Lowes Food.)

▪ Capital Boulevard at South Main Street and Falls of Neuse Road — 51 accidents. (That intersection is the gateway to town.)

▪ Capital Boulevard at Burlington Mills Road — 46 accidents. (A 2016 crash near that intersection killed a Wake Forest High School teacher. Michelle Simone Barlow, 42, of Wake Forest died when her minivan was smashed between a dump truck and a tractor-trailer rig just south of the Burlington Mills Road intersection..)

All of the intersections have traffic signals, meaning traffic slows or stops as lights change. That’s how distracted drivers cause rear-end collisions.

But in more good news, the state will reduce the odds of such collisions.

In a $464 million project, the N.C. Department of Transportation plans to make U.S. 1, or Capital Boulevard, a freeway between Interstate 540 and Purnell Road in Wake Forest, eliminating the intersections and replacing two of them — at Burlington Mills Road and South Main Street/Falls of Neuse Road — with interchanges.

The DOT doesn’t plan an interchange at Capital Boulevard and Wake Union Church Road, but it will build one on Capital Boulevard at Purnell Road, which is just a short drive north of Wake Union Church Road.

But Wake Forest drivers worried about the town’s highest-risk intersections will have to be patient. Work to make Capital Boulevard a freeway in Wake Forest isn’t scheduled to begin until 2024, and it won’t wrap up until 2027.

In the meantime, “police officials are taking this opportunity to urge motorists to be alert and proceed with caution through these and all intersections,” the town said in a news release.

And in case that reminder isn’t enough, police will be conducting enforcement campaigns in and around those intersections, the town said.

This story was originally published July 25, 2018 at 12:58 PM.