These are the worst intersections in the Tri-Cities. And here’s what police are doing about it

It didn’t take long for police to spot a driver illegally chatting on a cellphone at the corner of Canal Drive and Edison Street.

Kennewick officers wrote 33 distracted driving tickets in 3 1/2 hours, and weren’t able to catch up to seven others on a recent Saturday.

It’s tough to say whether this is normal, said Kennewick Sgt. Matt Newton. But he picked that intersection for a reason — half of all reportable accidents last year happened because drivers were distracted.

“In a perfect world, we would write one or two tickets,” he said. “But people can’t put their phone down and we end up writing a lot more tickets.”

This is the first of several intersections throughout the Tri-Cities that to be targeted as part of a regional effort to curb the number of intersection crashes.

The Benton-Franklin Traffic Safety Task Force recently received a $30,000 state grant to focus on reducing fatal and serious injury collisions at intersections in Benton and Franklin counties. The task force includes seven police area agencies

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Five Kennewick intersections account for most of the crashes that Kennewick police are called to. While Kennewick officers help at the intersections along state highways and the interstates, they aren’t included in Newton’s counts.

Kennewick’s top 5 dangerous intersections are:

• Columbia Center Boulevard and Canal Drive
  
  
• Columbia Center and Quinault Avenue
  
  
• Columbia Center and Clearwater Avenue
  
  
• Edison Street and Clearwater Avenue
  
  
• Edison Street and Canal Drive

In August, a moped rider was killed at Edison and Clearwater when a pickup truck pulled in front of him. The driver is charged with vehicular homicide and hit and run with death.

He said the intersection emphasis patrols will happen across the Tri-Cities, and they aren’t just for looking for people on their phones.

“If we identify an intersection where we have a lot of red light runners, then we can use this money to do an emphasis patrol,” he said. “This might change from city to city and intersection to intersection.”

Officer Jeff Cobb said Pasco’s worst intersections are:

• Court Street and 20th Avenue
  
  
• Court Street and 22nd Avenue
  
  
• Road 68 and Burden Boulevard
  
  
• Road 68 and Sandifur Parkway
  
  
• Sandifur Parkway and Road 100

And traffic Officer Eric Edwards said Richland plans to focus on:

• Leslie Road and Gage Boulevard
  
  
• Jadwin Avenue and Swift Boulevard
  
  

Newton explained drivers received plenty of warning before they got to intersection last week. Police put up signs on each of the approaches, and put a post on the department’s Facebook page.

They put two officers at the corner watching traffic and had officers in patrol vehicles waiting on each of the streets. The officers would signal ahead to tell people they spotted someone using their phone.

They will follow a similar pattern at other intersections when they start up again in the spring, Newton said. They have to wait for the weather to get warmer though, since officers need to be standing outside.

The goal is to educate drivers, and they all benefit from having the expertise from across the Tri-Cities.

“It’s not about writing tickets,” Cobb said. “We want people to be safe driving, and to get where they’re going safely.”

This story was originally published November 11, 2018 at 1:35 PM.