As traffic has increased near the GM/Samsung battery plant and Amazon data center construction sites west of South Bend, a woman who lives in the area is worried about safety. She hopes her Change.org petition will get the attention of state officials before it’s too late.
Lauren Boyd, who lives near the corner of U.S. 20 and Quince Road, says these days you can wait a half hour to turn left onto 20 since that traffic has only a flashing yellow light. Boyd says it feels especially treacherous at rush hour after picking up her 9-month-old daughter from day care.
Even scarier, she also has a 15-year-old daughter who’s learning to drive.
“You see a lot of people that are laying on their horns, flipping people off, swearing, yelling, it’s a very tenseful situation,” Boyd says. "Every single day it feels like there's almost a near incident or an accident where somebody either is going to rear-end me, or I'm going to get T-boned."
Boyd and several neighbors have sent emails to the Indiana Department of Transportation asking it to install a red light for U.S. 20 traffic. But INDOT has replied by saying that its study of crash data and vehicle speeds at the intersection has not justified the signal change. The agency thinks the situation will improve once work on the parallel State Road 2 finishes later this year.
Boyd shared INDOT's reply email with WVPE. The agency says that while a signal isn't warranted, it's considering lowering the speed limit on U.S. 20.
“I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty infuriating," Boyd says. "We’ve seen that it’s not going to get better because you’re also talking about potential shift workers and a lot of other commuters going in back and forth. it feels very dismissive that they don't foresee anything changing on their end.”
On Monday Boyd started collecting petition signatures on Change.org urging INDOT to install a red light. As of Wednesday afternoon, 404 people had signed, surpassing her initial goal of 400.
An INDOT spokeswoman did not reply to WVPE’s interview request.
